Raghoul's eyes cracked open. His head hurt like hell. The world was a blur of red and black. He tried to move but his body screamed back at him. Every inch of his nineteen-year-old skin felt wrong – like someone had peeled it off, dipped it in fire, then slapped it back on raw flesh.
He lay in a mess of death. Bodies everywhere. Some still looked human. Others were just black lumps. It turns out there were dozen other roots personnel waiting in ambush. The stink hit him first – cooked meat gone bad, shit, and blood baking in the sun. His stomach twisted and he gagged.
The sky above him wasn't right. Red clouds moved like they were alive, pulsing with the same beat as the pain in his skull. Earlier, birds had circled. Rats had chewed on the fresh dead. Now nothing moved. Not even the wind.
"Fuck," he whispered, his throat raw like he'd swallowed glass.
He blinked, and the world got clearer. A hand with no body, fingers still dug into dirt. A summon's head, eyes bulging. Broken armor scattered everywhere. Swords pointing up at a sky that didn't give a shit.
He tried to breathe deeper and regretted it. The smell punched him – burned flesh, guts, blood, and something else. Something like rotten eggs and ash. His smell. His power's smell. He spat black gunk onto the ground.
*I did this.*
Not a question. Just truth. Heavy truth that crushed his chest.
The clouds split for a second. Sunlight hit his face like a slap. Like God taking a quick peek at the mess he'd made.
Masashi's dying words echoed in his head:
"Fear keeps you breathing... but hate will burn you stone-cold from within."
Words that once seemed wise now felt like lies. Like salt in a wound that would never heal.
Raghoul pushed himself up. Pain shot through him. He bit through his bottom lip to keep from screaming. The fire inside him – his curse, his gift – moved under his ribs like it was alive. Like it wanted out again.
His dreadlocks hung burned and broken against his back. The scar across his collarbone throbbed. His skin split in places where his own power had broken through, leaving trails of dried blood and open sores.
Something moved. His head snapped up.
A little girl stood at the edge of the destruction. Maybe eight years old. Her dress hung in tatters. Her hair was matted with blood and dirt. But her eyes – those amber eyes – they cut him deep. They didn't show fear. They showed understanding. Like she knew monsters because she'd seen them before.
For what felt like forever, they just stared at each other across the field of dead bodies – the monster and the witness.
Then Raghoul's face split into a grin. Not a happy one. A broken one. Blood ran down his chin from his cracked lips. His hands lit up without him even trying. Red fire danced between his fingers and licked at the ground.
"BURN!" he screamed, voice breaking, arms spread wide like he was hugging the pain.
Fire exploded everywhere he looked. The vultures coming back caught fire in the air. They fell like shooting stars, melting before they hit the ground. Rats ran and burst into ash. The ground bubbled and cracked under his feet.
Raghoul laughed. Not a sane laugh. A broken, wild sound that tore through the quiet. He walked through the field like a god. The heat grew so hot that armor melted into puddles around bones.
"Is this what you wanted?" he screamed at the sky. At gods who weren't listening. At everyone who'd ever used him. "Is this power enough? IS THIS ENOUGH?"
The only answer was his own fire, now taller than trees, turning dusk to day. The sky opened up like a black mouth swallowing the sun. That old vision came back – the one from his nightmares – a huge red sun burning the earth, rivers of fire eating cities, mountains crumbling as flames washed everything clean.
His fire burned hotter than ever. It gave him a taste of power that could burn whole countries. Power that could remake the world. It should have scared him. Instead, it felt right.
He dug his nails into his palms until they bled. The ground shook under him.
"I am the plague these lands deserve," he said, voice suddenly cold. "I am the reckoning that comes when justice fails."
Then it stopped. The fire pulled back into him with a sound like the world taking its last breath. The field turned to black glass and cooling embers. Raghoul gasped for air. His body shook with aftershocks.
He stood among his dead, flames dying around his feet. He looked for the girl but she was gone – either run away or burned with the rest. He'd never know.
He didn't stop to cry. He didn't stop to think. Thinking was dangerous – it brought memories, and memories hurt worse than any wound. Instead, he walked north, following the broken road toward the old unknown faction cloning facility – a place no one went. A cursed place.
Night fell by the time he reached it. The building stood like a rotting corpse against the night sky. Walls crumbling. Windows like empty eye sockets. Plants growing through cracks.
Raghoul walked on broken glass. Each step echoed like a drum. It sounded like an army walked with him – ghosts of all he'd killed.
In the shattered mirrors on the walls, he caught pieces of himself: lean muscle, scarred skin, eyes that had seen too much. The boy who once puked after his first kill was gone. In his place stood a weapon with dried blood under his nails.
With each mirror, voices whispered back to him:
"The children—laughter torn away like pages from a book."
"The puppeteers—bones snapped like twigs beneath your heel."
"Masashi's final plea: 'Burn for something worth remembering, not just for the pleasure of the flame.'"
His vision blurred as memories crashed together: the old monk who first took him in; the monk's voice saying "You become the wound that births the flame"; the staff hitting his hands when he couldn't control the fire; the desert moon watching him practice; the black pool where he first understood what he wanted.
A sound tore from his throat – half growl, half sob. He punched the nearest mirror. It cracked, then exploded. Glass flew everywhere, cutting his face and arms. He felt nothing but release.
Red fire erupted around him. Wood beams caught. Plaster walls turned black. With each swing, another mirror shattered:
Walls hissed as flames ate old bloodstains, showing scratched words beneath – messages from people who died here long ago.
The building groaned as it started to collapse. Black smoke rolled up through holes in the ceiling.
Through tears he wouldn't admit were there, he saw a word in his blood on the wall: "RAGH'OUL." The letters seemed to pulse. The name hit something deep inside him – like it had always been his true name.
He staggered back. His chest heaved. Blood ran from cuts he couldn't feel. The flames roared around him, like they knew what this meant. This wasn't just graffiti. It was a promise. A destiny.
"Ragh'oul," he whispered. The word felt right in his mouth. Like the name he'd had before was just a shadow of this truth.
When the last mirror broke and the flames died down, Raghoul fell to his knees. Glass cut into his skin. The pain felt good – real and clean.
Tears burned his eyes and cut tracks through the dirt and blood on his face. Memories pressed in from all sides: Masashi's face the day they met; the girl's eyes watching from the edge of destruction; every person he'd killed.
One thought beat in his mind: "Let my fire be the reckoning that clears the path... and my name a promise that cannot be broken."
He stayed there until dawn turned the smoky air gray. When he stood, it was with the smooth moves of a predator who knows what he is. Dried blood made patterns on his skin like war paint. Glass stuck in his flesh like stars. His eyes were cold and certain – the eyes of someone who'd stared into hell and seen himself there.
Beyond the broken mirrors and smoking ruins, beyond the field of death and the girl who'd watched him break and reform, the world shifted uneasily. Tonight, a devil wrapped in blood-red flame walked free – and nothing would ever be the same.
As Raghoul stepped into the harsh morning light, the name echoed in his head like a promise:
--Ragh'oul. The Destruction of Sodom . The Curse of Brim and HellFire.--
He took it like a lover, and somewhere out in the wasteland, the first whispers of revolution began to speak his name.