Heat was all Kael had ever known.
It clung to his skin like a curse. Even as a baby, people said his body ran warmer than it should've. He never caught fevers—but thermometers broke around him. The air near him shimmered on hot days. Lightbulbs popped when he walked by.
And still, the fire inside him never left.
Kael lived in a dry, sunbaked village on the edge of civilization. The kind of place maps forgot. The kind of place grief settled into like dust.
His mother died giving birth to him.
He never met her. Never heard her voice.
Only stories. Sad ones.
The villagers said she went smiling. That her last words were his name.Kael never believed them.
He was raised by his uncle—a hard man with sun-leathered skin and cracked hands who never looked Kael in the eye for long.
"You're not cursed," he used to mutter. "You're just... born wrong."
Wrong.
That word stayed with Kael.
By the time he turned sixteen, he didn't smile anymore. Didn't laugh. His world was fire and silence.
He kept to himself. Lived in the shadows of rusted satellite dishes and scorched sand. When he walked through the market, people gave him space.Not respect.Fear.
Sometimes things caught fire when Kael was angry.
Tiny things, at first. Dried leaves. A loose thread on his shirt. Then larger. One time, he shouted at a boy who was mocking him—and the boy's backpack burst into flames right there on the school grounds.
No one could prove it. But everyone knew.
They called him a freak after that.
And Kael stopped pretending to care.
But deep down, the fire wasn't just rage. It was more than anger. It pulsed inside him like a dying star trying to reignite.
He felt the Sun inside his chest—bright, endless, hungry. Sometimes it whispered to him in dreams. Told him that he was born with purpose. That his fire wasn't a curse.
It was a weapon.
And the world would burn before it ever forgot him again.
One day, everything changed.
It was just before sunset. Kael was alone in a dried-out field when the flare hit.
He didn't see it, but he felt it—a surge of energy rolling over the land like a shockwave. No thunder. No flash. Just a deep vibration in the earth and in him.
He fell to his knees, gasping.
His eyes burned. His skin sizzled. The world turned white for a moment.
Then the voices started.
Not voices in his head—real ones, from somewhere beyond.
They didn't speak in words. They radiated. Pulses. Instructions. Heat-patterns in his blood. They told him the truth.
"You are the vessel of the Sun.You were born full.You are the Flame.The others are not like you."
Others?
There were more?
Kael clenched his fists, and the ground around him cracked. Smoke rose. The air around his shoulders rippled, as if warped by invisible heat.
For the first time in his life, he felt powerful. Whole.
He didn't understand everything yet. But he understood one thing:
He was meant to burn this world into balance.
And if anyone stood in his way—Moon, Star, or god—it would be their ashes that lit the sky next.