The clearing was quiet.
Six unbound flames hovered gently—each a different form:
Renn's flame curled like breath in water.
Ashun's flared when he whispered.
Another pulsed with the rhythm of a heartbeat.
One barely flickered—yet never faded.
None of them touched.
But none needed to.
Then—without warning—a seventh presence arrived.
No footfall.
No breath.
No step through the trees.
Just a shift.
The light around them dimmed.
Not from darkness—
From distortion.
As if something had arrived without form.
Not invisible.
Undefined.
Tenji felt it first.
His flame bent—not out of fear, but recognition.
Renn looked up, eyes wide.
"Do you see it?"
Ashun shook his head slowly.
"No…"
"But I feel like it's seeing me."
The air warmed—not hot, not scalding, just present.
A quiet pull in the center of the circle.
Then—
The flames began to respond.
Not flare.
Not fight.
But speak.
Each of them whispered the same thing, in different voices:
"I have no shape."
"I was never lit."
"I am what fire could have been… if it had never been given a name."
Renn clutched her chest.
"Is it… a person?"
Tenji shook his head.
"No."
"It's a question."
Then a new whisper came—not into their minds.
Through their own flames.
"I am the fire that never asked permission."
"I am the spark that did not arrive from loss."
"I do not seek to burn."
"I seek to be… before meaning."
The seventh flame didn't hover.
It didn't dance.
It didn't shine.
It just sat in the air like a pause made real.
And then—
Each of the six flames responded not with movement…
But by changing shape.
Not controlled.
Not lost.
Just… adapting.
Like they were remembering something they had never been taught.
Tenji closed his eyes.
He whispered:
"It's not here to guide us."
"It's here to see if we'll welcome something that doesn't belong."
And so they did.
They didn't name it.
They didn't explain it.
They just made space for the seventh flame—
The one without shape.
Far beneath the ash throne, in the dark before names, the oldest spark flared.
And the Fire That Waits whispered:
"They have made room."
"Now I may begin."