Maya looked around the table full of scattered books and sheets of paper. One document caught her eye. It was titled 'Nullfire'. It had a picture of a candle with a white fire, and some italic text under the title; Nullfire, the unknown source of fire. The most powerful kind of fire. Controlled by Embercallers, who were once largely populated, before an incident took all but one.
Maya turned the paper around, revealing a symbol on the other side. Something that looked like an eye, but with a weirdly shaped pupil. She shifted her gaze back on the candle with the colorless flame. It seemsed to stare back at her.
Somewhere deep, deep in the forest, Remy, Aatos, Hazel, Ocean and Aurora were sitting on a fallen oak trunk. They had gotten far enough, and now Aurora had to tell them what happened inside. Nobody else had been there to see.
"The fire was eating everything!" Aurora said before bursting into tears.
"It's okay to be sad. Can you just tell us if Althea was starting to have the fire in control when we left?" Aatos asked, placing a hand on the young girl's shoulder to reassure her.
"No! She's dead! The fire ate her! It grabbed her like fire shouldn't!" Aurora screamed between sobs, tears running down her face.
The others gasped. Ocean started tearing up, and Aatos looked down. Althea, their safety, dead. Hazel's expression remained still. Remy looked sad, but also determined.
"Like fire shouldn't, you say?" Remy asked.
"Althea told us a lot about people who can control fires. Most people here can. Maybe someone is against us," Hazel said blankly.
"Didn't she mention the village being against her and the queen always wanting to get rid of her? Now they are surely on the hunt for the rest of us! We need to fight back!" Remy said, a spark of determation shining in his eyes. It made Ocean lift his gaze.
"You're probably right. We need to fight back before it's too late," Ocean said.
Hazel pinched the bridge of her nose. "The Nullbounders, the queen's army, they have fire bending and literal guns. And we? We barely even have fists. Most of us aren't even fully grown yet," Hazel lectured.
"We can make our own weapons, and maybe we'll learn some magic," Aurora said.
"Oh, about the magic part.. Um, me and Remy kind of came from another universe, and there people don't know magic or anything," Aatos explained.
"I want to go back to the burned cottage. I think I saw something weird there," Ocean said before leaving by himself. The others didn't follow, letting him leave.
Ocean walked to the cottage ruins, searching the ground around the plot of charcoal. There it was. A small, white flame that didn't spread at all. He looked closer. The shape around it looked like an eye.
He looked around. Everything else looked normal. The fire hadn't spread outside the cottage, but the whole cottage was burned down. It was clear it was an intentional and controlled fire.
Then he walked back to the group.
"We have an enemy. Someone who can control the Nullfire," Ocean told them.
"Isn't the controller species extict? Probably controlled by the queen nowadays," Hazel said.
"Let's take on the queen's army one day! We are the Ashborn!" Aatos decided.
The information of the recently ended forest fire had already reached the castle. Blacklight prison had already started to transfer prisoners on other islands, starting from the least problematic ones. It was going to take some time to get to the ones who had to be restricted.
When the prison announced the fire was the reason of the transfers, Hexa glenched her jaw, her eyebrows furrowed. The forest? The same place that woman had took her brother and friend into? What if they got hurt?