That night Vel'Kareth had breathed differently. Michael could see it in the way the people moved more quickly, more purposefully, their eyes cast upward or toward the lit-up heart of the city. Shops closed early. Flicked firelamps dredged uptight tempo. [Something was brewing beneath the surface.
"A duel," said Anna as they walked. She didn't hurry. She never did. Her footsteps measured the same steady interval, her face impassive, though tension undulated through the streets like smoke.
"A public one?" Michael said, shifting the weight of the travel robe she'd loaned him. It remained rigid at the shoulders.
"Formal," she said. "Thread-sanctioned. Summoner against summoner. Not for pride or blood though it sometimes ends that way. This one's for Thread claim."
He glanced sideways at her. "What does that mean?"
"It means one of them wants to show that their soul shines brighter."
They reached the Ember Arch, a wide courtyard gouged into the cliffside high above one of Pyrrhion's great lava rivers. Old runes that shimmered faintly in the dusk light were inscribed on the arch itself. A silent crowd had assembled not for a duel, per say, but for a mini stone-throw theater: They were queued up around the ring.
Two summoners were stationed in the center. One was a stately woman wrapped in burnished red robes, her arms filmed with runes that breathed and twisted like fire snakes. A horned falcon spirit coiled around her in slow, scorching arcs. The other was younger possibly no older than Michael — with close-cropped hair, and the tense posture of someone bearing something heavier than his years. His vassal was already at hand: a serpent of living ash wrapped in a protective coil around his feet, slow and observant in its motions.
Michael leaned closer. "What is happening between them?"
The woman is claiming the Second Thread Mark," Anna said in a low voice. "She's trying to ascend. The boy is her apprentice. He challenged her. That doesn't happen lightly."
"He wants her Thread?"
"Not literally. He wants her recognition. Her respect. Maybe her place."
The two started to move slowly at first, skimming glyphs into the ground with bare feet and fingertips. Spirals blossomed in the stone at their feet, orange with an inner flame. Michael watched as heat shimmered off the stone as the ritual circle came alive, and he could feel it pulse beneath his ribs, mirroring the Mark on his own chest.
"She's all Flamebrand," Anna said just as the falcon gave a shriek and swooped. "Fast. Merciless. He's an Ashroot—blood-basted with Fire and Earth altogether. Slower, but grounded. This won't take long."
The boy lifted a barrier of molten stone in time to deflect the falcon's first strike, but the woman hardly hesitated. Her falcon split, mid-flight, into three glowing copies, each moving independently, weaving in and out, around, through the barrier with surgical precision. One struck the serpent. Another broke the molten wall. The third sailed directly toward the boy's chest.
Michael was watching, breath held. It was more than violence it was choreography, a burning language spoken in movement and memory.
"He won't win," he said.
"No," Anna agreed. "But he won't die. Not here. Not in front of the Arch."
Eventually, the boy dropped to one knee, his snake melting into vapor. The falcon came back to its master without anyone calling it. The woman brushed by him, not unkindly, and spent a moment on his shoulder before stepping clear of the lute.
Michael exhaled. The heat was still in his chest as if the fight had had as much of a vantage there as he.
"Will I have to do that?" he asked.
Anna offered him a glass mug of ember tea with the heat tempered against her hand.
"Only if someone thinks your flame is worth battling."
....
It was cooler at this height.
Michael perched on the lip of one of Vel'Kareth's upper terraces, legs dangling over the edge as he watched the city glow below him. The lava channels coursing through the streets pulsed with a gentle rhythm, like arteries of fire pumping life into the city's bones.
His fire spirit settled at his back, curled up in a perfect ember circle, its little body radiating a bit of heat that never quite reached flesh.
Anna wordlessly dropped to the floor beside him as she laid out a small cloth-wrapped plate and two cups of cooled flame fruit tea. She set one down next to him, then slid into a seat at his side, tucking her legs under her, as if she had done this a thousand times before.
They sat in silence for a moment. And that was fine.
It was Michael who finally spoke, breaking the silence. "I used to wake up to traffic. To noise. Neon signs out my apartment window. I hated it. The world was too loud, I used to think."
He took a slow sip. "Now I miss it."
Anna didn't glance at him, but her voice was even, soft. "What did you leave behind?"
Michael did not respond right away. His thinking was slow, like smoke.
"A sister. She was younger. Smarter than me. I don't even know if she knows I'm missing. Or if she cares."
"You think she forgot you?"
He nodded. "People forget fast. I hardly even know myself most of the time."
Anna turned away slightly, examining him, her eyes inscrutable yet generous. "That's the cruel thing about reincarnation. Faced with the collapse of what you were, it allows you a second chance without even questioning whether you wanted to let go."
Michael exhaled. He didn't cry. But something was aching in him, deeper, more visceral than the soul something that only flame could touch.
Soft voices echoed up from below two summoners talking by one of the street lanterns.
"…another Thread stated in Zephyros."
"By who?"
"Rumor has it one of the Chainbearers. The woman with pale eyes in ink-black robes. Eidara, I believe they called her."
Michael turned slightly at the name. He didn't know what made it stand out. It just… did. The way the man said it — reverent and fearful at once. Like it was a name and a verdict at the same time.
Anna didn't react. She sipped her tea and gazed at the city lights.
Michael looked back toward the horizon. "Does it get easier?"
Anna made no pretense of misunderstanding.
"No," she said. "But it gets less lonely. If you let it."