What is your name.

The shot never came.

Instead, there was a soundless snap, like the world itself exhaled and forgot me.

When I opened my eyes, there was no alley. No blood. No cold barrel.

Just white.

An endless, blinding white stretching in all directions. No floor, no ceiling, no horizon. I was floating and standing all at once, my bare feet brushing nothingness. My breath hitched as I spun around, searching for something solid, something real.

I pulled my knees to my chest, hugging myself like it would keep me from unraveling. My throat felt like sandpaper when I whispered, “Hello…?”

Something shifted. A ripple in the white, a soft glow taking shape in front of me. It wasn’t human, not even close, but I felt eyes on me, like it could see every shattered piece inside me.

“Do you… have a name?” My voice was thin, brittle.

The light tilted, thoughtful. When it spoke, it sounded like water moving in a dark cave.

“I have not thought that far. You may call me… Eddy.”

A weak laugh escaped me before I could stop it. “Eddy? Really?”

It didn’t answer. Just floated there, silent, waiting.

The quiet stretched so long it pressed against my chest. My nails bit into my skin. “Why am I here? I… shouldn’t be here.”

Still, no response.

My voice dropped to a whisper. “I wasn’t supposed to survive. Sixteen years old… standing at my parents’ funeral… and no one—” My breath hitched. “No one even looked at me.”

The white ate my words like they were nothing.

“I thought someone would help. Anyone. My uncle, my aunt… neighbors… people walking by when I was screaming for my life…” My chest tightened. My voice cracked. “They all turned away.”

Tears burned hot, sliding down my cheeks. My hands trembled as I tried to hold them back.

“For years I worked myself raw, sewing until my fingers bled, and it still wasn’t enough. Then I smiled at men who saw me as something they could buy.” My voice broke again, hoarse. “And I told myself it was survival. That maybe if I just endured enough, someone would finally… see me.”

A sob slipped out, sharp and ugly. I curled forward, pressing my palms to the unseen ground.

“No one came,” I choked. “No one ever came.”

The dam cracked. I couldn’t hold it anymore. My breath tore out in jagged sobs.

“I begged,” I whispered. Louder: “I screamed. I ran through streets covered in glass, bleeding so much I couldn’t even stand, and do you know what this world did?”

The words ripped out of me like claws:

“IT WALKED PAST ME!”

The endless white shook faintly. Eddy’s glow flickered.

“It let me crawl, dying, choking—and it didn’t even flinch!” I laughed, broken and breathless. “Like I was nothing. Like I was born just to be thrown away.”

I slammed my fists down, screaming through clenched teeth:

“I GAVE EVERYTHING—MY BODY, MY VOICE, MY HOPE—AND THIS WORLD GAVE ME NOTHING. NOTHING. Nothing.” My voice trailed.

The echo carried, jagged and raw, and something inside me snapped.

Heat spread from my chest, crawling outward. It burned, my tears hissed where they touched my skin. My fingernails glowed like embers.

I gasped as cracks of light spiderwebbed across my arms, glowing gold beneath my flesh, splitting my skin open like a shell. The fire inside me roared, surging upward, twisting my hair into streams of molten sunlight. My breath came out in shimmering waves of heat, every exhale warping the air.

The white space rippled violently as a crown of fire coiled above my head. Flames licked up my legs, eating away at the blood-soaked dress I died in, replacing them with flowing ribbons of blinding light that curled and snapped in invisible wind.

I screamed—not in fear, but in defiance—as wings of pure flame tore from my back, unfurling with a deafening rush of heat. The ground itself melted into glass beneath me, and when I opened my eyes, they burned gold, twin suns glaring into eternity.

Eddy’s glow steadied, voice deep, almost reverent:

“What is your name? The name that will forsake this world.”

What is your name? The name that the powerful and powerless will amount to nothing under.”

“WHAT IS YOUR NAME.”

I lifted my head, 

“Aestura.”

Then, softly, like the whisper of wind over a still lake, it spoke:

“Aestura… you have burned away what the world tried to bury. You are no longer its forsaken child.”

I stood taller, my wings casting molten shadows that reached into the endless white. My hands still trembled faintly—not from fear, but from the sheer force of the power coursing through me.

Eddy’s glow pulsed once, dimmed, then steadied.

“But flames without direction only consume,” it said gently. “If you wish to tear apart the world that abandoned you… if you wish to unmake its cruelty and forge something new… you will need more than rage.”

I turned toward it fully, my burning hair floating weightlessly around my face. “And what do you know of rage?” My voice was no longer brittle—it was molten steel.

For a moment, Eddy said nothing. Then, softly:

“Enough to know that even gods can be lost in it.”

The space between us shimmered like a heat mirage.

“Seek me out when your fire hungers for purpose,” Eddy continued, its tone calm but unyielding. “Find me when you are ready to learn what it truly means to be divine.”

I frowned, heat curling from my lips with each breath. “And if I don’t?”

The glow rippled faintly. “Then you will burn alone. And alone… even gods turn to ash.”

Silence stretched between us, heavy and alive. My molten gaze locked onto its formless light.

Finally, Eddy drifted backward, its voice growing distant, like the hush of receding waves:

“When the sun blazes high and the earth trembles beneath its heat… that is where you’ll find me.”

The white began to crack like shattered glass, bleeding into burning gold. Eddy’s voice echoed one last time as the world fell away:

“Do not forget my name… and do not forget yours, Aestura.”