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.