Chapter 4: Ash Beneath the Skin
The dawn light over Daesan Academy was soft and golden — but Sung Min felt none of its warmth.
He sat on the rooftop of the East Dormitory, legs dangling over the edge, watching the students below bustle toward their morning lectures. Laughter echoed across the courtyard. Uniforms rustled in the breeze. It should've felt normal.
It didn't.
Not after the night in the Hall.
Not after the fire.
He turned his hand over, palm facing the sky. Nothing happened. No blue flames. No flicker of power. Just skin. But he could still feel it, deep beneath — ash beneath the skin.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," a voice said behind him.
He didn't turn. "I saw worse."
Ara dropped onto the ledge beside him, setting a steaming cup between them. "Drink. It helps after the first Echo."
Sung Min didn't ask what was in it. He just drank. It tasted like soot and ginger.
She glanced at him. "Any dreams?"
He nodded. "A boy in a ruined city. Everything was burning. He was holding something… a sphere of light. Before it cracked."
Ara was quiet for a moment. "Memory. Maybe not yours, though."
"Then whose?"
She didn't answer. Just looked out over the Academy.
"Most people here think Daesan is just a school," she said. "For talent, for magic, for discipline. But it was built on something older. It's a vault. A prison. And now that you've woken the Flame... the locks are breaking."
Sung Min looked at her. "Why me?"
"Because you're the first one in sixty years to survive touching the Pillar," Ara said. "And the only one in a hundred who did it without being chosen."
He frowned. "You said the Flame chose me."
"It did," she said. "But not the way it's supposed to."
Before he could respond, a bell rang across the grounds. Not the usual class bell — deeper. Colder.
Ara stood instantly. "They know."
"Who?"
"Faculty," she said. "And not all of them are on your side."
She pulled a silver token from her sleeve , the same crest from her uniform. "This will get you through the East Wing without questions. Get to the old observatory. I'll meet you there."
"What are you going to do?"
"Buy you time."
Without waiting, she slipped off the rooftop and disappeared into the crowd below.
Sung Min stood slowly. He looked out at the students again , laughing, talking, living their lives.
He had a feeling those days were numbered.
Behind his eyes, the blue fire stirred.
Sung Min didn't take the usual path to the East Wing. He moved through side corridors and older stairwells, past dust-choked windows and walls lined with faded banners , remnants of Daesan's forgotten houses.
The silver token Ara gave him pulsed faintly in his palm, cold and smooth like river stone. Every time he passed a sigil-marked doorway, it shimmered just enough to keep the wards from noticing him.
But even with the token, he felt eyes.
Not human ones.
As he turned down a narrow hallway near the archive annex, he caught it , a flicker in the glass of a display case. A reflection. Not his.
He froze.Then, slowly, he looked.
The case held nothing but an old ceremonial blade, sealed behind runes. But in the glass, there was a shape behind him. Pale. Blurred. Watching.
Sung Min turned.Nothing.
The hallway was empty
But something lingered.
The temperature dropped again, just slightly. He gripped the token tighter and moved on, faster now.
The East Wing had been closed off for over a decade, after a fire no one talked about. The hallways bore the scars of it , scorched stone, warped metal fixtures, and windows that never quite let in light.
Sung Min pushed through a rusted door at the end of the corridor and stepped into the old observatory.
It was massive , a domed room of dark stone, the ceiling above cracked but still holding, its once-rotating mechanisms frozen mid-turn. Dust coated everything. Telescopes, abandoned desks, shattered charts.
But in the center of the room, something still pulsed.
A raised platform of five interlocking circles, each etched with lines of flame script, long dormant , until he stepped onto it.
The moment his foot touched the stone, the script ignited.Blue.
Then gold.
Then something darker.
Sung Min inhaled sharply as the platform reacted, rising slightly with a low, grinding hum.
A whisper filled the observatory:
"Second flame. Second voice. Second gate."
He staggered back. "What,,,"
Before he could move, the script surged , and in the air above the platform, a shape formed.
A figure, cloaked in torn robes, face wrapped in silk and shadows. Not an Echo. Something else.
It raised its hand. Not in warning. In recognition.
"Flame-bearer," it said, its voice like coal cracking.
"You walk the path of embers. But you are not whole."
Sung Min backed away. "What are you?"
"Memory. Warning. Seal." The figure turned its veiled face toward him. "They come. The Ash-Bound. The ones who remember the fire, but not the light."
The air turned heavy. The walls trembled.
Outside, he heard it , the sudden echo of alarms. Loud. Urgent. The kind they never used during training.
Ara burst into the observatory a second later, breathing hard. "We're out of time."
Sung Min pointed at the spectral figure. "Did you see..."
"I know. It's a flame-seal. But it shouldn't have activated yet."
"Why is it talking about Ash-Bound?"
She looked at him, pale. "Because they're not supposed to be real."
The room shuddered again. Stone cracked in the corners.
From behind the door they'd just come through, black smoke began to pour in , slow at first. Then faster.
And in the center of it: eyes.
Ara pulled Sung Min behind her, drawing a narrow obsidian blade from her coat.
"We can't fight it here," she said. "Too much old magic. Too many cracks."
"Then what do we do?"
She glanced at him. "You jump."
"What?"
She stepped backward onto the edge of the raised platform , and then off, into the opening below.
Gone.
Sung Min turned as the black smoke surged forward. The eyes in it narrowed.
He didn't think.
Didn't breathe.
He jumped