Aren's eyes snapped open.
They weren't the same.
No longer dull brown - now lit from the inside, like cinders trapped behind glass. his skin steamed. His veins pulsed with ember-white threads beneath the surface.
Across the path, Kael froze. A noble murderer dressed up in a rich velvet cloak, jaw dragging against the floor - eyes flickering between Aren and the rock.
He didn't run. Kael grinned.
"Didn't think you would survive, to be honest"
Aren pushed himself to one knee, breath ragged. His hands trembled. Sparks curling from his fingertips.
"You... you hit me with a"
"A rock"
Kael twirled his hair like it was a play toy. "Thought It'd kill you. Or at least break a bone or two"
Aren stumbled to his feet. The pain hadn't faded - it had simply settled deeper. Hot, not like fire but like something alive and boiling with purpose.
"Why?"
"Because yo-you showed me up little peasant"
He pointed at the Training hall, doors tightly locked a subtle glimpse of shame in Kael's eyes peers through.
Aren surged forward with a raw, broken roar - hands clenched, smoke curling from his palms. The sigil across his chest flared, wild and unstable, cracks of light ripping down his arm like glowing fractures.
But the moment his foot hit the ground -
KRK-!
His legs gave out.
The pain from the head wound spiked, his vision folded in sideways, and a wave of burning nausea hit like a hammer. He hit the floor hard, coughing blood, shaking.
"Tch," Kael muttered, watching Aren twitch in the dirt. "Could've been something strong".
He crouched beside him, looking into Aren's flickering eyes - not gloating, not even cruel.
Just... curious.
"Maybe next time you'll learn to walk before trying to run"
Kael stood, shook off his royal cloak, and walked off along the path into rich comforting palace that was with him since birth.
Aren lays motionless, breaths short, the solspire sigil glowing faintly under torn fabric. From a rooftop above, someone watches him - unknown. Silent.
Alarms begin to fade in.
The world keeps moving.
But something inside Aren has begun to stir.
Drip.
A single echo. Water? Blood?
Darkness swallowed everything, but Aren stood. Alone. Barefoot on cracked obsidian, where each footstep lit a faint white pulse beneath him - like coals remembering heat.
In the far distance: a tower made of sigils, spiralling upward into black clouds that pulsed with lightning and flame.
Each bolt struck with a WHAM that shook the ground - and with every flash, faces flickered in the storm.
Dead faces. Burned faces. His face.
He turned. Behind him, a mirror rose - shattered, fractured, but still showing his reflection. Except...
The version staring back had a charred skin, embers burning in its chest, and a cinder-glow eyes.
It smiled.
"You weren't supposed to live."
The reflection stepped out of the glass. Its mouth tore wider, teeth rimmed in molten ash. The solspire sigil charred across its chest like a pulsing wound.
"But you burned anyway"
Aren tried to scream, but smoke filled his lungs.
The tower of sigils in the distance collapsed, and the ground beneath him split. From the cracks, hands of ash and light reached up - grabbing, pulling, begging,
Then a flare.
Far above - something bright, golden, sharp - a sigil of pure light hovered in the sky for one heartbeat.
Solspire
It didn't save him.
It only watched.
THNK.
He hit the ground again.
Breathless. Alone.
Burning.
That's when he wakes - coughing, vision blurry, the sigil still glowing faintly under his skin, and the memory of that mirror refusing to fade.
Cold light.
The kind that hums - not like a flame, but like something pretending to be alive.
Aren's eyes fluttered open to the pale ceiling of a rusted medbay, corners flickering from a bad power feed. Old fluorescent panels buzzed, casting long shadows across worn sigil-monitor screens and scraped-up floors.
A white-cloaked nurse moved in the corner, quiet, cautious.
"You're awake."
Her voice was flat. Professional. But her eyes lingered a beat too long on his chart.
Aren shifted. His body ached, but the burn was deeper - a quiet heat in his chest like coals never fully dying.
He looked down.
Bandages wrapped around his torso, but they couldn't hide the faint white glow still leaking from beneath. The sigil hadn't faded. It was still there. Still pulsing.
"How long was I out?"
"Two days."
"Did anyone bring me in?"
"You were found outside training hall. Bleeding out, No ID. No trace of who attacked you."
She hesitated. Then leaned closer.
"We've seen wounds like this before. Not often. And they never stay long."
Aren clenched the sheet in his fists.
"What do you mean?"
"They either leave..." She stood "Or they stop being human"
She turned and left, the door hissing closed behind her.
Aren stared at the glowing mark beneath the bandages.
His reflection in the polished steel tray nearby flickered - for a second, the mirror version again. Watching.
He wasn't healing. He was changing.