SWNOVELXO Chapter 5: Chapter 5: Where Fire Once Touched Bone
"Some memories are not remembered. They are felt - like fire touching bone, long after the flame has gone."
I burned long before I was ever kissed.
Long before Kaelith's lips wrote death on my skin,
Long before the gods forgot mercy,
I was touched by fire.
And now it returns.
I held the white feather all night - the one singed black at its edge, like it had been born in the mouth of a dying flame.
I didn't sleep.
Sleep would've meant letting the memories bite deeper.
But at dawn, when the sky cracked open like a wound and the first red rays fell across the floor, I stood.
Not as a girl seeking answers.
As a storm returning to her battlefield.
The marketplace was already waking when I stepped out of the tavern.
Voices. Wagons. Smoke.
The illusion of peace.
But something in the air was wrong.
It tasted… watched.
That kind of silence - the one that hums beneath noise, waiting to strike - it had followed me in previous lives.
Before the fourth death.
Before the sixth betrayal.
And now, again.
At the far end of the stalls, I saw her.
A woman cloaked in midnight-blue silk, unmoving, watching.
She didn't blink.
Didn't speak.
Just raised a hand and held up a second feather - white, and untouched by burn.
I stepped forward.
But as the crowd surged between us, she was gone.
Vanished. As if she'd never existed at all.
Later that evening, I returned to the ruins near Gathil Ravine, the place Kaelith's guards had camped.
The ash was still warm.
Something told me he hadn't gone far.
So I sat on the broken stone, staring at the blackened firepit and let the silence speak.
Then I saw it.
A symbol.
Scratched into the stone - faint, old, but not forgotten:
> 𐤊 — The Mark of Kaether.
The mark of the ancient fire priests.
The very same cult that murdered me in my third life.
They had spoken of "The Flame-Wed Lovers" ... two souls bound by divine punishment for sins too sacred to name.
One cursed to love.
One cursed to forget.
And death - the only reset.
"This is older than Kaelith," I whispered. "Older than even me."
Maybe I wasn't the target.
Maybe we both were.
As the sun drowned behind blood-red clouds, I heard footsteps.
I didn't move.
I knew that sound.
Knew that rhythm.
"You again," he said.
My breath caught.
Kaelith.
He stood behind me now. No guards. No armor. Just him.
His tone wasn't curious.
It was careful.
"I don't know why, but I keep seeing your face. In fire. In sleep. In snow."
"Do I know you?"
I turned slowly.
Looked him in the eyes.
And for one beautiful, treacherous second.I saw the ghost of recognition.
"You will," I said, the smile on my lips sharper than any blade.
"And you'll wish you didn't."