Prologue
A burst of light and burning flame. That’s all it took for my whole life to be uprooted and everything I had come to know and love to be destroyed. The flash not only took away everything I cared about, it destroyed me. But at the same time, it created me.
My name is Renata. I was born in the small kingdom of Evencia, a place famous for its rich history and devotion to the art of blazing. Blazing is in essence causing your body to naturally catch on fire so that you can be recreated from your ashes as something better, stronger, prettier; you get the idea. It sounds painful, but as long as you possess the gift and undergo the proper training, it’s not. Despite this, it is very rare to hear about someone succeeding in it even once. Most who try, fail, because it takes extreme levels of concentration, talent, and skill. If you tried you either succeeded or died. There was no in between.
I was born with the gift, as was my older brother Kendon, however, neither of us had been permitted to study it as my parents perceived it as dangerous. Their view was valid. Most in the village had the gift but only a rare few attempted to learn to use it because of the danger it posed.
Our once prosperous kingdom was now ruled by a vicious woman who went by the name of Empress Deianira. She had come into power nearly a century ago after successfully blazing herself over and over again until she was virtually undefeatable. In known history, no one had ever successfully blazed as many times as she had. Very few dared to stand in her way so she was able to seize the throne with relative ease, killing any who did choose to go against her, including the previous king, his wife, and their newborn daughter. There wasn’t a single soul in our village who didn’t fear her at least a little bit. Anyone who told you otherwise was lying.
Time took away none of her power or brutality and she made sure to remind the townspeople of this annually since the day she ascended to power. We only saw her once a year on the day of the flash when she would come into the impoverished village to select two random gifted townspeople.
She would kill one of them by something called a flash which was essentially ejecting a portion of your power into a weaker being who was unable to retain it and so, in short, it would end up slowly burning them alive from the inside out to the point of incineration. The second tribute had the worst fate, though. They were given a chance at survival. All they had to do was defeat her. Needless to say, no one had ever succeeded or even on average lasted longer than about a minute. The standing record was three and a half minutes and the tribute had been the most skilled blazer other than her in our kingdom. He had even managed to successfully blaze once, but was still no match. The flash was a mandatory event for every townsperson, young or old, and no matter how many I survived and was forced to witness, it still tore me apart every single time. The reasoning behind it, according to Empress Deianira, was to remind us of what happens to those who go against her. In my silent opinion, it was her way of slowly wiping out the gifted until she was the only one remaining. It was one way to ensure that no one would ever be able to remove her from power.
It should be noted that the flash was not an impersonal event for me. It was very personal. I hated it with a passion. Almost everyone in this village did. There was not a single soul in our town who hadn’t had family, a friend, or at least someone they knew get murdered by it. I was no exception. I lost my mom four flashes ago when she was chosen as the second tribute. My dad had died a year later from the guilt and grief, leaving me and Kendon all alone with no other family. I still remember my mothers screams as she battled the flames in a desperate attempt at survival, but they only rose higher and higher and hotter and hotter until they snuffed out her life like someone would blow out a candle.
