Ravindra
Fire should not be blue.
Ravindra stared at the blaze in the cave's center, not ordinary fire of orange and yellow, but bright blue flames dancing without firewood, without smoke, only pure heat that made the air shimmer like disturbed water surface. Three years since his first kill, and he had seen Auratigris do many impossible things, but this was different.
This was Aether.
"Come closer." Auratigris's voice echoed from the cave corner, the great guardian sitting with wings folded, blue and gold eyes reflecting the supernatural firelight. "Don't be afraid. This fire won't burn you unless I will it."
Ravindra stepped forward, eight years old now, his body taller but still small for a normal human child his age, muscles dense from years of survival in Frostreach. His black hair was cut short with a bone knife, steel-gray eyes staring at the blue fire without blinking. Three years of hunting alone had taught him not to fear anything he could see. Only the unseen was dangerous.
Heat touched his face, but not painful heat. Warmth, almost gentle, like summer breath on a mountain that never knew summer.
"Today," Auratigris began, her voice dropping to the ritual tone she rarely used, "you will receive your true name. Not the name I gave you as an infant, that was only a placeholder, a word to call you. Today, you will claim it."
"I already have a name." Ravindra didn't understand. "Ravindra Kael Maharka. You gave it."
"I gave you words." Auratigris stood, her massive body moving closer until her giant head was level with the standing child. "But a true name must be claimed with blood and fire. Must be carved in Aether so the world knows who you are. That is guardian tradition. And you, though human, are a guardian's child."
Something tightened in Ravindra's chest. Not fear. Something deeper. Recognition, perhaps. Or pride.
"What must I do?"
Auratigris nodded, small approval. "Extend your hand. Left hand. Over the fire."
Ravindra didn't hesitate. He extended his left hand, small arm already full of scars from hunting and training, palm facing down over the blue fire. Heat rose, kissing skin, but not burning. Not like ordinary fire that would immediately char.
"Now," Auratigris's voice dropped to a whisper that made the cave tremble, "Aether will test you. Will read who you are. If you lie about yourself, even to yourself, the fire will burn. If you're honest, the fire will recognize you."
"I never lie." Ravindra stared at those blue and gold eyes. "You taught me that."
"Lying to others is easy. Lying to yourself is easier still." The great guardian circled Ravindra slowly, claws making soft clicking sounds on stone. "Now answer: Who are you?"
"Ravindra Kael Maharka."
"That's a name. Who. Are. You."
Ravindra fell silent. A simple question but he didn't know the answer. Who was he? A cast-out child? A hunter? A guardian's student?
The blue fire moved, licking his hand. Heat rose. Beginning to hurt.
"Answer, Ravindra." Auratigris stopped before him, eyes staring without blinking. "Who are you?"
"I... I don't know." Pain increased. The skin on his hand began to redden. "I'm a child who wasn't wanted. Who was left in snow. Who..."
"That's what they said about you. Not who you are."
Heat now burning. Ravindra bit his lip, holding back a scream. Eyes watering but no tears, he had learned not to cry three years ago.
"I'm... I'm a survivor." His voice trembled. "I'm the one who lived when I should have died."
Fire moved faster, hotter. The smell of burning skin began to rise.
"Deeper. What do you want? Who do you want to become?"
And suddenly, with painful clarity, Ravindra knew the answer. Words came out before he could think, before he could censor, emerging from a deep place he didn't know existed:
"I am the one who will make them regret it!"
Fire exploded.
Blue flames surged high, engulfing his entire arm, crawling up to his shoulder, to his neck, to his face, but not burning. No longer painful. Cold. Cold fire seeping into bone, into blood, into something deeper than flesh.
Ravindra jerked, not from pain but from alien sensation. Like something entering him, flowing through blood vessels, searching, reading every memory, every fear, every anger he had harbored for eight years of life.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the fire extinguished.
Ravindra fell to his knees, breath gasping, sweat drenching his entire body though the cave was now cold as usual. His left hand, which had been red and beginning to blister, was now whole. No wounds. No burn marks.
Only a mark.
On his palm, carved with ink that was not ink, more like light merged with skin, was a symbol. A complex geometric pattern he didn't recognize: a circle with twelve lines extending outward like a sun, but in the center, a thirteenth line cutting through all the others.
"Aether's mark." Auratigris lowered her head, touching Ravindra's hand with her great muzzle with gentleness contrasting sharply with her size. "Now you are marked. The world knows you are not an ordinary human. You are the thirteenth. The one who should not exist but does."
Ravindra stared at the mark on his hand, finger tracing the pattern that felt warm beneath touch. "What does it mean?"
"It means Aether acknowledges you. It means one day, you will be able to manipulate the energy flowing in this world, if you learn. If you survive long enough." The great guardian retreated, sitting back with eyes not leaving the small child still kneeling. "And it means the name I gave you is now truly yours."
Ravindra stood slowly, legs shaking but he forced himself upright. His left hand still felt strange, trembling with invisible energy, like something living beneath skin.
"Ravindra Kael Maharka." He spoke his own name, and for the first time, it felt right. Felt like it belonged. "The one who will make them regret."
"Yes." Auratigris nodded, a great movement making shadows dance on cave walls. "But before you can make them regret, you must know who 'they' are. Sit. Today I will tell you about the twelve nations that divided the world."
Ravindra sat on his usual stone, a position familiar after eight years, close enough to Auratigris to feel warmth, far enough to see the guardian's entire body when she spoke. This was the position for listening to stories, for learning history that Auratigris rarely told.
"Long ago," the great guardian began, voice dropping to the storytelling tone that made neck hairs stand, "the world was not divided. There was only one human nation, or perhaps none at all, depending on who you ask. But then Aether was discovered. Or perhaps Aether discovered humans. And with power came ambition. With ambition came conflict."
Blue and gold eyes closed briefly, as if remembering a past too long to count.
"Twelve leaders emerged. Twelve individuals who were stronger, smarter, or just more cruel than others. They warred. For years. Perhaps centuries. Mountains melted. Seas boiled. Skies tore. And finally, when none could win, they made a pact."
"What pact?" Ravindra asked, though he knew the question would interrupt the story's flow. But he couldn't contain the curiosity burning like blue fire.
"A pact to divide the world. Twelve territories. Twelve nations. Each with their own guardian, creatures like me, but bound to nations, forced to serve, made into weapons." There was bitterness in Auratigris's voice, like metal taste in mouth. "Twelve suns to illuminate their world. No more. No less."
"But you..."
"I am the thirteenth." Auratigris opened her eyes, and for the first time, Ravindra saw something rare in those eyes: loneliness so ancient. "Born after the pact. Or perhaps before and only woke too late. No one knows. No one cares. Twelve was enough. The thirteenth was a mistake. An anomaly."
Silence filled the cave. Outside, wind howled, a sound familiar as heartbeat.
"Like me," Ravindra whispered.
"Like you." The guardian nodded. "You were born of a mixing that shouldn't happen. Either two different nations, or slave with master, or something more forbidden still. The symbol on your wrapping cloth, twelve suns crossed out, is a curse. A mark that you are not pure. Not worthy of life."
Anger rose in Ravindra's chest, anger already familiar, that he had known since old enough to understand he was cast out not for wrongdoing, but for existence.
"They're wrong." His voice hard, echoing on stone. "I deserve to live. I survived. I..."
"Yes." Auratigris cut in, but not harshly. "They're wrong. And one day you will prove it. But for that, you must know your enemy. Must understand how they think, how they fight, what they fear."
The great guardian stood, walking to the deepest cave wall, where black volcanic stone met ice. Her claw moved, slow, careful, carving the surface with precision impossible for a weapon of such size.
A map appeared. Lines forming continents, islands, oceans. And on it, twelve symbols, each marked with names Ravindra couldn't read but somehow understood.
"Ameris in the west." Auratigris pointed to the phoenix symbol. "Maritime republic with ambition to swallow oceans. Slaves are their commodity. You might have been born there."
The claw moved.
"Ruska in the north. Frozen empire with steel discipline. They make the best soldiers and worst tyrants."
"Zhonghai in the east. Old empire with sprawling bureaucracy. Intelligence is their weapon."
"Gallier in the mid-west. Aristocratic kingdom with rigid honor. They see all who aren't nobility as trash."
One by one, the twelve nations were introduced. Twelve enemies Ravindra had never seen but already hated with confusing intensity.
"Why tell me this now?" Ravindra finally asked after the list was complete, after twelve names were carved in his memory like the Aether mark on his hand. "Why not before?"
"Because before you were still a child who needed to learn survival." Auratigris turned from the map, blue and gold eyes staring with intensity that made Ravindra almost step back. "Now you're becoming something else. Something dangerous."
"I'm just an eight-year-old child."
"You're an eight-year-old child with an Aether mark, trained by a guardian, shaped by Frostreach that kills adult soldiers in a week." Auratigris's voice dropped to a whisper more frightening than shouts. "In ten years, you will become a weapon. The question is: a weapon for what?"
Ravindra stared at the mark on his hand, the circle with twelve lines and one line cutting through all others. A symbol beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.
"For freedom," he said finally, voice firmer than he felt. "To prove the thirteenth deserves to live. That outcasts can become more than the trash they think we are."
Auratigris was silent for a long time. Then, something rare happened: the great guardian smiled, or as close as a creature with fangs the size of daggers could smile.
"Good. Then starting tomorrow, your training changes. No longer just survival. You will learn to fight. Learn strategy. Learn how one person can face twelve nations and win, or die spectacularly."
"I won't die." Ravindra stood, left hand clenched with Aether mark glowing faintly in his palm. "Not before they know their mistake."
"Confidence is good. But remember," Auratigris moved closer, great head lowering until warm breath enveloped the child's face, "confidence without ability is only arrogance. And arrogance kills faster than any sword."
"Then teach me." Steel-gray eyes met blue and gold without doubt. "Teach me everything. I will learn. I will become strong. And one day..."
"One day," Auratigris finished, voice like a promise carved in stone, "you will descend from this mountain. And the world that cast you out will tremble."
They stood in silence, guardian and child, teacher and student, two anomalies who shouldn't exist but did, surrounded by a map of twelve nations that didn't yet know the thirteenth had claimed his name.
Had been marked by Aether.
Had begun learning how to take revenge.
And that night, when Ravindra fell asleep with the mark on his hand still pulsing warmly, he dreamed for the first time not of snow and cold.
He dreamed of fire.
Fire burning twelve suns.
Fire he would create with his own hands.