The flames didn't hurt.
Not like they should have.
They kissed his skin with cruel familiarity, peeling away layers of memory instead of flesh. As if the fire itself was trying to remind him of everything he tried to bury.
Shigure didn't scream.
He didn't run.
He just watched.
The house collapsed again. The child was gone.
Swallowed.
So was the man who tried to save her.
So was the light.
Darkness folded over the scene like a final breath.
When Shigure opened his eyes, he was lying in black water. Cold. Still. Reflective.
The girl stood above him again, but she didn't speak.
She just looked at him with sorrow carved deep into her face.
"You didn't try to save her," she finally said. "Not really."
He sat up slowly, soaked to the bone. His muscles felt brittle. His chest ached.
"She was already gone," he whispered.
"No," the girl said, "you decided she was gone."
A silence hung between them. And then she asked the question that unraveled everything.
"Do you even remember her name?"
His mouth opened.
No sound.
His brain screamed.
Still nothing.
The pain came then.
Not from fire.
Not from wounds.
But from the void where a name should have lived.
He could remember the way her hair shone in the sun. The way she laughed when chasing birds in a garden. The way she clung to his sleeve when thunder scared her.
But not her name.
"I..." he began.
"You forgot her. That's the worst betrayal," she said.
Shigure stared at the black water. His reflection wasn't there. Only the girl's.
She walked across the surface like it was glass and offered him her hand.
"You can try again," she said.
"To save her?"
"To remember her."
He hesitated.
"But it'll hurt," he said.
"It's supposed to," she replied.
Her hand was warm when he took it.
Suddenly, the world shifted again.
Shigure fell.
And landed not on fire or water.
But snow.
Cold wind rushed past.
He stood on a mountaintop now, surrounded by white silence.
Ahead of him stood a boy in tattered robes.
He looked twelve at most.
But his eyes...
They were older than death.
"You again," the boy said.
Shigure stepped back. "Do I know you?"
"You killed me once. Then left me to rot in the caves of Kaeru."
Shigure blinked.
More echoes.
More fragments.
The boy raised a sword from his back. It was rusted. Cracked. But pulsing with memory.
"You forget every lifetime," the boy said. "But I don't."
Shigure braced himself.
"I didn't mean to kill you."
"You always say that."
Then the boy rushed forward, faster than any wind.
The mountaintop became a battleground of guilt.