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**Chapter Sixteen: Where Sparks Become Blades**
They stepped from the sky like falling stars.
Twelve revenants. Their cloaks torn by smoke. Their faces hidden, each mask carved from scorched bone. They moved as one—silent, deliberate, the ground cracking with each footfall.
The Watcher drew his blade.
Kaelen summoned wind, her cloak flaring behind her like wings.
I stood between them, the firemark on my chest glowing like a second sun.
"So," said the tallest revenant, voice like dry leaves on flame. "The girl wakes. The blade breathes. And the last of the fireblood dares to stand."
"I'm not standing," I replied. "I'm *rising*."
He laughed. The others echoed it—low and sharp, not joy, but hunger.
"We do not want your death," the tall one said. "We want your *choice*."
Behind him, the air shimmered. A platform of embers rose from the dirt, shaped into a throne without a name.
"Sit," he whispered. "And we will give you dominion over fire, wind, stone, and shadow. You will be our flame, our sword—our queen."
Kaelen stepped beside me. "It's a trap."
"I know," I said softly.
But a part of me… *understood* the offer.
Power. Control. An end to running.
And yet—my mother's voice whispered in the memory of flame.
*We are not what they name us. We are what we choose.*
I stepped forward.
And drew the blade.
Flame roared up its edge, gold turning white, white turning blue. The revenants flinched, their cloaks catching wind.
"I choose the path not written," I said. "I choose the fire that makes, not burns."
Then everything moved.
The revenants lunged.
The ground cracked open.
Kaelen summoned lightning, hurling it in arcs. The Watcher met a masked blade with steel of his own.
I leapt into the air—my blade swung once.
And a mask shattered.
Beneath it: a boy. No older than me. Eyes full of fear.
He wasn't ready for me to spare him.
But I did.
Because flame doesn't *only* destroy. It remembers.
The battle scattered like sparks in a storm.
And when it ended, four revenants lay defeated.
The rest vanished into smoke, voices swearing vengeance through the wind.
Kaelen looked at me, breathless.
"That was... not what I expected."
I turned, the blade still burning in my hand.
"It wasn't what they expected either."
But war had begun.
And I had just lit its fuse.
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