Fire

You are not what you can do. You are what you will not move off of.

House Ren has been Water for as far back as anyone bothered to write it down. Then, in the rain-soaked Rust Belt of District Six, a child wakes from the Sleeping, and the dark is hot.

Cisi Ren is the first Ren who burned: a Fire Titan born into a Water district, where the rain drains her heat and the Empire's ledgers are always watching. Every year the Pruning comes down the street for gifted children. It has already taken someone she loves.

So Cisi builds. Where every Titan in the record has manifested a blade, a staff or a bow, her soul comes out shaped like a gun. The kids who called her wrong-born start calling her something else: the Engine.

With her shadow-blade sister Nekato, her ice-cold brother Neko, and allies like Adam Stone and Jamie Duskburne, she helps raise the HIVE, a hidden refuge for Titans the Empire wants harvested. But the Empire is escalating, and the Pendant on her workbench may be the only thing standing between her family and the Kill Chain.

She has one promise left to keep: she will burn this continent down before she lets them touch her family.

Fire: Firefly is one of the concurrent prequels of the Elemental Saga in The Gaia Chronicles. Each follows a different member of the HIVE to the same night in District Six, and they can be read in any order.