WebNovels

Chapter 16 - Ash Born from Ash

When I opened my eyes, there was no sky… no ground.

Only clouds of ash, swirling above me like a dead ocean trying to remember how to live again.

Each step I took screamed — not in pain, but in the sound of life being forced to start anew.

I realized I was no longer in the world I had left behind.

Even the fire within me had grown silent… as if waiting for a signal to return to madness.

From the grey mist, she appeared — the grey girl.

Her eyes were open graves staring into eternity, and her voice carried the tone of one who knew the ending before the beginning.

> "Welcome to the Second World," she said.

"Here, existence is not measured by time… but by how many times you die without being buried."

I said nothing.

Everything around me resembled myself — ashes trying to remember the fire that created them.

> "Is this… hell?"

I finally asked, my voice stripped of anything human.

She smiled faintly.

> "Not yet. But you're walking toward it — unless you learn to speak the language of ash."

She reached out and touched my chest.

Suddenly, the black flame inside me reignited — but this time, it wasn't ordinary fire.

It was living ash, shaping itself around my heart like a dark tattoo pulsing with every beat.

> "Everyone who entered this world before you burned from within… because they thought the fire was their enemy."

She paused, locking eyes with me.

"You are different… because you were born from it."

And then I understood.

The Second World was not a place — it was an identity test.

If I couldn't reshape myself from ash, I would vanish like those before me.

I lifted my gaze to the grey sky and whispered, like an oath:

> "I will no longer be buried… I will be the ash that's born from ash."

At that moment, the horizon trembled.

From the clouds came human voices whispering my name —

But they weren't human. They were faceless souls trying to strip away my light.

The grey girl smiled.

> "Then let's see if your language survives… or if you're just another shadow burned twice."

And with that, the ground beneath me shattered, and I fell into a sea of living ash —

Where only those who remember who they were before the fire can survive.

More Chapters