Thomas Wright had always believed that the worst part of being sparkless was the pity in his mother’s eyes every birthday when his hands remained cold. He’d been wrong about that, as it turned out. The worst part wasn’t even the silence at the dinner table when everyone pretended not to notice that Tom had to use matches to light his candle. It was the way the other kids at school treated him. 

The Wrights were pyromancers—had been for six generations, according to the family tree that hung in the hallway, where each name was inscribed in gold leaf that seemed to flicker in candlelight. His great-great-grandfather had kept the forges running during the Winter Siege. His grandmother could create flames hot enough to melt iron with a thought. His father ran the family smithy, shaping metal with fire that danced from his fingertips like trained birds. Even Sophie, his fifteen-year-old sister, could light every candle in a room with a snap of her fingers.

Tom was twelve years old and couldn’t light a birthday candle without a match.

“It’s fine,” his mother would say, her voice bright with forced optimism as she watched him struggle with a match. “Some people are late bloomers. Your uncle Gerald didn’t get his spark until he was thirteen.”

But Uncle Gerald had gotten his spark. That was the part that hung in the air, unspoken but heavy as smoke.

Standing in the thin autumn sunshine on the edge of the Shifting Cliffs with his Year Seven class, Tom tried not to think about it. The cliffs had earned their name centuries ago. The ground here was notoriously unstable, prone to sudden tremors and shifts without warning. That’s why Mr. Blackwell, their geography teacher, had made them all sign liability waivers and listen to a twenty-minute safety lecture before they’d even left the coach.

Mr. Blackwell was a distant cousin of Tom’s. He was one of the few pyromancers at Millbrook Academy, and today on their school trip, he was demonstrating how heat could reveal stress fractures in rock. He held his palm against a large stone, and within seconds, thin lines of orange spread across its surface like veins.

“You see,” Mr. Blackwell explained, his hand still glowing with warmth, “the expansion from heat makes the weaknesses visible. Now, I want each of you to try this with your sample stones. Those of you with fire magic, use a gentle warmth—we’re not trying to melt anything. Everyone else, use the torches.”

Tom collected his sample stone and moved toward the basket of torches set up for students without fire magic. There were only three other students heading that way: Hannah Park, whose family were Watersingers; Dev Kapoor, a Windwhisper; and himself. The flameless Wright.

“Need help finding the matches, Wright?” Charlie Pemberton’s voice carried across the group, accompanied by snickers from his friends. Charlie was a Stonesinger, able to shape and move earth with a thought. He was also built like a rugby player and had decided months ago that Tom made an excellent target for his wit.

Tom kept his expression neutral as he lit the torch. He’d learned that reacting only made it worse.

“I heard his mum is frightfully ashamed of him,” Charlie continued. "Must be embarrassing, having a son who can’t even—”

“That’s enough, Mr. Pemberton,” Mr. Blackwell said sharply. “Unless you’d like to spend the rest of the trip cataloguing rock samples in the coach?”

Charlie fell silent, but Tom caught the look he shot across the group at him. A promise that this wasn’t over.

The exercise itself was simple enough. Tom held the torch close to his rock sample, watching as the heat made thin cracks appear across its surface like a map of rivers. He was so focused on his work that he didn’t notice the first tremor.

It was Lily Charles, a small girl with wind magic, who grabbed his arm.

“Did you feel that?” she whispered, her dark eyes wide.

Tom opened his mouth to respond, but the words died as the ground beneath them lurched. Not a gentle shift, but a violent bucking that sent students stumbling and screaming. Mr. Blackwell shouted something, but the sound was swallowed by a deep, terrible groan from the earth itself.

The cliff edge where Tom stood suddenly wasn’t there anymore.

He fell into darkness, his stomach dropping away, his hands scrabbling uselessly at crumbling stone. Something hit his shoulder. It was Charlie, he realized dimly as the larger boy’s weight sent them both tumbling. Then Lily’s scream joined theirs as the three of them slid down into shadow.

Tom hit the bottom hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. For several long seconds, he could only lie there, gasping, trying to remember how breathing worked. His hands were scraped raw, his shoulder throbbing where Charlie had collided with him, but nothing felt broken.

Above them, sunlight formed a narrow slash in the darkness, impossibly far away. Twenty feet? Thirty? Tom couldn’t tell. The crevice was barely wider than his father’s forge, the walls smooth stone that disappeared into shadows below.

“Is everyone—” Tom started, but a groan cut him off.

Charlie was sitting up, one hand pressed to his forehead. Blood seeped between his fingers, dark in the dim light. Lily was curled on her side, crying softly.

“Lily?” Tom crawled over to her, his hands shaking. “Are you hurt?”

“My ankle,” she whimpered. “I think I twisted it when we—”

“WRIGHT! PEMBERTON! CHARLES!” Mr. Blackwell's voice echoed down from above, distorted by the stone. “Can you hear me?”

“We’re here!” Tom shouted back. “We’re alive! But Lily’s hurt her ankle and Charlie is bleeding!”

There was a pause, then: “Don't move! We’re getting ropes. Stay exactly where you are. Can any of you use your magic to—”

“My head hurts too much to focus,” Charlie called up, his voice rough. “Can’t Stonesing like this.”

“The space is too small,” Lily added weakly. “I can’t gather enough wind.”

Tom said nothing. There was no point in stating the obvious.

“Just hold tight,” Mr. Blackwell shouted. “Help is coming. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Just stay calm.”

Twenty minutes. It sounded reasonable. They could wait twenty minutes.

Except the sun was moving, Tom realized. The slash of light above them was already thinner than when they’d fallen, shadows creeping across the narrow space. And with the shadows came cold, and not normal autumn cold, but something deeper. Something that seemed to seep from the stone itself.

“It’s freezing down here,” Lily whispered. Her lips were already losing color.

Tom shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her. “Here. Just for a bit.”

“What about you?” she asked, teeth chattering.

“I’m fine.” He wasn’t, but he’d been cold before. He could handle it.

Charlie was examining the walls, running his hands over the smooth stone. “I might be able to create some handholds. If I focus hard enough—” He closed his eyes, and for a moment, Tom saw the rock begin to ripple. But then Charlie swayed, pressing his hand to his bleeding forehead, and the stone went still.

“Don’t,” Tom said. “You’ll just hurt yourself more. We wait for the ropes.”

“Easy for you to say,” Charlie muttered. “You’re used to being useless.”

The words should have stung, but Tom was too busy watching Lily. She’d started shivering, violent tremors that shook her whole frame. That wasn’t right. It had only been a few minutes.

He moved closer to her, clasping her hands between his own. “Lily? Talk to me. Tell me about... I don’t know, tell me about your family.”

“Cold,” she whispered. “So cold.”

Tom looked up at the slash of light above. Still there, but dimmer now. The shadows were growing.

“Charlie,” he said quietly. “How’s your head?”

“Hurts like hell. Why?”

“Because I need you to try something. Not Stonesinging. Just... can you create friction? Rub two rocks together?”

Charlie stared at him. “What good would that—”

“Heat. Even a little bit might help.”

For once, Charlie didn’t argue. He picked up two stones and began grinding them together, but after a minute, he shook his head. “It’s not working. Not enough pressure, or wrong type of stone, or I don’t know. I’m not a bloody pyromancer.”

Neither am I, Tom thought, but he didn’t say it.

Instead, he looked around their prison, cataloguing what they had: smooth walls, a pile of debris from the fall, Lily’s labored breathing, Charlie’s bleeding head, and shadows that were growing longer by the minute.

And then he heard it.

A sound like claws on stone, coming from deeper in the crevice.

Tom went very still. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Charlie asked, but his voice had gone tight.

The scraping came again, closer now. And with it, a smell of something rotten and sharp, like meat left too long in summer heat.

“There’s something down here,” Lily whispered. “Oh god, there’s something—”

Charlie scrambled backward, his hand shooting toward the wall. “Get back!” Stone rippled under his palm, trying to form a barrier, but he was exhausted and hurt. The rock crumbled as quickly as it formed.

The wyrm’s attention fixed on the movement. It took a step forward, then another, its head lowering.

“Lily,” Tom said quietly, not taking his eyes off the creature. “Can you give me a gust? Any direction. Just something to distract it.”

“I... I’ll try.” Lily’s voice shook, but she raised one trembling hand. A weak puff of air stirred the dust.

It was enough. The wyrm’s head swiveled toward her.

Tom moved without thinking. He grabbed a heavy piece of broken stone with a sharp edge and threw it at the creature. It bounced off the wyrm’s hide with a clang, but the thing turned back to him, hissing.

“That’s right,” Tom said, his heart hammering. “Look at me. Over here.”

“What are you doing?” Charlie hissed.

“Being useful.” Tom picked up another rock. “Charlie, when I throw this, I need you to make the wall behind it bulge out. Just a little. Just enough to—”

“To what?”

“Trap it. Or slow it down. I don’t know, just do it!”

Tom threw the second rock. It sailed past the wyrm’s head, and Charlie, to his credit, focused through his pain and made the stone wall ripple outward. Not much, but enough to create a narrow shelf.

“Lily, blow toward that shelf. As hard as you can.”

She did, and the gust sent a cascade of smaller stones tumbling from the new formation. They clattered down around the wyrm, making it hiss and snap at the air.

“Again!” Tom shouted. “Keep it confused!”

For the next frantic minute, they worked in desperate coordination, with Tom directing, Charlie shaping stone barriers where he could, Lily creating small gusts of wind. It wasn’t elegant and it wasn’t powerful magic, but it kept the wyrm at bay, slowly driving it back toward the darker recesses of the crevice.

Until Tom ran out of rocks to throw.

The wyrm seemed to sense their resources were spent. It crept forward again, slower now, more cautious but no less dangerous. Its teeth gleamed in the dim light.

Tom looked around wildly for anything else he could use—a stick, a larger stone, anything. But there was nothing. His hands were empty.

And Lily was directly behind him, still shivering violently, too weak to run even if there was anywhere to run to.

The wyrm gathered itself to spring.

Tom threw himself forward, not toward the creature but in front of Lily, his arms spread wide as if he could possibly shield her with his own body. It was stupid, he knew. Useless. But it was all he had—

Heat exploded across his palms.

Not fire. Not flames. Just heat, sudden and intense, spreading from his chest down his arms and bursting from his hands like a wave. For one brilliant second, the shadows fled. His palms glowed orange-red, hot enough that he could feel the air shimmer around them.

The wyrm shrieked, making a sound like breaking glass, and scrambled backward, its bone-pale body twisting away from the heat. Within seconds, it had vanished back into the deeper darkness, leaving only the smell of sulfur and fear.

Tom stood frozen, staring at his hands. They were normal again. Cool and unremarkable. But he’d felt the warmth and power, along with the absolute certainty that in that moment, he’d had something to offer.

“Did you just—” Charlie's voice cracked. “Did you just use fire magic?”

“I don't know,” Tom whispered. “I don’t know what that was.”

Lily grabbed his arm with her good hand. “Your hands,” she said. “They were glowing. Like coals. I saw it.”

Tom turned his palms over, examining them as if they belonged to someone else. There were no marks, no burns. Nothing to indicate that anything had happened at all.

Except something had happened. For the first time in his life, he'd felt the spark.

And just as quickly, it had gone out.

The shadows crept back in, bringing the cold with them. Lily’s shivering had intensified, her teeth chattering so hard Tom could hear them clicking together. Charlie had gone quiet, slumped against the wall with one hand still pressed to his bleeding head.

“We need heat,” Tom said, more to himself than to them. “Light and heat. Before—”

Before what? Before Lily went into shock? Before Charlie passed out? Before the wyrm came back?

He thought about his father at the forge, the careful way he fed the fire. Not with magic, but with understanding. “Fire doesn’t require force, Tom,” his dad always said. “You need to feed the flame. You can’t demand it. You have to give it what it needs.”

Tom had always assumed his father was just trying to make him feel better about being sparkless. But what if there was more to it?

What if he’d been trying to create fire the wrong way his entire life?

Everyone in his family conjured flames from nothing, willed them into existence with pure magical force. But Tom had never managed that. The one time he’d felt heat in his hands, it hadn’t been from trying to create anything. It had been from responding to need. From wanting to protect someone.

From working with what was already there.

“Charlie,” Tom said suddenly. “Lily. I need you to do something for me.”

“We’re kind of busy freezing to death,” Charlie muttered, but there was no bite to it. He just sounded tired.

“There’s debris down here. Dry leaves, dead moss, bits of wood. Help me gather it.”

“What good will that do without—” Lily started, but Tom was already moving, collecting the scattered organic matter into a small pile in the center of their prison.

It wasn’t much. A handful of desiccated moss, some dried leaves that had blown down during the fall, and a few small twigs. Nothing that would naturally catch fire without a spark.

But sparks, Tom was learning, weren’t always about creation.

He arranged the materials carefully, the way his father arranged kindling in the forge. Then he turned to his companions.

“Lily, can you blow on this? Just warm breath, as much as you can manage.”

“I'm trying,” she whispered, leaning forward. Her breath misted in the cold air, barely warm at all, but it was something.

“Charlie, you too. Both of you. Just breathe on it.”

“This is insane,” Charlie said, but he joined in anyway.

Tom placed his hands around the small pile, cupping them to hold in whatever microscopic warmth their breath provided. And then he closed his eyes and thought.

He didn’t think about creating fire. Or about forcing magic from his hands. Instead, he thought about what was already there: The warmth in their breath, even as weak as it was. The friction heat from their fall, still lingering in the disturbed air. The potential energy locked in the dry moss and leaves. The memory of heat in his palms when he'd protected Lily.

His father’s words: Give it what it needs.

Fire needed fuel. Fire needed oxygen. Fire needed heat. And fire needed belief.

“Come on,” Tom whispered, his voice full of desperate hope. “Come on, please. They’re so cold. Please.”

His hands began to warm.

It started as a tingle, then a gentle heat, then something more. Not the explosive burst from before, but a slow, steady building. Like coals coming to life rather than flames bursting forth.

The moss beneath his palms began to smoke.

“Holy—” Charlie breathed.

“Keep breathing on it,” Tom said, not opening his eyes. “Don't stop.”

The smoke thickened. Tom could smell it now as the dry plant matter began to combust. His hands were hot, uncomfortably so, but he didn’t pull away. He kept thinking about his father’s forge, and the careful attention required to bring metal to working temperature. Too much heat too fast and you ruined the metal. Too little and it never transformed.

The moss caught.

The flame was small, but in their confined space, it was enough. Warmth began to radiate outward, pushing back the worst of the cold. Lily stopped shivering quite so violently. Charlie’s face regained some color, despite the ugly gash. 

Tom fed the flame carefully, adding small pieces of debris one at a time, never overwhelming it. He kept his hands cupped around it, not to create more heat now, but just to shield it from any stray drafts. The warmth in his palms had settled into something steady and sustainable. He didn’t feel a burst of power, but it was simply a constant presence now.

This was his magic, he realized. 

“WRIGHT! We’re lowering the ropes!”

Mr. Blackwell’s voice startled them all. Tom looked up to find the slash of sunlight had widened. They must have moved equipment to make the opening larger. Two thick ropes snaked down toward them, swaying slightly.

“Can you climb?” the teacher called down.

Tom looked at Lily’s swollen ankle, at Charlie’s bleeding head, at the small fire that was keeping them warm. “Lily can’t! Her ankle’s twisted. And Charlie hit his head pretty hard.”

There was a brief consultation above, then: “We’re sending down a harness. Put the injured ones on first.”

The next few minutes were a blur of activity. The harness came down, and Tom helped strap Lily into it first. She gave him one last look before being hauled up, her eyes shining.

Charlie went next, though he insisted he could climb. “I’m fine,” he muttered, but Tom noticed he didn’t protest too hard when Mr. Blackwell ordered him into the harness.

Before he was lifted away, Charlie met Tom's eyes. “That thing with the rocks,” he said awkwardly. “The wyrm. You... you saved our lives.”

“We saved each other,” Tom replied.

Charlie nodded slowly, then added in a quieter voice: “I’m sorry. For being mean about the spark thing. I didn’t—” He shook his head. “Just... sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Tom said, and meant it.

When the harness came down for him, Tom took a moment to carefully extinguish his small fire, scattering the embers and making sure nothing was still smoldering. The action felt significant somehow.

The journey up was harder than it looked. Tom’s arms were shaking by the time hands reached down to haul him over the edge, pulling him back into sunlight and safety.

Mr. Blackwell was there immediately, checking him over with quick efficiency. “Are you hurt? Can you walk?”

“I’m fine. Just cold.”

“You made fire.” It wasn’t a question. Mr. Blackwell's eyes held something Tom couldn’t quite read. “Down there, in the dark, you made fire from scraps.”

“I... yes.”

The teacher was quiet for a moment, then said: “That’s not easy magic, Wright. Even for experienced pyromancers. To kindle fire from so little, to sustain it in those conditions…” He shook his head. “Well done.”

They wrapped him in a blanket that someone had brought from the coach. Around him, his classmates were being fussed over by teachers and, in some cases, by paramedics who’d arrived with the rescue equipment. Lily was getting her ankle wrapped. Charlie was having his head examined.

Tom just sat on the edge of the Shifting Cliffs, watching the sun set over the valley below, and thought about the warmth bubbling just beneath the surface of his palms. The heat of the fire that had been there inside him all along.