Shadow in the Flame

In a cramped room steeped in the scent of aged paper and stagnant air, a 25-year-old young man sat at a rickety wooden table. The faint glow of a dim lamp, dangling from a frayed cord, struggled to pierce through the layer of dust that clung to its glass shade. The walls, once white, had yellowed with time, their corners draped in delicate cobwebs as if nature itself sought to reclaim this forgotten space. The table before him groaned under stacks of notebooks, their pages filled with tiny, nearly illegible handwriting. The sheets were crumpled, some torn, and ink had bled in places, blurred by stray drops of water—or perhaps tears. He couldn't recall the last time he'd ventured beyond the trash bin at the building's entrance. Why bother? The world outside was a gray, cold, indifferent expanse, while within these walls, he could at least pretend his existence held some meaning.

He was a hikikomori—a recluse, a willing prisoner of his own fears and disillusionments. His days blurred into an endless tapestry of sleep, cheap instant noodles, and ceaseless attempts to write something worthwhile. The novellas he crafted were his sole window to the world, though even that window was clouded and cracked. Into his stories, he poured everything he had: dreams of heroic deeds, of a love he'd never known, of a freedom he couldn't feel. Yet his words remained as heavy and unwieldy as his own life. He posted them on free online platforms, but even there, in the boundless abyss of the digital realm, his work sank without a trace. Ten views a month—that was his ceiling, likely the result of stray clicks or bots. Sometimes he refreshed the page, hoping for a single comment, but silence was his only reply.

And yet, despite it all, he kept writing. Each morning, waking with a crick in his neck from an unforgiving pillow, he would sit at the table and take up his pen. His thin, pale fingers trembled with exhaustion, but he stubbornly scratched out line after line. In those fleeting moments when words spilled onto the page, his heart—that weary, crumpled thing—would stir, beating a little more alive. He lost himself in the embrace of his manuscripts, in imagined worlds where he wasn't worthless, where his voice might matter. He dreamed of a masterpiece—a work that would wrench him from this prison, prove he was more than a shadow slipping along the edges of others' lives. But every time he reached for that grand idea, it slipped away, leaving only the bitter aftertaste of failure.

That day, something shifted. He was hunched over yet another chapter when a sudden gust of wind burst through the slightly open window. Pages scattered across the floor, and with a muttered curse, he bent to gather them. His gaze drifted to the street beyond—gray, empty, save for a few hurried passersby seeking shelter from the gathering rain. The sky was cloaked in heavy clouds, and an almost tangible unease hung in the air. Then, a strange longing gripped his chest—not to write, not to hide, but to step outside. To simply breathe the damp air, feel raindrops against his skin. It was madness, and he knew it. But perhaps madness was exactly what he'd been missing.

He shrugged on an old coat, its shape long since lost, and slipped into worn sneakers with frayed soles. The door creaked as he opened it, and a blast of cold air struck his face, freezing him on the threshold. The world outside felt alien, hostile, but he took a step. Then another. The street greeted him with the hum of distant cars and the rustle of wind-driven leaves. He walked forward, directionless, letting his legs carry him. For the first time in ages, he felt alive—not as the hero of his novellas, but as a man stepping through the drizzle.

Then came a sound. At first faint, like the snap of a twig, it swelled into a deafening roar. Around him, people screamed, scattering in panic, while he stood rooted, bewildered. A shockwave slammed into his chest, and the world shattered—shouts, smoke, blood. He dropped to his knees, gasping for air, but his lungs filled with the acrid stench of burning instead. Terrorists. The word flashed through his mind before pain tore through his body. Something sharp pierced his side, and he collapsed onto the asphalt, watching the sky above dissolve into darkness. His final thought was not of death, but of regret—that his masterpiece would remain unwritten.

Death was not the end. He awoke elsewhere, in another body, in a world beyond even his wildest imaginings. First came warmth—soft, enveloping, as though he'd been dipped in a gentle bath. Then sounds: muffled voices, the rustle of fabric, a strange rhythmic thudding like a heartbeat. He tried to open his eyes, but his lids were too heavy, his body frail and helpless. He had been reborn. An infant. A newborn in a world where the air smelled not of smoke and dust, but of something sharp and alive—metal, herbs, magic.

His first moments in this realm were marked by a cry—weak, rasping, barely audible. He couldn't see faces, but he heard voices. A woman's, laced with horror: "What is it? What's wrong with him?" A man's, quaking with revulsion: "Take it away… this isn't a child, it's a monster." His mother and father—those who should have welcomed him with love—recoiled from him as if he were a curse. He didn't know what he looked like, but he felt their fear, their disgust, and it cut deeper than the shrapnel of his past life.

His skin was cold and clammy, his body disproportionate, with long, spindly limbs that felt foreign even to him. His face—if it could be called that—was distorted: one eye larger than the other, a nose nearly absent, a mouth twisted in a pained grimace. He was a grotesque thing, so hideous that even his parents couldn't bear to touch him. They wrapped him in coarse cloth and carried him to a corner of the room, like refuse they'd forgotten to discard.

But amid this nightmare, a light emerged. A small figure with light steps and a bright voice burst into his world. She was seven—his older sister. Her dark, tangled hair fell across her face, and her eyes sparkled with curiosity and warmth. She didn't flinch or scream. Instead, she leaned over him, her small hands brushing his cheek with care. "How funny," she said, her voice free of fear, brimming with genuine wonder. She smiled, and that smile became the first ray of hope in his new life. "I'll call you little brother," she added, her words ringing with determination, as if she'd already resolved to shield him from the world's cruelty.

---

The world into which he was born was alien—not merely in its colors and sounds, but in its very essence. He didn't grasp this at first. His mind, still clinging to fragments of his past life, was too frail to comprehend the shift. The initial days—or perhaps weeks—passed in a haze. He lay in a rough wooden cradle that creaked with every shift, swaddled in cloth that reeked of dampness and something sour. His body, this absurd, grotesque vessel, refused to obey him. His arms—long, bony, with claw-like fingers—trembled when he tried to move them. His legs, thin and twisted, seemed like useless appendages. He couldn't see his face, but he felt the skin stretched unevenly across it, as though someone had carelessly stitched him together from scraps.

He had been born into the Dakota family, a prominent branch of the De-Dakota-Lastmund clan, a name that resounded through this world of swords, magic, and blood. The Dakotas were more than mere nobility—they were custodians of ancient traditions, warriors and mages whose power stretched back to eras spoken of only in legends. Their estate, carved from dark stone and encircled by whispering forests, loomed over the valley like a silent sentinel. Tall towers with narrow windows, walls cloaked in moss and etched with runes—all of it breathed grandeur. But to him, a newborn monstrosity, that grandeur was a distant echo, drowned out by his parents' contempt.

His mother, a tall woman with sharp features and cold gray eyes, regarded him as though he were a blemish on her flawless reputation. Her name was Lirena, daughter of one of the clan's elders. Her voice, sharp and commanding, quivered with disgust when she first laid eyes on him. "This is not my son," she declared, turning away, her long black hair swirling like a cape. His father, a hulking man named Xavir, bore hands scarred from countless battles. He remained silent longer, but when he spoke, his words fell heavier than stone: "He is not worthy of the Dakota name." Xavir was a warrior whose renown thundered across battlefields, yet in this child, he saw only shame.

Their revulsion was palpable. He was not nursed—Lirena refused to even touch him. Instead, he was handed to a servant, a quiet woman with weary eyes, who fed him a mixture of goat's milk and herbs that smelled bitter and strange. She didn't look at his face, didn't speak to him, merely did her task and left. From his first breath, he was an outcast, a shadow the Dakota family sought to bury in the deepest recesses of their estate.

But there was Tekra. His older sister, a seven-year-old girl with tousled dark hair and eyes that burned—not just figuratively, as he would later learn, but with literal fire. Tekra was unlike their parents. Where Lirena and Xavir saw deformity, she saw something else—a mystery, a brother, a being that belonged to her. She visited him daily, slipping into the small room where he was kept, hidden from the eyes of guests and servants. Her footsteps were light, almost soundless, but he learned to recognize them amid the estate's chorus—the clash of swords in the courtyard, the howl of wind through the towers, the muted murmur of servants.

That first time she named him, he lay in his cradle, staring at her with a hazy, unfocused gaze. His eyes, one larger than the other, could barely make out her silhouette, but her voice cut through the fog. "You'll be Wild," she said, leaning over him. Her face was so close he could feel the warmth of her breath. "Wild, like the wind in the forest. It suits you." She smiled, and her smile was bright, genuine, free of the falsehoods he would later learn to detect in others. Tekra didn't fear his ugliness—she embraced him as he was, and that became his first anchor in this strange world.

He didn't understand where he was. His mind, still tethered to memories of his past life—the room, the manuscripts, the explosion—was too weak to piece it together. At times, he thought he was dreaming, that this was just another tale spun from his imagination. But the ache in his body, the chill of the stone beneath his cradle, the scent of herbs and metal in the air—it was all too real. He didn't know what this world was, but he felt its sharpness, its vitality. Everything here was louder, brighter, more perilous than the gray reality he'd left behind.

Days passed, then weeks, perhaps months—time blurred for him, like a reflection in murky water. He grew slowly, his body remaining frail, but his mind sharpened. He began to notice details: the patterns carved into the ceiling, intertwining lines; the distant sound of horns; the rustle of servants' cloaks as they passed his room. And Tekra. She was his one constant, his window into this world. She told him stories—of the clan's warriors, of mages who summoned fire from the earth, of monsters lurking in the forests. Her voice brimmed with excitement, and he clung to it like a drowning man to a lifeline.

Then one day, everything changed. It was the day he first witnessed magic—real, not imagined. Tekra sat beside his cradle, legs crossed on the cold floor. Her fingers fidgeted with the hem of her tattered dress, her eyes glinting with mischief. "Watch," she whispered, as if sharing a secret. She extended her hand, and a tiny flame flickered to life at the tip of her index finger—small, trembling, but alive. It was no larger than a spark, yet it burned brightly, casting warm reflections across her face. Wild froze, his breath catching. He didn't understand what he was seeing, but he felt the heat radiating from that light and something else—a subtle, almost imperceptible vibration in the air.

"It's mana," Tekra said, her voice trembling with pride. "I'm not very good yet, but Papa says I've got talent. And you… you'll be able to do it too, Wild. When you're bigger, I'll teach you." She extinguished the flame, closing her fingers into a fist, and looked at him with a grin. "We'll do it together."

In that moment, something clicked in his mind. This was no dream. This was no fiction. The world he'd stumbled into was real—a realm of swords and sorcery, where fire could dance on fingertips and power flowed through the air like an invisible river. And he, Wild, the deformed child of the Dakota lineage, was part of it. For the first time since his rebirth, he felt not fear or despair, but a faint, growing spark of hope—much like the one Tekra had kindled.