The fall wasn't ordinary —
It was like being thrown into my own chest.
The darkness wasn't around me anymore… it was inside me, breathing with me, rearranging my heart at will.
All I saw was ash moving — rising and collapsing, like a creature trying to find its face in mine.
When I tried to scream, no voice came out.
Instead, others did — all of them sounding like me.
> "Wasn't death enough for you?"
"How many times will you be reborn to suffer again?"
"You're not the heir… you're the fire that forgot how to die."
The voices overlapped, turning into a storm of dead memories.
I saw my childhood — my face burning under endless flames, my mother screaming in silence, and everything I'd buried rising again to ask who I really was.
When I tried to move, the ash clung to me, pulling me deeper — like invisible hands dragging me into myself.
Then I saw her — the grey girl — reflected in the liquid ash before me, but this time her eyes were completely black.
> "See?"
Her voice echoed everywhere.
"The ash is nothing but your memory punishing you for forgetting."
I tried to call her name, but something else came out of my mouth —
black fire.
It erupted like a reflex against pain.
The ash around me stirred violently, spiraling away from the flame.
Then human shapes emerged — faceless, featureless, but speaking in a single, deep tone:
> "Return our names… O child born of fire."
That's when I understood — these weren't enemies.
They were fragments of the same fire — souls that burned before mastering its language.
I reached out, and the ash latched onto my skin, burning and glowing all at once, marking me with black, shifting lines.
The pain was unbearable, but through it I heard a whisper within my mind:
> "Fusion initiated: Name of the First Ash — activating…"
The grey world trembled.
My heartbeat thundered like a cosmic drum awakening something buried inside me.
I raised my head and shouted to the voices:
> "I won't return your names… I'll carry them within mine!"
At that instant, the sea of ash exploded into pillars of black flame —
And I felt every soul that touched me becoming part of my blood.
That was the beginning… of my true awakening.