Pain isn’t fire. Fire is alive. Pain is sterile.

The pylons screamed and the world turned white.

It felt like someone had reached inside my chest and wrapped barbed wire around the mark, tightening it with mechanical precision. The field didn’t burn me, it compressed me. Crushed the frequency that had just learned to breathe.

I dropped to my knees.

The molten creature roared beside me, its body flickering unstable gold. Wolves across the clearing staggered as the silver lattice expanded ...