"The Dawn that Rose from Fire"

Day 29 of Novel November- Kaelen and Alenyah begin to understand each other.

His voice dropped lower, rougher, as if the memory scraped against his ribs on its way out.

“Silas was teasing me,” he said. “Calling me ‘pebble,’ like always. And then-”

He swallowed hard.

“Then the alarm horns started. Not a warning. A death knell.”

Alenyah’s fingers tightened around his without her meaning to. Kaelen didn’t seem to notice; he was somewhere far away, dragged there by smoke and memory.

“I did not see the Great Wyrm burn the Reach. I did not even know such things could fly, could burn. I only heard the boom of the gate closing. We did not shut them till nightfall, which was hours away. Silas told me to stay put, and he had only reached the entrance of the training area, when the heat baked the walls and all between them.

I tried to follow, but so many were fleeing, I was knocked down so many times and lucky not to have been trampled. And my brother was running towards the fire, not away.”

He lifted their linked hands as though showing her proof. The moonlight glinted against the rippled flesh along his forearms, melted and silvered where Wyrmfire had kissed him.

Revulsion flashed through her, not at him, but at the violence done to him, and instinctively she tried to pull back. Escape. Deny the image, deny the pain.

But his grip tightened around her fingers.

“Don’t run,” he said, and the roughness in his voice was like gravel grinding under boot. “You had your turn to speak. Now it’s mine.”

Her lungs squeezed tight. Still, she forced herself to stay, to look him in the eye even as dread pooled in her stomach. She already knew how this story ended. She had lived its aftermath from the other side.

Kaelen took a breath, steadying himself.

“I don’t think the beast could fit down the tunnel,” he said quietly. “So it just… breathed.”

Her heart stopped.

“After it had already eviscerated Joreth at the front gate.”

The words hit her like a blow.

“The fire rushed through the passage like water,” he said. “A tide. Those who had just been trampling me…” A hollow laugh escaped him, stripped of any mirth. “They shielded me in the end. Their bodies blocked the first wave.”

He looked down at his own arms mangled proof of survival etched in molten lines.

“Almost all of me,” he finished.

The silence afterward was deep, cold, and jagged. A silence with edges. A silence that asked something of her that she wasn’t sure she knew how to give. Alenyah closed her eyes in sorrow. She could smell the burning flesh, and hear the sounds of spears and weapons bouncing uselessly off the Wyrm’s hide.

“Many of us survived because so many of our tunnels and passages led underneath your lands and came out in a port a few miles away by the sea. Many of us regrouped there, but not my father-” He swallowed, “-And not my brothers, even though we waited for days for more survivors. And I- I had to decide. The council was dead, my father was ash, my brothers slain.”

His voice cracked. Kaelen pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, jaw clenched as though he could hold himself together by brute force alone.

Alenyah’s heart clenched in her chest. Without thinking, she touched his wrist, offering him an anchor and asking nothing in return.

He let her hand stay.

“I wanted someone to answer for it,” he whispered. She drew in a sharp breath. There it was. The wound. The blade between them.

“And I thought,” he continued, shaking his head, “if the Fey’ri hadn’t called my father away,if he’d been there, if YOU had been there,maybe my brothers would’ve lived. Maybe the Wyrm wouldn’t have…”

He stopped, the unfinished sentence curdling the air between them.

She felt the guilt rise in her throat, hot and helpless. “Kaelen… I’m so sorry.”

He leaned back, eyes squeezed shut, breathing hard. For a moment, the two of them hovered in an aching closeness, touching at the wrist, her knee brushing his, the cold air turning warm where their bodies angled toward each other.

“It’s not your fault and it wasn’t fair. I did not know you, only the idea of you, the idea that someone COULD have changed the outcome.” He rubbed his face with his scarred palms and looked at her, really looked. “I didn’t know YOU until that night at Berin’s house.”

“I’m glad to have made an impression,” she tried to laugh, but his eyes burned hers. He wasn’t going to let her run from this moment, and for the first time in a while, she decided not to.

Kaelen exhaled, long and shaking, as if the words cost him something to release. “Even if you couldn’t fix it then,” he said quietly, “now you can make it right.”

The breath froze in her lungs.

There it was again. Softened, wrapped in sorrow instead of anger, but still a weight placed in her hands. A responsibility. A debt.

Alenyah pulled her wrist back, not sharply, but enough that his fingers slipped from her skin. “Make it right?” she echoed, her voice steady but thin at the edges.

He looked up, surprised, as if he hadn’t realized what it sounded like. “Alenyah, I only meant, your Song matters now. You have a chance to prevent more of what happened to my people.”

“But you’re still talking about fault,” she said, shaking her head. “About my fault. Or my mother’s. Or my people’s. As if we called the Wyrm. As if anything would have changed…”

“That’s not what I meant.” His jaw tightened, and for the first time since he began speaking, something defensive sparked behind his eyes. “Someone had to have known. Someone had to have sent for my father. That’s all I’m saying.”

“But you said it to me,” she whispered.

The words hung between them like a blade held point-down, waiting.

He opened his mouth, but she pressed on, because the ache in her chest had turned into something sharper, something she was no longer willing to swallow.

“And even if we pretend for a moment that the Fey’ri did something wrong,” she said, voice trembling with the effort of keeping it even, “there’s still the fact that my mother died with a Stoneborn sword in her chest.”

That struck him. A visible blow. His face drained of color.

The wind moved around them, carrying pine and cold stone and the echo of unasked questions.

He swallowed once, hard. “Alenyah…” He reached for her hand again, then stopped halfway, fingers curling in the empty air. “I don’t-I would never imply your mother deserved… anything. I didn't mean-”

“I know,” she said softly, though her heart still pounded. “But if we’re telling truths tonight, then let’s tell all of them.”

For a long moment, neither of them moved. His eyes held hers, haunted and uncertain, but she didn’t look away.

The silence returned, deep, cold, and jagged, but different now. Not a barrier. A crossroads.

But then, like a stone shifting under too much weight, something in him snapped.

His gaze darted away. His shoulders coiled tight. The moment, fragile and shimmering, cracked under the pressure of everything they still couldn’t forgive or forget.

“I need…” He stood abruptly, breath steaming in sharp bursts. “I need air.”

“Kaelen-”

He shook his head hard, backing away from the porch steps as though afraid he’d say too much if he stayed. “I’ll see you inside.”

He didn’t wait for her reply. The snow swallowed his footsteps, each one heavier than the last.

And Alenyah sat alone on the porch, heart pounding, the ghost of his warmth still tingling on her skin, knowing full well that the distance between them had closed and cracked in the same breath.