Hexa and Maya climbed up the nearly unclimbable wall of stone just to notice an easier passage when they got to the top. They went into the first stone structure they found.
Maya took out her flashlight to explore the place, the light shining straight into the eyes of four people who had been exploring the ruins: Remy, Hazel, Ocean and Aurora.
Once the blinding ray was pointed downwards, they got time to recognize eachoter. Hexa saw her sibling again, while Maya barely remembered any of them. She recognized Remy, but didn't know their name.
"Remy?" Hexa asked, eyes side. She was surprised Remy was there. She had barely believed they'd still be alive.
"It's me, sis," Remy responded, their lips instantly curving into a smile.
Before Maya shifted the light, shining it at the symbols on the walls instead of the floor. It got Hexa and Remy to look at them instead of eachoter.
"I get that you two know eachoter. Hexa has been telling me about you, but right now We need to get this done before sunrise.
She looked at them with a critical eye, analyzing what they could mean. All she could make up as a world burning, shattering, and a symbol of water. Maybe to put down the fire, maybe not.
She picked up a scroll that had been lying in the corner for ages and placed it on a rock that had been meant to be a table before the place became just the ruins it was now.
They opened the scroll noticed the edges of the paper were black. Ocean's fingers traced those black parts of the scroll, feeling how brittle it was. Someone had been there very long ago. He felt a sudden need to close his eyes. The world distorted.
Ocean sensed what had happened in the place. The people around him disappeared, replaced by a living image. The building they were inside was full of mechanical parts he didn't understand the purpose of. Two men in suits came inside like they didn't see Ocean at all. They placed down a suitcase and opened it with a click.
"We need to get rid of these. The people can't find out how to use our power as an advantage," the one on the right said, a small flame bursting from his finger. In response, the man on the left emptied the suitcase, three scrolls dropping to the ground.
Ocean tried to peek into one of the scrolls, but the man on the right snatched it before he could take a proper look.
"Don't just stand there. Get to work. Burn, drown, bury, or do anything to destroy these," the man on the right said.
The time warped, skipping minutes, maybe even hours. The house was nearly empty, symbols carved into the walls. The man on the right grabbed the last scroll and lit fire to the edge using just his finger. But the paper burned him back. The fire spread, leaving no one in the building standing, but the stone pillars and the scroll itsself. That's when the vivid image ended.
He looked at the scroll the others had already been looking at. He saw the symbols of fire, the word 'Embercaller', and something written in foreign languages.
One of the writings looked the oddest of them all: Polttaa, poistaa, säilyttää ja uudelleenkirjoittaa, it read. There were small symbols of fire drawn in white right next to the sentence.
"I think it says 'burns, deletes, preserves, and rewrites'," Hexa said, still doubting her own lingual skills as she translated each word.
"How do you know that?" Hazel asked, jealousy evident in her tone. Hexa opened her mouth, but Remy responded instead.
"I'm sure Hexa is right. That looks an awful lot like the language we studied the hardest. Aatos taught us his native language since we were little," they confirmed. Hexa nodded.
"But what could that mean?" Remy asked, tilting their head to the side.
"There are symbols of white fire. They could mean the Nullfire, since white is the closest color there is to nothing. It all felt like it made sense.
Burn. Delete. Preserve. Rewrite. The capabilities of the fire were deeper than known before.