The flames within her burned brighter, pushing against the boundaries of her physical form. Orange light spilled from her eyes, her mouth, even from beneath her fingernails—as if her body were merely a lantern containing a fire that had grown too powerful to be contained.

  "No," Cinder snapped, her voice sharp with denial. "We are not losing one of us. The curse doesn't work that way. We're supposed to be five. Five bodies, or the pain becomes unbearable."

  "Guess we'll find out," Pyra replied with a strained smile that was achingly familiar despite the otherworldly glow consuming her features. "Scientific experiment. For knowledge."

  "This isn't funny," Ember shouted, anger mingling with fear in her voice.

  "It's a little funny," Pyra countered, somehow maintaining her essential Pyra-ness even as her physical form began to lose cohesion. The edges of her body had started to blur, as if she were becoming more flame than flesh. "I mean, death by magical tree? After surviving supervillains and dimensional rifts? That's cosmic comedy gold."

  "Stop it," Cinder demanded, her voice cracking. "Just stop it and focus on holding yourself together. We can figure this out."

  Pyra shook her head, dislodging tiny embers that floated upward instead of falling. "Too late for that. But listen—" Her expression turned suddenly serious, the glow briefly dimming as she marshaled her remaining strength. "I don't think this is the end. I can feel... something happening. Like I'm not disappearing, just... changing state."

  The flames within her surged again, more insistent now. Her fingers had become almost transparent, trails of fire visible where bone and tendon should be.

  "Whatever happens," she continued, her voice growing fainter as more of her physical form surrendered to the consuming flames, "don't let Ash write my eulogy. Way too much existential dread. I want something fun. With jokes about my amazing hair and spectacular last stand."

  Ember and Cinder could only watch, paralyzed between grief and disbelief, as Pyra's body began to disintegrate—not burning away, but transforming into pure flame that retained her shape for a few heartbeats before losing definition.

  "See you on the other side," she whispered, her final words barely audible as her face became a mask of living fire. "Or inside. Or whatever. Just... try not to be so serious all the time."

  With that, Pyra—the physical manifestation, the individual body that had housed one-fifth of their fractured consciousness—collapsed into a column of orange flame that shot upward through the forest canopy like a signal flare.

  For a brief, timeless moment, her silhouette remained visible in the fire—arms spread wide, head thrown back, as if embracing her transformation.

  Then the flames dispersed, scattering into thousands of tiny embers that drifted on the forest breeze before slowly fading from sight.

  Silence fell over the clearing, broken only by the faint tinkling of the few crystalline decorations that remained intact on the bone-white tree.

  Ember and Cinder stood motionless, braced for the agony they'd been warned would come when their five became four—the creeping, unbearable pain of existing with fewer selves than the curse demanded.

  But the pain didn't come.

  Instead, there was emptiness—a hollow, echoing absence where Pyra's chaotic brilliance had burned. Cinder sank slowly to her knees, her shoulders curving inward as if the weight of that emptiness had physical mass. Ember remained standing, her face frozen in an expression of protective rage with nowhere to direct it.

  "She can't be—" Cinder's voice cracked, the flames around her hands guttering low like candles in a draft. "The curse is supposed to punish us for being fewer than five. Where's the pain? Why aren't we..." She trailed off, unable to complete the thought.

  But the pain didn't come.

  Cinder crumpled to her knees, shoulders hunched as if bracing for an impact that refused to arrive. Her face contorted with grief, tears cutting clean tracks through the soot and grime on her cheeks.

  "That absolute, reckless... moron," she choked out, pounding a fist against the earth. "What was she thinking? 'Let me just touch the creepy magic tree while fighting a mind-reading snake monster.' Brilliant strategy."

  Ember knelt beside her, her own tears falling silently. Her protective instincts had failed completely—their fifth, gone in a flash of magical backlash and poorly considered heroics. The flames that typically danced with calm purpose around her fingers now sputtered erratically, mirroring her fractured composure.

  "We should have been faster," she whispered. "Should have reached her sooner."

  "Should have tied her to the wagon the moment we entered this stupid forest," Cinder snapped, wiping angrily at her eyes. Then, without warning, she performed a gesture so un-Cinder-like that Ember actually blinked in confusion—she flipped both middle fingers toward the bone-white tree and blew a raspberry.

  Cinder froze mid-gesture, looking at her own hands as if they'd betrayed her.

  "Did I just... do that?" she asked, bewilderment flooding her voice.

  Ember opened her mouth to respond, but instead of her usual measured words, what emerged was: "You absolutely did, and it was chef's-kiss perfect." She clapped a hand over her own mouth, golden eyes widening to perfect circles.

  They stared at each other for three heartbeats of stunned silence.

  "That sounded like..."

  "But it came from..."

  Ember's hand drifted to her chest, where something warm and familiar-yet-not pulsed beneath her breastbone—a presence that radiated mischievous energy. The sensation wasn't painful or intrusive, but rather like discovering a room in a house you'd lived in for years but somehow never noticed before.

  "Cinder," she said slowly, "do you feel..."

  "Like someone stuffed a chaos gremlin inside my normally organized brain? Yes." Cinder's expression cycled rapidly between confusion, alarm, and—most surprisingly—amusement. A small, very un-Cinder-like giggle escaped her lips, causing her to clap her hands over her mouth in a perfect mirror of Ember's earlier gesture.

  Ember's flames, which had been flickering with grief moments before, now danced with occasional flares of bright orange—Pyra's signature color—at their tips. Looking closer, she could see the same phenomenon happening with Cinder's typically amber fire.

  "She's in us," Ember whispered, watching the orange highlights ripple through her flames. "Not metaphorically—literally in us."

  Cinder experimentally summoned a small flame to her palm. Where her fire had always burned with controlled, steady amber light, it now crackled with occasional sparks of orange energy that shot upward like miniature fireworks.

  "This is..." Cinder trailed off, then blurted in a tone exactly mimicking Pyra's enthusiastic declarations: "...the coolest thing ever!" She immediately looked horrified at her own outburst.

  Ember couldn't help it—she laughed. Not a small, dignified chuckle, but a full-body laugh that bent her double and scattered orange-tinged sparks across the clearing. It was inappropriate, probably borderline hysterical, and absolutely perfect for the moment.

  "Oh gods," Cinder groaned, though her lips kept twitching upward despite her best efforts. "She's infected us with her terrible sense of humor. This is worse than death."

  "Much worse," Ember agreed, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. "Can you imagine Ash with Pyra-levels of enthusiasm?"

  The mental image—solemn, philosophical Ash suddenly breaking into cartwheels while delivering existential observations—sent them both into another fit of undignified giggles.

  "We should be devastated," Cinder managed once they'd regained some composure. "We just lost a fifth of ourselves."

  "But we didn't, did we?" Ember mused, examining her hands where flames now danced with unfamiliar patterns. "Not really. It's like she's been... redistributed."

  Through their shared consciousness, they could feel something shifting and settling—not just between themselves, but extending outward to Kindle and Ash back at the caravan. The connection that had always bound them hummed with new harmonics, as if an instrument that had been playing five distinct notes was now producing four richer, more complex tones.

  Cinder climbed to her feet with a fluid grace that incorporated Pyra's natural athleticism into her typically more controlled movements. "We should get back to the others. They'll be worried."

  "And confused," Ember added, rising alongside her. "If we're experiencing this, they must be too."

  They moved through the forest with newfound ease, their bodies somehow lighter, faster than before. The Shimmerwood's dampening effect seemed less potent, as if their redistributed energy flowed more efficiently through fewer vessels.

  "Does this mean the curse is broken?" Cinder asked as they navigated between ancient trees whose trunks seemed to shift subtly to clear their path—another oddity neither bothered to question.

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  "I don't think so," Ember replied, her innate caution now laced with Pyra's optimism. "More like... reconfigured? The rules might be more flexible than we thought."

  "Trust Pyra to find a loophole through spontaneous combustion," Cinder said dryly, though the words carried more fond exasperation than genuine criticism. "If I'd known setting ourselves on fire was an option, I'd have suggested it days ago."

  That startled another laugh from Ember—another un-Ember-like response that felt simultaneously foreign and natural. "No, you wouldn't have."

  "No, I wouldn't have," Cinder agreed with an uncharacteristic grin. "But Pyra-in-my-head would have."

  They emerged from the dense forest to find the caravan exactly where they'd left it—wagons circled defensively, guards maintaining vigilant perimeter watch. Near the edge of the path, Kindle and Ash stood with Marta and Malik, their postures tense with worry.

  The moment she spotted them, Kindle broke into a run, her movements carrying hints of Pyra's characteristic boundless energy. "You found her? Is she—" She stopped abruptly, golden eyes quickly cataloging Ember and Cinder's expressions and the conspicuous absence of their fifth. "Oh no. Please, no."

  Ember opened her mouth to deliver the news gently, but what came out instead was: "So, funny story about magical trees and their compatibility with interdimensional fire people—"

  "Not the time for Pyra-style inappropriate humor," Cinder cut in, then froze. "Except that was me being the inappropriate humor police, which is usually Ember's job, not mine."

  "What in the seven hells are you two talking about?" Kindle demanded, looking between them with confusion that rapidly shifted to dawning comprehension as she noticed the orange flickers in their flames. "Wait. Wait wait wait."

  Ash approached more slowly, her smoky tendrils now laced with bright orange sparks that spiraled upward like jubilant fireflies—a visual impossibility for her typically subdued manifestation.

  "She has transcended physical form," Ash intoned solemnly, then immediately performed a small, graceful twirl that sent her smoky essence spiraling. She stopped mid-motion, looking down at herself with profound confusion. "That was... undignified."

  Kindle's expression transformed from grief to wonder as she examined her own flames, which now sparkled with the same orange highlights. Without warning, she executed a perfect cartwheel—something she'd always admired in Pyra but never quite mastered herself.

  "Holy crap on a cracker!" she exclaimed, landing with surprising grace. "I can cartwheel now! And apparently I've inherited Pyra's weird food euphemisms."

  Marta Koval, who had been standing close enough to witness this bizarre exchange, took three deliberate steps backward. Her hand moved to the protective amulet hanging at her belt—not drawing it, but resting on it with the instinctive caution of someone who'd encountered enough magical oddities to know when to establish distance.

  "What," she said in a voice as flat and hard as a millstone, "is happening?"

  Malik, standing beside her, had gone completely still in the manner of prey animals who've spotted a predator. The blood had drained from his face, leaving him pale beneath his travel-weathered tan.

  "Where is your fifth?" Marta pressed when no answer was forthcoming.

  Ember and Cinder exchanged a look—one that conveyed more in a fraction of a second than any explanation could have managed. With perfect synchronicity, they pointed to their own chests and said, in unison:

  "Here."

  Ember took a step toward Marta, hands raised in a calming gesture she'd used countless times to diffuse tense situations.

  "I know this may sound insane," she began, "but Pyra didn't exactly die, she... well... distributed herself into us."

  Marta's eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. "People don't merge," she stated with the absolute certainty of someone who knows how the world works. "They live, or they die. There's no in-between."

  Normally, this would be the moment where Ember employed her extensive negotiating skills to gently ease a skeptic toward uncomfortable truths. But the Ember who began speaking now wasn't entirely the same Ember who would have handled such a task with practiced restraint minutes before.

  "Look, lady, we didn't exactly ask for this either," she snapped, gesturing emphatically at herself and her sisters. "It just happened. Now, I realize merging with someone's consciousness is a little outside your wheelhouse, but it's our reality. So how about you suspend your disbelief for a hot minute and roll with it?"

  Malik's hand had moved to his instrument, fingers tracing protective symbols along its polished surface. When he spoke, his normally smooth voice cracked. "You're possessed."

  The four women turned to him in unified surprise.

  "What? No!" Kindle protested.

  "We're not possessed," Ember said firmly. "We're just... redistributed."

  "Like pouring the same amount of water into four cups instead of five," Cinder added, making an explanatory gesture that was far too animated for her usual demeanor. "Same total volume, just... fuller cups."

  Marta made a sharp, decisive cutting motion with her hand. "Stop. Whatever magic this is, I want no part in it." Her expression hadn't shifted to fear, exactly, but it had hardened into the wary calculation of someone mentally recalibrating a threat assessment. "I've transported strange cargo before—enchanted artifacts, magical beasts, even a talking shrub once—but I draw the line at soul-merging fire women."

  Malik had regained some of his composure, though his scholarly curiosity now warred visibly with primitive fear.

  "This is beyond conventional magic," he muttered, half to himself. "Beyond Magisterium classifications, certainly."

  Kindle moved closer to the bard, her face pleading. "But I did cartwheels," she said, as if that alone should dispel any reservations. "I never could before!"

  "And why should that be?" Ash asked, her tone sliding back into more philosophical territory. "Isn't consciousness simply energy contained in biological form? If that form changes, does the energy cease to be?"

  To their credit, neither Marta nor Malik backed away from Ash's smoky, now Pyra-enlivened presence.

  Marta simply closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and exhaled with the force of someone preparing to heave a sack of unwanted magical complications onto the side of the nearest road.

  "What are you, exactly?" she asked without opening her eyes.

  "Complicated," Ember finally answered, falling back on protective simplicity.

  "That," Marta said dryly, opening her eyes and pinning Ember with a glare, "is blindingly obvious. Can you... control this new state? Or should I be concerned about spontaneous combustion spreading to my wagons?"

  "We're stable," Cinder assured her, managing to suppress the Pyra-influenced urge to add finger guns to her statement. "No danger to your caravan."

  Marta studied them with the tight-lipped evaluation of someone who didn't believe that for a moment but had limited alternatives.

  Beside her, Malik had relaxed enough to lean in, his initial wariness replaced by avid curiosity.

  "So your lost... what did you call her, 'self'? Pyra? She's gone, but not gone-gone?" he asked, a spark of enthusiasm entering his gaze.

  "Yes and no," Cinder replied with her customary pragmatism. "Her body was destroyed in a battle with those Mistfang things. But her consciousness didn't... end." She hesitated, as if searching for the words to explain something that defied logical classification. "It split, or dispersed, between the four of us."

  "So, the story about you all being identical?" Marta prompted, crossing her arms. "I'm guessing that was nonsense."

  "Not exactly." Kindle piped up, twirling a strand of hair around her finger—a Pyra mannerism she'd always scorned but now couldn't resist. "We weren't always five. Once, we were one. Now, we're four, but more... us?"

  Kindle tilted her head at her own words, as if momentarily bewildered by her presence within them.

  "Huh. That was a more complex explanation than I was going for. Must've been the me-in-her talking."

  Marta and Malik exchanged a look that managed to convey, without words, the magnitude of their skepticism. To their credit, neither dismissed the story outright.

  "Answer this, then. Are you human?" Marta finally asked. The hand on her amulet relaxed, though it didn't stray far. Her eyes lingered on Ember, whose flames still contained bright, unpredictable flashes of orange energy.

  "We're super...human," Ember answered with a wry smile. "Probably closer to any god you'd choose to name than whatever you consider 'normal.'"

  "And definitely not vampires," Ash added in Pyra's exuberant, reassuring tone. "Can confirm from a position of expertise that we lack a wide variety of vampiric qualities." A pause. "Except immortality, oddly enough."

  Kindle, Cinder, and Ember all turned to regard Ash, eyebrows raised in surprise.

  "Not... that we're saying we are immortal," Kindle amended hastily. "Just that, theoretically, if a curse allows you to ignore death a few times, you might consider the question of a mortal lifespan irrelevant. Hypothetically."

  "Fine, fine, you're not vampires," Malik conceded, raising his hands in a placating gesture. His expression remained that of someone wrestling with the concept of a changed world. "But there's more to this story than you've shared."

  "That's one way of putting it," Cinder muttered.

  Marta studied each of them for a long, searching moment. Finally, she released her grip on the amulet and shook her head.

  "So now what?" she asked, the pragmatic tone of the caravan's leader reasserting itself. "Do you still wish to travel to Amaranth with us? We're about a day's journey away, but considering... recent developments, you may want to reconsider." Her gaze flicked between the four, as if seeing them for the first time. "What remains of you."

  "Nothing has changed," Cinder stated, meeting Marta's eyes without blinking. "We still need to reach the city. Whatever answers we seek, Amaranth seems the best place to find them. Or at least better than the forest full of magical snakes with mind-reading eyes."

  Marta's mouth twitched—a small concession, not quite a smile, but acknowledging Cinder's point.

  "Fair enough," she admitted. "And while I have no idea what's become of you, I won't leave passengers stranded in a place like this."

  "A wise choice, if I may say so," Malik chimed in with forced brightness. "My professional opinion, as a man who makes a living spinning tales, is that you haven't given us a 'tale' so much as an epic saga in need of... fleshing out."

  "Yeah, maybe skip the 'flesh' metaphors for a bit," Kindle suggested, managing an almost Pyra-level cheeky grin.

  "You really didn't have a choice, anyway," Ash added in a Pyra-esuqe tone of unexpected casualness. "At least, not if you value your existence." As Marta and Malik's eyes widened, Ash quickly amended, "From a purely ethical standpoint, that is! Forcing us to disembark in the Shimmerwood would essentially be sentencing you to the role of antagonist in our narrative, and that simply isn't tenable for a character of your stature."

  Marta and Malik's faces expressed varying degrees of alarmed incredulity, as if uncertain whether to interpret the comment as a bizarre threat or a philosophical aside. Ember decided to intervene before the conversation went completely off the rails.

  "Ash—er, Pyra-in-Ash means that leaving us here, helpless, would weigh on your conscience as an upstanding citizen," she clarified. "We appreciate your integrity."

  "Right," Marta said, her eyes never leaving Ash, whose smoky flames continued to pop with unexpected sparks of orange. "Integrity. Let's call it that."

  She turned on her heel, barking orders to her guards and crew, who'd been watching the exchange with mounting confusion from a distance. "Get the horses settled!" she shouted. "I don't know about you, but I'd prefer not to camp here overnight."

  Malik lingered, still visibly unsettled but unable to tear himself away.

  "I've studied many magical phenomena," he said quietly, "but never anything like... this." He gestured vaguely at their orange-flecked flames. "In our lore, when souls merge, it's always possession—one dominating the others."

  "It's not like that for us," Kindle explained, trying to sound reassuring despite the excited bouncing that kept interrupting her attempt at a serious stance. "Pyra's not taking us over; she's becoming part of us. We're still ourselves, just... Pyra-flavored now."

  "Pyra-flavored," Malik repeated faintly, as if the phrase itself might be contagious. "I'll, ah, make a note of that. For posterity. Or perhaps an epic ballad someday."