“Ah.”

  Pain was quite an odd sensation.

  It should have been humanity's greatest fear, the purest survival instinct embedded in their very nature.

  Yet pain had guided many to victory.

  Pain created opportunities for survival.

  Pain built as much as it destroyed.

  So Acacia could only manage a faint smirk when he glanced down to see his hands slathered in bruises and blood from his desperate grip on the railings.

  Yeah, he shouldn’t be worried. He was still human.

  With a single breath, the puppet strings reattached themselves to his corporeal form. His breathing steadied and his sweat evaporated. Any unnatural thoughts were spirited away, unknown, killed, and hidden from his conscious mind.

  The false mind became unaware of the nonexistent heart.

  Clarity returned. The boy resumed his thoughts, using the structure of the room to rush to the upper floor. Though he lacked sight to judge distances, his sense of touch told him exactly what his body was doing. With melodic steps, he made his way upstairs—nearly missing a few treads that broke his rhythmic progress—until something cold met his reaching fingertips.

  "Metal." A faint grin ghosted across his features. Without hesitation, he gripped the doorknob and gave it a sharp ninety-degree turn. It opened with a sickening crack that echoed through the stairwell. Relief flooded him when the handle didn't break off entirely. Though he tried not to dwell on it, the building reeked of decay and abandonment. The structure was clearly a decade past its prime. The dilapidated shell was all that remained of the bustling city of Oswelu—once a symbol of heaven and asylum for refugees who survived The Great Corruption.

  But such a sanctuary had been uprooted by the inevitable march of technological and thaumaturgical advancement, by the "progress" demanded by the neighboring Tachyon Empire. Those who dared oppose the Empire’s vision were crushed without mercy.

  Conform or die—that was the choice offered to Oswelu’s people. Through skirmish after skirmish, casualty after casualty, the city finally fell. All "regressives" were "taken care of." And in what might have been the cruelest mockery, the empire’s southwest province of Fiora built one of its trading port cities atop the conquered land’s bones.

  Ocarina was built on the graves of humans.

  No matter how the Empire tried to advance beyond its bloodstained past, its foundations were always rooted in taking lives for selfish gain. As long as that past existed, it would perpetually ripple through present and future like waves disturbing still water.

  Acacia grunted, acknowledging that paying attention in history class had some use in occupying his racing mind. He pushed the door fully open, and at last, his sense of sight returned to him.

  Light, something taken so much for granted, flickered through the widening gap. He turned toward that glimmer and advanced, relieved that his escape seemed complete—at least for now. The illuminated trail broadened into a beam of radiance, colors encroaching on the black room's territory. Acacia stepped forward.

  "Finally, you've arrived! What took you so long, cripple?"

  "Oh great, you again." Acacia's amusement instantly died upon seeing that the "glorious" ringleader was the only other person on the rooftop. "How'd you even get up here? This must be like two storie—"

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  "Fire. Propulsion." On command, a palm-sized flame sprang to life in Gio's hand—his sneer as repugnant as the blaze he birthed. "Connect the two, cripple."

  “...What did I even do to you?”

  “I own this city. You made a fool out of me in front of my boys. That’s enough of a reason.”

  That’s simply how it was with Gio Narma. Acacia wondered whether bedtime story villains had more complex motivations than this.

  “Seriously, you just piss me off!”

  Another ray streaked past Acacia. Not like before—it was a spear of pure flame. He barely jerked his head aside in time as the inferno snaked through the air, melting and piercing through the wall he had used for escape.

  The carnage spoke for itself. Death had taken its seat at the table.

  "At 118 degrees Fahrenheit, the human body receives first-degree burns. At 131 degrees, second-degree burns."

  Acacia grabbed his scorched shoulder reflexively, singed and marred by Gio’s assault. No doubt that dodging fire at close range many times caused his body to react badly.

  “At 162 degrees Fahrenheit, human skin begins to melt,”

  “Dude, just chill. Let’s call a truce—”

  “At this point, I’ve controlled my fire to about 140 degrees maximum.”

  Is he for real? Acacia tried to back away, but reality in the shape of a wall struck him like a hammer.

  Gio approached.

  "Hey cripple… if I actually tried, my fire could reach about 500 degrees! Haha, I could burn down this whole damn building if I wanted to!"

  The movement was blinding. Gio's free hand latched onto his prey, dragging him closer and closer to the inferno on his right. No matter how Acacia struggled, it was futile—Gio's grip was a hawk's talon piercing mouse flesh.

  Two pairs of eyes—black and blue—met.

  “...You, you’re not saying anything?”

  The boy was silent.

  "Defective even in speech, eh? You were talking so much smack before, but you're so silent now. I get it, you're scared."

  Silence.

  "Damn, you piss me off! Stop looking at me with those eyes like you're better than me! You're just a cripple—no better than the dung I step on with my shoe! The Convergence rejected you! God rejected you!" His words were a barrage, flaring with the same intensity as the flames in his grip.

  Because Acacia possessed no power, he had no right to live. That was the doctrine of the Tachyon Empire.

  For an instant, his eye flared.

  “Pathetic.”

  A deafening sound ruptured reality's domain. The world painted itself white.

  Time ceased, then resumed.

  When Acacia opened his eyes, the flames that had threatened to extinguish his life were gone. The rooftop had fallen silent. Darkness crept across the moon as midnight arrived, casting strange shadows across the scene before him.

  He slumped against the wall, exhaustion flooding his limbs. His mind was nothing but a marauding haze trying to piece together what had happened. No. That wasn't necessary. Sleep. Sleep. Sleeeeepp.

  Wait.

  His eyes snapped wide, reality crashing back with dreadful clarity. Where was Gio? What was that light? Why wasn't he dead? The fire had been right there, but now there was no flame, no new injuries. Just... what had happened—

  "...I-is this some kind of joke?!"

  But there was no joke in the sight of Gio's motionless body, lying still in a spreading pool of his own crimson. There was no humor in the way his skull had split, as an overripe fruit dropped from a great height. There was no punchline to the blood painting the rooftop like abstractions of violence.

  There was only the iron bar on the ground, stained with the essence of a human life.

  It was still…

  His hands dripping with humanity's filth.

  In the distance, he thought he heard laughter—or perhaps it was screaming. The stars continued their cold vigil overhead, indifferent to the scene playing out beneath their eternal gaze. Somewhere in the city below, life continued as normal.

  But here, on this rooftop, everything had changed. And there would be no going back to what was before.