Chapter 1 — The Structure of Eternals
---
They say I was born in the crucibles of Karn Idrith, a sub-territory buried in the bleeding stone canyons of Egrenoth, the Third Kingdom of Anima.
They are wrong.
I was not born there.
I was burned there.
----
> "Before the first flame, There is no warmth.
Only the silence of something waiting to scream."
---
Karn Idrith: The Bloodstone Furnace
Karn Idrith was never meant for life.
It is a place of ritualized suffering—where the weak are not cast out, but carved.
An orphaned canyon ruled not by leaders, but by Flame Pits—where the condemned and the chosen share the same fate: to burn, and be changed.
The skies are bruised purple year-round. Ash falls like snow. The wind carries no scent—because even decay burns away in this place.
At the edge of the flame pits, there are no guards. No walls.
Only children, stripped of name and bloodline, thrown into the Trial of Flesh.
We were told:
> "If your bones remain, you return."
Some did return—gnawed, hollow, broken beyond use.
Most were never found again.
---
The First Day
I was nine when I was thrown down the Stone Mouth into the pit.
My father's final words to me echoed in my skull:
> "Burn brighter than me… or vanish like smoke."
I did not scream when I hit the ground.
I did not cry when the searing rocks scraped open my back.
But I did listen—to the groaning of other children in the dark.
To the whimpering breaths that would not last the week.
We were given nothing. Not food. Not names.
Only time.
A year.
One year.
---
The Hunger
By the second week, I ate bark.
By the third, I bit stone to dull my teeth.
When that failed, I fed on fire beetles and the salt that crusted the cracks in the walls.
Some found ways to hunt vermin.
Some hunted the sick.
Some hunted the kind.
I did not.
I watched.
And I listened to the rhythm of starvation.
The sound of a child dying in their sleep is not dramatic—it is soft, like cloth tearing beneath weight.
---
The Cold Flame
By the third month, the cold was worse than heat.
Even the Flame Pits grow cold once your body runs out of fuel to burn.
When the flesh stops shivering.
When warmth becomes a memory.
That was when I began to feel something stir—not in my belly, but behind my eyes.
A kind of heat that did not burn, but remembered burning.
It didn't offer strength.
It offered clarity.
---
> "Pain is not punishment.
Pain is structure.
And structure is the first truth."
---
The First Kill
I was attacked by a boy twice my age in the sixth month.
He had made a knife from stone and nerve-twine.
He swung at me with wildness, but no aim.
I did not dodge.
I let the blade cut me.
Then I used the bleeding heat from my chest—not for rage, but for movement.
I broke his wrist.
I broke his neck.
And I buried the knife into his own mouth.
> Not out of hate.
But because tools belong to the prepared.
---
The End of the Year
By the twelfth month, there were nine of us left.
Of the hundred thrown in, ninety-one had vanished.
Bones scattered like script across the ash.
A few sat motionless, waiting to be removed.
But I stood.
I did not stand tallest.
I did not look strongest.
But when the Sculptors came—robed figures masked in obsidian—they pointed to me first.
Not because I was ready.
But because I had not broken.
---
> "The flame does not choose the pure.
It chooses the one who understands why they must burn."
---
The Whisper of Kindling
They marked me for advancement.
A brand was seared behind my right shoulder—the Glyph of First Flame.
It was then that I felt the first whisper of cultivation stirring beneath my ribs.
Not power.
Not energy.
But awareness.
Of breath.
Of blood.
Of movement in the dust.
I was at the edge of the Kindling Stage.
Not awakened.
But aware.
---
They let me live.
For the next trial.
The Trial of Soul.
But I had already begun to reshape myself.
The boy who fell into the pit was gone.
What climbed out was not human.
It was something waiting to burn.
---
> "I do not seek flame to kill.
I seek flame to remember."