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Chapter 15 - The Flame Within

Darkness engulfed me… but it wasn't an ordinary darkness.

It was alive.

It breathed with me — tightening when I trembled, laughing when I resisted.

I no longer knew whether my eyes were open or closed, because everything around me had become the same color — the color of burning death.

In the heart of the void, a black light flickered.

Then another… then thousands.

The flashes shaped themselves into fractured faces of flame — all of them looked exactly like me.

One of them spoke, in my own voice:

> "You think you control the fire? No… it's you who belongs to it.

It made you — from ashes and fear."

The fiery face reached out to me, and when it touched my chest, my past exploded before my eyes like ash reshaped by the wind —

A child running through flames.

A mother screaming his name, unheard.

Blood turned into a promise that was never kept.

I fell to my knees as the fire devoured my memories the way it once devoured my body.

But deep within, in that exact moment, I remembered her words:

> "Make the fire see you not as fuel… but as its master."

I raised my head.

The burning faces began to laugh, closing in from all sides.

But this time — I didn't run.

I stretched out my hand toward them and shouted from the depths of my being:

> "I am the one who ignites you… I am the beginning!"

A black light burst from my chest.

The flames roared into a vast vortex around me, consuming everything — then reshaping it anew.

The faces turned to ash, and the ash became rings of light orbiting me like obedient worlds of flame.

Then that same voice spoke again — but this time, it wasn't mocking.

It was soft… like an ancient reverence:

> "The Heir… has begun to remember his true name."

The darkness split open, and light returned.

I lay upon warm ashes, with the gray girl standing beside me — her gaze now carrying something that felt like acknowledgment.

She said quietly:

> "You survived the heart of the flame… none before you ever did."

I lifted my eyes to her.

The fire within me no longer burned only to destroy — it illuminated.

I spoke softly, but with certainty:

> "Burning is no longer my fear… it's my weapon."

She smiled faintly and said:

> "Then prepare yourself… for what awaits in the Second World isn't flame — but the trial of those who claim to command it."

I looked toward the horizon, where the ashes began to part — as if the world itself was being reborn.

And I felt it — the first step beyond fear… toward a fate from which there would be no return.

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