The air changed.
Not in temperature—there was no true heat in the Web—but in feeling. The threads tightened. The silence grew sharp, expectant.
Hector felt it first. A flicker inside his light-form. A vibration not his own.
> Laughter.
Not soft, not cruel—something deeper. Laughter like fire crackling in a dark room. Not meant to comfort. Not meant to mock.
It just was.
Then came the light.
It didn't arrive from one direction—it rose from within the threads themselves. As if each filament of the Web had caught flame. But none burned away. The light curled and coiled like molten ribbon, dancing in patterns no wind caused.
And then—
> "Found you."
The voice came from everywhere—a hundred voices speaking at once, overlapping and splitting, all laughing at the same time.
From the center of the coiling light emerged a form.
It was not shaped, not truly.
A storm of flame, yes—but not chaotic. It pulsed to a rhythm, a dance. Every flicker carried an echo of emotion: joy, rage, shame, freedom.
It laughed again. The Web trembled.
> "I am Ozoz, the Laughing Flame," it said. "And you are still hiding from yourselves."
Hector and Vicky drifted back instinctively—but Ozoz surged forward, laughing again.
> "Don't fear me. I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to free you."
Hector flinched as part of Ozoz brushed his form. It didn't burn—but it seared something deeper. A small crack opened inside him. Some illusion peeled back.
He didn't speak. But he thought:
> I'm not afraid.
And the flame cackled wildly.
> "You are! Of course you are! But so what? Fear is honest. Fear means you're close to changing."
Vicky narrowed her form, light sharpening to a shielded arc.
> "We're not hiding," she said.
Ozoz surged toward her. The shield melted—not destroyed, but revealed for what it was: a shell of caution, thin and trembling.
> "Everything you wear is a lie, little spark. So let's see what survives the fire."
Vicky hovered, stunned. Then something in her shifted.
She let her shield fall.
Ozoz laughed again, softer this time.
> "That's better. That's brave."
Then it turned to Hector.
> "And you, boy of echoes—do you know the weight of what you carry? You follow feelings, but you still believe they define you."
Hector pulsed with confusion. "They are part of me."
Ozoz's voice grew low, coiling into a whisper-crackle:
> "Only what survives the fire belongs to you."
It surged, and this time both Hector and Vicky were surrounded—completely engulfed by the living flame. They didn't burn. But they broke.
---
Something peeled open inside Hector.
His light-form trembled, layers splitting. His memory of self—what he thought he was becoming—shattered. Not lost. Just… no longer fixed.
He remembered the way he had begun to think of himself as strong, as careful. A seeker of others' feelings, a tracker of wounds. But now he saw the shell of that belief, and how rigid it had become. How safe.
> "Let go," Ozoz whispered. "Be born again. Not into flesh. Into freedom."
He did.
The flame surged through him—and the shape he had been split.
Then reformed.
Lighter. Clearer.
He wasn't empty now. Just unafraid to not know who he was yet.
---
Vicky, meanwhile, was reshaping even as the fire danced inside her.
She'd already learned to shift, to wear forms made of grief, of memory. But now she realized how carefully she had chosen those forms. Always armor. Always a story.
The fire showed her a different way: to shift without shame. To change and not justify. To become without asking permission.
She let her shape melt—into something uncertain, glowing and chaotic.
And laughed.
Her laughter echoed Ozoz's, rising into the dark like flame.
---
The god of destruction circled them slowly now, his laughter softening into embers.
> "You begin to understand," he said. "To change a thing, you must be willing to see it fall apart."
The Web around them pulsed in agreement—threads curling slightly, shimmered by heat.
> "What you become later depends on what you're brave enough to lose now."
Then, the flame folded inward.
The laughter grew distant, curling into the threads like smoke vanishing into wind.
> "This is not the last time you'll burn," Ozoz said, just before he vanished. "But you'll be better at it next time."
Then silence.
---
Hector and Vicky drifted in the quiet glow that remained.
No words passed between them at first. Just a shared knowing. Something had shifted.
Hector reached for a thread—and didn't hesitate this time. His light was looser now, more flexible. He didn't cling to a single form of himself.
He followed a pain-thread, but instead of feeling swallowed, he let it pass through him.
And saw more.
The resonance widened—he could now perceive what changed because of the feeling. The ripples of emotion, not just the emotion itself.
Vicky floated nearby, constantly shifting—now sharp, now soft, now radiant. Each transformation felt faster, cleaner. She wasn't deciding who to be. She was simply allowing it.
Not reacting. Becoming.
> "He was right," she finally said. "We were hiding."
Hector nodded.
> "Not anymore."
They hovered side by side, glowing with the heat of new understanding.
And somewhere far off in the Web, a single thread curled tighter—already sensing that something new was forming.
A future neither of them could see yet.
But they would be ready.