Hours crawled past. Midnight came and went. Ciel drifted in that space between waking and sleeping, his mind refusing to grant him either peace.
And then, in that liminal state, something changed.
The darkness behind his closed eyes shifted. A spark appeared, impossibly bright against the void. It grew, expanded, transformed into flames that burned without heat. Blue fire shot through with gold, familiar colors that tugged at something deep in his memory.
And from within those flames, a voice spoke.
It crashed over him like thunder, like titans colliding in the heavens above. Firm. Commanding. Authoritative beyond measure. It resonated not just in his ears but in his bones, in his blood, in the very core of his being.
Yet beneath all that overwhelming power, there was something else. Something that made Ciel's breath catch in his throat.
It sounded like his father.
"Do you..."
The words hung in the burning void, each one weighted with meaning that pressed down on his soul.
"...have what..."
Ciel's sleeping body twitched. His fingers clenched in the sheets.
"...it takes..."
Something stirred within him. Something that had been dormant for nine years. Something forgotten.
"...Do you..."
The voice rose, grew more insistent, more urgent.
"...have the..."
His breathing quickened. His eyes moved rapidly beneath closed lids.
"...FIRE!"
The final word exploded through him like lightning, the flames roaring outward to consume everything.
Ciel's eyes snapped open, his body jerking upright in bed. His chest heaved with rapid breaths. Sweat covered his skin. His golden eyes were wide, wild, darting around the dark room as if expecting to see something, someone.
But there was nothing. Just darkness. Just silence.
Just him, alone, as always.
"What..." His voice came out hoarse, broken. "What was that?"
A dream. It had to be a dream. His mind playing tricks, conjuring his father's voice from desperation and loneliness. Nothing more.
He pressed his hands to his face, rubbing his eyes hard enough to see spots. Get it together. It wasn't real. None of it was real.
But even as he tried to convince himself, even as he attempted to push the experience away and forget it had happened, Ciel couldn't shake the feeling that something had shifted. That voice. Those words.
Do you have what it takes. Do you have the fire.
His father's voice. Or something wearing it. Speaking to him from beyond death, beyond the veil that separated the living from whatever came after.
"No," Ciel whispered to the empty room. "No, it was just a dream. Just another cruel trick my mind is playing. He's gone. He's been gone for nine years. This doesn't mean anything."
He lay back down, pulling the covers over himself like armor against reality. His eyes closed. His breathing slowed, forced into a steady rhythm through sheer will.
Sleep. He just needed to sleep. Tomorrow he'd wake up and this would be forgotten. Another meaningless moment in an endless succession of meaningless moments.
But even as he tried to drift off, even as he willed unconsciousness to claim him, Ciel couldn't stop hearing that voice. Couldn't stop feeling the weight of those words pressing against his chest.
Do you have what it takes.
Do you have the fire.
His eyes squeezed shut tighter, as if physical force could block out the memories. But behind his closed lids, the darkness began to shift once more.
No. Not again. Please, not again.
But this time was different. This time, the change came not as flames but as light. Pure, blinding light that seared through the darkness with surgical precision.
Ciel's eyes flew open, but the light followed. It filled his vision, overwhelming and absolute. He tried to look away, to shield himself, but there was nowhere to turn. The light was everywhere, was everything.
And then, as suddenly as it had come, it stabilized. The intensity faded to something bearable. Ciel blinked, his vision clearing slowly.
He wasn't in his room anymore.
He stood, though he didn't remember standing, in a void of pure white. Endless in every direction. No floor, no ceiling, no walls. Just infinite whiteness that should have been disorienting but somehow felt stable, solid beneath his feet.
And standing before him, perhaps twenty paces away, was a figure.
Ciel's breath caught in his throat. His heart, which had been beating steadily moments before, now hammered against his ribs with violent force.
No.
It couldn't be.
But it was.
Dale Silver stood in the white void, looking exactly as Ciel remembered him. Icy blue hair. Golden eyes that burned with inner fire. The strong jaw, the confident posture, the presence that demanded attention simply by existing.
But something was wrong. The image before him was battered, damaged. Cuts and bruises covered visible skin. The clothes were torn, stained with what might have been blood. Dale looked like he'd fought a war and barely survived.
And yet, despite all of that, despite looking like he'd been dragged through hell itself, Dale Silver was smiling.
That smile. The one Ciel remembered from childhood. The one his father wore when he was proud, when things were good, when the world made sense.
Something inside Ciel shattered.
All the pain he'd buried for nine years, all the grief and anger and abandonment and loss, erupted from him in a sound that was barely human. A wail of pure anguish that tore from his throat with physical force.
"HOW COULD YOU?!"
The words exploded from him, accusatory and desperate. Tears streamed down his face, hot and unstoppable.
"How could you both do this to me?! I was five years old! FIVE! And you left! You promised you'd come back! You looked me in the eyes and PROMISED!"
His voice broke, cracking with emotion too big for his body to contain.
"Mother died! She died protecting a world that now treats me like garbage! And you... you just vanished! Left me alone with a legacy I can never fulfill! Left me to face everyone's disappointment! Left me to hear them whisper about how weak I am, how the bloodline is broken, how I'm nothing but a stain on your precious reputation!"
Ciel's legs gave out. He collapsed to his knees, hands pressed flat against the white ground that shouldn't exist.
"Nine years! Nine years I waited! I kept thinking you'd come back! That you'd walk through the door and explain everything! That there was a reason, a purpose, something that made it all make sense! But you never came! You NEVER CAME!"
His whole body shook with sobs. Every insecurity, every moment of pain, every night he'd wished he didn't exist poured out of him in a torrent that seemed endless.
"I'm not you! I can't be you! Everyone expects me to be this... this great hero, this successor, this worthy heir! But I'm just... I'm just..."
His voice dropped to barely a whisper.
"I'm just a broken child who misses his parents."
He rubbed at his eyes furiously, trying to clear the tears, but they kept coming. His vision blurred, his breathing ragged and uneven.
"I can't do this anymore. I can't be strong. I can't face them. I can't..." He choked on the words. "I just wanted my father back. I just wanted one more day. One more moment. One more chance to..."
To what? To say goodbye properly? To understand why? To feel safe again?
Ciel didn't know. He just knew the hole in his chest where his parents should have been, the emptiness that nine years hadn't filled, the ache that never stopped.
Through his blurred vision, through tears that wouldn't stop, he saw movement.
Footsteps. Dale was walking toward him.
Ciel looked up, his golden eyes meeting the matching pair above him. His father's expression hadn't changed. That smile, gentle and proud, remained fixed on his face.
Dale reached him. Stopped. And then, slowly, deliberately, he did something Ciel had almost forgotten.
His hand came down, resting on top of Ciel's head. The familiar weight. The gentle pressure. The gesture Dale had always used when he was proud of his son.
The head pat.
Fresh tears spilled from Ciel's eyes, but these felt different. Warmer. Less bitter.
"You have..." Dale's voice, when it came, resonated with that same overwhelming power from before. But now Ciel could hear the warmth beneath it. The love. The pride. "...what it takes..."
His smile widened slightly.
"You have... the FIRE..."
His hand pressed down a bit more, the gesture both comforting and affirming.
"You are... Ciel Lee... SILVER."
Something inside Ciel's chest loosened. Not healed, not fixed, but... acknowledged. Seen. Understood.
He looked up at his father through tear stained eyes. Looked at this image, this ghost, this impossible moment that couldn't be real but felt more real than anything had in nine years.
And he moved.
Ciel surged forward, wrapping his arms around Dale's waist in a desperate embrace. He pressed his face against his father's chest, not caring that the image felt somehow insubstantial, not caring that this might be a dream or delusion or breakdown.
He just held on.
Held on like he was five years old again. Held on like his father might disappear if he let go. Held on with every ounce of strength left in his body.
"I missed you," he whispered, his voice muffled. "I missed you so much."
He didn't know how long they stood like that. Time felt meaningless in this white void. Could have been seconds. Could have been hours.
But eventually, finally, something in Ciel settled. Not peace, exactly. But... closure? Acceptance? Something he'd needed desperately and didn't know how to ask for.
He pulled back slowly, reluctantly. Looked up at Dale's face one more time. Memorized every detail. The strong features. The proud expression. The love in those golden eyes.
The hero. His father. The man who'd shaped the world and then left it behind.
But as Ciel studied that face, something began to change.
Dale started to glow.
Soft at first, barely noticeable. But it grew quickly, light emanating from within him, growing brighter and more intense with each passing second.
Dale raised his hand. Pointed directly at Ciel's chest.
"No," Ciel breathed, sudden panic gripping him. "No, wait, I'm not ready, don't go, please don't—"
But the glow intensified beyond words. Dale's form began to dissolve, breaking apart into countless particles of light. Like stars burning out. Like embers caught in wind.
Beautiful. Terrible. Final.
The particles swirled in the air for one perfect moment, suspended in patterns that seemed almost deliberate. And then they moved, flowing through the space between them with purpose.
They struck Ciel's chest with the force of a physical impact. He gasped, stumbling backward as the light poured into him. Through his skin, through his ribs, directly into his heart.
Heat flooded his body. Not painful, but overwhelming. Like lightning running through his veins. Like fire being born in his core.
Power. He could feel it. Raw and vast and utterly beyond anything he'd ever experienced. Flowing into him. Becoming part of him. Changing him on a fundamental level.
The white void grew brighter. Too bright. Blinding. All consuming.
Ciel's eyes squeezed shut against the intensity. His body felt like it was burning, transforming, being unmade and remade in the same instant.
And then it stopped.
Everything stopped.
The light vanished. The heat faded. The overwhelming sensation of being filled with something greater than himself disappeared.
Ciel gasped, his eyes flying open.
He was back in his room.
The familiar darkness pressed in from all sides. The feel of his bed beneath him. The stale air. The weight of curtains blocking out the world.
Everything exactly as it had been.
Except...
There were tears on his face. Fresh ones. Still wet.
His hand flew to his cheeks, touching the moisture. Real. Physical. Actual tears from an experience that should have been a dream.
"What..." His voice trembled. "What was that?"
His chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. His heart hammered. Every nerve ending felt electrified, alive in a way they hadn't been in years.
It couldn't have been real. Could it? His father, appearing in some white void, dissolving into light and flowing into him? Impossible. Fantasy. The delusion of a broken mind desperate for closure.
But the tears. The tears were real.
And something else.
Something in his chest. A warmth that hadn't been there before. A presence, subtle but undeniable, like a second heartbeat pulsing in rhythm with his own.
Ciel sat up slowly, his hands trembling. He stared at them in the darkness, half expecting to see them glowing or changed somehow. But they looked normal. Just his hands. Pale skin. Long fingers. Nothing remarkable.
"I'm losing my mind," he whispered. "I've finally snapped. This is what happens when you spend nine years locked in a room refusing to—"
DING.
The sound rang through his head like a bell. Sharp. Clear. Utterly unlike anything he'd ever heard before.
Ciel froze. His entire body went rigid.
That sound. It had been inside his head. Not external. Not coming from the room. From within him.
"What..."
And then a voice followed. Mechanical. Emotionless. Speaking directly into his mind with crystal clarity.
"System Transfer Initiated."
Ciel's blood ran cold. His breath caught in his throat. His golden eyes went wide in the darkness, staring at nothing and everything simultaneously.
System.
The word meant nothing to him. What was a System? Some kind of spell? A technique? A living entity speaking in his mind?
"No," Ciel breathed. "No, it's not... what is..."
But even as confusion overwhelmed him, even as he tried to understand what was happening, another sound came.
A low hum, like machinery activating. Like something ancient and powerful waking from a long sleep.
The voice returned.
"Transfer in progress. Time remaining: thirty seconds."
Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds until what? What was transferring? What was happening to him?
Ciel's hands clenched in the sheets. His mind raced, thoughts tumbling over each other in chaotic succession. A voice in his head. Something called a System. His father appearing in that void and dissolving into light that entered his chest.
None of it made sense.
"Twenty seconds."
The warmth in Ciel's chest grew stronger. The presence became more defined, more real. He could feel it now, unmistakably. Something vast and complex unfurling within him like a flower opening to sunlight.
His breathing quickened. Fear gripped him. What was inside him? What had his father done?
"Ten seconds."
The warmth spread through his body. Into his limbs. His fingers. His toes. Everywhere at once. Not painful but intense. Transformative.
"Five seconds."
Ciel's heart hammered against his ribs. He didn't understand. Didn't know what was coming. Could only sit frozen in his dark room as something fundamental changed within him.
"Four... Three... Two... One..."
The presence in his chest suddenly expanded, filling every corner of his being. Ciel gasped, his back arching involuntarily. Information flooded his mind. Sensations he'd never experienced. Awareness of something beyond normal human perception.
And then, as quickly as it had come, the intensity stabilized. Settled. Became part of him as natural as breathing.
The voice returned, but this time it carried something different. Not coldness. Not emotion exactly. But... acknowledgment? Recognition?
"Transfer complete. Welcome, Host."
Host? What did that mean? Host to what?
Silence followed. Heavy. Pregnant with possibility.
Ciel sat in his dark room, hands trembling, mind reeling, trying to process what had just happened to him. A voice in his head calling itself a System. Something his father had apparently possessed and somehow passed to him.
After nine years of darkness. Nine years of hopelessness. Nine years of being weak and broken and lost.
Something had changed.
The voice spoke again, mechanical yet somehow carrying weight that pressed against his consciousness.
"Generating Status Information."