I hadn’t meant to sneak out again. My mana reserves were still recovering, my body sore from too many failed spell copies and one very recent brush with a flaming barrel. But when the crimson flare ripped across the sky—a guild emergency signal that flared only when someone had very much stopped following the rules—I didn’t hesitate. My legs moved before my thoughts could catch up, my boots pounding over cobblestones slick with night dew. I knew I had no right to be running toward danger, but staying behind, pretending I was meant for filing scrolls and smiling politely, felt worse. It felt like dying slowly.
The explosion had come from the southeast ward, a place where the guild patrols were supposed to keep everything orderly, quiet, and safe. But the moment I turned the corner into the alley behind the old potions shop, I saw how quickly safety could vanish.
Flames licked up the side of a collapsed wall. Smoke hung in the air like a curtain of ash and A man stood over another, his face hidden beneath a jagged steel mask while his right arm was encased in a gauntlet that hissed with green fire. The man beneath him—a boy, really, not much older than me—was bleeding, crawling backward with a wild, terrified look in his eyes.
I recognized the attacker almost instantly. Bran the Reaver. A walking execution warrant. Word was, the guilds had been after him for months. Theft. Murder. Magical arms trafficking. He was exactly the kind of monster people whispered about when they said, “Let the professionals handle it.”
I wasn’t a professional. I was a mistake. A statless nobody.
But when the boy on the ground looked up, trembling and cornered, in that moment, the difference between right and reckless didn’t matter.
I pulled the cloth from my satchel—rough, fire-treated, meant more for smoke-filtering than disguise—and wrapped it across my mouth and nose. It wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny, but it would blur enough of my face for now. The hood came next. I tugged it low and stepped into the firelight.
Bran’s head turned lazily at the sound of my boots scraping the stone. “More trouble?” he said, voice distorted by the mask, thick with cruelty. “You? Which guild?”
I didn’t answer. Words would just ruin everything. Instead, I raised my hand, focused hard on the spell pulsing under my skin, and channeled the copied magic like I had practiced—not for power, but for control.
“Flamecoil Burst,” I said under my breath, and the fire responded like it had been waiting.
It erupted from my palm in a tight spiral of orange light, slicing across the alley like a comet. It hit him square in the chest, knocking him a step back and searing through part of his shoulder guard. His green flame flared in response, roaring angrily from his gauntlet as if it were alive.
He growled, lunged forward and swung.
I dodged, just barely, with the heat of his strike kissing my arm as it sailed past. The gauntlet’s edge clipped my ribs, the impact made me stagger, but I kept my footing. I watched the way he moved—how every swing overextended, how the gauntlet flared a heartbeat before each strike. He fought like someone who had never needed to be precise because no one had ever lasted long enough to challenge him.
That was his weakness.
I drew him forward, ducking his next swing, and stepped into his blind side. My palm brushed against his shoulder, brief and barely there—but enough.
[Skill Copied: Ember Gauntlet – Flame Crash (Lv. 1)]
I felt the magic lock into place, burning hotter than the last. His spell was more aggressive than Flamecoil Burst, more chaotic, but I understood the shape of it. He turned to grab me, but I was already behind him, channeling his own magic through my fingers.
The flame struck him in the back—less potent than his version, but fueled by his pattern. The impact sent him stumble forward as flames licked at the edge of his cloak. He roared and spun, swinging wildly, but I was ready this time. I ducked under his arm and swept his legs with a low kick I had practiced in secret hundreds of times. He hit the ground hard, with the back of his head cracking against the stone wall with a dull thud.
It was over.
I stood there panting, my breath loud beneath the cloth mask, watching the flames around the alley shrink and fade. The boy I’d saved was still sitting on the ground, bloodied, dazed, and staring at me like I’d just crawled out of a storybook.
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“Who are you?” he asked, voice hoarse.
I wanted to tell him. I wanted to say, I’m Jax. I’m a mistake. But all I did was shake my head and turn away, my heart pounding as I vanished into the shadows.
I didn’t run all the way home, but my legs moved like I wanted to. Each footfall echoed through the city’s quiet backstreets, crunching against gravel and damp leaves, carrying the heat of adrenaline that hadn’t yet cooled. My mind reeled through everything that had just happened—the way the flame had answered my hand without hesitation, the sharp breath I’d drawn when the copied spell lashed out like it remembered whose it once was, the expression on that boy’s face when he realized someone had saved him.
And then, louder than all of it, the fear.
Not fear of Bran the Reaver. Not really. That part had passed.
But rather the fear of being found out.
I kept hearing my mother’s voice in the kitchen that morning—gentle but final, the way she’d said, “We want you safe.” I hadn’t promised her anything, but I’d let her believe things. Let her imagine I was listening. That I was settling down. That I’d be someone else.
And now I was walking home with the stink of fire on my sleeves.
I took a longer route back, looping through a few alleys and changing out of my scorched tunic in the shadows behind a shuttered café. The night air bit at the fresh burn beneath my elbow, and every breath I took seemed to hollow out a little more space inside my chest—like I’d carved something out of myself back there in the alley, and left it behind to smolder.
By the time I reached our street, I’d convinced myself I could pull it off. Walk in, greet them, make tea, pretend I’d never left.
But as soon as I stepped through the door, I knew the timing was wrong.
My mother stood in the hallway, arms crossed, her robe slightly askew like she’d put it on in a hurry. Her eyes were red, the kind of red that came from waiting. Not from crying. Just sitting in silence too long, hoping the door would open sooner.
Behind her, my father leaned against the edge of the kitchen table, the same city bulletin from this morning spread wide and forgotten beside him. He didn’t speak right away.
I stood frozen in the entryway, the smell of ash clinging faintly to my skin.
“You were out,” my father said finally, not cold—just tired. He sounded like he was asking me to admit it so he wouldn’t have to pretend he didn’t already know.
I nodded. “Just a walk.”
My mother stepped forward. “We heard what happened. The explosion. The rogue spellcaster and how that boy nearly died.”
Her voice was quiet, but each word struck like a soft hammer. Not loud, not fast—but precise. Focused.
“I wasn’t near that,” I lied. The words tasted sour in my mouth, but I forced the truth back down before it could get out. “I went out to clear my head. It was stupid, but I stayed out of the guild sectors.”
She hesitated. “Your jacket—”
“I burned it during practice,” I cut in. “Last week. Trying something dumb in the woods.”
I wasn’t sure they believed me. Not fully. But doubt was a comfortable enough cushion when you didn’t want to deal with certainty. And maybe they didn’t want to believe their son—the boy who had failed his Awakening, who they’d asked to stay small and safe—might have been the one standing in that alley, cloaked and masked, wielding stolen fire.
My father finally stepped back. “You need to stop sneaking around, Jax. We just want you whole. We want you here. Alive.”
“I know,” I said, and I meant it. I didn’t want to make them worry. I didn’t want to hurt them. But I couldn’t go back to being what they needed—not when I’d finally found something that made me feel real.
“I’ll wash up,” I said, and brushed past them toward my room before they could ask more.
The door clicked softly behind me, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. My shoulders sagged and my hands trembled.
I dropped my bag by the chair, peeled off my tunic, and ran cold water over the edge of the burn on my arm. The sting grounded me—clear, precise pain that didn’t lie. Then, after wrapping it in a clean bandage, I sat at my desk and opened my laptop, needing to think about anything else.
The screen came to life and as soon as it did, Notifications blinked like crazy and my fingers hesitated.
It was already trending.
“Who is #RogueX?”
“Masked kid uses mimic fire spell on a wanted criminal!”
“Guilds won’t talk—who was that?”
“Not a recruit.There was no badge on his clothes….Is this vigilante for real?”
I clicked into the thread. Someone had enhanced the footage, slowed it down and they’d captured the moment I struck with Flame Crash, the borrowed spell bursting from my palm in a fiery spiral. It looked... cleaner than I remembered. Purposeful. Heroic, even but I knew better. I knew how badly my hands had shaken afterward. But the comments didn’t.
“He’s not registered. That spell’s copied.”
“Definitely a mimic build. Insane timing. No way he’s new.”
“If you're reading this, RogueX—thank you.”
That one made my throat tighten.
Then I saw a name I recognized.
@Strixhound, my oldest online friend. We’d never met, but we’d traded builds, theories, and jokes for over a year.
He’d reposted the clip. Captioned it:
Whoever this guy is—he’s already better than half the guilders I’ve seen in action. Hope he’s still out there.
I sat back in my chair, the screen casting pale light over my desk.
They didn’t know it was me.
But for the first time in my life, strangers were talking about me like I was something more than broken. Something worth believing in. They’d given me a name I hadn’t asked for—and yet, a part of me clung to it with both hands.
[Mirror Core Active]
[Skill: Flame Crash – Stable]
I closed the screen, with my heart thudding. Then I stared at the reflection in the darkened glass—burned sleeve, quiet eyes, a faint smile I hadn’t meant to wear.
They called him RogueX.
But that wasn’t a name. Not yet.
That was a challenge.