Hi! Thank you for playing Emberfate and for the question 💖 Don't worry, it doesn't sound weird at all.
The base game will always remain free to play on both Itch.io and Steam, but later on, there'll be some small paid DLCs that add extra content like Potato's romance route. So no worries if you ever want to redownload the game in the future — you should always be able to! :)