The hallway didn't explode.
It ignited.
Not with noise — but with heat.
The four flame handlers stopped mid-step. Their weapons, forged to channel fire, wilted like leaves in summer. Gold light poured from the space around Ming, not from her hands, but from the air itself. It wasn't wind. It wasn't rage.
It was something older.
Something alive.
She didn't scream. She didn't strike.
She just stood there as fire peeled the world around her like paper.
The mark on her forehead burned bright — too bright — and her veins pulsed with light beneath her skin, visible, living.
"Fall back," one handler shouted.
But it was too late.
The closest man dropped to his knees, groaning. Not from pain — from pressure. His fire, the one he'd awakened through blood and ritual, was being dragged out of him. Like it wanted to leave.
The others watched it happen and froze.
Ming's eyes glowed, not gold this time — but white.
She saw it too.
The flame wasn't hers.
But it listened.
She breathed in.
Every torch on the corridor wall leaned toward her.
She exhaled.
And the flames died.
All of them.
Total silence.
Smoke curled through the corridor. Three of the handlers backed away, dragging the fourth. No one gave orders now. No one knew what to call what had just happened.
Ming turned and walked the opposite way.
No one stopped her.
She didn't know where she was going — only that she couldn't stay. Her skin still felt hot. Her thoughts still echoed with that voice.
Not yours, yet.
She took a service stair down toward the base levels of the Sect. These weren't meant for initiates. These weren't even taught in maps. But she'd seen them. Hidden doors. Narrow halls. Places the flame had whispered about in her sleep.
Down.
Farther down.
Until even the stone sweated heat.
She passed doorways filled with ember runes, locked vaults, and things in glass jars that didn't look dead. She kept going.
Then the air changed.
Not warmer.
Wider.
She stepped into a chamber shaped like a dome, the ceiling fifty feet above. The floor was carved obsidian, the walls covered in a language she didn't know.
In the center was a bowl of flame.
Not like the one in her room. Not the ones on the walls of the Sect.
This one moved.
It pulsed like a heart.
And when she stepped near it, it tilted toward her — not physically, but like a thought.
A whisper rose.
Not the second flame.
Not Bo.
Something else.
Something beneath even that.
You are early.
Ming stepped closer. The air shimmered with pressure. Her legs slowed. Her breath shortened.
"You knew I'd come."
You came because you burned.
"What are you?"
I am what was sealed. The first light. The first fire.
"Bo?"
No.
Older.
Bo was my shadow.
She took one more step and dropped to one knee. Her legs refused to hold. Her body wasn't weak. But the pressure — it was like standing under the sun.
Her mark flared. Gold again.
And this time, the flames in the bowl answered.
They surged upward, not toward the ceiling — but toward her chest.
Straight into her.
She gasped. Not in pain — in clarity.
Images. Visions.
Mountains shattering. Skies darkening. A fire so large it could hold cities inside it. A flame that gave life and took it. And a girl, no older than her, screaming as the world collapsed around her, flame pouring from her eyes—
Then gone.
She collapsed.
The flame bowl emptied.
Silence returned.
She woke to footsteps.
A boy stood at the edge of the room.
The same one from the training grounds. The one who'd spoken to her before.
"I followed the handlers. I saw what you did."
She sat up, still breathing hard. "You should've run."
"I did. Then I came back."
He stepped closer. His face was pale. But his voice didn't shake.
"They said you took power that didn't belong to you. That the flame inside you isn't normal."
She didn't answer.
"They're scared of you. They think you're something else."
Now she looked at him.
"Do you?"
"I think…" He hesitated. "I think if they're scared, maybe they should be."
She rose. Her legs steady again.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Taren."
"You told anyone where I am?"
He shook his head.
"Good."
She started walking past him, toward the exit.
Then she stopped.
"You should come with me."
He blinked. "Where?"
"Where the fire can't lie to us."
And then, before he could answer, a voice echoed through the chamber — not from the flame, not from her, not from him.
It was the High Elder.
"Ming Li."
She turned.
A projection of fire shaped like the elder's mask hovered above the obsidian.
"You will return immediately. If you do not—"
She raised her hand.
And the flame image shattered.
Not with force.
With refusal.
She looked at Taren again.
And this time, he followed her.