There it is again, that sense that I’m living in echoes, shadows, half-remembered screams from a version of me that didn’t survive. I’ve had these feelings my entire life. They started right after the fire, and I had always assumed that it was the survivor's guilt. Maybe it isn’t? “Why me?” I whisper.
“Because you’re not like them,” he says, while slightly nodding to the bar. “Because something in you remembers the war.” The word feels like a curse. I flinch, forcing him to lean back. And that’s somehow worse, like the moment passes and I’ve already failed some invisible test.
“This isn't about dreams or drawings,” he says. “It’s about blood. History. Prophecy. More than any of that…” He looks at me. And for the first time tonight, I feel like he sees me. “It’s about choice.”
My laugh is hollow this time. “Choice?” I say, voice like steel. “You made every road lead to you. You sent the letter. You knew I would show up. And now, you want credit for letting me walk?”
“You came back,” he says. I hate that he’s right. “You could’ve walked out of that alley and never looked at me again. You didn’t.”
I want to argue. I want to scream. Instead, I just say, “You scare me.”
He nods once. “Good.”
The air around us changes. One second, it’s heavy with silence—the kind that presses against your ribs like a held breath—and the next it feels like the walls are pulsing. I feel it before I see it. That strange pull. Like gravity…but deeper. Older. Like something under my skin is reaching for something it already knows.
I glance down at the table between us. My sketchbook’s there. I don’t remember pulling it out or openingit. It’s open now. And the page that stares back? It’s the symbol. Drawn in bold, dark ink. Not the faint versions I scrawled in a daze, or the ghost lines that showed up uninvited. This one is intentional. Perfectly formed. A circle of jagged flame wrapping around a broken blade. Half sun, half wound. His mark. Riven’s.
At the center is a crack of red. It doesn’t look like ink or paint. It looks like something living as it pulses once, and my breath catches. “What the fuck…”
I reach for it. My fingers brush the center of the symbol…and the world explodes. It’s not fire at first. It’s heat. Blistering. Internal. Like a furnace opens in my chest and roars to life. Light slams into the room. Every bottle behind the bar rattles. Glass trembles in its frames. Somewhere, someone screams. I’m not in the bar anymore. I’m in a battlefield of memory…it’s mine…only not.
The ground is scorched. The sky is split with red. Smoke rolls across bodies that don’t have faces but feel like they matter. In the center of it all...me…or a version of me.
Armor charred. Fingers slick with someone else’s blood. A blade in my hand. The same blade I drew inmy sketchbook. The same one I saw in Riven’s office. It hums like it’s alive. The woman wearing my face raises it high, and the fire obeys. Washing the battlefield clean. I snap back into myself like I’ve been dropped from orbit.
The bar is in chaos. The VIP chandelier is on fire. People are shouting, scrambling for exits. Smoke curls in black ribbons from the ceiling. And me? I stand rooted to the spot, sketchbook hanging slack in one hand, my gaze locked on the flames curling just out of reach. They lick the air, close enough to feel the heat, yet they don’t touch me. Not even a single spark. Across from me, Riven remains exactly where he is, as still and unmoving as if the fire itself knows better than to cross him.
He’s watching me like I just told him his future, and it terrifies him. “Lux,” he says, voice low. I don’t answer. Because I’m still burning. And for the first time, it doesn’t hurt. The sprinklers don’t go off. Somehow, the fire puts itself out, not with a hiss, or a crash, or a surge, but like it simply decides to stop burning. Smoke clings to the rafters. Ash settles like snow. And I just… stand there. In the middle of it. Untouched.
Cautiously, people edge back in, one by one, like survivors stepping out of a bunker. Someone’s shouting about electrical faults. Someone else is calling it a freak accident. No one’s looking at me. Not really. Except Benny, with eyes wide from across the bar, mouth opening like he’s about to ask if I’m okay. I turn away before he can.
The sketchbook is still warm in my hands. Pages warped. Edges singed. The symbol’s gone. Just empty paper now, mocking me.
Riven is still seated. His face is unreadable. Too calm. Too collected. Like he’s already moved three spaces ahead on a board I didn’t even know existed. “I didn’t mean to,” I whisper.
“I know.” He rises. Slow. Controlled.
“I didn’t want to…”
“I know.” His voice is soft now. Too soft. Like he’s afraid I’ll break. Or afraid I won’t.
“Get out of my head,” I snap.
“I’m not in your head.”
“Bullshit.”
He doesn’t argue. Just steps closer. I don’t let him near. “I’m not yours,” I say, not because I believe it, but because I need it to be true.
His jaw tightens. “No,” he says. “But you will be.” I walk out of the booth, out of the bar, out of the wreckage of who I thought I was.
I hit the street and breathe like I haven’t in hours. Like oxygen matters again. The rain’s picked up; misty, thin, laced with smoke. I don’t care. I keep walking. I don’t know where I’m going, I just know I can’t stay. Because something woke up tonight. And it’s not going back to sleep.
8
Soot Stains on the Mirror of Memory
I barely sleep. When I do, it’s not rest, it’s war with memories—with my own goddamn mind. By morning, my sheets are twisted. My sketchbook is open on the floor. The pages are covered in symbols I don’t remember drawing. They’re not all the same. Some are jagged, others curved like smoke. One is shaped like a cracked crown. I don’t look too long. I shove the whole book under my bed like it’s radioactive.
