The days after the silver flame were quiet, but something had changed.

Kael could feel it—not in the villagers, who had already moved on from their shock, but in the air itself. Patterns had shifted. The breeze hummed with an odd rhythm. Glyphs in old stone pillars blinked more erratically at dusk.

It was as if the world had exhaled... and then paused.

That evening, Kael wandered beyond the edge of the village, deep into the whispering forest where wild magic drifted like mist between the trees. He wasn’t looking for anything. He just needed space—somewhere away from the praise, the confusion, and the questions clawing at the back of his mind. Questions about the accident, about the fire, about the impossible force that tore through their world. And beneath it all, a quiet ache: the need to understand what happened to her.

But the silence was broken.

A sharp shimmer pulsed through the air—a strange distortion, like glass cracking beneath silk. Kael stopped. The sound wasn’t from this world. It wasn’t sound at all, but a feeling, like the space around him had… *slipped*.

Between two leaning stones, tangled in glowing reeds, something tiny flickered.

Kael knelt. At first, it looked like a dying flame. But as he leaned closer, he saw it was a creature—a barely-formed body, small as a squirrel, trailing threads of translucent light like shattered wings. Its skin pulsed with faint gold and violet. Its eyes, wide and terrified, reflected the sky like polished stars.

It was hurt. Fading. Part of it blinked in and out of focus, like it wasn’t fully there.

Kael didn’t speak. He extended his hand slowly, letting his palm hover near.

The creature didn’t flee.

Instead, it steadied.

Its flickering slowed. The vibrating distortion around it softened. As Kael crouched beside it, the earth beneath them seemed to settle—as if reality gave permission for this moment to exist.

“I don’t know what you are,” Kael whispered, “but I can tell you’re not meant to be seen… not yet.”

He wrapped it gently in a spare cloth from his satchel and placed it against his chest. The creature was warm—too warm—but not burning. Like pure energy trying to remember how to be still.

He didn’t know why, but he didn’t question it either.

That night, he smuggled it into the storage loft of his home. It pulsed in the dark, curled into the folds of his blanket, occasionally letting out soft harmonic hums. Kael didn’t sleep much. He watched.

Not with fear. With wonder.

Somewhere in the night, he whispered:

“You’re not magic. You’re something older than that.”

The creature made no sound.

But Kael smiled.

He didn’t know its name.

Yet.

The next morning, Kael opened his eyes to a soft glow filling the loft.

The creature had moved. It now hovered at eye level, suspended in the air like a dream that refused to fade. Its flickering was gone. Its form was calmer—more solid—though not entirely fixed. Gently, it floated down to Kael’s open hand, warm and weightless.

Kael sat up. “I can’t keep calling you 'you,'” he murmured.

The creature tilted its head, regarding him with quiet attention. It responded with a single, melodic pulse that shimmered in the air like rippling water.

Kael hesitated, then nodded as if answering some question only he had heard.

"I'll call you... Lumen," he said.

The moment the name left his lips, something changed. The creature pulsed with light—brighter than before—and its body shifted. Threads of golden energy spiraled inward, condensing, folding upon themselves like an equation resolving.

Before Kael’s eyes, it assumed a new shape—a creature unlike any he’d seen.

Its form resembled a small, sleek creature—something between a squirrel and a fawn—with soft, silvery fur and bright, intelligent eyes. faint runes flickered beneath its skin, pulsing like breath. It had legs now—delicate but sure. Its eyes still held the galaxies, but now they blinked.

It looked at Kael.

Kael extended his hand again.

This time, the creature stepped forward and rested its head lightly against his palm.

The bond had formed—not of command or ownership, but of trust.

Kael smiled again. "Lumen," he repeated, softer.

And the creature shimmered in acknowledgment.