Wild embers roared around Finn, their fiery tongues lig the air with an almost feral rage. He sat hunched on the splintered wooden floorboard—the st patch that still felt stable beh him, though it, too, seemed ready to surreo the fmes. The seari bit at his skin, a slow, cruel reminder of his helplessness.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d been trapped in a burning house. He’d survived one before—barely. Back then, he’d been just a child, living with his parents. It was his father that had saved him.

  But this time, there was no escape. No voice cutting through the chaos. No arms pulling him to safety. Only the crackle of fmes and the suffog certainty that his greatest fear had e true: he would die alone.

  Had deg to live alone been a mistake after all?

  Every few seds, a loud thud, followed by a faint tremor, made his blood run cold. Though the quakes were small—barely noticeable pared to the overwhelmihey still shook him to his core.

  Was it the house colpsing? Perhaps another pipe bursting? Or maybe it was the universe reminding him of his impending doom? Each thud hammering nails into his coffin, carrying him closer to suffog or burning to death. He hoped for the former.

  He knew what fire felt like on skin. The memory didn’t offer mufort. Why did it have to e baow?

  The suffog heat while he ran, the smoke drowning his lungs. Tripping over a stupid toy he’d fotten to put away. His face falling straight into the burning wood. The searing pain—like thousands of needles stabbing into his skin all at once.

  His hand involuntarily traced the scar the fire had left on his cheek. It felt as rough as it always had. The wound had healed long ago, but now it tingled slightly, as if it had been torn open again. Strange. Was he halluating? Had the smoke already reached his brain?

  Pyrokinesis.

  That was the word the parapsychology wiki had used—the supposed ability to create fire out of nothing and trol it with the mind.

  Utter nonsense. A fabrication born of wishful thinking, g any real evidence. If there roof, it was either cleverly doctored or the result of overactive imaginations twistiy into something fantastical.

  It sat fortably alongside telekinesis, remote viewing, telepathy, and other pseudostific buzzwords—dreamed-up abilities from the pages of ic books and sce fi novels.

  At least, that’s what Finn had always believed.

  He had discovered it by act when he was a child. He’d been sitting at his desk, gring at his math homework. Numbers and symbols stared back at him, mog his frustration. Math wasn’t his strong suit—holy, no subject was.

  But as he focused on the paper, his irritation building, something shifted in his mind. A spark. The moment, the homework caught fire—just a small flicker at first, but it quickly ed the entire page, leaving only ashes.

  The ordeal didhere. His teacher didn’t buy the excuse of a mysterious fire, and of course, no one believed him wheried to expin. A kid with no homework g it had spontaneously busted? It sounded absurd. His parents weren’t spared the sequences either, dragged into school to answer for his supposed lies.

  But that i was only the beginning of their problems.

  Over the following months, Filessly tested his fire abilities. Papers, leaves, pieces of wood—nothing ared from the burnings. Even the occasional small, scurrying ihat irritated him met the same fiery fate.

  But these experiments weren’t just for amusement. They yielded valuable insights. For instance, Finn discovered that by fog ily on an object—or even ay space—he could summon a small fme. With enough tration, he could manipute it, though his trol rarely sted long. He also learhat he could extinguish the fme he had created, but only the inal one. Any fire that spread from it remained beyond his reach, burning unchecked.

  But each time he used his so-called power, it left him utterly drained, both mentally and physically. It was more exhausting than aire day at school. Often, he would fall asleep mere minutes afterward, uo stay awake.

  At first, the exhaustion worried him, but over time, he got used to it—perhaps too used to it. pcy crept in, a his guard down.

  A normal person might have feared fire, but not Finn. Fire captivated him. Some might even call him a pyromaniac. Perhaps the tendency had always been there, lurkih the surface—he couldn’t say for sure. What he did know, however, was that his newfound pyrokinesis had only deepened his fasation, turning a simple i into something far more ing.

  Unfortunately, being a young boy with no knowledge of fire safety, coupled with pyrokinesis and an obsession with fmes, was a dangerous bination. He learhat the hard way.

  It happened on the day of the sports festival. Finn hadn’t po participate in any activities—he never did—but his teachers had other ideas, f every student to join at least one sport. Begrudgingly, Finn chose volleyball, thinking it wouldn’t tire him out too much. After all, how hard could it be to stand around and hit a ball?

  He was wrong.

  By the time he arrived home that afternoon, he was utterly exhausted. His limbs felt heavy, and his mind was foggy. Still, he couldn’t resist the urge to "let off some steam" by using his pyrokinesis. Perhaps it was the fatigue clouding his judgment, or perhaps it was his teeming fasation with fire. Either way, he summoned a fme.

  Predictably, he passed out soon after.

  Worse, was that when he woke up, his room was already abze. Fmes roared around him, their heat unbearable. He could hear his father’s voice, calling for him, desperate and terrified.

  The good news was that his father had mao find him in time and carry him out of the burning house. The bad news was that it wasn’t fast enough to prevent the damage. Finn had fallen face-first onto a burning pnk, leaving a rough scar etched on his right cheek—a perma reminder of his recklessness.

  After that i, he swore off his powers entirely. He vowed o use them again.

  A, even in the wake of the trauma, the temptation lingered—a faint it the back of his mind, whispering to him, urging him to py with fire once more.

  Maybe it was the flig thoughts, the i itself, or the bination of both. Either way, something had fractured inside him, leaving his mind unsteady. It was as if his trol over his power had been shaken, transf what once felt natural into something uable and dangerous.

  Rarely, and without warning, small fires would ma around him—tiny but dangerous if left unchecked. Thankfully, Finn always seemed to sehem just in time, snuffing them out before they could cause real damage. Still, the fear lingered.

  That fear drove him to isote himself. He decided to live aloaking a job that allowed him to work from home. The fewer people around him, the safer they would be. If the fires returned, at least he would be the only one who suffered.

  And now, as fmes danced and crackled around him, that fear had e to life once again.

  Turns out pulling three all-nighters in a row to fix a buggy game wasn’t a great idea. It had been years since a random fire i, and Finn had let his guard down again.

  Just like before, he woke up surrounded by fmes and darkness. But this time, his father wasn’t there calling for him.

  Panicked, Finn immediately called the fire department, then began searg for a way out. He stumbled through the thick smoke, his lungs burning with every breath, but the seari pushed him back each time he tried.

  A few minutes earlier, the fire had been a faint warmth, like sitting near a hearth on a cold winter night. Now, it was a relentless force. It felt as though his skin was being scorched by a branding iron.

  Desperately, he tried to run, even crawl, toward different dires, only to find his path blocked by fallen beams or walls of fire. No matter where he turhe fmes kept him trapped.

  Hopelessness cwed at him. Finn was ready to give in, to let the fire take him.

  But then, a thought struck. It was reckless, but it was all he had left.

  With a trembling breath, he focused every ounce of his willpower on the wall. If he could break through it, maybe—just maybe—he could find fresh air oher side.

  He hesitated, his heart pounding. It had been so long since he’d voluntarily used his power that he wasn’t even sure if it would work. Worse, he k could make things worse. But there was no other option.

  Gathering what little strength he had, Finn summoned a fme. A small fire, barely the size of his fist, flickered to life before him and crept toward the cracked wall he’d chosen.

  If the fme could by some miracle, muster enough force, it might shatter the cracked wall. The irony wasn’t lost on him: the very power that had twiearly killed him might now be his only hope of salvation.

  His chest tightened as he watched the fme move, painfully slow.

  When the fme finally reached the wall, it barely made a differehe fme fizzled out, ed by the raging inferno around it.

  It was useless. Finn slumped to the floor, his hope snuffed out along with the fme. He had nothi.

  Beads of sweat rolled down his temples, only to evaporate before they could reach his jaw. The air was getting thicker, heavy with the acrid stenoke and burning wood. Each breath was like inhaling molten tar, stig to his lungs and making every gasp a battle.

  Maybe this was for the best. At least this way, he couldn’t hurt anyone else—not like before. Perhaps isoting himself had been the right choice after all.

  A loud thud snapped him out of his spiraling thoughts. The sound was followed by a bst of scorg smoke, searing his lungs like a dragon’s fiery exhale. Something heavy crashed to the floor just inches in front of him, the impact rattling his very bones.

  No. He ched his fists, trembling. I don’t want to die alone.

  He closed his eyes and prayed, just as he always did when he found himself in trouble.

  "Please, I don’t want to die alone. I don’t want to die."

  The heat had bee so overwhelming, so all-enpassing, that it felt almost unreal. His vision blurred, and the flickering light seemed to stretd distort into impossible shapes. The air shimmered, like the surface of a boiling pot, and he wondered if the fire had already ed him.

  He closed his eyes.

  Then, out of nowhere, the icy breath of wind sliced through the inferno, shog him back to his senses.

  He stumbled backwards, the back of his head hitting something hard aallic with a sharp g, f his eyes open.

  The sudden shift from the darkness behind his eyelids to the blinding brightness above him momentarily disoriented him. After a few seds of blinking and squinting, his vision adjusted, and he saw the source of the lights.

  Above him, multiple circles of light bore down, their intense gre almost blinding. At first, he thought they were focused solely on him—but no, there were others. He wasn’t alone.