Near Death - Ashes Between Names

As the blood drains from Morrow’s chest, a fire burns where there should be none.
 
The factory is gone. The gang. The bullet. The pain.
 
Now there is only this place —
A clearing without trees, a horizon without sky. A pure, infinite void and a silence so complete it weeps.
 
At the center, a fire burns. No wood feeds it. No smoke escapes. No light is cast.
 
The fire is black, flickering to reveal a rare glimpse at the pure-white core. Light doesn't emit from this flame.
 
It twists upward like ink in water, devouring the shadows around it — and somehow, impossibly, revealing more than darkness should allow.
Shapes behind shapes. Meaning behind silence. Layers of forgotten truths.
 
Morrow sits on one side of the fire. His coat is torn. His leathers blood-wet and clinging. His hands would tremble if they could move.
Across from him sits himself.
No, not him.
The posture is wrong. The jaw too sharp, skin too pale. The eyes — knowing, wild, eager. He doesn’t know this version. And yet he always has.
 
The other speaks first in a voice low and dry as scorched vellum. His mouth doesn't move, but Morrow hears it all the same.
 
So. This is how it ends.
 
Morrow tries to speak, but all that comes is a dry cough. A copper taste. He holds his chest.
 
“No,” He finally says. “Not yet.”
 
The fire dances. It does not warm. It remembers.
 
The other tilts his head.
 
You always thought death was the price. But you were wrong. The price was pretending it wasn’t earned.
 
Morrow frowns.
 
“I followed the doctrine. I listened. I watched. I survived.”
 
You hid, the other corrects, gently. You wore quiet like a uniform. You called it loyalty. Called it wisdom.
 
The fire spits up a fragment — not a spark, but a face, burned into curling black heat, unspoken.
Morrow turns away.
 
We both know it, the other says, voice softening. The Flame isn’t made for comfort. It doesn’t light the way. It burns it clean.
 
Morrow’s lips tighten.
 
“And if I’m gone now? What changes?”
 
The other smiles. Not cruelly.
 
Then the fire finds another hand. But it would rather keep yours.
 
Morrow looks at his palms.
The blood is gone, instead, they’re blackened at the fingers. Not burned — soot. Marked. Forged.
 
You’re not done. Not until the lie crumbles beneath the ash.
 
And then the fire rises.
Not upward — inward.
 
It plunges into his chest, through the wound. Fills the space left by the bullet with something hotter than agony —
Purpose.
 
He screams.
 
The factory returns.
Concrete. Smoke. Screaming.
 
Morrow rises.
 
His chest is soaked in blood. But it steams now. Searing away. His hand tightens around an object in his left hand. A lighter.
 
The gangster who shot him falters. Morrow should have been dead.
 
Morrow doesn't pause to acknowledge his ally who brought him back from the brink. That can wait.
 
Too late, the gangster was burning now, scorched with a ball of thrown fire while Morrow was out.
 
Morrow walks forward to one of the gangsters on the factory floor.
He lifts one hand and holds it aloft, rending the air above his target, dragging a beam of black-light down onto the head of one of the gangsters. The darkness burns through, collapsing in only to ignite into a narrow bar of brilliant radiance.
The man drops.
Dead.
 
Morrow walks forward.
Not with rage. Not with triumph.
 
And in His voice, Morrow hears: This is your ignition.