There was no body. There was no pain. Only the memory of both.
Raka did not fall. He drifted—pulled through a weightless dark that pulsed like a heartbeat too far away to feel. There was no light here, no shape, no horizon.
Yet he knew. He existed. Somewhere. Somehow. Time didn't move here.
It unraveled.
Fragments twisted around him—not as visions, not as dreams, but as moments that remembered themselves. They flared, flickered, and folded back.
He saw his own hands covered in blood, holding a blade he hadn't drawn in this life.
He saw a mother dying, whispering a name that wasn't his—but he mourned her anyway.
He stood atop a battlefield where crows sang lullabies in a language of death.
He kissed someone in a firelit temple, then watched her eyes turn to glass.
And again...
and again...
and again...
Lives he had worn. Lies he had lived. Bridges he had become.
He drifted through the Spiral's core—not its center, but its memory.
It didn't pull him in. It didn't need to. It was already around him, layered like the rings of an old tree. Every breathless echo of war, of sacrifice, of impossible survival. All of it was coiled like smoke, waiting for him to stay.
A shape passed near him in the dark. Not a soul. Not a creature. It was memory made instinct. A crown floated beside him.
He did not take it.
A voice—his voice, older—whispered:
"You burn beautifully. But you never stay."
He kept drifting.
Kael's face flared into being.
Not the face from the Spiral breach—but younger, flame-framed, scared and angry.
Then—
Kael, in training.
Fists bleeding. Rage in his voice. "I won't let it take anything else."
Then—
Kael again, standing before a family altar. A flame crest held out. His grandfather's hand on his shoulder.
Then—
Kael, alone in a ruined corridor, whispering:
"Raka would've known what to do."
The Spiral wrapped tighter. It showed him a quiet end:
A resting place beneath the ruins.
A cradle of flame without fire.
Stillness, and finally... peace.
He almost reached for it. Almost. But something broke through.
A sound.
A laugh.
A child's laugh.
High. Clear. Free.
Like spring breaking open from frost.
He didn't know the voice. But his heart flinched toward it like a hand trying to remember how to hold.
"Papa, come on!" the voice echoed—closer, then gone again.
His soul surged forward.
The Spiral tightened, but did not resist. It observed.
The Spiral always watched bridges collapse.
It had never learned what to do when one chose to rebuild.
He drifted through shards of time.
Vel'Thara shattered under Spiral siege. Flame blooming through library walls. Lira shouting orders through blood-choked halls.
Tiv screaming glyphs he could no longer pronounce.
Sylva—standing over two fallen instructors, sword buried in the floor, screaming no.
Claire—yes.
Claire in a burned infirmary, holding a broken Ki focus like a promise she'd forgotten how to keep. Her eyes locked with something in the dark. She didn't scream.
Raka passed through it all.
He tried to speak.
He had no voice.
He tried to scream.
He had no breath.
But the Spiral let him see.
It was not mocking him.
It was showing him what needed to be rebuilt.
And again—
The laugh.
Kaelen.
A different life. A different thread. A future not yet real.
The child's laughter spun through the Spiral like light. It left no damage.
Raka reached toward it.
He could feel a body waiting for him. Weak. Cold. Small. Scarred.
But alive.
Empty.
Ready.
A presence moved beside him—shifting, serpentine, unformed. The Spiral?
No. Not quite.
A piece of it.
A mouth with no voice. A shape with no name. Watching him go.
"You will return to fire."
He didn't answer.
It moved closer.
"You are not healed. You are not whole."
Still, no reply.
Then—softly, it said:
"We remember you. Even when you forget yourself."
He fell. Not violently. Not fast.
Just… downward, through threads of who he had been.
Each one tried to tether him. None could hold.
And as his soul passed through the last ring of memory, he saw one image burned into everything:
A black spiral. Split down the center.
A choice. A burn. And a promise.
The first breath in the new body hit him like a punch.
Cold. Sharp. Too real.
Then came pain—not from injury, but awakening. The feeling of every nerve trying to remember what it meant to exist.
He didn't cry out. Just lay there, in the dark.
Concrete. Rain. A ruined city skyline. The sound of footsteps in puddles.
And somewhere, nearby—
Laughter. Small. Bright. Alive.
He opened his eyes.
And whispered,
"Not done."