"^(Please, hear my cry, Qriris of the fury. Shield me not, but wreathe me in the armaments of your wrath. Drink of my fire as I walk your burning path beneath the stars.)"

A chill rippled across my skin.

The prayer was quiet, distant, a lone voice in the night.

But it was there.

My name.

My words.

A call to the old-fire.

Though it keened out in a different tongue than the creatures had once invoked me, it echoed against the same cold heavens, spoke of that same furious and ephemeral and beautiful rage that had always kindled a fondness for the humans that had once known me.

It lit my weathered soul ablaze.

I closed my eyes, casting out to find that which had called me. I could feel the beating land beneath my fingertips, ran my hands once more over the great peaks and swelling oceans, searching for the cry.

It wasn't hard to find.

My hands trembled as I set my drink on the bar. Though I'd known his father and his father before, I barely registered the bartender's nod as I walked out into the street.

The cold of so many nights was gone. I felt the hum again, that thrumming current that ran beneath it all, and tipped my head back.

For the first time in a millennia, those once-familiar flames licked at the edges of my being. I tipped my head back in the rush, and in an instant I was gone.

The human was small.

Gods, they were all so small.

My heart broke again for these beings I'd once shepherded, seeing the human there, knelt by a tiny fire. That was always why I'd answered their calls - the heartbreak. That such luminous beings were tethered in such papery flesh, that these fires they built could only ever be such shallow mimicries of the rage within them. That they could themselves gaze on this cosmic injustice, and yet by some cruel fate their bodies had deigned them unworthy of their anger in the face of it.

I knelt by the fire across from the little thing.

"You burn bright, child."

The human opened her eyes, and I saw now the tears streaming silently down her face. There was no shock at my appearance. No, this was why she had been able to call me. The world had taken her shock, hollowed her luminous rage to dull points that strained against the dark.

"I'm so tired," the human said, and her face broke entirely now. She wept, falling to the ground, wracked with a wrenching sorrow.

"Shh, shh," I moved to sit by her, "The world has taken much from you, my darling."

"I can't-" she fought through the choking tears to speak.

"Shh, darling, sit with me, with this fire."

The human sniffled, quelling her tears faster than I thought she might. I helped her up, and we sat for a moment, gazing at the flames. I could feel her breathing quicken, the cogs in her mind begin to turn, the realization of what she had done setting in, so I have her a moment to process.

"You're real?" she asked, and the clawing fight against more tears filled me with a wave of simultaneous pride and sorrow.

"More or less," I replied. "More, now that you've invoked me."

"I didn't know what to do, I didn't-" gods, she had power in her, even as helpless as she was now. "I didn't know how to keep- to keep fighting."

"You're not alone anymore. And that prayer you managed to cook up can be more literal than you think, child." I pushed power into my words, enough for her to feel just how real I could be. "You are entitled to your anger, and that fight is something still in you. I cannot give you that. I can only right the injustice that is your inability to act on that fight."

This seemed to get through to her, and her next word struck me with incredible force.

"Good."

Though she still sniffled, though tears still lined her face, I could feel her kindle once more, the promise of my fire rushing to fill the hollow in her the world had made.

I felt a single tear fall down my own face, and I caught it as it fell, holding it on an outstretched fingertip.

"Tell me, child," I reached my hand into the flame, feeling my tear crystallize. "What has this place done to you?"

"My family- my village-" she gritted her teeth and stood, the sheer force of her will washing over me. "They poisoned the water, they- they took everything."

I stood after her, carrying the drop of my essence now bathed in fire.

"Not everything." I said, and emotions I hadn't felt in centuries filled me, lighting my eyes, my hands, bathing the room in the red glow of the old-fire. "They cannot take your fury."

I held out the teardrop, and she turned her gaze from the night to face me.

"You already know the path. Take it," I said, the voice of the old-fire joining my own. "Take it, and burn them all."