Ignition

Aiden stepped into his room, his footsteps slow as if weighed down by an invisible burden. The room was quiet, save for the rhythmic ticking of the clock on the wall. He approached the full-length mirror on the far side of the room, his reflection greeting him with an eerie stillness.

Aiden frowned, reaching up and running his fingers through his hair, feeling the waves shift under his touch. His fingers tugged harder, ruffling it further, as if by disrupting the neatness of his appearance, he could somehow release the tension that had built up in his chest.

The mirror reflected his wild movements, his frustration so evident that even his reflection seemed to understand. Aiden exhaled sharply, stepping back from the mirror. His body felt like it was pulsing with the energy of his emotions. His heart raced, his thoughts were a blur, and the feeling of helplessness seemed to consume him.

He wanted to scream, to break something, to lash out at the invisible weight pressing down on him; but instead, he slumped onto his bed, the soft mattress offering no comfort.

His mind drifted to the dream he had the previous night. It was vivid, as though it had been stitched into his very bones.

The image of the tree remained sharp in his memory: its twisted branches, the dark shadows that clung to its form, the sense of peace it emanated, despite its eerie appearance. He had to capture it before it faded, like so many other memories.

With a deep breath, he pushed himself off the bed and walked over to his desk. His hand hovered over the cluttered surface, pausing for a moment as he took in the dust that had accumulated over time.

The space had been left untouched for far too long.

With a huff of resignation, he grabbed a cloth and began wiping away the grime. As the wood of the desk became visible again, he cleared a small patch for his drawing, feeling the quiet satisfaction of a simple, productive task.

Once the space was cleared, he sat down and picked up a pencil, ready to recreate the tree from his dream. But as he put the tip to paper, he found himself frozen.

How could he possibly capture the twisted complexity of that tree?

He doesn't even draw.

Put him in a drawing competition along with eight year olds and Aiden would probably rank third at best.

The pencil danced across the page, but the lines came out all wrong, no matter how many times he tried to correct them. The branches refused to behave, their form slipping through his fingers like water.

Frustration flared within him again. "This is stupid," he muttered under his breath.

He crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it across the room, his anger seeping into every movement. The crumpled ball of paper soared through the air, but he didn't see where it landed.

He didn't care.

The room fell into a strange silence, broken only by the distant ticking of the clock. Aiden stood there, his breath coming out in uneven bursts as he tried to calm his racing thoughts.

Then, a faint, acrid scent tickled the back of his throat- a smell he couldn't quite place at first. It was distant, but unmistakable.

Smoke.

Aiden's eyes darted around the room, searching for the source, and then he noticed it: a thin wisp of smoke curling up from the corner of the room where the paper had landed.

His heart lurched in his chest as he rushed forward, the faint smell of burning paper growing stronger with each step. He was just in time to see the paper, now fully alight, singeing at the edges.

His hands moved quickly, slapping the paper to put out the flames, the heat from the fire still lingering on his skin.

He stared at the smouldering remnants, confusion filling his thoughts.

The fire had ignited so quickly. The sunlight had been warm, but it didn't seem hot enough to catch fire like that, could it?

Aiden stood motionless, his chest still heaving from the rush of adrenaline, his mind trying to wrap itself around what had just happened.

The room had grown quiet again, but the strange, lingering heat remained, both from the flames and from the strange unease that now gnawed at the back of his mind.

What had just happened? And why had it felt so… intentional?

-------------------------

The next few days passed in a blur of preparation, all leading up to the dinner. Aiden barely registered the time as he spent each day buried in his etiquette class, the monotonous routine offering a welcome distraction from the storm of thoughts that constantly swirled in his mind.

His days became a blur of repetition: the perfect placement of cutlery, the calculated dip of his chin, the rehearsed charm of polite conversation. It was easier this way, easier to retreat into the predictable structure of decorum than to let his thoughts stray.

Because when his thoughts wandered, they always returned to that day.

The paper, igniting without cause, its edges curling into blackened ash as though consumed by something more than fire. The Magi, their face resolute, their silence broken only by the terrible, piercing scream that rang out as the pyre claimed them. And the tree- an image burned into his mind like an afterimage of lightning. He could still feel the rough bark under his fingers, the pulse of something alive within it, something ancient.

He had thought the tree might return to him in his dreams. A small part of him even hoped for it, yearned for the solace it had offered.

But it never did.

Instead, the nights were filled with the echo of the Magi's scream. It began as a distant sound, muffled like a cry carried on the wind, but it grew louder each night until it seemed to surround him, pulling him back to the pyre.

In his dreams, he saw flames flickering in the darkness, felt the heat on his skin, and heard the raw agony in the Magi's voice- a sound so haunting it seemed to resonate in his very bones.

He would wake gasping for air, his room shrouded in silence, but the scream lingered. It clung to him, following him through the monotony of his days. He drowned it out with posture drills, forced smiles, and endless recitations of etiquette, his movements precise but hollow, his expression distant.

Yet the scream wasn't just a memory- it was alive. Aiden could feel it reverberating within him, as though it wasn't merely something he'd witnessed but something he was tied to, something waiting to resurface.

And still, the tree haunted him differently. Though it never came back in his dreams, its absence was a reminder of the calm he couldn't hold onto. Of a truth he couldn't yet grasp.

And of the growing suspicion that the Magi, the paper and the tree were part of the same enigma, like a puzzle waiting to be pieced together.