The Child of Forgotten Flame

I. Ashes That Dream

Even after the fire died, Kasa still heard the drums.

He wandered the plains with no tribe, no name anyone remembered, and a sigil burned into his chest that none could explain. It was no symbol the old healers recognized—a broken sun with jagged edges, glowing faintly beneath his skin. At night it pulsed. At dawn it hissed.

He did not pray to it.

He feared it.

But when bandits tried to kill him, it melted the arrowheads before they touched him. When wild beasts lunged, it whispered words in his blood—and the beasts turned away.

Something ancient lived inside him.

And it was waking.

II. The God That Was Not Forgotten

Far to the south, hidden beneath collapsed stone and vines that strangled even time, a statue cracked open.

Its name had long been scraped from memory.

Its worshippers scattered or buried.

But still, the old god stirred.

Nzobalu.

The god of flame that does not consume, of thought forged in heat, of boundaries between mind and matter.

Once, Nzobalu ruled in temples carved from glassified sand, in cities that burned and never fell. But war erased him.

Until Kasa was born.

And the god's final ember slid into the boy's soul the night his village burned.

Now, Nzobalu had a voice again.

III. The Whisper Beneath

But the flame did not return alone.

Deep beneath the world, in the chasm where broken gods weep and crawl, the Devoured opened one eye.

It felt Kasa's birth.

It felt Nzobalu's spark igniting again.

And it hated it.

But it also hungered for it.

So it whispered. Quietly. Beneath dreams.

"The fire cannot protect you."

"They will fear you."

"They will hunt you."

"But I will teach you to burn them all."

Kasa did not answer.

But the whisper followed.

IV. The Pilgrimage

Kasa walked without direction, but his feet always found the high places—ruins buried in vines, towers blackened by old fire, shrines no one knelt before.

And in those places… he felt seen.

At one such ruin, an old woman waited. Her eyes were blind, but her skin carried soot markings older than the soil.

She asked no questions.

She only said:

"The god you carry was not meant to return."

Kasa stared at the flames circling his feet.

"Then why did it choose me?"

The woman did not smile.

"Because you are broken. And in the old days… only the broken heard gods clearly."

Before he could speak again, she was gone.

But carved into the stone behind her was a single word:

"Return."

V. A New Flame

Kasa reached the mountain's edge by twilight.

Below him, valleys flickered with small campfires—tribes still clinging to the world they thought they knew.

He did not know where he was going.

Only that the fire inside him wanted out.

But he would not let it.

Not yet.

He clenched his fists.

Held the heat down.

And whispered:

"Not until I know what I am."

Behind him, his shadow stretched—and for a moment, it had horns.