The morning mist clung to the village like breath held too long.
Dr. Alaric Voss stood beneath the wide shadow of the ọjị tree in the village square, his journal pressed against his chest, though he had yet to write a single word. His eyes were fixed on the edge of the forest where the sacred river path wound away like a vein through the land. He had waited there since sunrise, knowing—feeling—that she would come.
And she did.
Amarachi emerged like a vision summoned from fog and dream.
She wore a wrapper dyed with symbols older than alphabets, the cloth hugging her hips and swaying with the grace of someone at ease in her power. Her skin, still damp with the breath of the river, glowed with a sheen of dew. Strands of black hair clung to her temples, curling down her shoulders like vines. Her eyes—dark as wet earth—locked onto his with unsettling calm.
"You saw me before you arrived," she said without preamble, stepping into the clearing.
Alaric's breath caught. "Yes."
"In a dream? A fever?"
He nodded, slowly. "At first, I thought it was delusion. But it kept coming. Always you. Always fire. Always the Codex."
She came closer, stopping just short of him. He could smell her now—smoke and something floral, like crushed hibiscus. Her presence curled around him like heat from a hearth.
"The spirits speak in riddles," she said. "But they do not waste their voice on the unmarked."
"You believe I was marked?"
"I know you were."
She stepped closer still. Her fingers rose, brushing lightly against the pendant at his chest. It glowed faintly beneath her touch.
"This stone," she whispered. "It's been carried before. It remembers the fire."
Alaric swallowed hard. "You speak as if… we've known each other before."
"We have." Her voice was silk over steel. "Not in this life. But in another. The river showed me."
She leaned in then, close enough that he could feel the heat of her skin against his neck. Her breath teased his ear.
"You were the one who left me… in flame."
His heart lurched. "What—?"
She pulled back, her gaze unreadable. "You don't remember. But your soul does. That's why you came here. You were pulled by a debt unpaid."
Alaric stared at her, shaken. Not just by the words—but by the truth humming behind them. A memory stirred deep in his chest like an ember under ash.
Her eyes softened slightly, but the fire remained.
"I don't know yet if I should trust you," she said. "But the spirits have chosen us both. That means something."
Then, more quietly, "I want to hate you. But something in me doesn't know how."
Alaric stepped closer, his voice low. "I don't want to be another foreigner who takes and leaves. If I came for you, Amarachi… it wasn't to take."
She looked up at him, her lips parting, her breath faltering for the first time.
"No," she whispered. "It was to burn with me."
The space between them throbbed—thick with memory, with hunger, with a heat neither fully understood. But before anything more could be said, a sharp cry echoed from the village entrance. A boy ran into the square, breathless.
"They've found another body!" he shouted. "By the forest edge!"
Amarachi turned, her body tense. The moment vanished like mist in sunlight.
Without a word, she sprinted toward the sound, her sigils already beginning to glow.
Alaric followed, heart pounding—not just from fear, but from the growing truth:
They were bound.
By flame.
By past.
By something neither of them could escape.