The Wound

Crackle of wood, hiss of sap, faces shifting in flicker. The fire was your first god. Beyond that circle lay darkness no one named. One night the flames sink low. The glare that drowned the sky dies to ember. The ceiling of the world tears open. Points of light: each one a fire that will never warm you. Your arms ache with kindling. One gesture and the warmth returns, the ceiling closes, the stars go back to nothing. The wood meets the ground.

The Path

One step back and the cold enters through the ribs and settles in the gap where warmth was. The fire shrinks to a coin of light on a vast dark floor. The cold is as absolute as the dark. When you return, you return changed. You sit in the circle and love them still, but the warmth stops at the skin. You describe what you found. They feed the fire.

The Shadow

Some hands never leave the kindling. The Devout looked up once, at nine. The void didn't threaten him. It simply had no idea he was there. The indifference was worse than any darkness he'd imagined. His neck still remembers the angle. He has not looked up since. He tends the fire long past the wood, past the ember, past the ash. He curls around what the fire left behind. Above him, the stars continue. ❖ The Illuminated steps into the dark and shatters. The infinite pours in, dissolving her edges. She reaches for the only power left: naming. A line between two lights. Then another. Then dozens – until she has chained the sky into constellations. She returns to the fire and declares: the stars have spoken, the meaning is fixed, she alone holds the key. Her disciples memorise the lines. They recite the names she gave the dark. They study the chart she gave them. Above, the sky she named goes on burning without her permission.

The Cut