All Fire Is The Same Fire

The glass hall breathed with rain. Windowpanes stretched, each one a river of water that refracted the city into a thousand trembling suns. Below, the bleeding tree weeped, black branches slick with the city’s original sin.

The Amber King stood at the central pane, palms pressed to the glass. He did not look at Lucius, he looked through him.

“Why all this?” Lucius asked, voice raw. He couldn’t help it, the question burned like an ember pressed to his tongue. “Why build a world of rot?”

The King laughed, a child’s sound in a cavern. “You ask as if you do not already know.” He turned slowly. “Do you think this is cruelty? Do you think Pareidolia is punishment?”

Lucius swallowed. “It’s torture.”

“Frivolous words,” the King said, the syllables deliberate. “You call things what you want them to be. I call them what they must be. Tell me then, have you heard the of the term ‘antediluvian?’”

Lucius frowned. “You mean-”

“Yes, the world before the flood. But the flood was not punishment,” the King said. “It was purification. A reset. A rebirth.” He stepped closer, so close Lucius could see the spotless polish of his mask. “My flood was a long time ago. I resolved not to be drowned, but to be the hand that repurposed ruin into order. So I offered the city a covenant to be remade, my green for red. In return, the Vatics gave me devotion and obedience. Their order answered my designs, one sacrifice for a thousand renewals.”

“So you gave up, what? Your soul for power?”

“For the means,” the King said. “To cleanse. To remold. I traded colour for control. Colour without structure is merely chaos. As long as I perform the will I know must be done, the will of the pattern, then nothing I do can be wrong.”

“You say this as if it absolves you,” Lucius breathed. “Because it’s destiny, you think you can slaughter all?”

The Amber King’s voice softened in a way that made Lucius’s teeth ache. “Have you ever prayed to God, Lucius? Felt the smallness of your voice in the dark? I know what it means to become god. You must begin by knowing. I am not blameless. But I am also necessary.”

Lucius staggered back. “You think you’re better because you became brutal. That makes you God?”

“I know I must be God,” the King said quietly, “because when I pray, I find I am talking to myself. That is the only truth I’ve ever known, that the voice I hear answering is my own.”

A single rain drop spattered against the glass pane in front of him, breaking off into two separate streaks.

“A dream dissolves at waking, then coagulates in memory as something truer than life. Blood dissolves in water, then coagulates into a sigil across the surface.” The King’s windowed reflection peered back at Lucius without malice, but with desire. “You still haven’t pieced it together, have you Lucius? Then let me retell you a story you already know, the true reality as I saw it that day.”

He rested a hand against the cold window, eyes narrowing as though he were watching the past replay itself beyond the glass.

“When I arrived in this world as a child, I was not met with paradise. No, what I found was filth. A land rotting under the weight of sentimentality and weakness, a garden strangled by vines pretending to be beautiful. That tree was not a savior. It was a parasite. Its roots burrowed deep, feeding on the guilt, the shame, the hidden sins of everything around it. Its nerves ran under the skin of the world.”

His hollow eyes burned brighter as he turned toward Lucius, his tone hardening.

“I saw through it. I saw what no one else would admit. They worshipped the tree like it was their god, when in truth, it was their captor. Smothering them with comfort. Keeping them docile. Content with scraps of borrowed life.”

He paused, letting the weight of his words settle before continuing.

“So I acted. I did what no one else had the strength to do. I cut it open. I drew out the poison festering in its heart. That crimson flow wasn’t corruption I created, it was corruption I revealed. The sickness that had been bleeding into the soil since the beginning. And when it spilled out, I took it into myself. I bore the weight, the fire, the rot.”

The hall quaked faintly as his resonance stirred, amber veins threading softly across the glass, mirroring the bleeding tree below.

“I did not destroy paradise, Lucius. I ended the illusion. I saved this place from its own false god. Can you not hear it? The choir singing numbers, codes, and scales. Bells ringing. Can you not hear the voices of the cage?”

He turned fully now, veil and mask still hiding his face, but the intensity of his presence filling the space between them.

“You see me as a tyrant. A monster. A villain. But I am the only one who dared to do what was necessary. I am not evil.”

Lucius stepped forward, fists trembling at his sides, his reflection wavering alongside the King’s in the towering windows.

“That’s not the truth,” Lucius snapped, his voice rising. “Necessary? Look around you, look at the life you’ve given to these people. You’ve stripped away all that was good.” He shook his head, chest heaving. “No. You didn’t liberate anyone. You just built another prison.”

The King finally looked back at him, sighing with exhaustion. “You still don’t understand, do you, Lucius? Do you know when I was born?”

Lucius didn’t answer, the question’s content being something he had never thought of. His throat was tight, but the silence only encouraged the King.

“It was not in some cradle. It was not in Pareidolia’s square, or under the gaze of that wretched tree. I was born the night your parents died, rather, the night our parents died. In the exact moment.”

Lucius flinched. “What are you saying…that’s not possible-”

The King cut him off. “When they died, when you stood by and let them die, the guilt you felt wasn’t a wound. It was a dominion. The shame, the hatred, the weight, it was so vast it cracked your consciousness. There was a time before the flood, and the time after the flood. It was not around you, it was inside you. And I am that flood.”

“That…can’t be…no…”

“Don’t you see? Pareidolia is your subconscious. Your mind. Your soul. Before the death of your parents, before I was brought here, I’m sure it was a beautiful place. A dream of green fields, of towering trees, of warmth and promise. Your innocence built its streets. But when they died, rot bled into everything. Every doubt, every selfish impulse, every sin you swallowed but never confessed, all of it seeped through the bricks of this city, vesseled through that bleeding tree.”

He spread his arms. The windows trembled, and outside, the bleeding tree pulsed.

“And I took it all. While you withered in weakness, I fed. I drank your poison and let it shape me into what you were too frightened to become. I became this city’s gardener. And then I became its king.”

Lucius spat on the ground, barely able to find the words. “No, no…you’re crazy. This can’t be…true. There’s still others out there…others who will fight against you.”

“Who, like Grimebank?” The King growled a sinister laugh. “I am Grimebank. I was the first hand you held in this city. I am the architect of every corner you bristled at. I have been called many names. I have worn many faces. But above all, I have been patient. Every step you took was on the path I carved out for you.”

“No-no, we…the Gnomon can fix this…I just need…”

“The Gnomon? You really are amusing, Lucius. Who do you think put the Gnomon up for auction? I’ve let that groveling Curator reside in my shadow for far too long, but it seems that he finally proved useful.”

Lucius staggered back as if the floor itself had tilted. “But-but…then this is-”

“All you,” the Amber King finished. “I am not merely like you, Lucius. I am you. The part you buried so deep you thought was gone. The stone that was discarded has become the new foundation. It all falls apart, Lucius, everything you worked for. The peace you built on a foundation of sand.”

The hall darkened, the storm outside seeping inside the walls. The Amber King leaned forward, eyes molten, his voice a low sermon.

“You don’t even remember, you painted the bleeding tree. It is your creation, each stroke came from your own hands, your blood shed onto the white canvas.”

The bleeding tree groaned outside, its bark creaking, and the sound echoed like a heart tearing open.

His hand rose slowly to the pale mask that had hidden his face for as long as Lucius had known him. His fingers tapped the porcelain once, twice, as if listening for the echo of what lived beneath.

Then, with a single motion, he removed it.

The amber veil slipped away with it, dissolving like smoke in the stormlight. And there, staring back at Lucius, was no stranger, no sovereign tyrant, but himself.

His own face.

Not a perfect mirror, but twisted. The eyes brighter, the jaw tenser, the skin marked not by time but by something other, something pernicious.

Lucius stumbled back, his hand clutching at his chest to keep himself from splitting open. His breath came ragged, shallow, his skin cold under his touch.

“No...” he whispered, shaking his head violently. “No-this isn’t real. You’re not me-you can’t be me!”

But the Amber King only stepped closer, his mirrored eyes fixed on him like a predator savoring the kill.

Lucius’s stomach lurched as the room seemed to close in.

The Amber King smiled with his smile, but a hollow imitation.

“Now you understand,” the King said, voice both foreign and familiar. “You and I are not two. We are one. To see me is to see yourself, Lucius.”

The glass rippled like water. The bleeding tree outside the windows blurred, its branches elongating, dissolving into wheat. The palace folded, edges softening, and the floor beneath them became stalks of wheat, just as they did in the landscape of dreams.

“Why-why show me this again?” Lucius demanded.

“Because you are blind,” the King said. He walked slowly among the stalks, fingers brushing them softly. “I can see your soul at the edge of your eyes, where you refuse to look. I am the frothing blood that pools and drains away. All fire is the same fire, Lucius. Mine merely burns with intent.”

The golden stalks swayed violently around them, bending under winds that carried the weight of memory and despair.

“That tree still stands because I never had the power to destroy it, it is not my creation. I lacked the resonance to end its poison.”

Lucius’s fists burned. “So all of this, everything you made me suffer, was just to power yourself up?”

The King’s amber eyes softened for a fraction of a second. “Not for myself. For the world. For Pareidolia. Your trials, your rage, your losses, they were meant to make you overflow. Only your Eternal Genesis could fuel what my Infernal Dominion could not reach. I needed your unleashed and unrelenting power to finish what I began.”

Lucius shook his head, chest heaving. “So you’re telling me the pain, the deaths... all of it... was just a tool?”

“Yes. And now, standing here, you understand the cost of weakness, how you needed to be built up in order to be struck down. The dog that weeps after it kills is no better than the dog that doesn’t. Your guilt will not purify you. No, that is what I am here for.”

Lucius felt something like acid climb his throat. “You hate me,” he said.

“Hate you? No, this is no more personal than any other death. I am simply washing away the dirt.”

Lucius’s hands trembled. “And if I refuse to let you do this?”

The King smiled, slow and precise like a blade finding its mark. “You have no more say.”

Lucius’s mouth tasted of ash. “You say all this like it’s mercy.”

“Mercy,” the King said, “Yes, I suppose it is.”