He moved like a man who no longer expected to be surprised—broad-shouldered in a threadbare parka, hood low, hands buried in black gloves worn thin by years. Rising like smoke from a quiet fire, his breath steamed in the air. The pistol at his hip sat heavy and unused. Until now, security work had meant guarding silent substations, breaking up looters, ignoring the quiet rise of candlelight rituals in apartment windows.
Then came the call.
"Unit Twelve, you’re closest to Viiskulma. Building E. Another one."
He didn’t ask another what. The tone was enough.
By the time he reached the scene, the air stank of ozone and burned meat in a wet sock. Cutting through stairwell gloom, flashlights caught cracked plaster and the steady drip from a burst pipe. A uniformed responder stood at the door, pale and speechless, as if the horror inside had knocked the words from his lungs.
“Let me through,” Aleksi said. The man stepped aside.
Inside, the apartment was wrecked in a way that defied logic. The overhead bulb had melted down its filament. The wallpaper had blistered outward—as if from some inner heat. At the center sat the body.
A woman, late thirties maybe, slumped in a crouch against the radiator, arms raised to shield her face. Her eyes were gone, scorched clean out. Mouth open, teeth cracked. Her clothes were intact, but the skin beneath was charred, peeling, and split.
Aleksi stood still. His gaze drifted to the wall behind her, where a symbol was etched—deep, deliberate. A Sámi rune, drawn in soot or ash. Jagged lines intersecting at unnatural angles.
Crouching beside her, he felt the cold floor biting through his knees.
“Same pattern as the warehouse body,” he said.
A voice from behind him was low and sharp. “And the man by the tram line. Eyes gone. Mouth the same.”
He turned. Inspector Leena Rautiainen—tall, thin as a blade, cheekbones sharp as axe strokes, hair buzzed close to her scalp. No badge, no insignia. She didn’t need them.
“You called me,” Aleksi said.
“I didn’t.” She stepped in, pulling the door shut. “But I knew you’d come.”
He rose slowly, watching her. “You're not supposed to be involved.”
“And you’re supposed to be retired.” She nodded at the rune. “You know what it means?”
“Not yet,” he said. “But I’ve seen it before. Laajalahti eco-cell raids.”
“That was seven years ago. Those people are buried or locked up.”
Aleksi shrugged. “Then someone’s picking up where they left off.”
Leena stepped closer, flashlight trembling slightly. “There’s no power in this sector. City says it’s an overload. But these rooms—they’re not losing light. They’re drained. Like something’s feeding on the current.”
Aleksi looked at the corpse. “Or the people.”
#
In Kallio, the university annex stank of mildew and wet paper. Fluorescents buzzed overhead, dim and dying, and beyond the half-frozen windows, the blackout deepened. Waiting in the corridor, Aleksi crossed his arms while muffled swearing echoed from the office.
Inari Vuollo emerged in a cloud of dust, dragging a dented filing cabinet as if it had offended her. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbows, black ink smudged along one wrist, dark hair twisted in a careless bun. Wire-frame glasses slid low on her nose.
“You again,” she said. “Still think fairy tales will solve your crime scenes?”
“I think people are dying,” Aleksi replied. “And they’re marked with runes no one else can read.”
She gave him a look—exhausted, sharp beneath it. “There’s a reason I left. They turned Sámi folklore into tourist bait. Pretty lies behind glass. I told them the stories were alive. That they change when ignored.” A humorless laugh. “Academia doesn’t like dramatists.”
“I’m not here for drama,” Aleksi said. “This symbol”—he handed her a photo—“matches your thesis cover.”
She glanced at it. Her body stiffened. “That’s Sosiit. The watching flame. From the Tulikettu myth.”
Aleksi frowned. “Fox made of fire, right?”
“Not made—become. Born of disruption. Environmental collapse, desecrated ground... the Tulikettu is a warning. A burning thread across the snow.” She paused. “It doesn’t kill. It cleanses.”
Aleksi exhaled through his nose. “I need someone who sees more than signs. Someone who hears what others don’t.”
Inari raised a brow. “You want Kaapo.”
“Already contacted him,” Aleksi said. “He’s waiting.”
They met Kaapo outside the city limits, where pine gave way to bare rock and snow-furred silence. He stood beneath a leaning birch, coat patched with leather and lichen, a carved staff in both hands. Blind from birth, his eyes were milky, but when he turned toward them, it felt like he saw.
“Detective,” Kaapo rasped. His Sámi accent wound through his words like wind over ice. “And the scholar who fled her stories.”
Inari flinched. “I didn’t flee. I stopped lying about what they were.”
Kaapo smiled faintly. “Then you’ve heard the Tulikettu. The real one. Not the fox in your books.”
Aleksi stepped forward. “People are burning from the inside out. Some say it’s chemical, some electrical. But I’ve seen them. I’ve smelled what was left. This isn’t man-made.”
“It is,” Kaapo said, voice dry as kindling. “The work of men who forgot the ground breathes beneath their machines. The Tulikettu speaks when we steal too much.” His head tilted. “It speaks in fire. And wind.”
Inari folded her arms. “And you heard it?”
“I felt it,” Kaapo said. “The cold stopped. The trees stopped. The sky turned its face. Something moved through the snow without sound.”
Aleksi looked between them. “My question’s simple. Can we stop it?”
“No,” Kaapo said.
“Yes,” Inari said, at the same time.
Their eyes locked.
Inari’s voice steadied. “Myths evolve. Which means they can be unwritten. Stories are shaped by who tells them.”
Kaapo shook his head. “Not this one. This one tells us.”
#
By the third night without power, Helsinki turned feral.
Shattered glass crunched under Aleksi’s boots as he stepped over the gutted storefront on Hämeentie. The pharmacy had been stripped—painkillers, batteries, baby formula gone. A trail of bloody handprints smeared the frozen curb. He didn’t follow it.
Fires flickered in trash bins and stolen oil drums. Pressing in harder now, the cold bit through coats, into bone. City services had collapsed—no buses, no police, no news but rumor. And always, the same whisper: "I saw it." "It was watching." "The fox came for him."
Kaapo moved beside him with slow precision, the rubber tip of his staff tapping over the icy sidewalk. His scarf wrapped high, but breath still steamed through it. His blind eyes stayed fixed ahead, unblinking.
“She’s waking,” he said. “The hunger grows.”
Aleksi didn’t ask who she was, he didn't have to.
Behind them, Inari trudged in silence, shoulders hunched against the wind. Her glasses had fogged, cracked down one side. Her eyes were bloodshot from sleepless nights and too many visions she refused to explain.
They reached the alley off Porthaninkatu, where a man’s body lay twisted in frost and soot. His clothes half-melted to his skin, chest arched backward as if struck by lightning from the inside. His face locked in a rictus grin, eyes wide with the last thing he’d seen.
Burned into the brick above him: a crude outline of a fox, drawn in flame. Charred lines, and something darker underneath.
Aleksi turned away, jaw tight.
“Second one today,” Inari murmured.
“He was on the council,” Aleksi said. “Signed the landfill expansion. The one that paved over the wetlands.”
Kaapo tilted his head, listening to something they couldn’t hear.
“It’s not vengeance,” he said. “It’s rebalancing. You pour poison in the river; the river drinks you.”
Aleksi lit a cigarette with shaking hands. “Funny how the river’s got claws now.”
That night, they took shelter in an abandoned community center—dark, half-frozen, the floor littered with broken chairs and forgotten toys. No one slept.
When the visions came, they came together.
Inari was first—sharp, guttural, stumbling to her knees. “She’s here—no, inside—!”
Aleksi saw the walls ripple with heat that wasn’t there. Peeling open like bark, the floor revealed roots choked in plastic and blood. Smoke curled from the seams in his gloves. He tore them off—his palms glowed faintly, ember-veined beneath the skin.
He looked up—and there it was.
The Tulikettu.
It stepped from the dark like flame unfolding: long-limbed, fur of molten copper and ash, eyes twin embers flickering in sockets too deep for light. Its paws didn’t touch the ground. Its breath melted frost from the air. And it looked at them with judgment.
Inari screamed. The fox turned—and shifted.
In its eyes she saw oil rigs, pipeline maps signed by her father, a forest burning from within, and her own silence.
Kaapo’s lips moved without sound. Tears traced his cheeks.
Frozen, Aleksi’s heart pounded in his throat. The fox turned to him—and he saw the raid seven years ago, shoving a teenager face-down in the slush, ignoring crates marked with Sámi seals as evidence burned beside them.
The fox blinked. And vanished.
In the silence that followed, the building groaned.
Aleksi dropped onto a bench, hand trembling. “It knows.”
Kaapo nodded. “It remembers.”
The next day, they moved to an abandoned church near Kaisaniemi, which reeked of damp stone and old smoke. Stained glass lay shattered across the nave, scattered like brittle autumn leaves. Pushing through broken archways, cold wind stirred burnt hymnals and whispered through the ribbed ceiling.
Inari crouched at the altar, black scarf tight around her jaw. Her eyes—wide, sharp despite exhaustion—scanned the fragment of hide she’d unrolled like scripture. Pulsing faintly in the firelight, symbols burned in red ochre across its cracked surface.
“It’s not a prayer,” she said. “It’s a summons. Sámi shamans called them Gáldu boazut—Flamewalkers. Spirits given form when balance is shattered.”
Aleksi leaned against a half-collapsed pew, arms crossed. “How do we make one?”
Her eyes flicked up. “We don’t make it. One of us becomes it. The rite needs fire, blood, and a gift willingly given—the thing we fear losing most.”
Kaapo sat in the corner, legs folded beneath him, palms resting on his knees. His breath came slow and deep, as if he’d already accepted whatever truth waited.
“A soul lit by pain,” he murmured. “Not burned. Transformed.”
Aleksi exhaled. “And what happens to the person?”
Inari didn’t answer at first. She touched the edge of the hide with care. “The texts say the Flamewalker doesn’t return. Or if they do… they don’t come back whole.”
Silence stretched, taut as wire.
“Then we choose,” Aleksi said. “One of us walks into the fire.”
Inari stood, spine straightening like steel pulled through snow. “I should do it. I found the rite.”
“No,” Kaapo said gently. “You want to because you think you deserve to. That’s not the same as being called.”
Her jaw tightened. “You don’t get to decide.”
Aleksi stepped forward. “Then what are you offering, Kaapo? You’ve been talking to the wind since day one.”
Kaapo’s blind eyes didn’t flinch. “I lost my sight to fire. I’ve felt what she is. I’ve known her name longer than either of you. But I’m too old. My blood would vanish in the smoke before the fox even turned its head.”
Inari looked at Aleksi, voice low. “You’ve seen what she shows. The boy at the raid. The sealed crates. What are you willing to lose?”
Not speaking, the fire cracked beside Aleksi and cast light across his face—the scar under his eye, the unshaved jaw, the weight in his silence. “I already lost my badge. My family. My name, if I’m honest.” He looked down. “The only thing I have left is the truth I’ve been avoiding.”
Inari narrowed her eyes. “And that is?”
“That I liked the power,” he said. “Back then, during the crackdown, I told myself it was justice, but it was control.” He looked up. “That’s what I fear losing now. The part of me that remembers being human.”
Kaapo inclined his head. “Then maybe it’s you.”
They moved out to the clearing behind the church, which was ringed with dead trees, their trunks blackened and hollowed like chimneys. Falling in wet clumps, the snow hissed as it touched the fire Inari had no problem coaxing to life—not an ordinary flame, but something that pulsed red and gold, alive with hunger.
Aleksi stood at its edge, stripped to his thermal undershirt, boots planted in the half-melted snow. Steam rose from his skin.
“You don’t have to do this,” Inari said, her voice barely audible over the crackle. Her coat flapped in the wind. Her cheeks were streaked with ash and tears.
“I do,” he said. “It was always me.”
Kaapo sat cross-legged nearby, singing under his breath—an old Sámi joik, low and sorrowful, drawn from somewhere deeper than language.
Aleksi stepped forward.
The flames didn’t resist. They welcomed him. They crawled up his legs, threading through muscle and peeling back like bark. He staggered, bit down, but didn’t scream.
He saw the boy—facedown in the slush, begging in Northern Sámi as Aleksi’s boot pinned him. The crates. The smell of gasoline.
As the fire rose to his chest, his lungs filled with smoke that wasn’t smoke, but breath from another world.
He remembered his daughter’s face, blurred by guilt. The unopened letter. His hand trembled as he reached for it—then the flames took it too.
His eyes burned last, but did not melt, more remade. When he opened them again, they were lit from within, flickering like embers behind shattered glass.
Inari stumbled back. “Aleksi?”
He stood in the center of the blaze, untouched. Skin charred in lines like old wood grain, flickers of flame coiling from his shoulders, arms, mouth, and his voice was deeper, cracked open like a fault line.
“I remember,” he said. “And I burn.”
#
Stretching endlessly, the Arctic forest was cruel beneath a silver sky. Aleksi moved through it like smoke—unnatural and silent. Snow hissed where he passed.
The trees leaned away, animals fled, and the ice cracked in patterns beneath his feet, like veins under skin.
He felt the Tulikettu’s trail as heat in the back of his skull—ruptures, places where the world had buckled, bent by something older than rage.
By the time he reached the lair, night had swallowed everything. A jagged hollow of stone and snow opened before him, lit from within by shifting orange light. The forest around it pulsed with dread—branches twitching without wind, frost forming shapes that shouldn’t hold symmetry.
He stepped inside.
The ground groaned. Roots recoiled. Ash fell from the ceiling like dead feathers.
And then it appeared.
The Tulikettu.
It flowed into view like living fire poured into the shape of a beast—long-limbed, fur glowing with coals and cinders, and nine tails flicking through the dark like whips of molten wire.
It smiled.
Aleksi stepped forward, fire coiling from his fists.
“You remember me,” he said.
The fox opened its mouth. And the forest screamed.
Lashing toward him, branches sharpened into spears. Ice rose in jagged walls, and roots burst from the ground, clawing at his legs.
The wind inside the lair screamed with voices older than language. Fire twisted through the cavern, veins of living gold. The Tulikettu circled Aleksi, its tails trailing flame, eyes locked with his—waiting.
Standing bruised and smoldering, cracks spiderwebbed across the charred skin of Aleksi’s chest, flame licking along his spine. His breath came slow, each exhale releasing cinders. His humanity clung to him, melting like the last snow in spring.
The fox stilled. Its voice came without sound, deep in his bones: "You came to destroy me."
Aleksi raised his hand. Fire surged across his palm, curling in readiness. The fox didn’t flinch.
“I came to stop this,” he said. “The deaths. The fear.”
"They are not punishment. They are warning. The Earth reclaims what is stolen. Always."
Its gaze burned through him, and he saw—the wetland buried beneath landfill, the river choked in runoff, and forests chewed by machines. Not as images, but sensations: lungs struggling for air, roots drowning in asphalt.
And in every act of destruction—silence.
The Tulikettu had filled that silence with balance.
He lowered his hand. The flame dimmed.
“You’re not the threat,” Aleksi whispered. “We are.”
"You have burned, but not broken. You remember. Will you forget, if I let you live?"
He looked at his reflection in the scorched rock—eyes molten, mouth flickering with heat. Not the man he was, but not the monster he feared.
“No,” he said. “I won’t forget. But I can’t go back. I’m not him anymore.”
Stepping closer, the fox’s breath was the heat of summer storms, of birth and collapse. It pressed its forehead to his.
"Then burn with me, and become the fire that remembers."
The world erupted.
Flame coiled through Aleksi’s chest, fusing every scar, every regret, every act of violence and silence—transformed into purpose.
His body shattered, and something greater rose.
Ash drifted through the Arctic trees for days. Where the lair had been, nothing remained but scorched stone and silence.
But in the shadows of cities and forests, a figure appeared, tall, hooded in smoke, and eyes like dying stars. He left blackened footprints and bodies curled in ash—corporate raiders, poachers, men who signed away rivers.
They said the fox walked again, but it walked with a man now.
And together, they hunted.
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