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Coughing, I scrambled upright, wiping at my face, jerking in horror as I studied my hand.
I was no longer flesh and muscle but coal and cinder.
I reeled backward, only to be yanked forward by a woman blazing brighter than any flame I’d ever seen. My eyes narrowed against her blinding luminescence, barely able to see her form, feeling the uncanny urge to kneel before her golden power.
My lips parted in shock and awe. “Runa?”
She nodded, her fiery hair sparking and glowing with air eddies around her head. “Don’t panic. When I first stepped into the flames, I struggled to breathe too. The shock will pass. You’re okay.” She smiled with glowing teeth. “The fire listened.” She waved her free arm around the flickering, sizzling landscape. Trees burned in a ring around us. The river that’d babbled before us was now a lake of molten ore. “Ask what you want to know. It has granted you its ear.”
I winced as the soles of my feet seared and charred, burning, burning, burning.
Gritting my teeth against the building agony, I fought the urge to bolt across this nightmarish world and find water in which to plunge.
The longer I stood on flaming coals where grass used to be, the more I hurt.
Fire carved its way through my flesh and into my bones, becoming a part of me against my will.
I didn’t think I could stand it.
I trembled as it grew too much to bear.
My hand struggled in Runa’s, seeking a way free, needing her to let go of me so I could run. My temper gathered, calling forth my shadows, desperate for them to lift me off the smelted earth and fly me into darkness.
But nothing answered.
No blotting night. No comforting shade.
I was blinded by light.
Burning—
A hiss slithered inside my skull. “You are not welcome here, Moon Master. You trespass where you don’t belong.”
I froze.
Runa caught my eyes, looking more like the cosmic sun than a woman birthed by fire. “Are the flames speaking to you?” She squeezed my fingers, making me groan under my breath as cinders from her touch sliced open my flesh, pouring pain directly into my blood. “Speak back,” she urged. “Ask them your name.”
But I was past conversation.
I was dying.
Suffocating.
“That is the cost of earning what is lost.” The flames laughed in my head, showering me with sparks.
A wind howled over the blazing world, kicking up ash and embers, throwing the heated hurricane into my burning eyes. “We will not be kind or guide you. You forgot for a reason. Just like her. That reason is all that prevents you from destroying life.”
I folded forward as fire poured down my throat, searing into my lungs and tearing fiery holes through my insides.
Runa cried out as I fell to my knees.
“No—what’s happening?” She stroked back my flaming hair. “You’re okay. Don’t fight it. The fire—”
“Is killing me,” I choked, ripping my hand from hers and clawing at my chest. “I can’t breathe.”
“Don’t let go of me!” Her shout was lost beneath excruciating pain.
I scratched at the coals that made up my ribs. I attacked myself, tearing off ribbons of flame-flesh, trying to protect my heart before the fire found it.
But I was too late.
I screamed.
I tumbled forward into ashes.
Pain.
So much blazing pain.
Runa collapsed to her knees beside me. “Stop it!” She yelled at the fire. “Let him go!”
“He does not belong,” the answering hiss was the last thing I heard as my eyes snapped closed and darkness sucked me deep.
* * * * *
Death welcomed me with soothing arms.
Blood to shadow.
Moon to stars.
I sank until there was nowhere else to go.
Darkness cocooned me in a soft, endless nothingness.
For an eternity, I hovered in that void.
I no longer needed to breathe or blink or beat.
I was back in that eternal peace where silver orbs existed, tasting of citrus, rain, and nectar.
I recognised this world.
This ceaseless, infinite world.
And it welcomed me back with a roar that shuddered the entire galaxy.
Asteroids plummeted from the cosmos, burning up in a blaze of rock and flame, bringing light to this world of limitless shadow. Comets slammed into mountains. Stars plunged into rivers. And brimstone glittered on the moon.
And through it all, I clutched at my gaping chest, holding a bleeding heart in my palm.
Blood as black as pitch.
Lifeforce as rich as oil.
I tipped my hand, sighing with relief as the undead heart, the unwanted heart, rolled off my fingers, smearing ink and darkness until it plopped onto the grass.
Grass withered and died where it touched.
Blood sank into the dirt with a hiss, soaking the earth just as the sky lit up with blazing blues and purples. I looked up to the galaxies where I belonged. Clouds spun, and the entire cosmos blurred as the earth rotated with sickening speed, faster and faster, causing the stars to streak silver in their haste.
