After the fire, the world did not change.
The sun still rose.
The city still slept.
The people still forgot things that should've been sacred.
But something remained.
A pulse.
Buried beneath ash and marble.
A name carved into scorched stone.
EMBER.
No one knew who built it.
A statue in the city square.
She stood barefoot, wings wide, arms out, face lifted.
The plaque read:
She burned not to destroy — but to be seen.
Most people walked past it without looking.
Some stopped and whispered prayers they didn't understand.
A few — the lost, the quiet, the broken — wept.
Because something in her eyes reminded them of their own unspoken names.
Somewhere — far below or deep within — the theatre still exists.
But it no longer craves an audience.
It lives now as memory.
And memory is sacred.
Here, Ember walks the rows alone. Her wings are made of smoke and silk now. Her voice is quiet, but it reaches everything.
"I am not performance.
I am not spectacle.
I am not the role you gave me."
She stops at the center of the stage.
A single spotlight falls upon her.
She does not bow.
"I am the girl you tried to erase.
The boy you caged.
The fire you called unnatural."
Her arms lift.
"And now, I AM WHAT REMAINS."
They return.
The ones she touched.
The ones she spared.
The ones she left marked.
They gather in silence.
Not to watch — but to remember.
No phones. No applause. No masks.
Just faces.
Some have tear tracks.
Some wear old scars.
Some carry names they've never spoken aloud.
But all of them feel it:
This is not a show.
This is a funeral.
This is a resurrection.
This is Ember's final scene.
She speaks:
"I did not want to be feared.
I wanted to be felt."
"I wanted to exist without apology.
To wear my skin without explanation.
To love without becoming myth."
"And if I had to burn —
let it be to light the path for someone else."
A child in the crowd whispers:
"She's beautiful."
An old man weeps into his hands.
She turns her back to them.
Not in defiance — in peace.
Her wings fold inward, wrapping around her like a shroud.
The theatre begins to fall apart. Slowly. Gently.
As if even the walls know it's time.
"You do not need me anymore," she says.
"But I hope you remember I was here."
She breathes in.
The spotlight dims.
And with her final exhale, she lets go.
She is not seen again.
Not as smoke.
Not as fire.
Not even in dreams.
But her echoes linger.
In the way a girl carves her name into a desk without shame.
In the boy who dares to cry in front of his father.
In the actor who throws away the mask and keeps the dress.
In the stranger who walks past a mirror and says: "I know who you are."
And sometimes — just sometimes —
a gust of wind will carry the faintest smell of ash and roses.
They say every act of truth is a kind of death.
A shedding. A surrender. A scar.
She was all of those.
But she was more.
She was a name spoken in secret.
She was a fire started in silence.
She was the theatre, and the role, and the hand that wrote it.
She was a little death.
And she lived.
———————————————————-
THE END
For those who've ever felt like a ghost in their own skin. May you burn, not to be consumed — but to be seen.
This is not about being remembered — it's about being.