It was raining.
Not the gentle drizzle that whispered against windows or sang lullabies across the rooftops. This was the type that might cover up. The kind that came down in sheets, as if the world itself were trying to scrub something off.
Michael stood soaked to the bone beneath a dying streetlight. Laid over his body, his black shirt weighted regret, heavy and cold. The city behind him was a tangle of concrete and neon, but he wasn't really there anymore not in mind, not in heart.
His hands were empty.
They had once held hope.
A letter. A knife. All gone now.
He blinked slowly, silver hair soaked with rain and blood not that he couldn't tell where one stopped and the other started. Breath came out of him in shallow gulps. His ribs ached. His vision stuttered like a malfunctioning reel, and in some distant place within his eyes, he felt it:
Something inside him had snapped.
Not just his body. Not just his heart.
His soul.
They had betrayed him.
No he had betrayed himself.
He lurched forward, a step onto the road. Lights. A horn.
He didn't flinch.
There was no pain. Only cold.
Only stillness.
Then the world cracked.
The Soul Sea
Darkness.
But not silence. Not quite.
Michael drifted into a shapeless void. Nobody. No heartbeat. Only thought and even that was coming apart. Beyond him was the Sea of Unbeing, an emptiness shot through with traces of memory. He saw himself, not as oneself, but as many some old, some young, some monstrous.
An aged voice, light as air, awakened.
"Thread Severed. Candidate: Michael."
"Lawless soul. Unanchored. Fractured."
"Weave begins anew."
And suddenly—heat.
From beneath him roared blazing heat. Flames did not touch his skin, for he no longer had one, but they licked at the fundamental strands of his being, sewing together a body from ash and memory.
"You have been chosen for the First Thread: Ashborne Flame."
Michael screamed, Not from the pain, but from the becoming.
His soul went up like dry paper to a match. His regrets alight, his grief the kindling, and from them, a single glowing ring blossomed around the core of his being:
The First Thread Mark.
The Realm of Pyrrhion
Michael fell like a comet my up out of the Sea and into a sky riven by firestorms.
He struck the reddish earth hard, smoke rising around him. His body was new, raw, and unfamiliar. Embers sparked under his skin, fire in his veins instead of blood.
A wasteland of black stone, broken monuments, and fire-devoured towers extended around him. The sky was scorched. The world was bleeding light.
He coughed, stumbled upright, and stared at his own reflection in a pool of molten glass:
Pale skin. Silver hair, tinged with an orange glow. And his eyes one had changed.
Not fully. But enough.
At his iris, a faint sigil glimmered.
The Eye of Shattered Vows dormant, but to be awakened.
He didn't know where he was. He didn't know just why he was back.
But one truth rang inside him like a vow:
He would not break this time.
.....
The air shimmered with heat.
Michael hiked, slogging through burned-out canyons crisscrossed with emberlight. His boots — unfamiliar rough leather — crunched on bone-dry ash. He was still coming to grips with this body, this place, this… rebirth.
All he knew for certain was that his soul was still aching.
His Thread Mark, seared into the middle of his chest, throbbed dully under his tunic. It directed him — not with words, but instinct. Like a stray ember always blowing toward the flame.
In the distance, up on the fractured plateau, he saw movement.
Figures in ritual garb fire dancers, swathed in flame-woven cloth. They scratched symbols into the ground, murmuring ancient words. And then there's a burst — out from the ground, a monster, on the creature of man: a salamander-like beast with lava scales and smoke billowing out of its back.
A Summon.
Born from the pact. Controlled by bond. Fueled by soul.
He looked on, awestruck and a little scared.
But just before he could step closer, a voice came to him. Not loud. Not commanding. Just clear.
"You're not from here."
Michael turned.
She was beyond a very high curtain of heat. The flames bowed around her not afraid, but reverent. She wore Pyrrhion robes, but they clung to her like silk to a statue: artful, graceful. She had hair of soft gold, bright as dawn. There was an odd depth to her eyes, not sadness per say but something very old wearing youth like a mask.
And her smile mild, as if she'd met him in a different life.
He didn't speak at first. He couldn't.
"You're not on fire," she said, moving closer. That means it accepted you," Thread said.
He finally found his voice.
"…Who are you?"
Her head cocked slightly, as if deep in thought.
"I don't know. Not all of me. But the name they call me this time is Anna."
This time.
Something in Michael's chest began to contract not in fear but in recognition. Not memory. Not love. Something older. Like someone who had been waiting for her all along, without knowing it.
"You're just coming into this world," she said, extending her hand to him. "And you aren't prepared for what it wants from you. But I can help … if you trust me."
He looked at her hand. Then back at the red horizon.
Everything burned.
Except her.
And for the first time since he died, he didn't feel alone.