A par¿ falls from a torn sky into a healer's floating cottage on the Kalu Ganga, carrying beneath her sternum an ancient fire others have spent years preparing to harvest. Her name is Bindi. The Elders believe pain can ripen the Ember inside her. But Aria loves her without asking to own her, and that love begins cooling what they need fevered. Then the cold returns - wearing trusted voices, old wounds, and the shape of a ruined unicorn sent to hunt her. When Bindi is driven from the Headland cliff into the sea and kept in a hidden fold of time, Aria follows. What begins as rescue becomes a hunted pilgrimage through bodhi groves, fallen mountains, and a night river of drowned temples, where every healing makes Bindi easier to find. At the last flame, she must discover what has truly been hunting her - and whether love can remain love when it refuses to keep what it saves.