Born to burn

8. WHAT WAS BURIED II. ___________________________

FEZ’S PLACE – 3:45 A.M. TUESDAY.

•

„And now? One’s back.” Ash muttered, eyes fixed on the glowing screen in front of him. Fez didn’t move. He just shook his head slowly, like the truth tasted like ash on his tongue.

„The g.enocide wasn’t successful. But no one talks about it. You don’t erase Fujiwara. They erase you.” His voice dropped to a whisper. The room felt colder somehow. Kimi stopped pacing.

„The ones that survived hid in the shadows. Hunted one by one. But they still exist…” Fez’s stare was unfocused, like he could see through time. Ash leaned in.

„So how many are there, besides Phoenix?” Fez looked down at the encrypted file like it was breathing.

„Himari had two brothers. Haruto. Kaito. Born of four bloodlines each… Demon. Mage. Siren. Unseelie Fae. Experimental hybrids. They shouldn’t have survived infancy, but they did and they didn’t just survive. They grew powerful. Too powerful.” Kimi’s breath caught.

„The Council panicked. Issued the Purity Codex. Said it was about balance and magical stability. But we all know what it was. A culling. A legal framework for g******e. Any hybrid outside the sanctioned tiers? Eliminated. No trials. Just erasure.” Fez nodded grimly.

„And the Fujiwara? They weren’t hybrids by accident. They were forged. Each generation is more dangerous than the last. Not just tolerated bloodlines. Chosen ones. Spliced. Tempered.” He almost whispered.

„Blood magic on purpose.” Ash added quietly.

„And when Himari disappeared… they called it a victory, but they were wrong.” Fez flipped to the next page.

„The Council didn’t just miss something. They missed her daughter.” Ash swore under his breath.

„I found more.” Kimi spun around.

„What?!” Ash’s voice dropped.

„She had two brothers… yes. Haruto and Kaito. But that’s not all.” Fez froze.

„Clan heirs. One wind. One earth. Born into a bloodline that taught discipline with blades and memory through pain. They weren’t sons. They were rituals given names.” Kimi’s mouth was a thin line. Fez read aloud from the next file.

„Kaito. The laughing wound. Earth-blooded. Went rogue after Himari vanished. Killed the priest during his succession trial. Took his heart and spat blood into the family bowl. Then walked out. Burned three sanctums on the way. Disappeared.” Ash let out a low whistle.

„Hardcore.”

„No.” Kimi said sharply.

„That’s Fujiwara.” Ash scrolled.

„Haruto. Windborn. First son. Prodigy. Designed silence wards before he turned five. Could blindside an Oracle by seven. He never questioned. Never faltered. Until Himari died.” Fez’s jaw clenched.

„Council listed him as dead, two days after Himari’s car crash. Internal tag: Final Silence.” Ash shook his head.

„No body?” Fez asked, already knowing the answer.

„None.” Ash said.

„Which means he chose it. He vanished himself.” Kimi narrowed her eyes.

„That’s not disappearance. That’s shadowing. You don’t vanish like that unless you’re watching something. Or someone.” Fez’s voice was low.

„He was shielding Phoenix. Masking her aura. He suppressed her magic and power since that day...” Fez said it like a revelation he’d been choking on for hours.

„That’s why we couldn’t read her. He buried her in shadow. His shadow.” Ash sat back, jaw slack, overwhelmed.

„So we’ve got Himari. Haruto. Kaito. But that’s not the end of the tree. There are more.” Kimi’s head snapped toward him, eyes sharp enough to bleed stone.

„What the f.uck?! Tell me.” Her voice cracked across the table. Ash pointed to the open record.

„Haruto had a daughter. Hinata.” Ash’s voice dropped as he read.

„Her mother was a Siren. That’s water and wind. A double affinity… air and ocean, storm and undertow.” He looked up, eyes wide.

„She’s known for mind-siphoning and voicecraft. Codename: Hollow Hymn.” Fez stiffened like someone had just walked over his grave.

„That’s not just a hybrid.” He said slowly.

„That’s weaponised seduction. Siren blood doesn’t whisper. It drowns. Wind doesn’t bend. It breaks.” Ash kept reading, voice lower now.

„She can thread thoughts out of your skull like silk. Pull memories through a song. Force you to remember pain you never lived. Or make you crave her like she’s oxygen.” Kimi’s lips parted like she forgot how to breathe.

„They say her voice doesn’t echo. It devours sound. A scream inside your mind that never stops repeating. You don’t just hear her. You feel her. In your spine. In your sleep.” Fez muttered.

„Codename makes sense. Hollow Hymn… she doesn’t sing songs. She sings in silence. And it obeys.” Ash added, almost reverently…

„They tried to collar her when she was nine. Tried to bind her throat with black-iron chains. One handler drowned in a hallway. Another went mute. Permanently. And after that, they stopped trying.” Kimi hissed, like the words tasted of blood.

„S.hit. That’s not magic. That’s a curse dressed like poetry.” Fez nodded once.

„That’s Hinata Fujiwara. Beautiful. Lethal. And probably listening as we speak.” Ash tapped again.

„Then there’s Kaito’s line. Three kids. All alive. All off-grid. All f.ucking nightmares in the making.”

„Hit me.” Kimi braced.

„Raiken…” Ash muttered, flipping a scorched page with care.

„Eldest. Mageborn. Gravity and space-time. The Riftborn Prince.” Ash almost whispers as he's looking through the scripts.

„That’s not a title.” Fez said.

„That’s a warning.”

„They say he was born during an eclipse.” Ash went on, voice dipping low.

„The clock broke the second he took his first breath. No cry. No scream. Just blinked and time cracked.” Kimi stiffened.

„He’s the one they called 'Eventide.' Gravity’s pulse. The black star.” Fez sat back, exhaling.

„I heard about him. Not in Council records. In whispers. He doesn’t walk, he arrives. Doesn’t talk, he rewrites your f.ucking reality.” Fez whispered like telling a horror story at a school camp.

„Gravity doesn’t bend around him.” Ash added.

„It obeys.”

„And his magic?” Kimi asked. Fez nodded slowly.

„I’ve heard whispers. The boy who made a battlefield kneel without lifting a sword.”

„And it wasn’t war magic.” Ash added.

„It was time magic. Aetherborn Entropy. Space and time fused. It says he doesn’t fight fast, he slows the world down. Freezes seconds like breath caught in glass.” Kimi crossed her arms.

„And when he does move? It’s not teleportation. It’s rewriting. Like the universe apologising for placing him too far away.” Ash nodded.

„Voidstep. Graviton distortion. Doesn’t break you with force. Breaks you with gravity that forgets you’re allowed to stand.” Fez’s voice dipped.

„His glamour doesn’t lure. It fractures. You see futures that hurt. You forget what was real. And if you try to strike him? You’ll realise you already did. And lost.” Silence pressed in.

„They say he doesn’t speak in battle.” Kimi whispered.

„Just moves. Like thunder disguised as thought.” Ash leaned back, visibly unsettled.

„He’s not loud. Not poetic. Just inevitable. Loyalty to him is permanent. And love?” Fez answered.

„Like falling into a black hole. Slow. Irrevocable. You never make it out the same.” Kimi looked down, almost reverent. Ash exhaled.

„He’s not the heir. He’s the anomaly. The timeline breaker. The one who made the future obey.” Fez’s voice was glass-sharp.

„If anyone touches what’s his? He won’t kill them. He’ll erase the version of reality that allowed them to try.” Ash’s finger slid to the next line.

„Then…Yoshiro. Middle son. Unseelie Fae mother. Shadows and soulflame.” Ash scanned the screen, eyes widening.

„Yeah...” Ash swallowed.

„They call him the Ash Lion. Said his soul was born burning. That he didn’t cry when he was born, he cracked the tile. First breath and the floor smoked.”

„That’s not exaggeration.” Fez murmured, rubbing his temple.

„That’s blood memory. That’s Fujiwara.”

„He’s the one who marked a Warden with fae fire in broad daylight.” Kimi added, stunned.

„Fae-born hybrids aren’t supposed to survive puberty without imploding.”

„He didn’t just survive.” Ash said, voice thick with awe.

„He thrived. Walked into the Unseelie trials and demanded exile. Won. By choice.” They all looked with open mouths. The fates which were unravelling beneath their fingers and their screens? They were all prophecies written in blood.

„They also call him the Hound of Mirrors.” Fez whispered.

„Because nothing reflects what he is. Nothing survives him whole.” Ash tapped the file again, breath catching.

„His magic… It’s called Vulcan Pulse. Magmatic. Earth and Fire fused at the marrow. He doesn’t summon magma. He is magma. His skin cracks with it. His blood hisses with it. Every time he gets angry, the room swells with heat.” Ash continued amazed by the powers and the strengths which Fujiwara created just by mixing species and creating f.ucking walking atomic bombs infused by their Kekkei Genkai…innate ability of elemental origin.

„He creates lava creatures from his rage.” Kimi added, eyes narrowing.

„Snakes, lions, f.ucking bears… all made of fire and stone. And they fight like pieces of his soul broke off and hunting.” Fez’s jaw flexed.

„I heard he cracked a battle coliseum in half with one punch. Just to prove he could. Said it wasn’t even his final form.” Ash looked stunned.

„Coreform. That’s what they call it. His entire body goes obsidian and fire. He stops being a boy. Starts being an eruption. F.ucking walking Volcano…” Kimi exhaled, slowly.

„He fights like it and laughs while cities fall. And his final move? They call it Core Detonation. Turns miles of ground into f.ucking glass.” Fez read and his eyes were frozen. Stunned.

„He’s Kaito’s son alright.” Fez muttered, jaw clenched with admiration and fear.

„Chaos incarnate. Fire and stone wrapped in skin. The one who doesn’t flinch when the world burns, he starts it.” Ash smirked.

„And he wears rings. Of course he f.ucking does.” Kimi grinned despite herself.

„The eruption always wears rings.” Fez’s voice went low, dark.

„And Phoenix is his cousin...their cousin…” The room held still, the air crackling with unspoken possibilities. Because if that bloodline was awakening again… and the world wasn’t nearly f.ucking ready. Ash smirked.

„And then… there’s the youngest. Akari.” Ash said, tapping a screen with a flick of his finger.

„Daughter of Kaito and a demoness from the southern bloodlines.” Kimi blinked.

„Wait. A double Demon?” She was taken aback by it.

„Yup. Codename: Blightblessed.” Ash replied, voice dipped in awe. Fez leaned forward, jaw tight.

„She doesn’t just burn. She corrupts.”

Ash nodded.

„Her magic eats spells. Unravels wards. Turns blessings into hexes. She kissed a priest once and he forgot God.” Kimi hissed through her teeth.

„That’s not a child. That’s a walking curse.” Fez exhaled, eyes narrowing.

„She was born in a blackout. Hospitals fried. Cities blinked out. She didn’t cry, she short-circuited a prefecture. Came into the world giggling with lightning in her veins.” Kimi read it like a prophecy, and maybe it was.

„Stormpulse.” Ash muttered.

„A very rare fusion, electricity and light. But hers is corrupted. Weaponized. Sentient. The Council didn’t even try to classify her. They just marked her Uncontainable.” Ash chuckled, cause it's so typical.

„Her aura’s all pop rocks and war warnings.” Kimi added, breathless.

„Like sugar-laced chaos wrapped in a stun grenade.” Ash couldn’t help but grin.

„She doesn’t summon storms. She is one. Doesn’t fly. She flashes. Doesn’t glow. She shorts out circuits.” Fez looked grim now.

„They call her Hexline in the underground. A system myth. Because when she enters a room, retinal scans twitch, data leaks start singing, and reality rewrites itself like it’s obeying her heartbeat.” Ash chuckled darkly. „And her favourite trick? Neuroflash. She hijacks the neural signals of your brain. Mid-conversation. Mid-fight. Mid-kiss. You forget your name before you even blink.” Kimi shook her head.

„F.uckin’ hell. That’s not magic. That’s a system breach in girl form.” Fez muttered, almost reverently.

„She doesn’t control electricity. She commands it. And it doesn’t resist. It obeys.” Ash leaned back with a wild grin.

„And the worst part? She makes it look h.ella cute.”