Not yet, Please...
Pheo heard the voice again. It irritated him, couldn't he at least have a quiet death?
I need your help, I need to die...
Pheo began to ignore the voice, it's not like he could do anything in the first place.
Please, only you can do it...
Only he can do it? There are plenty of other capable people hundreds of times stronger than him there.
Only you can answer my prayers...
Pheo could feel something amidst the pain he was in. It was like his ribs split open, not from pain but from the light enveloping his body. A golden flame surged up through his lungs and into his skull. Every fibre of his being was engulfed in an impossible heat, yet he didn't burn.
He opened his eyes, his entire body was burning with a flame yet he couldn't feel an ounce of pain. The entirety of his body was quickly healing itself, bones were twisting themselves back into place.
Pheo felt invigorated, as if he had just woken up from a long slumber. He turned to Beam, noticing how he was moving slower than he was before. He ran towards him and, within seconds, was already right next to Beam.
Beam could barely react as Pheo punched him, piercing the skin that was once impenetrable. The creature panicked, trying to escape as Pheo grabbed a hold of it with both of his arms.
He tore the hole his fist made wide open, only for him to be met with another layer of metal. He kept going deeper, each time being met with a new layer. As he continued to tear his way through, the layers became more old, more rustic. Beam could do nothing but try and shake Pheo off as he continued.
After he finally tore through the last layer, he was met with the face of a human. He was confused, why was there someone at the center of Beam? At that moment, visions began to appear.
Pheo held his head as he slowly adjusted towards the sudden imagery. He closed his eyes as the pain surged in his brain like a migraine. When it finally ended, he opened his eyes to find that he was somewhere else entirely.
He found himself inside a house, it had sunbaked stucco walls that were faded into a pale, sandy beige. The entire house was a single room, small and square in size. Through a window he could see the desert that spanned as far as the eye could see.
"Tag! You're it!"
Pheo turned to see that there were two kids older than him playing inside. "Make sure not to break anything" A woman told the kids. She was stirring a pot, cooking in what seems to be a kitchen.
The walls were filled with drawings of stick figures and animals with too many legs. "Woah!" A man backed off as the kids' game of tag went straight to him. They used him as a pillar to circle around in.
Pheo stood there, invisible to everyone in the scene. The sight stopped him cold, the happy family in front of him almost felt alien. There were no polished floors, no riches, not even privacy. But there was light in their eyes and a warm smile on their faces.
His throat tightened without warning, it felt dry like the desert wing. Something inside him, a thing long starved, twitched awake. It wasn't envy and it wasn't regret. It was the feeling of longing for something, sharp and sudden, like a memory of warmth he had never actually lived.
He watched as the woman wiped flour from her cheek and smiled at her child. The father laughed at a joke too small to matter. No one was afraid of another, no one was scared of being beaten up, no one was drinking bottles of liquor, no one was frozen solid.
Then Pheo felt pain in his mind again, the area he was in suddenly turned static. It was changing, slowly but surely it was transitioning to a different scene. The noise of children's laughter and the silent hums of the mother suddenly became silent.
The fire in the clay stove had long gone out, cold ashes spilled in a gray fan across the cracked floor. The sunlight that had once steamed gently through the window had now cut across the room in a harsh, slanted beam.
Pheo turned to see that the family was still there, but not like before.
The mother was slumped against the wall, her hand still reaching towards the empty pot. The father laid face-down, with a pool of blood surrounding him. One of the children laid motionless, a large cut woven through his entire body.
Only one had remained, a teenager that had a raging silver flame surrounding him. His entire body was covered in metal fragments, all of them of different kinds. He was frozen solid, his wide eyes stared at the far wall, unblinking, as though seeing something long gone.
The bodies lay in silence. No signs of struggle on their faces, only the uncanny peace of those who had no time to scream. Pheo knew exactly what had happened then, the person he was looking at was the one who killed his own family.
Not out of rage. Not for survival. But because he wasn't able to control his power. He had heard of this before, the last person alive had gone through an awakening. When a person has first used their powers, it would be during their awakening.
During an awakening, their power spirals out of control and their consciousness fades, making them barely able to make rational decisions. Although Pheo hasn't seen many books containing information about it, he knew that anyone who was awakening was a threat to everyone around them.
What he was witnessing right now was the worst case scenaio, an unfortunate incident that leaves a person with immense guilt for something that they didn't mean to do.
Please, Kill me.
The teenage was now looking at Pheo, speaking to him. It was then that he realized the voice he had been hearing all this time was his. The person who stood before him was what Beam once was.
Ever since then, I haven't been able to control myself. After a while, Parquatz found me and held me in captivity. He used me as a weapon, a tool for his massacres. I never wanted it to be this way. Please, kill me...
Pheo snapped back to the present, staring back at the perosn inside Beam. He could now feel the pain Beam was going through, it was insufferable. "So this is what you've been feeling the entire time"
He didn't want for Beam to suffer a horrible death, he wanted for him to die without any pain. Pheo concentrated, the flame inside him started to grow brighter and brighter. The air thickened around him, a high, ringing pressure built inside until...
It ruptured.
A blending, concussive burst that tore outward in all directions hurling the golden flame like a wave of fury unchained.
"What's that?" Anora asked herself, she saw a bright light quickly coming towards her. Before she could even react, the golden flame engulfed her.
Wing, Ikra, and Ryu were climbing up the staircase. "Having a bad day?" Warhound asked him. He was barely still alive, clinging as much as he could before the inevitable happened.
Ikra noticed that the kid he had left behind was sitting next to Warhound, her eyes lifeless. He saw that they were looking at her, "She's alive, just been through some stuff" he told him, "You should go get her a therapist or something"
"And you didn't do anything to her?" Ikra asked. After watching him doing petty acts again and again, it looked out of the ordinary for him to worry for her. "Who do you take me for? I have my reasons for doing what I've done" He stated, "I don't care on what people think when it comes to what I must do"
His words changed the way Ikra viewed him. What he once thought was the scum of the earth turned out to have some decency. It made him recall his past actions, "Wait a minute, Ryu" Ikra called for him, "Did you actually lose to this thing?" He pointed at Warhound. Ryu looked confused, "Of course not, who told you I did?"
"He won the game but I could've easily killed him," Warhound told them. "Yeah right" Ryu mocked him, "Maybe next time" Warhound snarled, but he had no energy left to move.
Wing noticed it was suddenly becoming bright and looked down, "Everyone take cover!" He shouted out. He pushed Ikra and Ryu into a small crevice in a wall before being engulfed in flames, buying them a few milliseconds before they followed. "Looks like we're both out of luck son" Ikra hugged him with the energy he had left before the flames also engulfed them.
Arm grabbed a pendant with a sigil from Parquatz' dead corpse and pocketed it. He looked to Tom, he was on the ground covered with wounds. Although he was able to overpower his opponent, he wasn't fast enough to help him.
If only those kids helped him
Arm promised himself to retrieve Tom's body and went back. He saw that further ahead, a golden flame was rushing towards him. He summoned hundreds of his hands and made a blockade for himself, covering himself in multitudes of layers of arms.
In the encampment, someone was reading a comic book. "Do those things even make sense to you?" A soldier asked him. "Yes it does" Narfius responded, they were both sitting in the front of a vehicle.
"I don't get you people" He told him, "Ain't life interesting enough? Why read about these things?" Narfius sighed, "If you have to wait as much as I do, you'd do the same" The two of them stayed quiet, keeping watch over the hole.
FRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSHHHHHHHHH
The two of them watched as golden flames erupted from the shack. It howled upward, scorching the air in a blazing inferno that claws through the heavens. "See" The soldier told him, "Isn't that interesting?"
Narfius wasn't paying attention to him though, he was too focused on the scene unfolding in front of him. It wasn't anything ordinary, whatever caused that flame was someone who was leagues above everyone present.
He considered running, maybe he still had a chance to survive if he sprinted the opposite way right now. But for some reason he stayed still, captivated by the fire. It was mesmerizing, dancing in the sky as it slowly formed into a familiar shape.
Narfius envisioned the mythical creature it formed into, it had appeared in many books he had read before. It soared with wings that blaze like the sun. Every feather it had was of molten gold, with trailing sparks that shimmered in its wake.
The sound of flames made sounded like a cry, beautiful, mournful, and powerful enough to silence the world for a heartbeat. But it's greatest power lies not in its flames or flight, but in the moment of its death, when it crumbles into ash only to rise anew, bright and fierce, a symbol of renewal and immortality.
Born from its own end, it's the living promise that even in ruin, something greater can emerge. Narfius was thinking, no, he saw a Pheonix form at that very moment. He was witnessing a historical event, one that would shake the world.
They're definitely going to like this