“I remember everything.”

  ---

  I smelled the smoke before I saw the flames.

  The stone beneath my back was colder than death, but it wouldn't matter soon. I was already half gone — carved open by symbols I didn’t understand, surrounded by men who spoke in dead tongues. They chanted like machines, soulless and slow, their faces hidden behind bone-white masks. One of them held a crooked dagger soaked in black oil. Another held a bowl — I think it was filled with my blood.

  I stopped trying to scream an hour ago. No one would listen. No one ever did.

  The altar was made of soulwood, sacred only because it devoured the memories of those who died on it. That was the price: pain and erasure. A clean sacrifice. But I was not clean. I was Raen Ashthorn, son of a traitor. A child with a cursed name.

  And tonight, they would burn me alive to silence it forever.

  > “Child of broken lineage,” the masked elder said, voice brittle as dry parchment. “You will serve the Nether Dao. You will die in agony... and live in darkness.”

  He slit the skin across my chest, tracing a spiral that glowed black as ink in moonlight. The pain wasn’t just sharp. It whispered. With every stroke, I heard voices — soft and seductive, coiling around my thoughts like vines. I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood and iron and shame.

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  Then they started the ritual.

  ---

  Something ancient bloomed inside my mind.

  It wasn't a memory. It was a storm.

  A thousand images flashed behind my eyes — burning mountains, temples drowned in blood, gods howling as their own followers consumed them. I saw a woman with eyes like obsidian moons tear open the sky with her scream. I saw a lotus — black, endless, alive — blooming in a field of corpses.

  Then I saw me. Not as I was, but as I would be — eyes hollow, soul shattered, power flowing like venom through broken veins.

  The voices hissed:

  > "You are not dead. You are unmade. Be born again… from ash."

  ---

  The altar ignited.

  Soulwood doesn’t burn like normal wood. It sings. The flames screamed my sins into the sky. My body convulsed. Flesh cracked. Bones shrieked. I felt every nerve burn, twist, die — and then come back.

  Something inside me opened.

  Not a door.

  A wound.

  The black lotus in my soul spread its petals, and with it came clarity. The chanting stopped. The air collapsed inward. The elders stepped back — too late.

  Because I was changing.

  My soul fractured like glass — and through those cracks, power poured in.

  The mask of the nearest elder melted under the heat. I saw his real face: afraid. He tried to run. I didn’t lift a finger — he turned to ash just by being near me.

  The altar cracked beneath me. Then exploded.

  ---

  I walked out of the flames barefoot, skin steaming, symbols still glowing across my chest.

  The world was quieter. No, not quieter — emptier. Like something had left it when I returned.

  The elder’s robes burned beside me. The stars above were too bright. My heartbeat was slow. My thoughts were silent.

  I felt nothing.

  No fear.

  No sorrow.

  No home.

  Only... memory.

  ---

  I looked at the scorched bones scattered around the temple.

  My voice was a whisper, hoarse and inhuman:

  > “I remember everything.”