Initially, Love struggled to summon her flames at will. The ability wasn't tethered to her emotions, and despite her massive appetite after using the powers, it wasn't fueled by food either. Instead, her power felt like a free spirit—a presence she had to invite rather than command—and she began to treat it as such.
At first, she theorized that her powers were tied to a specific window of time; she believed she had to use them at her most comfortable hour to 'reset' a 24-hour cooldown. However, after careful observation, she realized that while the ability was indeed limited to once per day, she could summon her flames at any moment she chose.
She briefly considered abstaining from her powers for a few days, hoping to stack her charges for multiple uses in a single day. However, the free spirit of the fire refused to be hoarded, ignoring her wishes. Still, she felt a surge of gratitude; her arsenal had evolved from a crude wooden spear to the command of the elements—even if it was a gift she could only claim once a day.
Though her command over the flames was limited to a single daily window, its sub-skills offer distinct tactical trade-offs. While she could conjure a rapid succession of fire projectiles—one per turn for seven rounds—they lacked the devastating impact of her concentrated fireballs. However, the sluggish casting time required for a fireball led her to a sudden, striking revelation about the true nature of her power.
Love noticed a cruel limitation to her fire-summoning ability: it demanded a constant, high-energy output. Generating fireballs or projectiles fueled her power, but it drained her caloric reserves—a death sentence in a wilderness where food was tragically scarce.
Summoning flame projectiles came easily, yet her mental resilience fractured when she attempted to summon more than one; despite having a fire attribute, she was a novice wielding power by a strange twist of fate, she could not manage the strain.
Fire was a strange element, unlike other elements that had a symbiotic relationship with nature and was working in harmony with nature - fire was volatile.
It defied the very laws of nature, a ravenous entity seeking only to consume life. Love, in her attempt to tame it, suffered deeply. During her first trial, the sheer heat scorched her leather garments to a blackened, ruined state; she narrowly avoided being left topless only by plunging into a pool of water hidden within the barren wilderness.
It was nothing like the first time. The first time, the flames had appeared involuntarily, yet somehow, they hadn't scorched her. Looking back, she realized she hadn't even known she could summon them. Were they controlled by her subconscious, or an outside force? Both theories felt absurd, so she stopped obsessing over it. Instead, she focused on training herself to manifest the flames only in specific, controlled areas.
In order to summon flames from specific areas of her body, Love had to practice constantly. She had to decide which part of her body to call the flames from, as well as the form they would take. She discovered that successfully summoning fire required her to focus entirely on that specific area.
This meant detaching from her surroundings and focusing solely on her body, feeling every vein, artery, and tissue—the blood circulating in that area—before bringing out the fire. If she wanted to summon flames from her hand, she had to truly become that hand.
That was her first breakthrough in Fire Control 101—a joyous milestone she named Flame Weave. Yet, for all its power, the skill carried a treacherous price. Whichever limb she "dressed" in the weave became the body's new sensory anchor; if she wove it around her hand, that hand had to see, smell, feel, hear, and strike all at once, while the rest of her body merely followed its lead. Unlike her other abilities, this trade-off demanded constant, grueling focus: she had to prevent the flame from quenching, tether it to her flesh, and maintain its intricate shape.
The first time she succeeded, the sheer metabolic drain nearly killed her. Ravenous and drained, she only managed to deactivate the skill when she finally collapsed from fatigue. Now, she only practices when she is already on the brink of exhaustion, ensuring that if her mind fails to shut the power down, her body's need for sleep will do it for her.
Compelled by the need to try harder to develop a new skill, she encountered another breakthrough.
Her next breakthrough arrived when she stopped resisting her biology and surrendered to the volatile rhythm of the flame. She began by coaxing flickers from her fingertips and casting them into others; soon, she bridged the gap of physical contact entirely. What started as thin, searing threads evolved into massive, shapeless plumes of heat. It was her most lethal evolution yet. Though she'd long dreamed of a spear wreathed in fire that could launch molten bolts, she couldn't yet weave the two together. For now, wielding her flames alongside her wooden spear was enough.
This new skill, however, arrived with its own dangerous cost. Unlike her previous abilities, Love could conjure and extinguish her flames at will, yet she found herself choosing the latter less and less. She could sustain the projectiles indefinitely, only pausing when the gnawing ache of hunger forced her to stop.
This constant proximity to fire soon spiraled into a compulsion. Day and night, she remained by the hearth of her own making, seduced by the hypnotic dance of the golden hues and their crimson shells. She would drift into a trance, staring into the heart of the heat until the flames licked her skin, leaving behind a map of scars she barely felt.
To break this cycle, she attempted to limit her summoning to just once every seven turns—but the pull was too strong. In the end, she realized she couldn't simply quit; she had to overwrite her obsession, suppressing her destructive addiction with a healthier one.
Love's final breakthrough was the culmination of her fire research. She successfully combined her ranged ability with her internal weave to generate a concentrated golden ball of fire. The process was demanding; without the ability to summon multiple projectiles, she had to cast a standard flame and then use extreme mental focus to compress its form.
The result was a small, glowing sphere of unstable energy. Unlike her previous formless blasts, these contracted fireballs possessed two game-changing properties: they triggered massive explosions upon impact and allowed for manual trajectory control. She even theorized that if she could maintain a perpetual state of "Fiery Glory," these orbs could be stored for long-term use.
Just like her earlier abilities, this breakthrough had a catch. It was a high-stakes gamble: the long casting time meant she could be killed before the attack even launched. The mental toll was also immense. A fiery explosion could instantly take down a single target, but against a crowd, it left her utterly spent. After one blast, she was often too tired to offer anything more than "drooling," ineffective attacks.
Nevertheless, thanks to her growing toolkit, Love was finally a predator in the wild, not the prey.