Chapter Three: The First Clue

The fire still haunts me. It follows me into sleep, creeping through my dreams, twisting and shifting as if it has a will of its own. But it is never the same. Each night, I see something new—a whisper in the smoke, a shadow moving within the inferno. It was not an accident. It was not random. There is a pattern hidden within the flames, and I am going to find it.

The first lead came from an old scholar, a man whispered about in circles of those who seek the forbidden. He lived far from civilization, beyond the reach of laws and reason, in a place where only the desperate dare tread. It took weeks to find him, to follow the rumors of his existence. When I finally stood before him, I saw not a man, but a husk—his body thin and frail, his skin resembling parchment scorched at the edges. His voice was weak, but his eyes… his eyes burned like embers.

I told him of the fire. He did not laugh. He did not doubt me. Instead, he spoke of something called the Eternal Hunger—a fire that is not fire, a force that devours not only the flesh but the essence of all things. It cannot be created, cannot be extinguished. It simply exists, waiting to be called. He claimed that those who summon it never live to tell its secrets.

I demanded answers. He only smiled. Knowledge has a price, he told me, and he would not part with his unless I paid. A trade. A memory for a whisper of truth.

I hesitated.

Then I gave him what he wanted.

The warmth of my mother's embrace, the sound of my father's laughter—stolen from my mind with a single touch. I felt the loss instantly, like an absence where something precious had once been. But I did not falter. What is love to a man who has nothing left?

In return, he gave me a name: The Tome of the First Flame. A book that should not exist, hidden in the ruins of a forgotten city. It holds the history of fire magic, the true history, the kind erased from mortal knowledge. And somewhere in those pages, perhaps, is the answer I seek.

I left the scholar in his crumbling home, his price paid, his whispers lingering in my ears. But as I stepped out into the night, I could not shake the feeling that something had shifted within me.

The fire had taken my family. Now, it was taking me.

And I no longer knew if I cared.