Lumina Nightglow's Arc

Chapter 7 of 34

Lumina walked toward the cold groves, and the forest's power surged with every step. When she lifted her foot, sparks jumped from her wings. A sleeping fern near the path browned at the edges. She stopped and pressed her lips tight. She could feel the sick groves ahead, dark and quiet under her skin. She had to reach them. But one careless step might burn the very roots she came to save. Her guard creature padded beside her, veins glowing like small rivers under its coat. It nosed her hand, then whined when a spark stung its fur. Lumina pulled her power back. The strain made her arms shake. "I can hold it," she said. "But I can't move and hold it. Every step spills the fire." "Then don't fight the whole forest at once," said Luminara Tidewhisper. She drifted in her ribbon of river water, blue hair trailing, starlight caught in the strands. She had guided Lumina here from the very start. Her calm now steadied Lumina like a hand on the shoulder. "You held one sound before. Hold one thing again. Hold what you love." Celsius Heartwood knelt in the grass, the small green soul of the forest who had shown Lumina how to merge with the heart. Flowers trembled in her hair from the heat. "The power wants out," she said. "Give it a road down, not a road out. Send it where it can't burn." Lumina knelt too. She pressed both palms flat to the ground. She stopped reaching for the far groves. Instead she thought of the forest she knew. The stream she'd crossed. The friends beside her now. She thought of how Celsius had trusted her with the heart. How Luminara had never left her side. How the whole forest had waited for someone to wake it. She let that feeling gather in her chest, warm and steady. Then she pushed it down through her hands into the soil. Not fire. Love. It sank into the roots and spread. She felt it run outward under the grass, root to root, faster than her feet could ever go. The sparks on her wings died. The heat left her skin. Green rushed away from her in a wide ring. Ferns lifted. Buds cracked open across the cold groves she could not have reached on foot. The warmth poured into every sleeping place at once, and none of it burned. Lumina opened her eyes. The nearest groves glowed with new life. Her guard creature stood and shook its coat, unhurt. Luminara smiled. Celsius pressed a hand to her mouth. "You didn't have to walk to them," Celsius said softly. "You just had to love them." Lumina rose. She no longer feared her own steps. But she felt something her love could not touch. Far past the healed ring, deep in the oldest dark, one place stayed cold. It did not answer the warmth. It pushed back.