Behind the Scenes: From Side Characters to Center Stage

When I drafted Echoes of the neXt, Fahrenheit and Ellemental weren’t built to carry the whole city on their backs. They were deliberately minor characters—two sparks at the edge of a much larger fire, there to tilt key moments and then slip back into the crowd. That was the plan.

The truth is, it was always the plan for them to step forward later.

From the first outline notes, I knew Echoes was a wide-shot story: the Bloom’s legacy, the city’s strange physics, the big machinery of control vs. freedom. Fahrenheit and Ellemental appear as part of that machinery—quick, sharp, and a little dangerous—but their origin and their bond needed a different kind of canvas. That’s why we made Fire & Storm: a tight, survival-forward mission that forced them into the same corridor and asked what they’d do when the rest of the world wasn’t watching.

Reader response to Fire & Storm confirmed what I felt while writing it: these two weren’t just cool cameos; they were leads with unfinished business. Their choices, their temperaments, the way they disagree and still move—it all begged for a spotlight.

Burning through the neXt is that spotlight.

If Echoes introduced them and Fire & Storm proved they belonged together under pressure, Burning lets them operate at full volume. The story pushes them from reactive to proactive—from surviving the corridor to choosing the corridor. It’s where the cost of hope starts to tally, where allies and enemies trade places, and where their partnership has to be more than chemistry; it has to be conviction.

I’ve wanted to write this chapter since page one of Echoes. I’m excited you’ll get to see why.

Preorder here: https://a.co/d/4UEr5Xh