Ember Born

Chapter 15: The World Find Out

By that evening, Jade's face was on every local news channel.

The footage played over and over, blurry phone videos showing him sprinting faster than any normal person could, pulling open a burning door with his bare hands, shouting a warning seconds before the house exploded. News anchors used words like "miracle" and "mystery teen" and "unexplained abilities." By morning, reporters had set up cameras right outside their apartment, calling out questions every time the front door opened even slightly.

"Is it true your son ran into a burning building?"

"Can you explain his abilities?"

"Is he some kind of experiment? A secret government program?"

Daniel had to physically block a reporter from following Mary to her car. Grace ended up letting one particularly persistent camera crew photograph her porch just so they'd finally leave, muttering under her breath the whole time about privacy.

But something unexpected happened too, something that surprised all of them.

The neighborhood didn't turn on Jade. If anything, they rallied around him. Neighbors who had watched him grow up, who remembered him as a shy little boy racing Helen on his bike, who'd seen him volunteer at the community garden every summer, stood outside their own homes and told reporters, again and again, that Jade was a good kid, a kind kid, someone who deserved privacy and support, not a media circus.

"That boy just ran into a burning house to save my neighbor's son," one older woman told a camera crew firmly. "I don't care what he is. He's a hero, and you should all leave him alone."

It didn't stop the reporters completely, but it helped, just enough that Daniel and Mary could breathe a little easier behind their own front door.

That night, once the cameras had finally thinned out, Jade sat down with his parents at the kitchen table and told them everything.

He told them about the dream with the flame, about his healing, his strength, his speed, and his visions. He told them the flame had said he was born carrying a piece of itself inside him. He even admitted he'd shown Helen his powers just hours before the fire, and that she'd promised to keep it secret.

Daniel and Mary sat in stunned silence through most of it, occasionally exchanging a look neither of them fully explained out loud.

"So all this time," Mary said quietly, once Jade finished, "since you were a baby, this has been, what, growing inside you?"

"I think so," Jade said. "I didn't understand it until the flame explained it to me. Even now, I don't understand all of it."

Daniel rubbed a hand over his face, clearly overwhelmed. "And you have no idea where this comes from? Where you're actually from?"

"No," Jade admitted. "Just that I wasn't born here. Not really from anywhere I understand."

Mary reached across the table and took his hand. "We should have asked more questions a long time ago," she said quietly. "We told ourselves it didn't matter. That whatever it was, it would work itself out eventually. I think we were scared of what we might find."

"We're not scared anymore," Daniel said firmly. "Or, we are, but that doesn't matter now. We need answers, Jade. Quietly, carefully, but we need to understand what's happening to you, and where you actually came from."

Jade felt something loosen slightly in his chest, relief mixed with a nervous kind of hope. "You mean it?"

"We should have done this years ago," Mary said. "We're doing it now."

That night, after Jade had gone to bed, Daniel sat at his laptop for hours, quietly searching through old adoption records, hotel bookings from a trip over sixteen years ago, anything that might lead them back to the orphanage where they'd first found their son.

Thousands of miles away, in the Chemari tribe, King Zeno felt it the moment it happened, a sudden, powerful surge rippling through the invisible thread connecting him to the flame's power.

He had expected the boy's abilities to awaken slowly, clumsily, the way most gifts did in the beginning. What he felt instead shocked him, control, precision, a strength and confidence far beyond what a boy his age should have been capable of managing.

Zeno stood alone in his chambers for a long time after that, his expression unreadable.

"He's stronger than I thought," he murmured to himself. "Faster than I expected."

For years, Zeno had told himself he had time, that the boy was still small, still weak, still far from ready to face what waited for him back home. That feeling had just shattered completely.

Whatever was coming, Zeno realized, it was coming sooner than he'd planned for.

He would need to be ready. Sooner than he wanted to be.

Not everyone in the story reacted with fear.

Tyler, still recovering from smoke inhalation but otherwise unharmed, insisted on speaking to reporters himself, refusing every suggestion from his own parents that he simply say nothing.

"Jade saved my life," he told one reporter directly, staring straight into the camera. "I don't care what kind of powers he has, or where they came from. He ran into a burning house for me. That makes him a hero, not a freak. Anyone who says otherwise can talk to me directly."

The clip went almost as viral as the original footage, quickly becoming the version of the story most people chose to believe, less "mysterious, possibly dangerous teenager," more "brave kid who saved his friend."

Jade, though, didn't see much of that part of the story unfolding.

While the world outside argued and speculated, Jade locked himself in his room and refused to come out.

He'd barely spoken since finishing his conversation with Daniel and Mary, retreating upstairs with a heaviness he couldn't fully explain, even to himself. Everything felt like too much all at once, the fire, the explosion, the cameras, the sudden, glaring truth that his entire life had just changed in a single afternoon.

When Helen came by that evening, worried after not hearing from him all day, she found his door locked, the handle strangely warm to the touch.

"Jade?" she called softly, knocking. "It's me. Can I come in?"

No answer.

"Jade, please. I just want to make sure you're okay."

Still nothing.

She tried the handle again, only to find it wouldn't budge at all, the metal around the lock slightly warped, as though it had been melted just enough to seal itself shut.

"Jade, did you, did you melt your own door lock?" Helen asked, half disbelieving, half worried. "Please, just talk to me. I'm not going anywhere."

Inside, Jade sat on the floor with his back against the door, knees pulled up to his chest, listening to Helen's voice through the wood.

He wanted to answer her. Some part of him desperately wanted to open that door and let her in, the way he always had before. But another part of him, a part he didn't fully understand yet, needed to be alone, needed time to sit with everything that had just happened before he could face anyone, even her.

"I'm sorry," he finally said quietly, his voice barely loud enough to carry through the door. "I just need some time."

On the other side, Helen sat down against the door too, mirroring him without knowing it.

"Okay," she said softly. "I'll be right here when you're ready."

She stayed there for a long time, long after Mary gently told her it might be best to go home for the night. And even after she finally left, Jade remained exactly where he was, alone in the dark, trying to make sense of a life that no longer felt like it belonged only to him anymore.