Chapter Text
He wakes on stone.
Cold, slick stone, hard enough to bruise bone. It presses into his back like knives. His lungs fight to drag in air, but the air itself feels wrong, too heavy, too thick, like breathing smoke. He coughs and coughs until his chest burns and spits black grit onto the ground.
The sound is swallowed instantly.
No echo, no life, just silence.
His ears ring, high-pitched, drilling into his skull. Every heartbeat makes it stutter louder, louder, until he claws at his head like he can dig the noise out with his nails.
Nothing works.
He opens his eyes, slow, because even the light hurts. The world swims: gray sky, smoke curling in lazy ribbons, jagged outlines of collapsed towers stabbing upward like broken teeth. The ground is covered in ash so thick it looks like snow, except it’s bitter in his mouth and coats his tongue metallic.
The smell makes him gag. Fire, metal, rot. Charcoal that’s seeped into everything. It clings to his skin, his hair, his clothes like it’s in him, like he’s made of smoke.
He sits up on shaking arms. The stone tears his palms raw, dust filling the cuts until they sting like fire. His body feels heavy, wrong, stitched together badly. His head spins and spins until he curls forward, forehead pressed to his knees, trying not to throw up.
He doesn’t know his name.
He tries to remember but all he sees is an empty void.
He doesn’t know his name. He doesn’t know anything, actually, not a single fact about himself, and that’s impossible, isn’t it? Everyone knows their name. Everyone knows something.
He pulls at the blank space in his mind anyway, frantic. He needs to know.
And something answers.
Flashes, too bright and too fast: fire roaring higher than towers, wings outlined in flame, a voice-his voice? Screaming until it broke. Heat blistering his skin. A thousand people screaming back.
And then silence.
He gasps and jerks back like the memories themselves are flames licking at him. His vision blurs. His stomach twists.
“No,” he whispers, voice hoarse, “no, no, no, stop, I don’t—”
The ruins don’t answer.
He shoves himself up, stumbling like a newborn, knees buckling with every step. His legs shake too badly to hold him but he forces them to. The city stretches endless: skyscrapers half-collapsed, skeletons of steel beams jutting like ribs. Neon signs hang dead, their broken bulbs still humming faintly like ghosts. Entire streets gape open where the ground’s split, jagged craters filled with stagnant water that stinks of metal.
The silence is unbearable. Every crunch of gravel underfoot echoes like an explosion. Every shaky breath sounds like he’s screaming. His own heartbeat feels too loud in the hollow city.
He keeps moving, because standing still feels worse. He doesn’t know why. Maybe something’s chasing him. Maybe something’s always chasing him.
Ash clings to him, coats his hair, slips into the scrapes on his hands until it looks like smoke is bleeding out of his veins. He wipes at his face and only smears the gray deeper into his skin.
A sound cuts through the silence.
Not the ringing, not his own steps. Something else.
Shuffle of feet. Whisper of fabric. A laugh that’s wrong.
He freezes. Turns slowly.
Shapes peel out of the shadows. Too many. Their eyes glint sickly yellow in the half-light, their skin stretched tight over bones. Bandits—maybe once human, not anymore. The Lower City warps people. Starves them, poisons them. Makes them predators in a place with nothing left to eat.
They smell like rot and rust and hunger.
Tommy stumbles back, every nerve screaming. His chest heaves, throat closing.
“No—stay back, stay—”
His voice cracks, too thin to carry. They grin, jagged teeth flashing. One drags a knife along the wall, sparks spitting into the dark. The screech rattles in his skull.
He grabs the nearest thing—rebar jutting out of rubble, jagged with rust. It’s heavy, wrong in his hands, but he clutches it like it matters. His arms shake so badly it rattles against the stone.
They don’t stop.
One lunges. He swings wild, eyes squeezed shut, and the rebar smacks against a skull with a dull crack. The bandit reels back hissing. Tommy nearly drops the weapon, stomach twisting at the sound.
Another grabs his arm. Fingers like iron dig into his skin, purple blooming instantly. He yanks free only because the grip slips, sweaty and weak. Luck. Only luck.
They laugh louder. Closing in.
“I don’t even know who I am!” he shouts, voice shredded raw, and it feels like a confession, an apology, not a threat.
They circle tighter. He backs up until his shoulders slam into broken brick. No way out. The rebar slips in his sweaty grip. His vision blurs. His heart slams against his ribs so hard it hurts.
This is it. I’m nothing. Nobody. I’m going to die nameless in the ruins.
The leader steps forward, blade raised.
Tommy squeezes his eyes shut.
And the world breaks.
A weight slams down from above. The leader doesn’t even scream before he crumples—pink hair flashing, steel gleaming wet. The ground shudders with the impact.
“Step away from the kid.” The voice is low, guttural, dangerous in a way that makes the bandits freeze.
Arrows slice the air. One buries itself in the wall an inch from Tommy’s ear. Another pins a bandit’s arm to the ground before he can blink. Perched high on broken stone: a man with feathers silhouetted behind him, bow steady, eyes sharp enough to cut.
“Don’t let any of them touch him!” His words ring like commandment, a law the city itself should obey.
And then the last—tall, coat flaring as he strides into the chaos like he owns it. His grin is wicked, his voice sharp enough to slice the silence in half.
“You lot really picked the wrong day.”
The bandits falter. Some scatter instantly, rat-like. The stubborn ones stay only long enough to die for it—blade flashing, arrows whistling, voice corralling them into nothing.
It’s over in seconds. Too fast. Too clean.
Silence again.
Tommy still stands frozen against the wall, rebar trembling in his hands. His whole body shakes so hard his teeth clatter. His ears still ring. His chest heaves like he can’t get enough air.
They turn to him. Legends, monsters, gods in human skin.
The tall one kneels, coat settling around him. He holds his hands out like approaching something fragile, voice soft in a way that doesn’t match the carnage around them.
“Hey. Easy. We’re not here to hurt you.”
Tommy flinches anyway, pressing himself harder against the wall. His throat works before his voice crawls out, hoarse and broken.
“…Who am I?”
The three glance at each other. Something unreadable passes between them—grim, heavy.
The man with the bow sighs, quiet, aching, like a prayer he’s said too many times.
“…Poor lad.”
And Tommy feels the words settle in his chest like another stone he’ll never be able to lift.
Ash drifts down heavier, cloaking the four of them in gray.
The walk is too long. Or maybe too short. Tommy can’t tell.
The strangers lead him through the ruins like they’ve done it a thousand times, boots crunching sure and steady where his stumble feels pathetic. He trails a few paces behind because being too close feels like begging and too far feels like running. His hands shake so badly he keeps clenching them into fists, nails biting deep into raw palms.
Everywhere he looks the city is worse. Collapsed highways dangling like snapped spines. Streetlights bent double, glass shattered into glitter that crunches sharp underfoot. The sky is a flat gray bruise pressing low, always threatening rain but never delivering. The silence is broken only by crows perched on wire, black against black, watching. Always watching.
He tries to count steps to ground himself one, two, three, breathe but the ringing in his ears eats the rhythm.
The pink-haired man moves like a knife, cutting through rubble with no hesitation. The archer (Phil, he thinks, maybe he heard one of them say that name) scans every corner with eyes that glint like steel. And the loud one, the one with the grin too sharp to be safe he talks sometimes, mutters little comments at the others, and it always makes the air feel thinner. Like his voice can reshape the ruins just by being loud enough.
Tommy keeps his mouth shut. His throat feels scraped raw anyway.
After what feels like hours maybe days? They reach a door. Not a normal door. Heavy steel, welded into the side of a half-collapsed building, covered in scorch marks but standing proud. The kind of door that doesn’t ask you to knock. The kind of door that dares you.
The pink-haired one raps a coded rhythm on the metal. The sound echoes down inside the hollow building. Locks clang, gears shift. The door opens.
And warmth hits him in the face like a fist.
Light spills out-real light, not firelight, not neon buzz, but golden and steady. Warm air heavy with the smell of bread and oil and smoke that means hearth, not ruin. Voices, muffled but alive. Too alive.
Tommy reels back a step. It feels wrong, obscene, after the silence outside.
The loud one (Wilbur, that’s his name, he thinks) notices. He pauses in the doorway, tilts his head, studies Tommy like he’s a puzzle with missing pieces. His grin softens—not by much, just enough to show something less sharp under it.
“You coming in, kid?”
The word kid rattles in Tommy’s chest. Like he’s small, like he belongs somewhere, like he isn’t just smoke and ash. His feet move before his brain agrees, carrying him inside.
The door slams shut behind them, bolts sliding home. The sound makes Tommy flinch.
Inside is impossible.
The walls are patched steel and stone, lit by strings of salvaged bulbs humming warm yellow. Tables cluttered with maps, half-dismantled weapons, mugs of tea gone cold. A fireplace built out of scrap glows steady, flames licking safe and orange instead of wild and hungry. Shelves sag with supplies: tins, jars, bandages, stacks of books with cracked spines.
It smells like life.
And it’s loud. Voices echo from deeper in the safehouse, laughter sharp and sudden, footsteps pounding across upper floors. The air vibrates with it, and Tommy’s skin prickles like he’s standing too close to lightning.
His chest tightens. His hands won’t stop trembling. He wants to crawl back into the silence outside where nothing touched him, where nothing wanted him.
“Easy,” Phil murmurs, noticing. His voice is softer than it has any right to be. “It’s safe here.”
Safe. The word feels poisonous. Safe means letting your guard down, and letting your guard down means getting crushed.
He presses back against the nearest wall, shoulders hunched, eyes darting across every corner of the room. Too many shadows. Too many people. Too many places someone could grab him.
Wilbur crouches in front of him, same as before, hands out like he’s coaxing a wild dog. His coat pools on the floor, ridiculous and regal all at once. His grin is gone now, replaced by something quieter.
“No one here’s gonna hurt you,” he says. “Not us. Not anyone.”
Tommy’s throat burns. He wants to believe it so badly it hurts worse than the bruises. But the words come out cracked and broken:
“…I don’t even know who I am.”
The room hushes. Even the muffled laughter from upstairs dims, like the safehouse itself is listening.
Techno (because that’s the pink-haired one, he remembers now, Techno) crosses his arms, eyes sharp but not unkind. “Then we’ll figure it out. You don’t need all the answers yet.”
Phil nods, feathers shifting faintly with the motion. “You’re alive. That’s what matters first.”
Alive. The word sits heavy in his chest. Heavy and unfamiliar.
Wilbur offers a hand. Palm open, steady. “Come on. Sit by the fire. You look like you’re freezing.”
Tommy stares at the hand like it’s a weapon. His own fingers twitch but don’t move. His heartbeat slams against his ribs.
The fire crackles. Ash drifts off his clothes in little clouds, settling on the floor of a place too clean for him.
He whispers, almost to himself, “…I don’t belong here.”
And the three of them exchange a look over his head complicated, weighted, like they know something he doesn’t.
Phil answers first, voice quiet but certain.
“You do now.”
The fire crackles too loud.
It shouldn’t. It’s only wood, fire contained in a scrap-metal hearth someone had clearly welded together with care. Flames licking orange, a steady rhythm, the kind people gather around. The kind that’s supposed to mean comfort. But to Tommy, each pop sounds like a bullet. Each shift in the wood is a scream too close to his ear. His skin prickles, hairs rising on his arms, and even as the heat wraps around him, he can’t stop shivering.
He sits hunched on the ragged couch they gave him, the one nearest the fire. The springs squeal if he moves too suddenly, so he doesn’t. His knees are pulled up tight, arms circling them like ropes binding him in place. His muscles ache with the tension. Every bandage wrapped around him feels like a lie—neat white fabric layered on a body that feels filthy, ruined, ash-stained. His fingers twitch against the gauze, trembling like they’ve been wired wrong.
The others move around him in fragments. Philbusies himself at the long counter on the far side of the room, the clink of mugs and faint scrape of spoons against ceramic grounding but sharp, like each sound digs into Tommy’s skull. Techno is in the corner sharpening a blade, every scrape of metal against stone dragging across his nerves. Wilbur paces sometimes, coat swishing, long legs restless, words spilling from him like a leaking tap. None of it makes sense—questions Tommy doesn’t know how to answer, jokes that hang in the air waiting for a reaction he doesn’t give.
Tommy shakes his head, again and again, until his neck is stiff. He has nothing to give. His mind is an empty room with the lights switched off.
And the silence behind the noise the laughter upstairs, the footsteps across boards, the low hum of lightbulbs strung above makes it worse. This house isn’t dead like the city. It’s alive, humming, buzzing. He feels wrong inside it, a black smear on the warm glow.
When Phil sets a steaming mug of tea beside him, Tommy doesn’t touch it. The smell is too much: sharp herbs, smoke, something grounding. He wants to want it. He doesn’t.
“Drink if you can,” Phil says gently. He doesn’t push, doesn’t even linger. Just sets it down and moves on, feathers shifting faintly at his shoulders as he climbs the stairs.
Techno goes next, silent as stone. His gaze cuts across Tommy one last time before he disappears into the shadows. Stay alive, his eyes seem to say. Not unkind. Not warm. Just steady.
Wilbur lingers longer. He crouches near the fire, fiddling with something on the floor, humming low. When his eyes flick up, they burn too bright. “You look like you’re freezing,” he says. “But don’t worry. It’s warmer here than it looks.”
Tommy wants to believe him. Wants so badly it aches like a bruise. But the words catch on the barbed wire in his throat.
The safehouse quiets when Wilbur finally retreats upstairs. Doors creak, then shut. Silence swells.
It takes forever for Tommy’s body to relax enough to even think of sleep. He shifts, couch springs creaking, pulling the blanket tight against his chin. It smells of soap and woodsmoke, warm in a way that tugs at something in his chest some memory that refuses to surface. His eyes sting. He blinks until the sting dulls, until exhaustion drags him under.
And sleep is not kind.
The fire follows him.
It eats the city whole, climbing steel and stone like ivy. Screams swell around him, the ground vibrating with terror. Ash falls thick, coating his tongue bitter and dry. His own hands glow white-hot, light splitting through the cracks of his skin, and when he screams it isn’t words but flame, pouring out of him in a roar.
The name cuts through it all: Blazeborn.
It echoes against skyscrapers, whispered, shouted, screamed. His name, the world insists. His curse. His destiny.
And there wings. Great burning wings, feathers curling into smoke, rising from his back. He sees the glow reflect off glass, sees people scatter, sees the fire reaching for them, hungry. He can’t tell if he’s burning them or trying to save them.
The dream claws into him until he can’t breathe.
He wakes choking.
Sweat slicks his skin, hair plastered to his forehead. His hands shake so hard the blanket tangles around his legs. His throat burns raw, as if he’s been screaming. The safehouse is too dark, too quiet. The embers in the hearth spit low, the only light a faint orange glow that makes the shadows stretch.
Tommy presses his fists to his eyes. He doesn’t dare breathe too loud. His chest heaves anyway.
And then—footsteps.
Slow, steady, descending the stairs. Too loud in the silence. Tommy freezes, breath stuttering. His fists clench so hard nails bite through bandages. If they heard him—if they saw—if they knew—
The shadow that rounds the corner is tall, shoulders draped in a coat. For a second Tommy sees wings again, vast and burning, and his whole body jerks.
But it’s just Wilbur.
His hair is mussed from sleep, his shirt half-unbuttoned, the ridiculous long coat hanging loose over his shoulders. He squints at Tommy, bleary but sharp, and when his eyes catch on Tommy’s trembling form, he softens. A tired smile curls across his face. Not the knife-edge grin, not the showman mask. Just warmth.
“Bad dreams?” His voice is rough with sleep.
Tommy can’t answer. His voice is locked behind his teeth. He hates himself for it.
Wilbur doesn’t push. He just drags a chair across the floor, spins it backwards, and straddles it. His chin rests on the top rail, arms draped loose. The firelight paints him in gold and shadow, flickering across tired eyes.
“You’re not the only one,” he says after a while. “This place… it keeps its ghosts. You’ll see.”
Tommy stares at his trembling hands. Bandages white in the firelight, smudged with ash where he’s clawed them. His throat works, but the words scrape raw when they finally spill out.
“…I saw fire.”
Wilbur’s face twitches, just for a heartbeat, before he schools it into something gentler. “Fire doesn’t always mean destruction,” he says softly. “Sometimes it just means you’re still burning. Still alive.”
Alive. The word sticks like a thorn in Tommy’s chest. He doesn’t feel alive. He feels like ash pretending to be a person.
Wilbur hums, low and tuneless. Something that might once have been a song, though Tommy doesn’t recognize it. The sound isn’t sharp or demanding it’s steady, soft, filling the silence with something that doesn’t choke.
Tommy’s breaths hitch, but slowly, painfully, they start to match the rhythm. In. Out. In. Out.
His eyelids drag heavy again. He resists, fighting sleep like it’s another enemy, but the weight wins. His body sinks into the couch, the blanket pulling him down.
The last thing he sees before darkness takes him is Wilbur still there. Still humming. Still watching the fire like he can keep it alive with will alone, like he’s daring the nightmares to come back.
When Tommy wakes, it’s to the smell of tea again. The mug from last night sits on the floor, steam curling faintly, replaced fresh. The fire is low but alive. A blanket he doesn’t remember pulling tighter is tucked firm around his shoulders.
And he isn’t sure whether to feel safer or more trapped than ever.