There was no heat in the inferno. As the web of golden fibers dissolved, the sensation of burning was replaced by a total, absolute negation of temperature. I was no longer a boy, an engine, or a king. I was a singularity of discarded potential, drifting in a space where time had been folded into a single, suffocating point.
The gardener did not scream as he dissolved. He simply ceased to be, his form fraying like thread until only his shears remained, now cold, lifeless iron falling through the infinite white. I watched them fall, but they never hit a floor. In this space, there was no floor, only the terrifying realization that by burning the map, I had destroyed the coordinate system of my own existence.
"Lucien."
The voice was not a sound. It was a vibration in the fabric of my bein
