Chapter 3 BETWEEN FIRE AND FLESH

The dream was fire again.

Seraphine stood in the ruins of her childhood home, flames licking up the walls, shadows writhing in corners. Screams echoed from upstairs - not fresh screams, but old ones, burned into memory. Her fingers were red with blood, not hers, not recent.

A figure walked toward her through the smoke.

Kael.

But in this dream, his eyes weren't icy blue - they glowed gold, like molten metal. And in his hands was a blade not of soulsteel, but of bone. Her mother's bone.

He raised it-

She woke with a gasp, sweat cold on her brow despite the heat of the cave.

Bobble, curled near the mouth of the den, looked up with a sleepy blink. "Another dream?"

She wiped her face. "Not a dream. A memory. Twisted."

He said nothing. Sometimes, even familiars knew when to keep quiet.

By midmorning, Seraphine was already moving through the Wyrdwood again. The forest had grown restless. Leaves whispered rumors through the canopy, and birds avoided the clearing where she and Kael had spoken the night before.

The Wyrdwood had seen the meeting. And it remembered.

She reached into the pouch at her side and removed a small vial of nightroot - a forbidden herb that allowed witches to walk the Veil, the space between memory and vision. She hesitated. The dreams were getting worse. More specific. They weren't just fragments of the past anymore.

They were warnings.

Elsewhere, Kael stood before a Tribunal.

The Witch Guard's inner circle had summoned him unexpectedly, their faces veiled in shadow, their robes stitched with the crest of the Burning Eye.

"You made contact," one of them said. Not a question.

Kael nodded. "Yes."

"With the Nightbloom witch."

"Yes."

"And yet you didn't eliminate her."

He didn't respond.

"She is a threat."

"She's not attacking anyone."

The room went still.

One of the elder guards leaned forward. "Do you doubt the doctrine, Thorne?"

He met their gaze. "I doubt the need to kill a woman who's done nothing but survive."

A long silence followed.

Finally, a voice from the shadows whispered, "Perhaps you are no longer fit to bear the Brand."

Kael clenched his jaw. "I made an oath."

"Oaths break," the voice replied. "Just like bloodlines."

Back in the forest, Seraphine walked through an overgrown path of black thorns and silverleaf. Her magic pulsed at her fingertips, brushing over each step like a sixth sense. The Wyrdwood had grown sharper, more aware.

It was protecting her. But it was also warning her.

She reached the ruins of an ancient temple - once sacred to her kind, now defiled by ash and decay. She knelt at the base of a crumbling statue of Veyla, the Witchmother, and poured a drop of blood onto the stone.

The runes lit up, briefly.

A whisper rose from the ground.

You are not safe.

The hunter carries more than steel.

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

He is marked by something older than the Guard. Something bound to your line.

And he remembers.

Her pulse quickened. "Remembers what?"

But the runes died before answering.

Kael was halfway back through the forest when he saw her.

Not hiding.

Waiting.

Seraphine stood in the center of a grove, arms folded, expression unreadable. Her cloak fluttered in the breeze, a deep violet against the green. Magic shimmered faintly around her like heat.

"You're bold," Kael said.

"You're confused."

He tilted his head. "Am I?"

She stepped forward. "You had a chance to kill me. Twice. Why didn't you?"

"Maybe I didn't see the point."

"You knew who I was."

"I wasn't sure."

"You are now."

He didn't answer.

She stopped a few feet from him. "What do you remember about Daggerfall?"

He flinched.

"I remember the fire," she said softly. "I remember my mother's scream. I remember the boy who found the trapdoor."

Kael's hands curled into fists. "I was sixteen."

"You let me live."

"It was a mistake."

"You don't sound sure."

A long silence stretched between them.

Finally, he said, "I dreamed of you. For years. I thought it was guilt."

"And now?"

"I'm not sure what it is."

She looked away. "I should hate you."

"I wouldn't blame you."

"And yet..."

He took a breath. "And yet?"

She looked up, her eyes sharp as the stars. "I don't."

They spent hours in that grove, speaking in low voices. Not trusting. Not yet forgiving. But peeling back layers of silence they didn't know they'd built.

Seraphine told him about the years in hiding - the covens that turned on her, the betrayals, the constant running.

Kael told her about the Guard, about the initiation rites, about the friends he'd watched become killers without remorse.

"They made us believe witches were born evil," he said.

She scoffed. "And you believed them."

"I did."

"And now?"

"I don't know what I believe anymore."

She studied him. "That's the first honest thing you've said."

As dusk fell, a different quiet settled over them.

Seraphine moved to leave.

Kael reached for her wrist.

"Wait."

She froze.

He didn't pull her closer. Didn't speak.

He just looked at her, really looked - at the tiredness in her eyes, the quiet strength in the way she stood, the scars she didn't bother to hide.

"I should be your enemy," he said.

She didn't move.

He stepped closer.

"But every time I see you, I feel less like a hunter and more like a man lost in his own war."

She looked at him, voice low. "And I should strike you down."

"But you don't."

They were inches apart now. The air between them hummed - not with magic, but something just as dangerous.

Kael raised a hand, brushing a strand of her hair behind her ear.

"I remember you," he whispered.

"I never forgot," she replied.

And then - as if the moment had been waiting ten years to happen - their lips met.

Not gentle.

Not soft.

Desperate. Hungry. Years of confusion and rage and pain poured into a kiss that shattered the wall between them.

She pressed him against a tree. He tangled his fingers in her hair.

The Wyrdwood pulsed around them, neither protesting nor blessing - simply witnessing.

Later, they lay beneath the tree, breath still uneven.

Seraphine rested her head on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart.

"This is wrong," Kael murmured.

"Everything that's ever mattered is," she replied.

"I can't go back."

"Then don't."

He looked up at the canopy. "They'll come after me."

"They'll come after me, too."

"We could run."

She smiled bitterly. "They'd follow."

"Then we stand."

She tilted her head. "Together?"

He met her gaze. "If you'll have me."

Far away, in the spires of the High Guard fortress, a raven landed on the edge of a window.

It bore a letter. Sealed in black wax.

The commander unrolled it, eyes narrowing.

The Nightbloom lives. The Hunter has turned.

He crushed the paper in his fist.

"Send the Wrathborn."