The dream was too vivid to be a dream.
Thuta was small again. Maybe seven. The orphanage was burning.
Flames danced along the ceiling. Smoke coiled like black fingers through the halls. Screams echoed — voices he couldn't place anymore, faces erased by time. He stood at the edge of it all, barefoot on the cold stone floor, watching the world collapse in fire.
But the fire didn't touch him.
It swirled around his feet like it knew him. It licked at the doors, the windows, the beds — but curled away from him. At the center of the room, someone had carved a circle into the floor. A spiral surrounded by faint outer rings.
He didn't know what it meant back then.
Now he did.
The Crimson Sigil.
He woke with a gasp.
His room was dark, save for the faint red glow of the mark on his hand.
He sat up slowly, chest heaving.
The dream wasn't new. He'd had it before — years ago. But this was the first time he recognized the symbol.
Was that where it began?
Had he been marked before he even understood what it meant?
He stared at his hand. The sigil pulsed gently. Not urgent. Just… present. As if to say: You're remembering. Good.
---
U Sein Myint was still missing. His office remained locked, the damage still unrepaired.
Thuta wandered through the quieter wings of the university library, hoping for something — anything — that might explain what he'd seen.
He didn't find answers.
But he found a fragment.
A page torn from a scorched book, buried beneath a pile of discarded scrolls. It smelled faintly of incense and ash. The ink was faded but legible.
"In rare cases, children untouched by fire during sacrificial events were recorded as vessels. Not chosen — but found. They would bear fragments of the flame's echo. Empty enough to carry it."
Thuta froze.
Untouched by fire. Empty enough to carry it.
"Is that what I am?" he muttered. "A container?"
He leaned against the wall, heart pounding.
Memories slipped in through the cracks. The orphanage staff always kept their distance. The others got adopted. Not him. He'd thought it was because he was moody. Too smart. Too strange.
Now he wondered if someone had made sure he stayed behind.
---
That night, he returned home and didn't bother turning on the lights.
He sat on the floor with the scroll, staring at it.
"I didn't ask for this," he whispered.
The sigil burned.
Heat poured from his palm, then lifted. It shimmered in the air like steam, coiling upward toward the wall.
And there — seared into the plaster — appeared words.
"The fire chose you because you were empty."
Thuta swallowed.
"Thanks," he muttered. "That makes me feel great."
But he couldn't deny it anymore.
Everything pointed to one truth:
He was never meant to live a normal life.
Not after that night in the orphanage.
Not after the sigil chose him.
Not now.
---
He stood in front of a dusty map pinned above his desk. His eyes followed the faded line westward — past Mandalay, past hills and rivers, toward the mark now etched onto the scroll.
Sagaing.
The place of the next seal.
If it was even there.
He didn't care anymore.
He had no family. No plan. No safe place. No real future.
But he had the flame.
And the flame had a direction.
---
He paid for the cargo truck in cash, using a name that wasn't his.
The driver didn't ask questions. Thuta sat in the back with sacks of onions, an old bicycle frame, and a sack of sleeping dogs.
The road was bumpy, the air smelled like garlic and wet rope.
But it was quiet.
He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall of the truck.
"If I was born in fire," he whispered, "maybe I'll find answers in the ash."
Behind him, in the folds of his satchel, the scroll warmed.
Waiting.
-----