Ashen landed hard, knees buckling as gravel tore through his skin.
He was in a canyon now—narrow, towering cliffs on both sides. The sky above was a ceiling of dark smoke. The air pulsed with heat, like standing too close to a dying furnace. Not warm. Not alive. Just the memory of fire, lingering where it no longer burned.
And something was watching him.
He stood slowly. The air tasted like copper and dust.
The canyon stretched forward endlessly, but the path behind him had vanished. The walls whispered with every gust of wind. Words half-formed, sentences melting into heat. He didn't try to understand them anymore. He just walked.
He didn't know how long he wandered. Time no longer moved straight here.
Then he saw the light.
It was a soft glow at first, distant. Then it grew, swelled, like something rising from the center of the earth. It wasn't sunlight. It was fire—but not like any fire he'd seen before.
It shimmered in the shape of a man.
Tall, impossible to look at directly. The flames made no noise, gave no warmth. They twisted with purpose, folding around a skeletal shape—long arms, narrow shoulders, and eyes like dying suns.
Ashen stopped walking.
The flame-being tilted its head.
"You've come far."
The voice wasn't fire. It wasn't sound. It was memory—spoken from inside Ashen's own mind, like something he used to know.
Ashen forced a breath. "What are you?"
The being stepped closer. No heat touched him. Only gravity. Weight. A presence that felt like standing in a forgotten cathedral.
"A memory of who you are."
"Or who you were."
Ashen's heart thudded.
"I'm just a boy," he muttered. "I didn't ask for this."
The flames pulsed.
"That's a lie you've been told."
Flashes struck him without warning.
—A hall of mirrors, each holding a different version of himself.
—A throne made of teeth.
—A woman with no eyes, cradling a burning child.
—A god kneeling before a boy, whispering in a language no longer spoken.
Ashen gasped, clutching his chest. His knees gave again.
The man of flame knelt before him now, close enough to touch.
"You are not cursed, Ashen."
"You are the last vessel of remembrance."
Ashen shook his head. "I don't… understand."
"You were born when the world forgot."
"Your scream was not the first. It was the last echo of a forgotten truth."
Ashen's eyes stung.
"You're not real."
The flame-being paused.
Then, with strange gentleness:
"Neither are you."
The canyon trembled.
Behind the flame-being, a gateway formed in the rock—twisting obsidian, wrapped in roots and ash. Carvings lined the archway. Names. Symbols. One of them glowed with golden light—the same spiral eye from before.
Ashen looked toward it.
Then back to the being.
"I don't want this," he whispered. "I just wanted to live."
"You were never meant to live simply."
Ashen reached out. The flames did not burn him. They folded around his hand like smoke given thought.
"Will you remember us," the being said softly, "even when it breaks you?"
Ashen didn't answer.
He stepped through the gate.
And the canyon vanished.