Some powers are born from light.
Hers came from fire.
It started with a whisper.
Ava had just stepped into the hallway outside her apartment when the air turned cold unnaturally so.
Then the whisper came.
Not from behind her.
Not from the shadows.
But from inside her head.
"Let me in."
Her vision blurred. For a split second, the walls melted into marble. The hallway flickered with candlelight. And she saw Clara no, not Clara anymore standing at the far end.
Her smile was twisted. Unnatural.
A puppet… with Vincent's strings.
"Ava," Liam called behind her, but she didn't answer.
Her body was frozen. Heat rushed beneath her skin, crawling like wildfire. Her hands trembled.
Clara took a step forward, her voice layered hers and his.
"Still trying to be the hero? Still pretending the power inside you won't consume everything you love?"
Ava stepped back.
Her pulse roared.
"Get out of her, Vincent."
Clara's eyes flashed silver. "You can't save them all. Not this time."
With a flick of her wrist, the world cracked
And suddenly, they were in the dreamscape again except this time, it wasn't a dream.
Liam had been pulled in too.
They were trapped in a burning ballroom, just like the one from Isabella's past.
Vincent's voice filled the air.
"Let's see what your power does when you're scared. When you're cornered. When the one you love is in danger."
Ava turned Liam was bound in spectral chains at the center of the room. Fire licked the walls, rising higher with every heartbeat.
Chaos.
Ava's emotions surged. The air around her crackled with gold energy.
Her memories returned in flashes:
Isabella, screaming as fire exploded from her palms.
Vincent, laughing as a mansion collapsed around them.
A woman's voice, begging her not to lose control again.
Now, in this place between reality and memory, she stood at the brink again.
"Stop this!" she shouted.
But Clara-Vincent only smirked.
"You stopped it once by dying. What will you sacrifice this time?"
Ava stepped toward Liam.
Her magic flared wild, untamed.
It burned through her veins.
She raised her hands…
And the room shook.
The fire obeyed her rag spiraling outward.
The chandeliers shattered.
Liam screamed not from fear, but from the heat the golden light searing the chains and the floor beneath him.
Ava's power was too strong.
She couldn't contain it.
Control.
She had seconds.
One wrong move… and she'd destroy him.
She closed her eyes.
Focus.
Breathe.
Feel.
The voice that had once taught Isabella whispered again.
"You don't fight the fire. You become the flame and guide it."
She inhaled sharply and pushed inward.
Her rage condensed into a glowing sphere between her hands.
The fire around her halted, frozen mid-motion like a paused inferno.
She opened her eyes.
And hurled the energy at the chains.
BOOM.
The chains shattered.
Liam collapsed into her arms.
The illusion crumbled
And the dreamworld dissolved into ash.
Back in Reality
They both woke gasping.
Clara lay unconscious at the hallway's end, eyes rolled back, a black mist leaking from her mouth.
Vincent had fled.
But the damage was done.
Ava sat trembling, Liam in her arms.
"I almost… I could've…"
"You didn't," he whispered hoarsely. "You controlled it."
She looked at her hands.
No sparks. No glow.
But inside her?
The power pulsed.
Controlled… but never silent.
Later, as Liam slept beside her, Ava opened the bloodstained dress again.
Hidden beneath the seams something she hadn't seen before.
A second note.
"You passed the first test. But power without purpose is nothing.
Let's see if you survive what's coming next."
And in the mirror across the room
Clara stood.
Smiling.