The slums of Rydel were always choked with smoke. By dawn, the brickworks belched black plumes into the sky, blotting out the sun. Harriet Thorn grew up in that darkness, her hair and skin forever smelling of soot and scorched clay.
They called her Emberheart long before she earned the name. Even as a child, she had a way of making flame dance in her palm—just a spark at first, then a flickering tongue of fire she shaped into tiny, defiant stars.
When she was twelve, the overseers came to evict the brickworkers again. She remembered the tall man in his polished boots, his voice so smooth as he listed all the debts owed. And she remembered her mother's hands, rough and shaking, reaching for the last handful of copper coins.
"That's all we have," her mother whispered.
The overseer smirked. "Then you have nothing."
Something in Harriet snapped. She stepped between them, her fists clenched so tight her nails cut her palms. "Leave us alone," she said, her voice low and brittle.
He laughed. "Or what, little rat?"
The flames answered before she could. They burst from her hands in a sudden rush of heat and light, licking up the man's fine coat and driving him screaming into the dust. She didn't stop to watch. She grabbed her mother and ran—past the kilns, past the broken carts, past all the things she would never see again.
Years later, Harriet would remember that night as the true beginning. The day she learned that sometimes mercy was not enough—and that fire, however dangerous, could also be the only shield left to the powerless.
By sixteen, she had joined the underground resistance. When she emerged from hiding, she had learned to shape her flames not just into weapons, but into symbols. At every raid, every sabotage, she left behind the same mark: a single ember burning in a clay dish. A promise that no matter how many times the oppressors rebuilt, their cruelty would never stand unchallenged.
One evening, crouched in the rafters of a stolen warehouse, she held her hand to her chest and felt the heat pulsing just beneath her ribs. It was more than power. It was her purpose.
And when the summons from Gaia came, Harriet did not hesitate. She would answer it with the same fury that had saved her mother—and she would bring her fire to every battlefield that dared to smother hope.
Shall I continue to Chapter 13: Gaia's Trials?