"Some truths are whispered in fire—but not every flame deserves to be followed".
The coordinates had led Aarav to an abandoned warehouse on the city's southern edge. Streetlights flickered overhead, casting nervous shadows across cracked pavement. He arrived by cab, stepped out, and immediately felt the air shift. Thicker. Hungrier.
The building had no signage. Just a door flanked by rusted pipes and graffiti too faded to read. Aarav hesitated—then entered.
Inside, the air was hot. Not warm—hot. Dozens of people stood in rows, heads bowed, each marked by the same glowing lattice patterns beneath their skin. Embers swirled through the air, rising toward vents that pulsed with faint red light.
At the center of the room stood a tall woman in a crimson robe. Her voice was soft but carried power as she spoke.
"We are The Breathers. Chosen not by birth, but by purification. Five seconds stripped the world down—and left us rebuilt."
Aarav edged farther inside, unnoticed. He felt the glow in his arm pulse faintly, as though resonating with the others. Yet something about the scene unsettled him. Their silence. Their reverence. Their blind submission.
He spotted the boy from the hospital—the one in the wheelchair—now standing beside the robed woman. His eyes were clearer. Too clear.
"Oxygen is a privilege," the woman continued. "And those who resist will never awaken."
Then they turned toward Aarav.
The boy smiled weakly. "You felt it too. You belong here."
Aarav stepped back. "No. I came to understand it—not worship it."
The robed woman narrowed her gaze. "If you leave, you will forget. Your lattice will fade. The others will surpass you."
Aarav's fingers curled into fists. The glow beneath his skin dimmed, but didn't disappear.
"I don't want to surpass anyone. I want to stay human."
He turned and walked out.
No one followed.
Until they did.
Shadows peeled from the warehouse walls and closed in, faces lit by the same cold lattice-fire. "Nothing leaves this room," someone hissed. "not you. Not our truth."
Aarav backed toward the door. "I'm not your enemy. I won't speak your creed."
They surged. He ran. They besieged him in the alley—too many, too fast. Blows came like thunder without rain. He staggered, breath sharp and burning, the glow under his skin flickering—but his will didn't.
They dragged him back inside.
Days blurred into light and questions. "Swear to The Breathers." "Forget what you saw." "Become more than human—or be made less." He was restrained, his wounds tended just enough to keep him upright, his choices narrowed to obedience or oblivion.
He wasn't alone. In the dimness, he heard others: some who yielded and donned crimson; some who fell silent and did not rise; some who kept breathing but looked emptied-out, eyes turned inward to a place past pain; a few who tried to run, and the echo of doors slamming shut.
Through it all, Aarav held to a single line in his mind, steady as a heartbeat: I choose my path.
They could bruise his body, starve his sleep, press their doctrine into every hour—yet they could not bend that line. He counted footfalls, mapped shifts, learned voices. He watched for a pattern, a seam, a breath of chance.
If The Breathers claimed those five seconds were a beginning, Aarav would prove they weren't the end—only the test.