“Fire is bright and fire is clean.”

  —RAY BRADBURY, Fahrenheit 451

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  // Fire is the oldest story. Prometheus stole it. The Joker played with it. Sometimes the best story arc is to let the world burn.

  Infernos rarely begin with explosions or grand collapses. They rarely start with a rend in the earth, even here in the Crucible with its scarred allusions to Golding’s novel. Most often, fire begins with a mistake. A pot left too long on a stove. A candle forgotten overnight. Something small, almost invisible—until it consumes everything around it.

  These fires rarely roar into life. Instead, they creep. They take hold in the silence, growing from the barely noticeable into something impossible to ignore. Relationships aren’t so different. They rarely begin with the bolt of electricity that lances from the sky itself, but with what lingers after. The flames begin from the smoke, from the smolder, a byproduct of the heat that is left untended.

  Fires in Remi’s life had always started that way. Not from a dramatic strike, but through neglect. An ember of overlooked heat, an echo permitted to spread until it consumed the entire structure of his life.

  So why would this one be any different?

  He and Nel had just crested the scar itself. They had climbed to a flat and open area that was roughly the size of a football field, at least as far as Remi could tell. Sports weren’t his thing, and grasp of sports ball dimensions came entirely from TV and the high school practice field. That's to say, his notion of the space was pretty vague, but the comparison felt close enough.

  Nel and Remi made it to the eleventy-first yard line, still engrossed in their conversation about his old course reading.

  “I always wanted to ask you,” Nel said, causing Remi to turn and look at her.

  “What?”

  “What was the deal with the boy with the mulberry birthmark?”

  Remi grinned. “They are delicious, especially when warmed over a fire.”

  “Gross!” She looked at him. “No, really, why did he die?”

  He paused to think. “He is the one who introduces the first conflict to the island. He introduces the idea of beasts, but, more importantly, he gets killed through the boys’ negligence with the first fire. They let it all get out of control, and as a result, someone dies. It foreshadows much of what is coming.”

  “That tracks,” she replied, leaning in.

  Maybe it was her attention. Maybe it was ash. Maybe he was just too busy lecturing to pay attention. Regardless of the reason, he didn’t notice the glyph until it was underfoot.

  He could have easily excused his oversight by saying it was embedded in ash, but its indented form was easily visible if he’d been paying attention. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. So when his foot rolled onto it, the flare of light beneath his foot, and the announcement blazing across his HUD came as a shock.

  

  [SYSTEM MESSAGE]

  Zone Event | Burn Vector

  Path calculating…

  

  The light from the glyph flared again, but in the shifting fuzz of static. Remi’s HUD morphed to mimic the light. It's like he had changed the channel on his grandmother’s old TV, to one she didn’t have. His vision filled with that white, popcorn static, which solidified into a view that was no longer his own.

  The static split, a small tear at first, that rolled back to reveal an overlay that wasn't his own. Remi’s perspective had shifted; it was still first person, but it wasn't his own.

  For an instant, he was someone else: a posture he knew, a jaw set in the way only Dorian’s could. But Remi didn’t just see it. He felt it. The outline of the body blurred, like a reflection in rippling water. He blurred at the edges. His muscles were taut. Why was he coiled? Then, the world jerked sideways as another shape surged forward. Elias, hollow-eyed, half-lit by firelight, and leaning too close. But it seemed that Elias was not looking at Dorian, but through him, right to Remi himself. His lips moved as though he were about to speak. And hatred flared in his eyes. But the words were swallowed by the hiss of burning, the sound of a match on gasoline.

  The overlay stuttered once more before returning to static, and finally to Remi’s normal view.

  And then it was gone.

  Remi staggered as his vision re-synced. The vertigo forced him to close his eyes or risk tumbling. Whatever he had just seen, it wasn’t a memory; it was a spark.

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  The Crucible didn’t waste echoes or memory. It stoked them.

  So when the fire started, he didn't see it at first. He felt the low rumble on the jungle floor that vibrated up his legs and rattled his teeth. He heard the nearby trees swish, as it seemed like the whole jungle breathed in. And as it exhaled, the sound was like pages crackling in a bonfire. A moment later, he felt the searing heat from behind him.

  As he opened his eyes, he looked over his shoulder to see a massive wall of fire fifty feet high erupt behind them; it cut them off from the ravine they had just exited. Before he could speak, the Crucible froze.

  

  [SYSTEM MESSAGE]

  Fire path calculated and locked. Commencing burn vector.

  Burn baby Burn.

  

  But stuck in this liminal space, Archie’s voice burst out. Remi couldn’t tell if the voice was actually in the air, or only reverberated in his skull, but it boomed with a gravity that felt larger than it had before. Gone was the casual friendly banter, replaced with something vast, something larger that the Crucible itself. It held an authority that belonged to epics, not chat windows.

  Neglect has kindled ruin. Just as the embers of the past kindle something anew. Epic journeys are often marked with trials of fire. So shall yours be! Step forward, Scrivener and Scriptbreaker.

  Before you is a door. You just need to open it.

  On cue, a light flicked on from the sky to illuminate a small circle of space. At the fire end of the field of ash before him. The gray char swirled, as if stirred by an unseen wind. Spinning to reveal a golden door with two large lock holes.

  

  [NEW QUEST: Locks & Keys]

  Objective: Enter the Great Hall.

  Requirements: Fetch the two keys. Unlock the Safe Room entrance.

  As the announcement faded, two key icons blinked onto Remi’s mini-map. The setup was almost theatrical, laid out like a compass. He and Nel were positioned at the S, with the door to the N, and the keys pulsing on the far E and W edges of the ash field.

  There is only one escape.

  The wall of fire didn’t stay behind them; it surged forward from its two edges. It raced along the edges of the ash-field, along the treeline, until the sides of the space were also burning. As it reached the end, the two walls turned sharply, racing to meet at the door. The entire space was now rimed in fire, a blazing square of fifty-foot curtains that hissed and roared, hemming them in. The jungle beyond was gone, replaced by the shifting perimeter of orange. It tossed an uncomfortable heat that shimmered like sunlight on glass, as light wavered and bent, as though the world inside the box were melting under the heat.

  Remi inhaled, his throat clawed by stinging smoke. The air clung thick to his tongue, acrid and acidic, as if every gulp was lined with metal filings. Sweat ran slick down his arms, carrying flecks of ash that stuck and smeared against his skin like ink stains.

  Even the ground reignited with life, as light leaped from cracks in the ash. As the previously hidden undergrowth sprang back to fiery light, as it too glowed faintly beneath his boots.

  There was no path backward, and no escape from the edges. No retreat. No escape. The only way forward was through the compass-set area. First to the east and west to grab the keys, and then to the door. At least the path was open, Remi thought to himself.

  His first thought was quickly followed by its counter: this is too damn easy. In stories, when something looks too straightforward, it never really is. Sadly, Archie agreed.

  [AI]: I’m guessing you are thinking this all appears too easy.

  Remi: No. The firewall is scary enough. I’ll just grab the keys and go.

  [AI]: You are a terrible liar, Remi. And the Crucible cares not for your comfort. St. Catherine said, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” I am nothing if not a giver.

  Remi: Fine. Just spring the damn trap you’re setting, so I can get out of this hellscape.

  Archie didn’t respond, but the Crucible did. As another wall sprang upwards, this time it came from right below him and Nel. They each dove to the side to escape getting incinerated. The wall split them. Nel vanished behind flame. As the field bent inward, it formed two parallel corridors of fire, identical in shape, in order to force the separated pair to proceed forward alone.

  Remi was fast. Fast enough not to die, but not fast enough to get out of the way pain-free. Pain lanced up his legs as the flames and radiating heat blasted him. His HUD flashed crimson as his HP bar, which had been at 315, dropped 15% suddenly. Just then, the stakes ring pulsed, filling entirely.

  They were now cut off from each other. Locked in individual boxes of flame, but it didn’t last. As just to his left, another wall leaped forward from the back wall to shoot forward into the distance. It was close, but not enough to do damage. Remi was now in a corridor of flame, his only route a narrow line straight ahead.

  Through the roar and crackle, he thought he caught the rhythm of another exhalation. Another wall being blown into existence nearby. Nel’s corridor, he realized. The maze was mirroring itself, boxing them both into separate throats of fire.

  Remi took a step toward where Nel should have been, but crashed into a wall of heat. He needed to confirm; he needed to be certain of what was happening. Talking wasn't an option, so he thought about the custom chat window she had set up for them.

  Remi: Nel, are you okay? Are you also on a fire pathway?

  Nel: Yes. Heat is messing with pathing diagnostics. The only choice is forward.

  As if to motivate them, the jungle seemed to breathe again. This caused the rear wall to crawl forward about 5 yards, halving their available safe space. As Remi registered its movement, he flinched at the heat and at the flame’s inexorable advancement. The wall didn’t stop. It kept creeping toward him, yard by yard, forcing him into motion as it clawed closer to where he was standing.

  He turned to face the long corridor of fire ahead. The path before him funneled tighter, narrowing his vision until it fixed on a point about 20 yards away. Into this space, a creature stepped out of the flames. Less man than ember; it was flame given form.

  Its body was a lattice of charred wood, cracked with veins that glowed with molten fire. Even at this distance, Remi could see the heat ripple off it in waves, which caused its outline to blur, giving it a sense of half-existence. Trapped in the space between blaze and being.

  The surrounding flames whispered and cracked, a thousand pages curling in a furnace. The corridor bellowed like a forge, low and thunderous, pushing waves of heat through the corridor until his ears rang with the sound of burning paper.

  He examined it.

  

  FIREBRAND

  

  HP: 451 / 451

  Neglect made flesh. This is flame given will. It does not burn—it consumes.

  

  Resists: Blunt force

  Its face was like an open coal furnace, with firelight licking out through the gaps of its charred mask. Its eyes were not eyes at all, but coals that flared with each step. As it walked towards Remi, he saw that each footfall inexplicably left a scorched mark in the ash.

  The fire pressed in from all sides. Remi was being squeezed in a vise of flame. He drew his rune of summoning in the air. After three seconds, the familiar weight of his meter stick dropped into his hand. He wasn't sure how effective a stick would be against something that shrugged off blunt force beat downs, but—as always—he would figure it out as he went.

  One way or another, he was certain; he was going to kick this thing’s ash!