Seraphina said it was progress.
I called it unraveling.
She taught me to breathe in rhythm with the fire, to let its pulse guide my own. "It's alive inside you," she'd say, her hands pressed against my chest. "Listen to it. Feed it what it wants."
"And what does it want?" I'd ask.
Her eyes always gleamed when she answered. "Everything that resists."
So I fed it. Fear. Anger. The ache that came whenever I thought of what I'd lost—of who I used to be. Each emotion vanished into the heat, and for a while, that felt like power.
But the more I burned, the less I recognized myself.
Kade surrounded me with circles of salt and blood, whispering old words that made the air ripple. Fire coiled around me in spirals, humming with voices too ancient to belong to this world. Sometimes I almost understood them. They spoke in fragments—names, promises, warnings.
When the ritual ended, my body would shake from the inside out. The fire wasn't just under my skin anymore; it was behind my eyes, in my pulse, in every thought I had.
Even Seraphina seemed different around me now. Reverent.
Or maybe afraid.
One night, she knelt before me in the courtyard. The sky above was streaked with red lightning, the mark of her power spreading across the horizon like a wound. She placed her palms against the ground, and flames rippled outward in a perfect circle.
"Do you feel it?" she whispered. "Even the heavens bend when you breathe. The world waits to be remade through you."
Her faith in me terrified me more than her cruelty ever had.
Later, Mira found me alone in the quiet halls. The others avoided her; her gift was too invasive, too close to truth. She saw memories as clearly as light.
"You dream too vividly," she said softly, leaning against the archway. "That's why it's hurting you."
I looked at her, tired. "Maybe the dreams are the only part of me that's still real."
She gave a small, sad smile. "If you keep letting her shape them, you'll forget which parts are yours."
"She saved me," I said, though even to my own ears, the words sounded hollow.
Mira's gaze softened. "That's what she tells all her flames. But fire doesn't save, Liam. It consumes." She paused, studying me. "Do you still remember your mother's face?"
I tried. I really did. But all I could see was light. Blinding, endless light.
Mira exhaled. "Every flame she gives you burns something else away." Then she touched my wrist—the place where the spiral pulsed—and whispered, "Before it's too late, remember who you were."
When she left, I felt colder than I had in months.
That night, the boy returned to my dreams. But he wasn't alone.
Seraphina stood behind him, her hands resting lightly on his small shoulders. The sight made my stomach twist.
"She calls me by the name Mother used," the boy said.
I stepped closer. "What name?"
He smiled, the glow of the fire turning his teeth to gold. "Solan."
The name hit me like a blow. For a moment, the world fractured—splinters of memory cutting through me. A woman's laughter. A carved sun hung above a door. A child running barefoot through the fields, calling out that same name.
And then it was gone.
When I woke, the mark on my wrist was glowing bright enough to light the room. Seraphina stood at the foot of my bed, dressed in pale gold. Her eyes caught the firelight and held it, perfect and still.
"Solan," she said quietly, almost tender. "The mortals changed it when they tried to bury your truth. You were never meant to be Liam. You were always the flame reborn."
"I'm not your god," I said, forcing the words out, my throat dry.
Her smile was soft, but her voice was sharp enough to cut through stone. "Then why does the fire kneel?"
I turned. Around us, the torches bent inward, flames twisting toward me like living things. The heat thickened, pressing against my skin. I raised my hand, and they trembled—not in devotion, but in fear.
Something inside me shifted. The light around Seraphina flickered, just for a second, and in that brief distortion, I saw another face layered beneath hers. A hollow shape made of fire and shadow, wearing her like a mask.
Then it was gone.
She noticed my hesitation. "Tomorrow we burn the rest of the Lightborn," she said calmly. "You will lead the pyre."
"And if I refuse?"
Her lips curved. "Then the fire will remind you who commands it."
The air ignited around me before I could react. Heat surged, molten chains wrapping my wrists. Pain lanced through my arm, the spiral mark burning white-hot. The chamber vanished into gold light.
And through that blinding brilliance, I heard echoes that didn't belong to Seraphina at all. A woman's lullaby. A child's laughter. A name whispered like a prayer.
Aria.
The light faltered.
Seraphina's smile flickered. "See?" she said softly. "Even the fire knows you're mine."
But something deep inside me whispered otherwise. The fire didn't love me. It feared me.
When sleep finally came, the boy stood at the edge of a burning world. The wooden sun in his hands was half ash now, half ember. He held it out to me.
"Take it," he said.
"What is it?" I asked.
"What we started," he replied. "What she's trying to finish."
His eyes glowed with something I couldn't name—sorrow, defiance, maybe both. "They called me Solan once," he whispered. "But that was never who I was. That was what they made me."
"What did they make you?"
He smiled faintly. "A god."
The charm crumbled into flame. I reached for it, and the fire swallowed everything.
When I opened my eyes, dawn was bleeding through the quartz walls. Seraphina stood on the balcony, her silhouette framed by the rising sun. For a moment, she looked almost human—just a woman watching the world wake.
"Do you see it?" she murmured without turning. "The world remembers its flame."
Her voice echoed strangely, layered like two sounds overlapping.
I looked down at my hands. The spiral mark burned bright and steady, its light alive beneath my skin. "Or maybe it remembers its monster," I said quietly.
For the first time, the fire around me hesitated. It flashed uncertainly, as though the world itself didn't know which one of us it should obey anymore.