The Fire That Kept Breathing
The light in the dorm dimmed.
Zephryn's breath steadied—barely.
The hum still echoed beneath his ribs.
But it wasn't the Lyceum's hum.
Wasn't pulse tech.
Wasn't anything that could be replicated in a lab.
It was older.
Sharper.
Alive.
He closed his eyes.
And the memory pulled him under.
Six years ago.
Darkness.
Not like night. Not like death.
This was void.
It didn't echo. It didn't press. It simply… existed.
A weightless, endless place where nothing breathed unless it chose to.
Zephryn floated, curled in on himself.
His pulse had long since faded.
His glyph—a faint burn on his skin—dimmed to nothing.
And yet—
Something glowed.
Not outside.
Inside.
A flicker near his chest.
A silver coil, slow and sharp, curling like flame through water.
It pulsed once.
Then again.
Each time, his lungs remembered how to tighten.
Each time, the world around him bent.
Not shattered.
Not broken.
Just… folded.
He tried to scream once.
But the void stole the sound.
All that escaped was a breath.
And the fire answered.
Not with words.
With a shape.
A twisting glyph—one he had never seen.
One that should not have existed.
And yet—
It recognized him.
Not by name.
Not by blood.
By feeling.
Like it had been waiting for him to fall.
He reached out.
His fingers trembled through the glyph's edges.
It burned.
Silver and blue laced across his palm, trailing up his forearm like a scar that had always been there, waiting to be remembered.
The glyph spoke.
Not in language. In weight.
And in that moment, Zephryn didn't climb out of the void.
He was thrown.
Back into the cliffside.
Back into flame.
Back into memory.
Back into a world that had already started forgetting him.