CHAPTER 1
THE WHISPER OF KARAKAL
Dawn brought with it a soft scent of milk and grass. The plains stretched slowly, as if they too were waking up, and in Karakal everything seemed to follow its usual calm rhythm. The sound of cowbells came from the other side of the pen, mixed with the song of a bird that hadn’t yet decided whether to start the day.
In the midst of that barely changing routine lived Emily. Short black hair cut at the nape, eyes that looked far, delicate skin and an agile body. Her fourteen years belonged to a girl enjoying her childhood without major disruptions or obligations. She wasn’t especially different from the other children in town, but she wasn’t quite the same either. She had something. A way of staying quiet. Of observing.
Some in the village said she was her brother in girl form. Not for what she said, but for how she listened to what couldn’t be heard.
That day wasn’t much different from the others—at least at first.
“Come on!” shouted Zimon from the hillside, laughing as he ran downhill. “I bet you a stone you won’t catch the balkan!”
Zimon was slightly taller than Emily, slim and quick-footed. His hair seemed to constantly battle the wind, and his eyes, a light honey color, gleamed even more under Karakal’s sun. He always wore an old leather jacket, with a blue patch on the left elbow, inherited from his uncle. Quick to smile and slow to speak.
Emily ran after him, dodging thickets and loose stones. The balkan was a large hare with tiny antler-like horns. Of course, they wouldn’t catch it—nor were they really trying. It was more an excuse to run, laugh, and feel alive.
When they were tired, they dropped into the tall grass, panting.
“Do you think we’ll ever leave this place?” Zimon asked, looking at the sky.
“Sometimes I think yes. Sometimes, that we don’t need to,” Emily replied without looking.
“Imagine if one of us received an ánima,” he said after a pause.
His voice changed when he spoke of that.
“Not everyone gets one.”
“There’s never been one in my family. At least that I can remember. It’d be an honor to be the first.”
Emily nodded without saying anything. Deep down, she’d wondered the same many times.
“My brother used to say the ánimas were something different from what they are now. He said they were enormous, like bison made of stone and fire, and when they played together it looked like a battle between gods. Everyone would stop and watch.”
Zimon looked at her in surprise.
“He told you that seriously?”
“He didn’t speak much,” Emily said. “But when he did… I believed him.”
One time he drew one for me. It had wings that looked like metal and bear-like paws. He called it Alción.
Zimon sat up with a half-smile, changing the subject.
“Your parents must have cheese in the cellar,” he said in his usual tone.
“You know they do.”
Zimon was crazy about cheese. Especially the fresh kind. The kind that still held warmth, as if the pen still lived inside it.
They went down the hill laughing and talking about the things kids talk about when they’re happy.
When they arrived, they snuck in carefully through the back. But not carefully enough.
“Once again sneaking where you shouldn’t be!” shouted Emily’s mother from the other side of the pen.
“We were just checking the quality,” Zimon replied with his mouth full.
Emily’s mother raised an eyebrow but said nothing more.
Her father, as always, sat in the shade, silent, watching. He didn’t need many words. One gesture was enough.
His years as a rider in the mountains of Punta águila had made him a man of few words and many deeds.
The afternoon passed without any major changes. It was one of those days of peace, of laughter. One of those moments, like so many others, you don’t know you’ll miss… until you can’t return to it.
That night, Karakal slowly dimmed. Lights went out one by one, and the sounds of the day hid beneath the earth.
Emily stepped out onto the threshold for a few seconds. From there, everything seemed still.
Only the hoot of an owl broke the darkness.
For a moment, she had the feeling someone was watching her from the plains.
But there was no one.
Emily hadn’t slept well for some time. She had the feeling something had changed.
Something small, imperceptible, like a thought you don’t know where it came from.
She turned in bed several times. In the end, she lay staring at the ceiling, silent.
That’s when she heard it—this time more clearly.
It wasn’t a noise. It was a kind of song.
Low, distant, as if the wind carried words that weren’t its own.
“The flame burns, the flame burns…
Everything burns…
and the end finds you in the plains.”
She sat up suddenly. Looked around. Nothing.
But her body felt it. As if the air had thickened.
A flame climbed up her back, vibrating along her spine. It didn’t burn, but it wasn’t warm either.
It was an echo in her bones. Something not from outside, but from within.
Something she didn’t know she had.
She remembered that, in the plains, right after falling into the grass with Zimon, she’d thought she heard it too.
“What?” she had said, turning to him.
“What?”
“Did you say something?”
“No… why?”
“Nothing. Must’ve imagined it.”
But she hadn’t imagined it.
And that night, just before closing her eyes, she felt it again.
A slight tingling at the nape of her neck.
Subtle. Persistent.
As if something invisible blew against her skin.
As if something inside her… was waking up.
That night, Emily was no longer just a girl from the village.
Something was awakening. Though she didn’t yet know the price.
CHAPTER 2
Tingling
The house smelled of freshly baked bread and warm milk.
In the kitchen, Emily’s parents spoke in low voices while preparing breakfast.
“We’re running out of salt,” said her mother. “If the caravan doesn’t come soon, we’ll have to trade it for cheese.”
“Last time we traded for fabric, and look how that turned out,” replied the father, nodding toward the crooked curtains in the living room.
They laughed softly, like those who have shared many identical mornings.
The fire crackled in the stove, and the clear light of a new sun poured in through the window.
Emily came down the stairs with a slightly furrowed brow.
Her nape was tingling, as if someone was blowing on it from the inside.
It wasn’t pain. It was… that. A persistent tingling. A warning.
“Good morning,” she said, sitting at the table.
“Good morning,” they both replied at the same time.
They looked at her a second longer than usual, as if they saw something different in her eyes. But they said nothing.
“Today I’m going with Zimon to Broken Hill,” announced Emily as she cut a piece of bread. “There are some plants I want to find, the ones that grow near the red stones.”
“What do you need them for?” asked her mother, without a reproachful tone.
“For nothing in particular. I like them. And they’re good for dyeing, too.”
The father nodded slowly, as if he didn’t quite believe that was the real reason. But he said nothing more.
The road to Broken Hill was long but calm.
Zimon was waiting for her at the crossing of the three cypresses, as always.
“All good?” he asked when he saw her.
“More or less,” said Emily, walking beside him.
They walked in silence for a while, hearing only their steps on the dry earth. After a few minutes, Emily spoke.
“It came back last night.”
“What did?”
“The song. The one about the flame. And after that… I got the tingling.”
Zimon glanced sideways at her, curious.
“And how do you know it’s not a mosquito bite?”
Emily slapped his arm without stopping.
“Idiot. It’s not that. It’s like something’s touching me from the inside.”
Zimon said nothing, but his face grew more serious.
“You think it could be…?” he began to say, then stopped.
“I don’t know. But it’s getting stronger.”
ánimas manifested like that: with a faint tingling at the nape.
“The birth,” they called it.
After a few hours, they began to see Broken Hill in the distance. It was even smaller than Karakal. Just a few old houses, a collapsed windmill, and a well where children used to compete to see who could spit the farthest.
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They spent a while chatting with other kids from the road, talking about unimportant things.
One of them claimed to have seen a white deer.
Another swore that, in the old eastern fields, a well had appeared that no one remembered digging.
Emily found the plants she was looking for —red leaves, maybe because they grew among stones of the same color. They had dark veins that gave a special tone when crushed into paint used for clothing. She picked them carefully and stored them in a linen bag.
“That’s it,” she said.
“And now? Lunch?” asked Zimon, with a hungry smile.
“That’s right.”
When they got home, her mother greeted them with her apron full of flour.
“How was it?”
“Quiet. I found what I was looking for.”
Emily placed the bag on the table and, after a moment of doubt, spoke:
“I think I need to see the great elder.”
Her mother set the dough bowl down and looked at her. She didn’t seem surprised.
“Have you felt anything else?”
Emily nodded.
“The song came back. And the tingling.”
Her mother didn’t respond immediately.
“Then go. He’ll know what to do.”
The great elder lived in a house at the end of Oak Path, half-covered by roots and ivy.
He was over eighty winters old, but still had a clear voice and eyes like burning coal.
“Emily,” he said when he saw her. “It’s about time.”
She sat in front of him, not knowing what to say.
The elder closed his eyes for a few seconds, as if listening to something within the silence.
“You’ve felt it,” he stated.
Emily nodded.
“I don’t understand it.”
“You don’t need to. Sometimes the soul knows things the mind doesn’t. What matters is that you’re listening.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then the elder picked up a small bronze bell and rang it gently.
“You’ll come in three days, at dusk. The fire ceremony will be that night. There we’ll see if the flames say anything more.”
That afternoon, at the market, someone mentioned that the roads were emptier than usual. That the royal caravan hadn’t come by yet, and that was strange.
One man said he’d seen smoke from afar on the southern route, and another claimed they’d closed the pass at the Gorge.
But no one seemed to know anything for sure.
“Caravans are never this late,” murmured an old woman. “Something’s going on.”
The night before the ceremony was quiet.
Emily barely slept, as if her body knew something was coming.
The tingling was still there —more constant, more real.
Like a second breath beneath her skin.
The day of the ceremony began early. The whole village dressed specially.
Each person carried an important object: a stone, a necklace, a drawing, a broken doll, an old tool.
Everything would be thrown into the fire as a gesture of gratitude.
A way to ask for guidance. To show respect for the unseen.
Emily brought a piece of burned cloth. One that had belonged to her brother.
When night fell, the village gathered in the square.
Flowers hung from doors and lanterns, and a great bonfire burned at the center.
The great elder spoke of cycles, of the earth, of the value of offerings.
One by one, the villagers cast their items into the fire.
Some closed their eyes. Others whispered prayers.
When Emily threw hers in, the tingling became nearly unbearable.
The fire crackled. It hissed. Some flames rose higher than usual.
But nothing else happened.
The silence was uncomfortable.
The great elder closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and simply said:
“It doesn’t always happen.”
And the ceremony ended.
The walk back home was a mix of shame and bruised pride.
Zimon said nothing.
He only placed his hand on Emily’s shoulder.
Everything was said in that gesture.
That dawn, while the village slept, the attack came.
Hooded shadows, silent as smoke, began to enter through the alleys.
They didn’t shout. They didn’t run. They just advanced.
One of them opened the door to Emily’s house.
She woke up to the sound of splintering wood.
She peeked from the stairs just in time to see her father standing in front of the dark figure.
“Today the Nasfan sings to the wind. Today the flame spreads and becomes ash. Where is it?” said a deep, broken voice.
The hooded figure’s eyes glowed red.
Emily screamed. Her mother pushed her out the back of the house, just as another attacker entered.
They ran.
The village was burning.
Neighbors were dragged to the square, tied up. Others fled through the fields.
Some didn’t make it.
Zimon was being dragged through the mud.
Everything was chaos.
Emily tried to run to him, but it was useless.
A black hand dragged her toward the center.
The hooded ones surrounded the place.
One approached her, raising a kind of curved staff.
Just then, the tingling turned to heat.
A blue flame lit behind her. A small figure emerged from the glow.
It had the shape of a wolf… or something similar. But it was more than that.
The creature raised its head, sniffed the air… and then looked at her.
It stepped forward.
Emily felt time stop.
The hooded one raised his staff to strike, but the ánima lunged.
It leapt on him like a blue arrow, knocked him down, and rolled across the ground wrapped in fire.
The remaining attackers reacted.
Two rushed at Emily, but the ánima turned with brutal fierceness and repelled them with its claws.
Another tried to throw a rope, but was split by the burning back of the wolf.
Emily, still trembling, wrapped in a dome of light connected to the wolf by fine filaments, was paralyzed.
Her head pounded, as if a thousand war drums beat all at once.
Zimon appeared through the smoke, covered in dirt, wielding a shovel like a sword.
He shouted her name through the flashes of fire.
“Emily! Emily, run!”
But it was too late.
Everything was happening.
Slowly, Emily moved toward her house.
The smoke was thicker there.
Inside, she saw her father on his knees, bleeding, in front of the same dark figure.
His eyes found hers.
“Run, Emily,” he whispered. “Run and don’t look back. Your brother is…”
The sentence hung in the air.
The hooded one raised his weapon.
A flash.
And the blow fell.
Silence.
Emily’s world held a final breath… before breaking.
Emily’s scream was not human. It was a roar mixed with flame and pain.
The ánima responded. It roared too, and a wave of blue fire spread across the square.
The enemies staggered. Some fell. Others fled. But it was too late.
The wolf rose like a wall, its ember eyes fixed on the attackers.
It now stood over two meters tall.
It charged at them with unstoppable fury.
One was thrown against a stone wall.
Another rolled across the ground in flames.
Emily’s mother screamed from outside.
The smoke made it impossible to see beyond a few steps, and her voice faded among the chaos.
Emily walked to the center, surrounded by ash.
Zimon, on the edge, bloodied and muddy, searched for her with his eyes.
The chant began, faintly:
“The wind blows. And the flame is burning.
You cannot escape the wind.
You cannot escape the end.”
A voice shouted before being swallowed by a dazzling blue light.
The last hooded ones fled into the shadows, leaving behind only fear, smoke, and ash.
And an old air pushed through time and space.
The whole village fell silent.
Emily trembled.
Zimon too.
But she wasn’t afraid.
She trembled for what had awakened.
For her father.
For her brother.
For herself.
For everything.
The ánima turned, looked at her… and howled.
A long, broken howl, full of memory and flame.
The day had not yet arrived.
But the girl no longer existed.
Only the daughter of the flame remained…
…and the wolf.
CHAPTER 3
ROAD TO THARELLIA
“If the wind sings, close the shutter… for the Nasfan wanders, seeking shelter.”
They had been on the road for a day. Emily still felt her mother’s gaze as she left, her trembling embrace, and those words that echoed in her chest:
“Here your father rests, Emi. I cannot leave. There are places that are undeniably part of us, and this one is mine. Perhaps you’ll find yours someday, little one.”
Emily’s mother knew that day would come, though she never imagined it would be like this—leaving behind a village wrapped in ashes and fleeing from the fear of the Oscillators. It wasn’t an easy decision. It wasn’t just her husband’s grave that held her: she firmly believed the bodies must receive the honor of the Twelve Suns, the full cycle every spirit deserves before being released. To her, leaving before the final sun would break the link between this world and the next.
Emily understood. And although her heart wanted to stay, she knew her place was no longer in Karakal. Since the night of the attack, something had awakened beneath her skin: the bond pulsed like a contained fire, incomplete. She felt she had to reach Tharellia, the capital, where the Temple of the First Sun guarded the ancient knowledge of the ánimas. There, perhaps, she would find answers. Or confirmation. Or something she didn’t yet know how to name.
Her mother didn’t stop her. She only looked at her with a mix of pride and sorrow, as if she already knew her daughter was not just a frightened girl, but an inherited one, walking toward her destiny.
The sun had not yet risen when the caravan started moving again. The horses’ hooves struck the dry earth in a soft cadence, as if the dawn itself whispered that it was time to go.
Emily walked beside Zimon, both wrapped in cloaks borrowed from the merchants. The air carried that scent left by the earth after rain, though it hadn’t rained in days.
No one had spoken a word since their departure. The village of Karakal was left behind, small in the distance, but still visible if one looked with the heart. Emily did. She turned her face, and for a moment, thought she saw the silhouette of her father’s stable, the smoke that would no longer rise from the chimney.
She forced herself not to cry. The wind pushed forward, as if forbidding her to look back for too long.
“Are you okay?” Zimon asked softly.
Emily nodded without speaking. At her side, the sleeping presence of her ánima seemed to move with the wind, invisible. The bond burned within her like a quiet, expectant flame.
The day passed uneventfully. At midday, they stopped beside a stream to rest. There, a hunched old man, his eyes clouded with a milky veil, sat near Emily. He wore a tattered tunic and a charred wooden amulet hung from his neck.
“I can smell the bond,” he said, without looking at her.
Emily frowned.
“What?”
“Fire has its scent, girl. You carry it with you… just as the Inherited Ones did, in the old times.”
Emily breathed in involuntarily. For a moment, she thought she smelled her brother when he spoke of fire.
“We all have the fire, Emily… just some don’t know how to hear it,” she remembered.
Zimon stood up, but Emily raised a hand to calm him.
“What do you know about the Inherited?”
The old man smiled, revealing more gaps than teeth.
“Only what remains in the stories. They say there was a time when the ánimas were more than battle spirits… They were memory. Ancient flame. And those who bore them were guides. Not soldiers.”
“And what happened to them?”
“The kingdom grew. The wars too. And with them, the ánimas learned to kill.” The old man tilted his head. “But you… you carry a different fire.”
Emily felt something stir inside her. The old man rose with difficulty and walked away without another word. He only let one phrase fall to the wind:
“Walk north if you seek truth. But don’t go alone.”
When evening came, the caravan stopped in a clearing, and the merchants began lighting small fires with dry branches. The murmur of tired voices mingled with the crackling wood, and a faint smell of soup and roots filled the air.
Emily sat on a flat stone, hugging her knees. She looked at the orange sky, but her thoughts were elsewhere. Zimon approached and dropped beside her, not saying a word for a while.
“My mother once told me that fire is memory,” Emily murmured, without looking at him. “That if you watch it in silence, you can see things that are no longer there.”
“And what about the things that haven’t happened yet?” Zimon asked.
She shrugged.
“I guess they burn too… but more slowly.”
Zimon chuckled and tossed a pebble on the ground.
“I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want it to sound important… but I left with you because nothing ties me to Karakal.” He glanced sideways. “No one was waiting for me, no one stopped me.”
Emily looked at him for a moment, in silence.
“You left because you’re brave,” she said.
“I left because, of all the things I could do, going with you made the most sense.”
There was a pause, then Zimon grinned.
“Though who knows… maybe I’m your ánima,” he said, with a stifled laugh.
Emily raised an eyebrow, amused.
“An ánima with dark circles and an eternal hunger for cheese.”
“And great style,” he added, pointing to his patched jacket.
They both laughed. It was a small moment, but real.
“I don’t know where we’re going,” Emily murmured, “but I feel like I’ve carried it inside me for a long time.”
Zimon looked at her quietly.
“Do you know what I’d like to do if we make it to Tharellia?” he said.
“What?”
“Be a scribe. In the Temple of the First Sun. Learn the ancient names, the real stories. Write it all.”
Emily nodded slowly, curious.
“And what would you write?”
“This journey. Everything we’ve lived. Even what hasn’t happened yet.” He looked at her again. “Maybe I’ll call it… Daughter of Flame and Wolf.”
Emily laughed, but something more than humor sparkled in her eyes.
“It would be a great book,” she said.
“You’re already writing it,” he replied. “Only, with fire.”
Silence returned, this time warm. The sky darkened little by little, and the wind carried distant songs from the merchants. A harp broke the air so delicately that Emily, in the midst of everything, felt for a moment that the world made sense. At least that night.
Night painted the landscape with strokes of shadow. The caravan moved away slowly, leaving behind the still-glowing embers of the camp, flickering like fireflies trapped between earth and memory.
Emily watched in silence, as one looks at a book fading as the page turns.
“Maybe I won’t return,” she thought, as her crystal-clear eyes reflected a recent past that already felt so far away. Like stories only the old remember. Like ancestral songs the wind hides among the trees.
And then, somewhere in the clearing, someone played a small, broken harp, its out-of-tune strings seeming to understand the language of nostalgia.
They sing from the north — her mind whispered —
trees with broken branches,
they sing of heroes and legends,
of roads without maps and myths without time.
And my little broken harp… sings too.
It sings for my father.
It sings for my brother.
It sings for me.
It sings because the flame keeps burning.
And I walk…
because something awaits me at the end of the fire.
And I sing for you.