One hundred and twenty one: Flame under the name

Freya's pov

I didn’t fall, I was the fall.

There was no air in the Hollow Flame. No heat, no sound, no light yet I was being burned and screamed at and forged all at once. I thought I’d known pain. Thought I’d understood what power cost.

No.

This was not pain. This was unmaking.

Every part of me that had a name, a memory, a voice, it was peeling away like old skin. My fingers dissolved. My legs crumbled. My thoughts bled out into fire.

I forgot what it was to have lungs. To breathe and to love.

Then, the fire spoke but not in words.

In loss.

My mother’s hands, broken from work. My father’s eyes, gone cold in the snow. My brother’s laughter the last time he hugged me.

I relived every goodbye I never gave. Every scream I never released.

I wanted to call out. To claw my way out of the flame.

But there was no voice left in me.

Because here, in the Hollow Flame, names meant nothing.

Only truth survived.

You carry our wound. The voice was all around me. Soft and cruel, gentle and merciless