We Carry the Fire is a visual novel set in a world that is slowly ending. Every few years after the new moon disappears from the night sky, it will return red, and when that red moon is full every town, village, and city in the Empire will be attacked by mindless, spectral monsters called Shades. The only weapon the people have in their defense is Fire, an ever-burning white flame believed to be a gift from God Himself.

Players follow Ashe, a young person whose red eyes mark him as an outcast. When a new red moon appears, Ashe volunteers to deliver Fire to a remote farming village that would otherwise be destroyed under the full moon. This mission will be particularly dangerous because it requires him to cross the Forest, a mysterious wilderness believed to be home to malicious spirits and terrifying monsters that otherwise live only in myth.

But Ashe will not face these dangers alone. He is joined by a party of other outcasts like himself: Blaise a former knight excommunicated from her order for an alleged heresy; Kol, an Alfar of the Forest exiled from his clan for breaking a taboo; and Luz, a magical prodigy expelled from her university for stealing secrets from restricted texts.

Their success is far from guaranteed. Rather, each of them joins this mission knowing they will likely fail, and failure means death. Yet they are each willing to accept that great risk for their own reasons.

The trials they face in their journey will reopen old wounds and push each of them to their breaking point, and to find a way forward they will each be forced to let go of something important.