I woke to the scent of burning roses.
The air itself shimmered — heat rolling in waves through a chamber. The walls breathed faintly, veins of molten light running through their black surface like arteries. Firelight danced on the floor, and the sound of distant chanting throbbed like a heartbeat I didn't recognize.
My heartbeat.
I sat up, choking. My body didn't feel like mine anymore. The skin was pale, traced with faint golden fissures that pulsed when I breathed. Every motion brought the smell of smoke, of something raw burning inside me that wouldn't die.
Someone was watching.
Across the room stood Seraphina.
She wore no crown — she didn't need one. The flames bowed around her as if drawn to her breath. Her eyes were liquid gold, her expression both tender and cruel. A beauty that devoured everything it touched.
"Awake, at last," she said softly. "Do you remember dying?"
Her voice slid into me like silk over blade. I remembered the pyre. The fire. The shadows. Aria's face, streaked with tears, before the world went black.
"Where… am I?" My throat rasped. My voice sounded wrong — deeper, harsher, as if something else spoke through it.
"In the House of Ash," Seraphina replied, circling me slowly. "You were found at the edge of the world — burning, screaming, yet unconsumed. My children brought you to me."
Her fingers brushed my jaw. The touch was fire, but not painful.
"Tell me, little flame," she whispered, "what do you remember of her?"
Her.
Aria.
The name struck like lightning. Memory and pain collided — her voice, her touch, her shadow cutting through fire to save me. And then the fall, the river swallowing us both.
I closed my eyes. "She tried to save me."
Seraphina smiled — not kindly. "Is that what you think she did?"
Her hand pressed against my chest. Fire surged through me. I gasped, back arching as the chamber pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat.
"She burned you," Seraphina murmured. "She used forbidden power to turn you into this. She didn't save you — she remade you. A monster, neither living nor dead."
I shook my head. "No. You're lying."
She leaned closer, her lips brushing my ear. "Am I? Then why can't you remember the warmth of sunlight, the taste of air, the sound of your heart before it began to burn?"
Her words slithered beneath my skin.
Because I couldn't.
Because all I remembered now was hunger.
And somewhere deep inside, the flame flared in agreement.
...
Seraphina stepped back, gesturing to the door. Four figures entered — her lieutenants.
Each radiated danger in a different form.
Neris, the poisoner, with blue hair and eyes like stagnant water. Her smile never reached her lips.
Valor, the enforcer — massive, scarred, his skin etched with runes that glowed when he moved.
Mira, the memory-singer — blindfolded.
And Kade, the ritualist — robed in red, inked from neck to ankle in symbols that bled faint light.
"These are your siblings," Seraphina said. "They will teach you what you are."
Neris bowed mockingly. "He still smells mortal."
Valor grunted. "He still feels mortal."
Seraphina raised a hand, silencing them. "He will not for long. Today, he learns his first truth."
She turned to me. "You were born of shadow, reborn in flame. The two cannot coexist — one devours the other. Tell me, which do you think you are?"
"I don't know," I said quietly.
"Good." Her smile was predatory. "Then we will find out."
...
They brought me to a vast chamber — circular, its floor cracked and glowing like the crust of a dying world. Chains hung from the ceiling, dripping embers. The heat was suffocating, yet it didn't burn me. It moved inside me, pulsing, waiting.
"Breathe," Seraphina commanded. "Do not resist the fire. Let it know you."
I closed my eyes. The heat rose through me, slow at first — then fast, violent, hungry. My veins burned gold. My heart stuttered.
Images flared behind my eyelids — the river, Aria's scream, the light devouring us both.
The pain became unbearable. I fell to my knees, clutching my chest.
"Let it in," Seraphina whispered. "You cannot command flame until you become it."
I screamed — and the chamber screamed with me.
Flame erupted from my hands, pure and wild. The air ignited, burning white-hot. The walls cracked, molten light spilling through them like veins. The power rushed through me, not as energy but as instinct.
The fire moved where I willed it — no, where I felt.
When I gasped, it brightened.
When I exhaled, it roared.
When my heart beat faster, the flames danced to its rhythm.
It obeyed me — or maybe I obeyed it.
"Magnificent," Seraphina breathed.
I fell forward, panting. My hands still glowed, the skin along my forearms smoldering but whole. The others watched, half in awe, half in fear.
Neris clicked her tongue. "You'll burn yourself before you burn anyone else."
Seraphina turned to her, voice cold as steel. "He will learn balance. That is your task."
Neris's lips curved. "My pleasure."
...
Days — or nights, I couldn't tell — bled together in that house. There were no windows. Only firelight and whispers.
Neris taught me poison, not the kind brewed in vials, but the kind born in words and glances. "Power," she said, "is the art of letting others die slowly."
She smiled as she taught me to still my pulse, to exude venom from my skin so subtly it could kill with a touch. She made me drink her toxins until I could no longer be harmed by them.
Valor taught me to fight — if it could be called that. His lessons were beatings dressed as wisdom. "Pain makes the flame listen," he said, driving me into the ground until every bone screamed. "Control comes through suffering."
Kade made me bleed. His rituals carved marks into my flesh, each a symbol of binding. "The fire must be caged," he whispered, "or it will eat your soul."
Mira's lessons were stranger. She sang memories into my mind — fragments of war, death, the fall of cities I'd never seen. "We are what we remember," she said. "Seraphina will decide what you remember."
And through it all, Seraphina watched.
She never touched me again after that first day, but her presence was everywhere. In the heat that followed me. In the whispers that crawled through my dreams.
Sometimes I woke screaming — shadows clutching at my throat, Aria's face burning to ash before my eyes.
Every time I did, Seraphina's voice was there.
"Do you still mourn her?"
"She made you this."
"She burned the human out of you."
"She gave you to me."
And the worst part — the part I hated — was that some nights, I believed her.
...
Weeks later, she brought me back to the chamber.
"You've learned to let the fire live," she said. "Now learn what it wants."
I stared at the circle etched into the ground. Symbols I'd come to know — death, rebirth, hunger. In the center stood a mortal, bound and trembling. His heart pounded loud enough I could hear it.
"Kill him," Seraphina said simply.
I froze. "He's human."
"Exactly," she said. "Oh, spare me that. You once were too. And you killed many more when you just turned. Or you've forgotten?"
I looked at the man — his tears, his shaking hands. My own reflection in his fear. Once, I'd been that small. Once, I'd begged like that.
My chest burned. The fire stirred. It wanted.
I clenched my fists. "No."
Seraphina's smile didn't falter. "Then I'll remind you."
She lifted her hand, and the man screamed as fire burst from his skin — my fire, pulled from me against my will. I stumbled back, horrified as his flesh blackened, his eyes melting like wax.
When it was done, only ash remained.
I fell to my knees, shaking. "What did you—"
She knelt before me, voice soft. "You think you killed him? No. She did. The shadow that turned you burned your soul clean away. I only gave you what was already yours."
Her hand touched my chest again, fingers tracing the burn there. "This flame is your truth, Liam. Aria's shadow destroyed what you were. The fire is what you've become."
And in that moment — something inside me snapped.
The guilt, the grief, the endless ache of her absence — all twisted, warped, inverted.
If she'd made me into this, then I would become what she feared most.
I would burn the world she left behind.
...
From that day, I stopped resisting.
I trained until the fire answered my every command. I burned through walls, tore through illusion, learned to fuse my flame with the breath of others — to steal air itself.
Seraphina called me her "child of the sun."
Her coven began to bow when I entered.
Even Neris stopped mocking me — though her eyes still glimmered with envy.
When I slept, I dreamed of Aria's eyes turning away from me. When I woke, I burned harder.
There was no peace in the fire. But there was purpose.
And purpose was better than pain.
...
One evening, Seraphina summoned me to the inner sanctum — a room filled with statues of weeping angels, their wings scorched black.
She stood before the largest, bathed in the orange glow of hundreds of candles.
"You have learned obedience," she said. "Now learn devotion."
She drew a dagger — gold, ornate, carved with symbols that pulsed faintly.
"Blood for blood," she whispered. "Flame for flame."
She cut her palm and held it out. Fire bled instead of blood, coiling into the air like liquid light. Without hesitation, I did the same. When our hands met, the chamber shook — a soundless explosion of heat and power.
The bond seared into me — not like the one I'd shared with Aria. This was no gentle tether. This was a chain.
When the light faded, she smiled. "Now, my Embered Prince, you belong to me."
And deep in my chest, where my heart once was, the fire whispered her name.
...
Later, when I was alone, I looked into the mirror.
My eyes were gold now — not soft, living gold, but molten, unblinking. The scars on my chest glowed faintly like embers beneath glass.
For the first time since the pyre, I didn't see Liam.
I saw what she had made.
What Seraphina had perfected.
The fire moved beneath my skin like thought. I lifted a hand, and flame gathered at my fingertips, twisting into a sphere that pulsed with my heartbeat.
I thought of Aria's shadows — how they had wrapped around me that night, trying to save me. I thought of how Seraphina's words had poisoned that memory until it ached to remember her.
If she still lived — if she still walked somewhere beneath this same cruel sky — then one day she would see what her love had made of me.
And maybe then, I would burn her world to ashes.
Not out of hate.
But out of love — the kind that destroys everything it touches.