The fire burned, but it no longer consumed him.
It was a part of him now—woven into his very being, thrumming beneath his skin like a second heartbeat.
The swordsman stood before him, his blade still lowered, but the five eyes remained shut. Watching. Waiting.
"You finally understand," the swordsman murmured. There was no mockery left in his tone—only acceptance.
The awakened man met his gaze. "I do."
Then, he moved.
This time, he wasn't fighting against the fire. He wasn't wielding it like an outsider grasping at something beyond his reach. It was his.
The tower chamber exploded with light as flames surged from his body, white-hot and radiant. The air warped from the heat, the stone beneath his feet cracking, glowing with molten veins.
The swordsman reacted instantly. His blade lifted, the first eye snapping shut.
Darkness surged again—
—but this time, it did not take him.
The blindness clawed at his vision, but his fire roared in response, piercing through the void. He could see the swordsman now—not with his eyes, but with the heat, with the way the air shifted around him, the way the flame felt his presence.
The blade descended.
He did not step back.
Instead, he raised his dagger, flames coiling around the steel, and met the swordsman's strike head-on. The impact shook the chamber, a shockwave of heat and force sending cracks spiderwebbing through the stone walls.
For the first time, the swordsman was forced back.
His blade trembled in his grasp. A flicker of something passed across his ruined face—not fear, but recognition.
"You're not the same," the swordsman muttered.
"No," the man agreed. "I burned away the weakness."
He lunged.
His dagger struck fast, white flames exploding from the edge, engulfing the air between them. The swordsman twisted, avoiding the first strike, but not the second. Fire raked across his arm, searing through fabric and flesh alike.
The swordsman did not flinch. Instead, he grinned.
Then, all five eyes on the blade snapped shut at once.
Silence.
Darkness.
Stillness.
But he did not falter.
The void closed in around him, but this time, he did not fight it.
Instead, he let the fire consume him.
He felt his body unravel, become something more—not just a man wielding flames, but the flame itself. Heat. Light. Destruction. Rebirth.
The darkness did not swallow him.
He burned through it.
The swordsman was still there, waiting in the silence. Expecting him to stumble, to hesitate.
But when the fire shattered the void, he was already behind him.
The dagger struck true.
Straight through the swordsman's back.
The flames surged into him, and for the first time, the swordsman staggered.
He exhaled sharply, a choked breath—not of pain, but of completion.
He turned his head slightly, as if to see him one last time. The ruin of his eyes met his own, and the swordsman smiled.
"Good," he whispered.
Then, the flames consumed him.
His body cracked apart like embers in the wind, his form collapsing into light and heat. The blackened steel of his sword shattered, the eyes on the blade closing forever as the weapon crumbled into dust.
The tower chamber fell silent once more.
The awakened man stood alone, his dagger still glowing, the heat still pulsing in his chest.
He had won. But he was no longer the man who had started this fight.He had burned.And from the ashes, something new had emerged.
The man felt a distant ringing, the sound of the toll of a bell, chiming with force and rattling the very air around him.
Each chime seemed to reverberate deep, from the resounding chambers to the inside of his bones, shaking him As the sound grew louder, the world around him began to crack, and thin spiderweb fractures spreaded across the space, splintering everything in sight.
Time itself seemed to bend, stretch, and twist in response to the relentless toll.
And then, with one final, deafening clang, the world shattered into many pieces .
The man awoke.