Fire is not just flame. It is memory made raw.
And tonight, it returned to me.
We had barely escaped the frost-woods when it began—the visions.
It didn't come as dreams.
It came in the spaces between blinks.
In the reflections of Lyra's eyes.
In the shiver of starlight against my skin.
Something old had begun to stir the moment the dragon's light wrapped around my arm.
Now, it hungered.
Not for destruction.
Not even for power.
For truth.
And truth, I was learning, was a fire that burned backward.
Lyra was quiet as we walked beneath a sky that churned like a sleeping leviathan. The stars were not as I remembered them. Then again, I didn't remember them at all.
"We'll rest in the roots," she whispered, pointing toward a black hill coiled with bioluminescent vines.
But before I could speak—
I fell.
Not physically. Not through terrain. But through myself.
The world around me vanished, not like a fading dream, but like paper catching fire from its center.
And suddenly—
I stood in another time.
Another world.
The heat was unbearable, but I didn't flinch.
My hands were ablaze. Not metaphorically. Not magically.
Literally burning.
And yet, they didn't disintegrate.
They glowed—each finger like a shard of molten dusk. In one palm, I held it:
A dying sun.
Its light cracked, bleeding red-white through deep fractures. It screamed as it pulsed against my grip.
Not sound.
Emotion.
It begged to live.
It pleaded.
But I…
I crushed it.
With a single closing fist, I snuffed out a star.
The light wailed, then vanished.
Darkness rushed in, absolute.
And something—someone—screamed my name.
"AETHERION!"
A figure fell from above.
Armor in ruins. Golden blood pouring from his side. His face—beautiful, divine, and broken with betrayal.
He hit the ground hard.
I watched, unmoved.
"You were supposed to protect the Core," he gasped.
"I was supposed to rewrite it," I replied.
But I didn't recognize the voice as mine. It was deeper. Fuller. Like it had tasted eons and grown bitter from the flavor.
The dying god crawled toward me. His eyes, galaxies unto themselves, filled with something tragic.
"You burned me," he whispered.
And then—
I looked down at my other hand.
It was no longer flesh.
It was cinder, alive and shifting—ash swirling around a hollow light. A second sun—small, new, barely born—beat inside my palm like a heart.
I had taken one life…
And birthed another.
I woke with fire on my tongue.
Literal.
Lyra screamed and doused my mouth with frost-leaves, smoke curling from my lips like I'd swallowed a forge.
"You were convulsing," she said, breathless. "And speaking in dead tongues."
I stared at my hands. Normal now. Human. Shaking.
"I crushed a sun," I whispered. "I ended… a god."
She froze.
Then nodded.
"So it's true," she said.
"What is?"
"You were the God-Breaker. Before the Rift took your name."
I didn't deny it.
Because the fire still echoed inside me. And behind my ribs… something glowed faintly.
"I don't want this," I said.
"You already had it. Wanting isn't the point."
The stars above shifted. One blinked—and vanished.
Not behind clouds.
Erased.
Like it was ash now.
Like I had done it again.
I gripped the soil beneath me.
"What did I become?"
"You never became," Lyra said, softer this time. "You were always him. The Rift didn't change you. It sealed you."
My breath caught.
Because suddenly, I remembered more.
The blade. The spire. The god I felled.
His name was Lucem.
And I called him brother.
He begged me not to.
He said it would break the sky.
And I did it anyway.
Not for rage.
Not for war.
But because I believed the Cycle was poison.
Because death and rebirth were shackles.
And I wanted to end it all.
Even if I had to burn the divine.
I stood, slowly. The wind trembled at my presence now.
The trees bent.
Even the stars seemed reluctant to meet my gaze.
"If I remember everything," I said, "I won't come back the same."
Lyra didn't argue.
Instead, she touched my chest—where the dragon's light pulsed faintly—and whispered:
"Then promise me, Aetherion… when it's time to burn again, you'll choose which fire you light."
My heart stilled.
Because deep inside it, something laughed.