Gil is a blur.
A ghost made of muscle and memory.
Steel flickers in his hands—not blades, not quite. One's jagged like a broken crucifix, the other curved like a crescent smile. Each strike lands before the commanders even register the danger.
A handful died just like that.
One leaps forward—chanting midair.
Gil sidesteps.
A twist. A palm. The man's jaw shatters with a crack like splitting wood.
Gil steps through him and lets him fall.
Seven left.
They try formation.
Chant together. Radiant runes light the air like constellation threads.
Gil doesn't hesitate.
He charges.
Straight into the blaze.
And vanishes—just long enough to make your heart drop.
Then the air behind them folds like paper—and Gil reappears, inside their formation.
By the time they scream, it's already over.
Only two still stand.
One collapses moments later—his throat cut so clean he doesn't even bleed right away.
And that leaves—
Oren.
I stand there with the realization.
"This is no mere trick, it's real"
Gil straightens. Still breathing steady. Awaiting Oren's next move.
Oren doesn't rush.
He walks toward Gil like a priest walking the aisle—measured, expectant, righteous.
"You're nothing special," he says. "Just another spark that thinks it's flame."
He lifts his hand, light coiling at his palm.
"When the gods burn the world clean, I'll be the last voice they hear."
Then Oren raises a hand.
And the world breaks open.
It doesn't start with sound.
It starts with absence.
The forest goes silent—no birds, no bugs, no breeze. The air thickens like syrup.
Then the flame comes.
Not from above.
Not from Oren's hands.
It erupts from the earth itself.
Golden fire splits the ground like roots exploding in reverse.
It climbs trees and hollows them from the inside—oak trunks crumbling into piles of ash before they hit the ground.
Animals scream—rabbits, birds, something massive in the brush—and then fall silent.
The flame doesn't chase them.
It judges them.
It finds the unclean and burns them where they stand.
A deer bursts from the underbrush, eyes wild—only to stop mid-stride.
Its flesh blackens. Bones glow through its skin like hot coals beneath paper. Then it collapses, twitching once, gone the next.
The fire leaves the clean untouched.
But the unclean?
They don't just burn.
They're undone.
And Gil?
He's on fire.
His cloak is already gone. Skin blistered. Hair blackened at the edges.
But he moves.
Faster than logic allows.
Through flame. Through judgment.
He spins past a collapsing tree, leaps between beams of light that slice through the air like divine blades.
He buries a dagger in Oren's ribs.
For one breathless moment—I think he won.
Then Oren laughs.
A low, musical thing. Like a choir swallowing a scream.
He tears his robe open.
His body is hell made holy.
Skin like dried bark—burned and healed and burned again.
Radiant runes glow beneath the char. Branded again and again until the flesh refused to scar.
And from within?
Light.
Liquid, molten, and alive.
It seeps from his pores like sweat. Glows from his eyes like twin suns.
The air warps around him. Heat shimmer turns to lightstorm.
"I do not burn," he says, voice heavy with madness. "I am the fire."
He grips Gil by the throat.
And the earth screams.
It detonates.
The blast clears a crater thirty feet wide.
Trees disintegrate. Stone melts.
A ripple of fire slams into the treeline and keeps going, carving a path of holy devastation through the forest.
A nearby cliffside ignites. Birds mid-flight vanish, reduced to falling ash.
The stars dim, like the sky itself refuses to witness this.
And when it clears?
Gil is on his knees.
His clothes char. His skin a raw patchwork.
He's not dead.
But for the first time—
He looks like he might be.
Gil drops.
His knees hit ash. His body slumps forward—arms loose, head bowed.
Steam curls from his back where flesh used to be.
He doesn't move.
Not a twitch.
Not a sound.
Just a smoking body, half-buried in holy ruin.
Oren turns.
His robes are gone, burned away to reveal the ruin beneath—scar-tissue armor etched with madness and scripture.
He walks toward me like a god returning to claim his altar.
"Now," he says, voice low and final,
"The boy is mine."
My feet won't move.
My breath won't come.
The boy stirs in my arms—fragile, warm.
I hold him tighter.
Uselessly.
And then—
"That was rude."
The voice is ragged.
Dry.
Familiar.
Oren freezes.
So do I.
Slowly, impossibly, Gil stands.
His spine cracks upright like someone winding a rusted clock.
Muscle ripples over bone—not growing, but returning, as if the body remembers how it was built and is forcing itself back into place.
Burned skin splits. Light floods through the fissures.
Then it seals shut.
One eye opens, clear and sharp, despite the fire still glowing behind it.
His chest glows from within—like his heart is a lantern refusing to go out.
He breathes once. Shaky.
"Didn't want to use this again."
His voice is flat.
But his eyes say everything.
Regret. Disappointment.
Fear.
Not of dying.
Of what this will cost him.
Oren sneers.
"This changes nothing, you insignificant worm."
Gil's fingers curl once.
A shimmer of golden heat rolls off his shoulders.
"Maybe not."
"But I know how it works now."
He vanishes.
There's no windup.
He just ceases to exist in that moment—then reappears ten feet behind Oren, dust scattering under his boots.
"You can't hit what you can't see."
Oren flinches.
Just a twitch. But I see it.
He lifts both arms—and screams.
Flame explodes in all directions.
Trees ignite. Air twists. Patches of the earth boil open.
He lashes out wildly—setting the grass, the rocks, the sky itself on fire.
"SHOW YOURSELF!" he bellows.
"I AM CHOSEN—I AM HOLY—I AM FLAME!"
He fires beams in every direction.
Craters burst open where Gil used to stand—seconds too late.
Flashes of movement. Footprints in ash. A glint of metal. Then gone.
Gil doesn't block.
He doesn't counter.
He just moves, slipping between annihilation like he's reading the fire's mind.
Oren's breath comes fast now.
His light flickers.
Not dimmer—just frantic.
"You… can't hide forever!"
Gil's voice answers, low, distant, everywhere.
"Not hiding."
"Just waiting."
Then—
A line of light.
Not an arc. Not a blade.
A single, vertical shimmer in the air—so thin you'd miss it if not for what it leaves behind.
Oren's eyes go wide.
He tries to speak.
His lips don't move.
His head falls.
Slides from his shoulders without a sound.
His body remains standing, radiant and still.
Then collapses.
"Judgment works both ways," Gil mutters.
Silent. Empty.
Burnt down to the last breath.
The light fades.
What's left of Oren crumbles—ash and cloth and something too warped to bury.
The ground is scorched for thirty feet in every direction. Trees still burn at the edges. The air crackles with heat that doesn't leave.
Gil stands in the center of it all, chest rising and falling.
Alive.
Somehow.
I can't move.
Can't breathe.
The boy in my arms is still unconscious, but me?
I'm wide awake.
Every inch of my body is shaking.
Not from pain.
From helplessness.
That man—
Oren.
He could burn the sky.
He could tear the forest open with a gesture.
He didn't fight. He judged. And the world listened.
And Gil… Gil beat him.
Came back from the edge of death. Healed himself like it was nothing. Moved faster than I could even see. Like he was made of light and rage and purpose.
And me?
I ran.
I watched.
I shook.
What am I supposed to do?
How do I survive in a world like this?
How do I matter in a world where men can split mountains and stitch themselves back together?
I'm nothing but a gutter rat with blood on his hands and a child he doesn't know how to protect.
I don't belong here.
Not in this story.
Not beside them.
I tighten my grip on the boy.
His skin glows faintly. Warm. Untouched.
I want to promise him it'll be okay.
But I can't even believe it myself.
How do you change the world—
when you can't even stand in it?