Ican’tbe replaced.
The forest closes around me with each step, branches snagging at my jacket, roots trying to trip me in the darkness. Blood continues running into my eye, and I swipe at it impatiently, smearing crimson across my cheek. My head throbs with each heartbeat, and there’s a high-pitched ringing in my ears that might be permanent hearing damage or might be shock.
The lights grow closer. Not a house like I’d hoped, not even a ranger station. Something bigger. A compound of some kind, stone and timber built directly into the mountainside as if it grew there naturally instead of being constructed. Multiple buildings connected by covered walkways, everything designed to withstand harsh winters and probably things worse than the weather.
The main structure dominates the clearing, three stories of rough-hewn logs and fieldstone that look more like a fortress than a home. Lights glow from windows on all levels, but there’sno movement visible, no shadows passing behind curtains to suggest occupancy.
I hesitate at the tree line, every instinct suddenly screaming that this is a mistake, that I should turn around and take my chances alone in the forest rather than approach whatever place this is. But cold seeps deeper into my bones with each passing second, the blood won’t stop running into my eye, and the alternative is stumbling through wilderness until exposure, blood loss, or both finish what the car crash started.
The decision makes itself.
I step out of the trees and cross the clearing on legs that shake more than they should, each step bringing me closer to the massive timber door at the compound’s entrance. There’s no doorbell, no knocker, just iron straps and hinges that look hand-forged, metal dark with age or deliberate shine.
My hand reaches for the latch before I consciously decide to touch it. The metal is cold enough to burn exposed skin, and when I test the mechanism, it moves smoothly despite its apparent age.
Unlocked.
I should run.
I should turn around and take my chances with the forest, with the cold, with anything except walking uninvited into a place that radiates danger the way normal buildings radiate heat. But the door is already swinging open under my tentative push, revealing darkness beyond that smells of smoke and something else, something that makes my brain want to flee even as my higher functions insist I need help, need warmth, needanythingexcept freezing to death in the November night.
I step inside, and the ceiling seems to reach up the entire three stories. Why they need an opening this big, I have no idea.
The door closes behind me with a sound like finality.
And in the center of the vast space that opens before me, surrounded by shadow and silence, a flame burns inside a crystal dome, colors shifting and dancing in ways that fire shouldn’t move, slowly dying like something that’s been waiting a very long time to extinguish.
What have I just walked into?
Chapter Five
ROXY
The flame calls to me like a siren song wrapped in heat and color, pulling at something deep in my chest that has no name, no explanation. I should be looking for a phone, for help, for anything remotely resembling rational survival instinct. Instead, my boots carry me forward without permission, drawn toward the crystal dome sitting in the center of this cavernous space like it’s the only thing in the world that matters.
The flame inside shifts through colors that don’t belong in nature, reds bleeding into golds that shimmer with touches of blue and violet, each flicker casting shadows that dance across stone walls and timber beams in patterns that feel almost alive. It’s dying, though. Even with my limited understanding of fire, I can see that much. The movements are sluggish, desperate, like watching something beautiful struggle for its last breath.
Blood runs into my eye again, and I swipe at it impatiently, leaving a crimson smear across my cheek that I don’t have the energy to care about. My ribs scream with each breath, my head pounds like someone’s using my skull as a drum, and there’s a dead man in my wrecked car half a mile back who died screaming about monsters and dragons. This flame, trapped in its crystal prison, shouldn’t be the thing that holds my attention.
But it is.
The dome sits on a pedestal of dark stone that looks older than the mountains outside, carved with symbols that twist and writhe in ways that make my eyes hurt if I stare too long. The crystal itself is flawless, catching the weak firelight and throwing it back in fractured rainbows that shimmer against my skin as I move closer. Heat radiates from it in gentle waves, nothing likethe searing burn I’d expect from flame, more like standing too close to someone who runs warm, intimate, and inviting.
My hand lifts of its own accord, fingers extending toward the curved surface. Some distant part of my brain screams that this is a terrible idea, that touching mysterious fire domes in abandoned mountain fortresses ranks somewhere below swimming with sharks and above poking sleeping bears on the list of ‘How Not To Die.’ But the pull is magnetic, irresistible, like the flame itself is reaching back through the crystal, begging for contact, for connection, for anything that might prove it’s not completely alone in its dying.
The crystal is warm beneath my fingertips, smooth as silk, and humming with something I can’t quite name, energy or pure concentrated life force bleeding through the barrier between us. The flame surges the instant I make contact, colors brightening from dim ember to brilliant blaze in the space of a heartbeat. Gold overtakes red, then blue threads through the gold, creating patterns that spiral and dance with sudden, desperate joy.
It’s beautiful.
It’s terrifying.
It’s the most alive thing I’ve ever touched, despite being trapped behind crystal like some exotic pet.
“What thehelldo you think you’re doing?” The voice hits me like a physical blow, arctic and furious, dripping with the kind of rage that promises violence if you don’t have an excellent explanation ready immediately.
I spin, my hand jerking away from the dome as my heart slams into my throat hard enough to choke me. The movement sends pain lancing through my ribs, and my vision swims for a dangerous second before steadying enough to process what I’m seeing.
A man fills the doorway I entered through, except calling him a man feels like calling a hurricane a light breeze or a forest fire a candle flame.