Jumping awake, he found himself once again flung into the past—every death dragging him back to this cursed day.
"What was that? Fucking flame?" he muttered, breath ragged.
His mind raced a million miles a second. Panic clawed at his chest, but he forced it down, clinging to logic like a lifeline. Maybe it was a repressed memory. Some buried pain. A scar so deep it had etched itself into his bones. Trauma—he hated the word, hated the weight it carried—but what else could it be?
Before he realized it, too much time had slipped through his fingers. Drowsiness crept in again, thick and heavy.
And just as the darkness began to devour him—
Heat. A burst of it. Violent and pure.
A searing light blazed from within him—white flames erupting from his mouth, his nose, his eyes. But they didn't burn. They roared for a moment, wild and hungry, then faded as quickly as they came. His vision blurred with tears from the strain, from the heat.
He gasped. Air returned. Life returned.
He lay sprawled on the floor of his room, chest heaving, eyes wide.
He hadn't returned to the darkness.
He'd survived.
That could only mean one thing.
"…Aw—awakened," he whispered.
Then came the laughter. Tired, raw, echoing through the empty house like the cry of something forgotten. A broken, lonesome sound that refused to die.
But it was alive. And so was he.