Part 2 · Chapters
Seven Days in the Fire
An unexpected encounter opens a door. Climbing out is still up to you.
When the Primordial Ember entered his chest, Xiao Jin did not feel heat at once.
First came cold.
An unbearable chill spread from his heart. Like poisonous insects driven from their nest, the black flames fled wildly through his veins. Only then did the primordial fire truly ignite.
It felt as though each of his bones were being broken and joined again inside the flames. His blood boiled. His skin split. Yet his throat could not even form a scream.
On the first day, he saw Yan Tuo pressing him into the coal dust.
“Admit you were born inferior, and the pain will stop.”
Xiao Jin struck his forehead against the ground to stay awake.
On the second day, he was back in the trial arena.
Before ten thousand people, the instructor declared that he could never become a hero. This time no one laughed. They simply watched him burn, calmly, as if that were the ending a weakling deserved.
On the third day, Lie Ang stood outside the fire.
“Courage without strength will only get those beside you killed.”
On the fourth day, Xiao Hui fell from the hanging bridge. Xiao Jin threw himself after him again and again, always a moment too late.
On the fifth day, he saw the Ash District buried in snow. The residents pointed at him, saying Flame City would never have gone to war if he had not tried to play the hero.
On the sixth day, his blackflame self appeared again.
“Say you don't want to be a hero,” it whispered in his ear. “Just one sentence.”
Xiao Jin's mind was like paper burned through. He could no longer even remember what a hero was. He knew only that someone waited far away.
On the seventh day, Elder Ember came to the edge of the fire.
“Enough.” For once, there was no mockery in his voice. “Giving up is not the same as cowardice. You've endured longer than anyone.”
Xiao Jin opened his mouth. Only a broken whisper of breath escaped.
“Say it, and I'll put out the fire for you.”
He looked at the ground. His fingers were burned down to blackened joints. Every inch of movement felt like the torture beginning anew. Still, he slowly reached out and wrote in the ash.
The first stroke was so crooked it was almost unreadable.
Still.
Halfway through the next character, he fainted, then woke again in the flames.
Someone.
Elder Ember did not move.
With the last of his strength, Xiao Jin wrote the rest of the sentence.
Someone is still waiting for me.
At that moment, all the flames poured back into his chest.
The Primordial Ember consumed the black fire. Shattered bones rejoined. The burns did not vanish, nor was the pain erased. But Xiao Jin's breathing suddenly deepened, as though he could draw a thread of life from even the thinnest air.
After seven days, he opened his eyes.
There was still only a small flame in his palm, but it held steady, as if rooted there.
“This is Ember Breathing,” Elder Ember said. “It won't make the pain disappear. It will let you take one more step through it.”
Xiao Jin tried to sit up. Pain still beaded his forehead with sweat.
“Where's the way out?”
Elder Ember pointed beyond the hall to the rock wall whose top they could not see.
“Up.”