Enna stared up at the rain of sparkling fireworks. A magical rocket sang up into the sky. A thundering boom shook the trees, and sparkles of red and yellow spattered in a star pattern. More fireworks followed--green, blue, red, and more. Crowds cheered and clapped, nothing but a dull roar in the distance. Enna wrapped her black cloak more tightly around herself. She was perched on a grassy mound on the side of a hill. When the fireworks started, she dropped her walking staff and collapsed on the hillside to watch. The fireworks were remarkable, beautiful, but Enna only saw a colorful blur through her tear-filled eyes.

She was too late. Nothing could stop it now.

A loud roar rang up from the Cold Mountain--resonant, throaty, remote. Enna startled--adrenaline raced through her. But she was so tired, so sad ... she staggered to her feet. All she knew was that she had to get away. She was too late, and her people were too far away even to hear her shout.

No one else knew.

The roaring got louder. Enna stumbled down the path, fighting the grief and misery. Then she suddenly remembered. She wiped her eyes and broke into a run, racing towards the last hope her village had.

Enna Hawthorne had not always been Enna Hawthorne. Once, she was Karine Lowfoot, Child of Renne.

That had been forty years ago, before she had snuck away, scarcely fourteen, and concealed in the back of her lover —Ennis’— cart. They had been young, and he was handsome, and forbidden, and all the things Renninites were not allowed to have. There had been a child, and then there had been a fever, and neither lover, nor child remained. Karine became Enna, in remembrance of her lover, and Lowfoot became Hawthorne, named for the brush in which her son was buried.

She did not think her past would come back to haunt her like this.

Enna ran until the lights of the fireworks disappeared behind the folds of the hills. The night swallowed the cheers of the festival, leaving only the wind and the distant growl from Cold Mountain.

The path dipped into a grove of crooked firs. Branches clawed at her cloak as she stumbled through them. Her lungs burned. Every breath tasted of ash already drifting from the north.

“No,” she whispered aloud, as if speaking could hold the world together. “Not yet.”

Another roar rolled from the mountain, and this time the earth answered. The ground shivered beneath her boots. Pebbles danced down the slope. Somewhere behind her, in the valley villages, the fireworks continued to burst in brilliant colors against the clouds. The fools thought tonight was celebration.

The Renninites knew better.

Tonight was Fulfillment.

Enna stopped so suddenly she nearly fell. Her stomach twisted.

Her mind snapped backward forty years.

Candles in a stone chamber. Thick incense smoke. Old Mother Cerys drawing symbols in ash across the floor while the children knelt in silence.

Karine Lowfoot among them, fourteen years old and frightened to breathe too loudly.

“The sky shall be split with fire,” Mother Cerys had whispered. “The mountain shall answer the holy lights. And from flame and ruin, the world shall be made pure.”

The other children had repeated the words reverently.

Karine had repeated them too.

Enna pressed trembling fingers to her mouth. Another memory surfaced, sharp as broken glass.

Hidden chambers beneath Renne, with men carrying barrels of black powder down ancient tunnels, maps of Cold Mountain spread across oak tables.

She remembered Ennis laughing quietly beside her as they watched through a crack in the doorway. It was past curfew, and he had snuck in from the farmhouse to be with her. Karine had laughed too, because she had still been young enough to think prophecy and madness were different things.

Now the mountain roared again. And this time, faintly, she saw it. A red glow blooming around the summit.

Enna staggered onward down the forest trail, thoughts crashing together in fragments.

The Renninites believed the world had become corrupted beyond cleansing. Cities, kings, machines, trade—all poison. Only fire could scour humanity clean enough for rebirth.

Judgement Day was not punishment to them.

It was mercy.

She had spent half her life believing she escaped them, but the cult had never stopped preparing.

The realization hollowed her out. Every festival in the valley tonight had been funded anonymously. Every village encouraged to celebrate the Centennial Eclipse. Every mayor gifted fireworks from traveling merchants.

The Renninites had spread them everywhere: so many sparks, so much thunder. Enough to wake the mountain.

Ahead, through the trees, a single lantern flickered beside a cottage. The apothecary’s house. Enna lurched toward it.

Another flashback struck before she reached the door. She saw herself younger again, kneeling before the Circle Elders.

“Would you give your life for purification?” Elder Bran had asked.

“Yes,” Karine had answered automatically.

“Would you give your child?”

Silence.

Even now, decades later, the remembered horror froze her blood.

She had hesitated, only for a second, but under Renne, hesitation was sin.

That was the moment they began watching her, the moment her and Ennis fled.

Enna slammed into the cottage door hard enough to rattle the frame.

“Open!” she cried. “Please!”

Inside came hurried footsteps. Bolts scraped back. The door opened a crack, revealing a pale young man holding a lamp. Tomas.

He stared at her in alarm. “Mistress Hawthorne? What happened?”

“The mountain,” she gasped. “How many fireworks remain in the valley?”

“What?”

“How many?”

“I—I don’t know. Hundreds still, probably. The nobles paid for an all-night display—”

“Then we are all dead.”