For three nights, Calil woke to fire behind his eyes. He was a golden-skinned man with silver curls and sharp elven ears, and the tribal marks on his face had never itched before now. But his yellow eyes burned. Tonight the pain cut deeper than steel. He pressed his palms to his face and groaned. A prophecy spoken at his birth promised power sleeping behind these eyes. He had waited his whole life to feel it wake. This did not feel like a gift. It felt like his skull was splitting. He rolled off his mat and stumbled outside. His home stood at the base of a great waterfall, one of many weathered stone houses long abandoned. The spray misted his skin. His pathways were empty and silent, as they always were. He was the only soul left in the ruined hamlet. A low rumble answered his pain. His red tiger padded from the shadows, mane bristling, single yellow eye fixed on him. The beast pressed its huge head against his chest. Calil gripped its fur to stay upright. "It's worse," he whispered. "Every night, worse." Then a voice came from the dark path. "Because you keep running from it." An old woman stepped into the moonlight. She was small, wrapped in a purple robe stitched with stars and crescent moons. She leaned on a crooked staff of pale wood. Her eyes were blank white, yet Calil felt her looking straight through him. The tiger did not growl. It lowered its head instead. Calil knew her. She was the oracle who had stood at his birth. She had spoken the prophecy while his mother wept. He had not seen her since he was a child. "All-Seeing Al," he said. "You did this to me." "No." She came closer. "The power did. It's awake now, Calil. It claws at the door because you keep it shut." She raised her staff and touched it to his brow. The burning flared white-hot. He cried out. "You feel the pain because you resist. Stop resisting." "How?" he gasped. "Open your eyes and truly see. Name the fire as yours." Calil's knees buckled. He knelt on the wet stone. He thought of the empty houses, the silence, the years alone waiting for a destiny that only hurt. He was done waiting. He stopped clenching. He let the fire come. Light burst from his eyes. It poured over the ruins in twin gold beams. For one breath, he saw everything: cracks in stone, roots under earth, the tiger's heartbeat, and far beyond, shapes moving toward the falls. Then the pain vanished. His eyes cooled. He stood, shaking but whole. The oracle's face was grave. "The burning is gone," Calil said. "You cured it." "I woke it," she said. "And now that it shines, others will come for it. They saw that light too." She turned toward the dark path. "They are already coming."

The golden light still poured from Calil's eyes. He could not shut it off. Twin beams swept the ruins with each turn of his head. Al watched him from the wet stone path. "They see you now," she said. "Every step you take, the light points them here." Calil pressed his hands over his face. The light slipped through his fingers. "Then I'll blind myself," he said. "I'll close my eyes." "The light doesn't stop when you close them." Al tapped her staff on the ground. "You can't hide it. You must aim it." A shape crashed through brush below the falls. Then another. Calil's far-sight caught them clear: armed figures climbing toward him, drawn by the glow. His red tiger snarled and set its body between Calil and the path. Its single yellow eye burned in the light. "Aim it how?" Calil said. His voice shook. "It goes everywhere." "Because you look everywhere. You are afraid, so your eyes dart." Al stepped close and gripped his jaw. "Pick one thing. Hold it. Let the rest go dark." Calil's breath came fast. The figures were near now. He heard boots on stone. He turned toward the sound, and the beams spread wide across the whole hillside, lighting every tree. "No," Al said. "Not the fear. Choose." Calil forced his gaze away from the climbing men. He looked instead at the two great trees beyond the ruins. They stood taller than the houses, crowned with huge yellow blooms and heavy clusters of apricots. He fixed on a single flower at the top of the nearest tree. He held it. He did not let his eyes move. The light narrowed. The wide glare pulled inward. Both beams drew to one thin line and struck the flower. The rest of the hillside fell into darkness. The men on the path stopped. Their beacon was gone. Calil heard them mutter, confused. They could not find him in the dark. The light now marked only the tree, far from where he stood. "Hold it," Al whispered. Calil held. Sweat ran down his face. The tiger stayed pressed against his leg, still and ready. Below, the men circled the glowing tree. They fanned out toward the wrong slope, hunting the light where it landed. Calil let out a slow breath. The beam stayed fixed on the bloom. He had done it. He could point the light where he chose. Then his knees gave. He dropped to the stone, and the beam snapped off. Full dark swallowed the ruins. His eyes closed. His body could not hold the power long. Al knelt beside him. "You aimed it," she said. "But you cannot keep it lit. That will fail you when you most need to see." She looked toward the tree, where the armed men still searched. "And they will not stay fooled forever." Calil lay on the cold stone, spent. He had learned to point the light. He had not learned to hold it.

Calil woke on cold stone. The falls roared behind him. Al sat close, her white eyes fixed on nothing, her staff across her knees. The oracle had spoken his prophecy the day he was born, and now she trailed him like a shadow. Below, the armed men still searched the wrong slope. Their voices carried up the rocks. Calil pushed himself up. His hands shook. "Tell me plainly," he said. "What is this power for? Why me?" Al did not turn. "To see," she said. "I know it lets me see far. You've said that." Calil's voice cracked. "But see what? Every riddle you give, I break my head on it." "You break your head because you look for a weapon." Al tapped the stone. "It is not a weapon." Calil clenched his fists. He was tired of half-answers. He grabbed a fallen apricot from the ground, one shaken loose from the great trees above. He threw it. It burst on the wet rock. "Then what do I do with it? Point at flowers while men hunt me?" Al finally faced him. "Look at me and tell me what you find." Calil hesitated. Then he let the fire rise. Pain burned behind his eyes. Gold bled through the yellow. Light poured out. He fixed on Al's face and held the beam narrow, the way he had learned. He did not look at her robes or her staff. He looked deeper. And he saw. Not distance this time. He saw a line running out from Al, faint and gold, threading down through the earth. It ran to the ruins. It ran past them, toward something buried and dark far below the hills. A place where a light had gone out. "There's a thread," Calil said. His breath shook. "It goes into the ground. To a dead place." "A shrine." Al's voice stayed flat. "Seventeen have gone silent. Something is cutting the gods from their houses. I have hunted the one who does it for three years." She leaned close. "Your eyes do not find enemies. They find the broken thread. You are meant to follow it back to the source." The light died. Calil dropped to one knee, spent again, but his head was clear for the first time. The power was not made to burn men. It was made to track what someone was killing. The riddle broke open in his hands. Boots scraped closer below. The men had circled back. The glow from his eyes, brief as it was, had marked the ruins again. Al stood and pointed her staff at a mound of earth beyond the trees, where a wooden trap door sat flush in the grass. "Down," she said. "They found you. We follow the thread from underground." Calil ran for the burrow. He knew what his eyes were for now. He also knew the men would not stop hunting the boy who could find the killer.

The burrow swallowed Calil in cold dark. He dropped down the wooden steps and pulled the trap door shut above him. Stone walls pressed close. The hunters' boots thudded on the grass overhead, then faded. Al had not followed him down. He was alone with the thread he was meant to hunt. Somewhere near this refuge, a shrine had gone silent. Its broken thread would show him the killer's trail—but a thread cut too long ago fades to nothing. He had little time. Calil felt his way along the tunnel. His hand found a broken wagon wedged in the earth, tipped on its side. Cracked bottles littered the dirt. Coins had spilled from a split sack. Some traveler had died down here, or fled and left everything. Calil pushed past the wreck. The air changed. It went dead and still, the way a room feels after a fire dies. He was close. He let the fire rise behind his eyes. Pain flared. Gold poured out and lit the tunnel walls. He looked deeper, the way Al had taught him, past the stone toward the dead place. A thread appeared. It was thin and gray, snapped clean, its cut end curling like burnt hair. "You're rushing." The voice came from beside him. Calil turned. A man stood in the golden glow, see-through as smoke. He wore an old robe marked with the same tribal lines that scarred Calil's own face. His hair hung in long gray curls. His eyes burned yellow, like a mirror aged forty years. Calil's breath caught. He knew the face. It was his own. "Hold the thread before it breaks apart," the spirit said. He raised a faded hand toward the gray line. "Don't stare at the wound. Follow where it bleeds from." Calil's arms shook. The light wanted to scatter. He fixed on the cut end and traced it back, the way water runs to its source. The thread pulled his sight through the earth. It ran under hills, past silent stones, toward a low place far to the east where the ground sank into shadow. "There," the spirit said. "Hold it. Burn the path into your mind." Calil held. The trail flared bright, then began to fade at its far end. He caught the shape of it—a valley, a black doorway in a hillside—before the gray thread crumbled to dust in his sight. The gold died. Calil fell against the wagon. Bottles rattled. His head was clear. He knew the direction now. He knew where the killer's road began. The spirit still hovered, dimmer now. "The trail is yours," he said. "But you glowed again. Down here, the earth hid it. Above, it did not." A heavy thud struck the trap door. Then another. The hunters had seen the light seep through the grass. Calil rose. He had his direction. Now he had to reach it before the door gave way.