The first time I saw death, I was only six.
It wasn't the kind of story people tell with ghosts or haunted dreams. I saw it — really saw it — like a shadow that wrapped itself around people before they died. That day, it clung to my mother. I tried to scream, tried to warn her, but how could a child explain the invisible?
She smiled, kissed my forehead, and crossed the street. The truck never even slowed down.
Since then, death followed me like a curse. Friends. Teachers. Anyone who stayed close for too long. I'd see the black mist coil around them, and days or weeks later, they'd be gone.
I stopped making friends.
I stopped speaking much at all.
At sixteen, I was just another quiet boy at the back of the classroom. No one knew I hadn't slept properly in years. No one knew I kept seeing it — the mist — and no one ever listened when I tried to warn them.
Until the fire.
It was a rainy night, and my foster home — the fifth one — smelled like mold and forgotten promises. I sat near the window, watching the city lights blur through the glass. That's when I saw it again. Death.
Not mist this time.
Flames.
Blue flames.
They danced at the edge of my vision like they were alive, wrapping themselves around me, whispering in a voice that wasn't human.
> "You see what others fear. You see what they deny."
My chest burned — literally. Pain ripped through me as the fire entered my body, and in that moment, I felt my heart stop.
When I opened my eyes again… I wasn't in that world anymore.
The sky above me was violet, split by twin moons. Giant trees with golden leaves swayed in silence. I lay in a cracked courtyard, surrounded by rubble, blood, and the stench of something ancient.
A voice echoed in my mind:
> "This body is weak. But you… you carry the Soul Flame."
That's when I knew.
I had died.
But I had also been reborn — into a world where cultivation ruled, where the strong shattered mountains, and the weak served or perished.
The fire was still with me, curled inside my soul. Warm. Waiting.
I clenched my fist, and for the first time in my life, I didn't see death around me.
I was the death.