The blood was still warm. But the boy wasn't.
"Ah. I got blood on my clothes," Luciel muttered.
He shivered in the frigid cold of the Federation's endless winter, wearing far too little for the weather. His frail, malnourished body didn't help his case either, so he stripped the dead man's puffer jacket and wore it as a blanket.
He didn't look like much—just another boy shaped by hunger and dust. Dark brown hair hung messily over his brow, dull with soot and dirt. But if it caught light, an auburn shimmer flickered beneath, like an ember buried under ash.
He turned to look at the dead man courtesy of his knife, his muted, gray eyes still and dead.
'Sleeping with a corpse again?' He sighed, his face blank.
The snowstorm was more severe than Luciel had expected, so he couldn't move rashly that night. This small cave in the mountains was his best bet of surviving the White Winter.
But it didn't matter. He'd lived in the Outlands since birth, far away from ordinary humanity in the Districts. He'd slept in worse places. Beside worse men. Death and struggle were essential cogwheels running this game called life, and it had been that way for thirteen years of his existence.
'Well, that's just the way of the Outlands. Nothing I can do about it.'
Life was truly fragile in the Outlands. Take this dead man, for example. He was slashed at the throat just because he tried to steal food from Luciel, and he was dumb enough to follow the boy inside the cave, to boot.
The Outlands knew no mercy. If it was in the Districts, sure, you might get pickpocketed, but your life would still be intact. Here, however, stood a lawless zone—you could die because you chose to sleep at the wrong place, for carrying a coin, or for talking weirdly. No one was normal, even he himself.
This wretched life had shaped him into a cold, calculated survivalist, but at the same time, he was ready to accept death anytime. It was a natural occurrence, so he wasn't scared of it—he just refused to end in an idiotic manner.
The snowstorm raged on, and the body had started producing a familiar stench, but still bearable. 'I should sleep now.'
He'd burn the corpse early in the morning. Snow preserved the dead—even if the man wanted a burial, Luciel unfortunately couldn't fulfill that wish.
He dragged the bloodied adult body, about two times the size of him, toward the cave entrance to make some room. Like a cocoon, he wrapped himself up with the puffer jacket and lay down on the uneven, rocky surface of the cave.
He then closed his eyes and drifted off to darkness. It swirled against his eyelids and caressed the back of his mind. The soothing nothingness had always been the same, yet this time, something appeared in the corner of his eyes.
No, his nose? His ears? His senses suddenly became jumbled—nose eating, ears seeing, eyes hearing?
Luciel then realized what was going on. 'I'm dreaming?'
He didn't expect to dream. Not anymore.
He'd always wanted to dream a comfortable life, preferably in a countryside part of the Districts, where he could live in a small, homey cottage with a tiny garden. But the Outlands weren't jewels and pearls, and Luciel had long taught himself not to hope for things like warmth, or peace, or a future that wasn't carved out of someone else's corpse.
That night, however, he was standing in a vast nothing—weightless, colorless, soundless.
Then came a voice.
"Dear..."
Soft. Gentle. It resounded and echoed, drifting like a lullaby through the mist.
Luciel's eyes, or ears, widened; he still wasn't sure if his senses had returned to normal. He couldn't move, couldn't speak, but the sound pierced the ever-expanding darkness.
"I'm here."
He wanted to respond, but words stuck at his throat. Panic flickered, not from fear, but from need. His fingers twitched in a place without a body.
'What is this?'
The void then rippled. A heavenly light appeared—feminine in shape, glowing like the moon behind silk. No face, no features, just blind radiance. Yet somehow, it pulled his heartstrings.
He reached out without thinking; his desperation shattered the bind against his spectral body.
"Aw... trying to touch me already?" she teased, her voice breaking the quiet like a smile. "I understand, dear. It's been so long."
Luciel hesitated. Confusion warred with longing. He didn't know who she was, or why her presence made his chest ache in ways he couldn't describe. But something in him—some forgotten stars of the past—wanted nothing more than to fall into her light.
"We finally found each other again," she whispered.
A strange emotion washed over him—grief, but of no memory. Like mourning someone you've never seen, yet somehow without them, life seemed incomplete and utterly dull.
She stepped closer and embraced him, leaving Luciel dumbfounded.
"I'm sorry..." her voice cracked. "I couldn't give you a proper life this time. You've suffered more than anyone ever should."
Luciel couldn't breathe. His arms moved without thought, clinging to her as though her light would fade if he didn't.
'Why does it hurt so much?' he cried out, unfamiliar with the waves of emotions crashing against his heart.
"You won't remember this dream," she said softly, stroking his hair. "I don't want to bind you to something you chose to let go. I want you to live your life freely—your own choices, your own fate. But if we find each other again... that will be enough."
Her warmth seared through him, not as fire, but as memory without memory. Before he knew it, his tears came without sound.
Then she smiled. The most beautiful smile—gentle, sorrowful, radiant.
"I left something for you."
She reached out, her fingertip blooming scarlet.
"This is your scarlet flame. The one you rightfully earned. I'm just returning it."
The moment their fingers touched, something ancient stirred the whole ethereal plane. The void backdrop burned in scarlet hue as flame flowed into him. It wasn't a power. It was a truth.
"You worked so hard to awaken it before... I was so proud of you," she whispered lightly.
And then, her tone shifted—soft, knowing, a little bit of pride.
"Even in this life, 'I' will always guide you. 'I' will speak in flame and truth. 'I' will speak for your soul. Listen close, alright?"
The light around her then began to dim, as if the flame had drained her brilliance and left only embers in its wake. Particles of light drifted away like fireflies pulled by the dark.
Luciel's panic surged. He tried everything in his power to light her up again. He tried to speak, scream, beg. But only silence drifted.
"I love you, Luciel," she said, her voice barely above a breath. "This isn't a goodbye."
A single tear fell from her fading form and landed on his brown, faded auburn hair, glimmering like a dying star. Her pure droplet cracked his skull and pierced his brain—or at least, he felt like it.
"Live well. We'll meet again. I promise."
And then the dream shattered, along with pieces of memories and light, like nothing had ever happened.
Luciel jolted awake.
Morning had already arrived to mock him. His senses slowly activated—the cold returned first, then the bite of wind, the sharpness of breath, the cocoon of a dead's man jacket enveloping him entirely.
He then sat up, dazed, and bewildered.
'A dream...?'
Yet it didn't feel like one. Dreams were temporary, easily faded. This one stuck. Not the details—those had already slipped away—but the ache. Then another came, this time his chest, like it had been caved in.
He then noticed something.
He brought a hand to his face.
Wet.
His eyes were flooded with tears. Real ones.
He stared at the quiet shimmer of water on his fingertips slowly turning into frost.
He'd never shed a tear for as long as he could remember. Not even when watching the Outlands swallow his parents whole and leave only bones and deafening pleas. He'd forgotten that.
'Then why now?'
He didn't understand it. He only remembered the warmth, the overflowing love, complex emotions.
Luciel lowered his hand, his chest tight.
And then it happened.
A sudden heat surged through his wrist. It wasn't burning, but commanding. He flinched and pushed the jacket out of the way.
Lying there was a mark of some sort. It was a circle shimmering in a faint crimson, pulsing like it had a heartbeat.
Before he could process it, a mystifying scene unraveled right before Luciel's eyes. Faint rune-like letters started forming out of thin air like firework sparks. He didn't know if it was his imagination or if it was real—but the runes were there, in the flesh. No, in the fire.
He reached out to the runes that were still rearranging themselves. Immediately, extreme heat wrapped around his fingertips, but it didn't burn—he felt warmth instead.
After some time, the runes had finally completed themselves. Even when life had given many twists and turns, Luciel could only stare in disbelief in the process. And now, the runes even made sense. He had only learned his native language and writing, but not runic language.
Yet, here he was, reading them silently in his head. It read:
Name: Luciel
Epithet: —
Flame Rank: Scarlet.
Soul Form: [Kindleheart]
Soul Resonance: [Kindling]
Soul Attribute: [Flameborn]
Soul Abilities: [Divine Flame]
Relics: —
And that was the end of it.
Luciel just stared. None of it should've made sense—and yet, it did.
'What the hell?'
The symbols weren't just letters. They carried weight, pressure, like a law passed down from something older than the world, in the depths of his existence. The moment he read them, he felt the runes settle into his bones, flesh, and blood.
'In flame and truth...' a familiar voice resounded in his head.
'Scarlet flame...' another one echoed.
Luciel swallowed hard, eyes falling to the fading runes, then down to his palm.
He thought of warmth, of love that the dream had given him. And as if answering a call, scarlet sparked to life—tiny but undoubtedly alive. It danced above his skin like it had been waiting its whole life to be summoned.
But the flame seemed much more profound than just normal ones.
A flame that didn't obey.
A flame that watched.
A flame that knew.
Luciel blinked, realizing what that entailed.
He had awakened and unknowingly become a Resonator.