Cinder saw the seed fall into the Ash Bog, a dead zone between the peaks and the depths. Without thinking, he plunged down the mountainside, melting a trail behind him. Aquaria felt the disturbance in the water—a tremor of heat and pain—and rose to the surface for the first time in a hundred years.

They met at the edge of the Ash Bog. He stood on a cooling slab of basalt; she rose from a steam vent in a pillar of liquid grace.

Once upon a time, in a world split in two by an ancient curse, there was a boy made of molten fire and a girl carved from living water. Their names were Cinder and Aquaria.