“Deina.”

  Amber-flecked brown eyes fluttered open, narrowing to a squint at the sudden brightness. Deina slowly sat up, finding herself in the village’s healing center. The white blanket covering her fell to the ground as the girl observed her surroundings. Her clothes had been changed by the nurse, and her cape was nowhere to be found.

  “My water bottle! Where is it?” she asked, panic seeping into her voice as she found none of her belongings.

  Laios and a nurse had their respective chairs in the firelit room. Deina’s grandfather chuckled, gesturing to the far end of the room, where her belongings sat on a table against the wall.”

  The girl heaved a sigh of relief, taking a breath before reporting what happened at the altar.

  “R-regius is dead, and Lord Caleo has returned. Skia is gone for now,” she summed up in a few words, before pointing to the bottle. “A-after Regius burned away, he left behind some kind of red dust. I believe it may be important.”

  Laios’s lips curved upwards in amusement. “Indeed. When a sacrifice of Lord Caleo dies at the altar, they leave behind Scarlet Ash. When scattered by a close friend or family, it will summon the purest flames of Lord Caleo to assist and protect them. We’ll have to give them out to Regius’s friends and family in the Upper World.”

  Deina had been out for who knows how long. Her injuries were gone, and she needed to do something before she started crying again. “I’ll go.”

  “You are fully healed, so it should be alright,” the nurse offered with a kind smile. Deina nodded urgently.

  Laios stood up, picking up the bottle. “I’ll split it into containers for you.”

  Less than an hour later, Deina was preparing to travel again. Laios had drilled as many upper world customs into her head as possible, and gave the girl an upper world card for a transportation machine named a ‘bus’.

  How strange.

  She did not carry her torch, instead just a water bottle now filled with actual water, her brown Land of Fire cape, and a bag of smaller bags filled with red ash.

  She glanced at the map in her hand as she found one of the secret entrances to the Upper World and climbed up the ladder. ‘Kade, 14 years old male, black hair’

  The Upper World was a strange place. Tall gray buildings loomed everywhere, and the ground was all white and black. Quite unfamiliar for someone used to the orange and brown hues of an underground world of fire.

  Passing people shot her strange looks. A caveman-looking girl with a cape was definitely odd to them.

  Deina had a good sense of direction, allowing her to navigate the ‘city’, it was called. Soon, she found herself before a massive gray building surrounded by fences. A stone sign read ‘Ark Street Middle School’

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  “Need something?” Deina panicked slightly as she glanced at a blonde woman who must be a teacher exiting the yard. “Are you a student? You don’t have a uniform and I haven’t seen you before, probably not.”

  “I’m looking for...” the girl shot a subtle glance at her paper, careful not to blow her cover. “Kade Anton.”

  The teacher raised an eyebrow. “Oh, Kade. Who are you? He’s in class right now.”

  Deina quickly spun up a story on the spot. “U-um, I’m his... distant cousin. I’m here to tell him, uh, his uncle got in an accident. Please, this is an emergency. He deserves to know.”

  The teacher sighed slightly, her eyes slightly suspicious. “I see. Break is in a few minutes, come wait at the principal’s so I can get Kade.”

  The black-haired girl was directed inside the building to a fancy room with white wallpaper, where a middle-aged man sat in front of a device named a ‘computer’. A sign on his desk read ‘Principal: Mr Yesse’. Was his name really just Yes? He didn’t seem to really notice her, only shooting the strange girl a glance as she entered the room and returned to typing.

  A minute later, the blonde teacher returned, leaving behind a black-haired boy who must be Kade. He narrowed his eyes at the strange, cape-wearing girl and lowered his voice. “Do I know you? You’re definitely not my cousin and I don’t have an uncle.”

  Deina reached into her bag and retrieved a small red drawstring bag and handed it to him. She had pretty much scripted out how much to reveal to him during the wait. After all, Kade was an upper world person not directly related to Regius, she couldn’t tell him everything. “My name is Deina Adusta. I apologize for your loss. The Scarlet Ash will protect you.”

  She turned and quickly walked out of the room, leaving Kade to connect the dots- Regius disappearing, a girl with the same last name as Regius, and an apology for loss.

  Her next destination was a house, where she’ll meet Regius’s- and her own- parents. She took the strange machine called a bus, where she stood squished against dozens of people, before finding the building.

  This one was much shorter, surrounded by greenery with a wooden brown door. Hesitantly, Deina knocked on it. These were Regius’s parents, they deserved to know the whole truth, and where their second child had disappeared to.

  “Oh, hello. May I... help you?” a black-haired man with amber eyes opened the door, finding a strange girl.

  “My name is Deina Adusta. I’m here to tell you about Regius.”

  The man’s eyes widened at the familiar name, the name he had planned for his daughter before the child had ‘died’ at birth. And Regius... “...come on in.”

  Deina summed up her entire life story in a few sentences, and then described Regius’s fall to their world, the prophecy from Logia, and the sacrifice. When she finished her story, she retrieved two packets of Scarlet Ash and handed them to the wide-eyed man. “Lord Caleo shall protect you in your time of need.”

  “I’ll give this to Re- your mother too,” the man promised, eyes watering slightly at the loss of Regius. “Are you going to come back..?”

  Deina shook her head, a small sadness blooming inside her. This was her father, she had two parents like any normal person. “I’m sorry, I am a member of the Land of Fire. I do not belong in the upper world.”

  With that, the strange girl with the cape and ash left.

  As Deina headed back towards the entrance to the Land of Fire, she frowned as she noticed a leftover bag of ash. Laios had only detailed three people to visit. Maybe he missed someone? The day was still relatively early, she could get the last address and visit them with time to spare.

  “Elder, I think you miscalculated the bags of ash,” Deina said, after returning to the village. She held out the one leftover bag. “I visited all three people, but there’s one left over.”

  Laios smiled slightly at his adopted granddaughter’s confusion. “I did say ‘close friends and family’, have you ever considered who is both?”

  Deina blinked, her brown and amber eyes widening slightly in surprise. “This is for... me?”