Thuta hadn't slept.
The stranger's words echoed through his skull like a mantra he didn't understand. "The Fold will come for you." Whatever that meant. Whatever the Fold was. He had no idea.
What he did know: his room felt smaller now. Every window creaked. Every flicker of light made him flinch. The shadows felt alive, and the sigil on his palm had refused to dim since the break-in.
It pulsed with a heat that felt less like power and more like a warning.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, scroll unrolled before him. It had been dormant since the night before — until now.
The parchment began to shimmer.
Symbols shifted again, more frantic than before, aligning in neat rows, forming a pattern. Then, they stopped moving.
A phrase burned across the top:
"To know the key, know the war."
Thuta blinked.
The room darkened.
He wasn't asleep. But the world around him faded, colors draining from his vision.
And then — the room was gone.
---
He stood on scorched ground.
Above him, a sky split in half by red lightning. The air smelled of burning metal and incense.
Flames rained down from floating spires.
Before him: chaos. Not a battle — a massacre. Armored figures clashed in the distance, some wielding flaming staves, others coated in robes that shimmered like mirrors. Screams rose. So did smoke.
At the center of it all, a man floated. His face hidden beneath a crimson hood. A sigil larger than Thuta's burned across his chest — not carved, but alive.
The Crimson Warlock.
Thuta didn't know how he knew the name. He just did.
The Warlock raised his hand. The earth cracked open.
Creatures poured out — malformed things with alchemical brands scorched into their skin. Twisted by transmutation. Bound by unnatural fire.
Another figure — cloaked in silver — ran into the chaos, carrying a scroll.
He drew a circle of blood in the air.
And then — silence.
A wave of white light engulfed everything.
Thuta screamed—
And he was back in his room.
Gasping. Shaking.
The scroll lay before him, symbols rearranged once again.
This time, the message was clearer:
"The sigil binds both lock and bearer. To carry it is to remember. To remember is to awaken."
Thuta closed his eyes.
He was carrying memories that weren't his. Wars he hadn't fought. Magic he couldn't control.
And he had no way to stop it.
---
He stumbled outside, needing air. Yangon had never felt so claustrophobic.
As he walked, he noticed them — the signs.
A half-erased spiral drawn in dust on a street mirror.
A faint crimson mark scratched into the doorframe of a teashop.
Even the seat next to him on a city bus bore a faint stain — circular, ringed, pulsing faintly as he passed.
He wasn't imagining it. Something — somenetwork— was watching him.
He ducked into the market to escape it. Somewhere familiar. Loud. Crowded.
He spotted a street fortune teller tucked between stalls of fake jade and secondhand phone cases. The old woman looked half-asleep until he approached.
"You want reading?" she croaked.
"Sure," Thuta said.
She took his hand.
Paused.
Her eyes widened.
Then she shrieked and slapped his hand away.
"Go! GO! You carry curse! No reading! No refund!"
Thuta blinked. "I didn't even pay yet."
The woman threw a handful of salt at him.
He backed away, brushing it off. "Okay. Noted. Public readings are out."
---
Back in his room, the scroll pulsed again.
Another line burned into its bottom edge:
"If the second flame is lit, the war begins anew."
Thuta read it aloud. "What second flame?"
The scroll didn't answer.
But the sigil on his palm grew hot.
And then — laughter.
Soft. Echoing.
Not his.
He stood frozen, eyes darting around the room. But no one was there.
Only the flame.
Burning. Waiting.
---