Fire did not only burn buildings.
That night, fire burned half of Ajin's soul.
Ajin's breath hitched the moment he reached the crest of the hill.
The scene before him was not Rogo Pavilion—
It was hell.
The sky above the valley glowed red, illuminated by pillars of fire rising from the buildings he once called home.
Flames devoured the wooden halls and training yards, vomiting black smoke into the night sky.
The wind carried the scent of scorched timber… and something else.
Something metallic.
Something rotten.
Something unmistakably human.
Ajin staggered forward.
"No… no… please no…"
Then he heard it.
Between the crackling roar of the flames—
Between collapsing beams and shattering roof tiles—
He heard screams.
Small screams.
Children's screams.
Ajin's blood ran cold.
"NO!"
He launched himself downhill, slipping, stumbling, ripping his robe on thorns and sharp stones. He didn't feel a thing. Pain didn't exist for him anymore.
He reached the main gate—
But two armored soldiers stepped in front of him, blocking the entrance.
"Halt!" one barked. "This area is restricted!"
"THE CHILDREN!" Ajin screamed, his voice cracking. "LET ME SAVE THEM!"
The soldier sneered.
"A worm like you? Go home."
He shoved Ajin hard.
Ajin hit the ground, the breath knocked from his lungs.
But fear and desperation fueled him—he scrambled to his feet again.
He charged.
BUK!
The butt of a spear slammed into his stomach.
Ajin gasped, doubling over, bile rising in his throat.
"I said LEAVE!"
They punched him.
Kicked him.
Dragged him across the dirt like a sack of rice.
But Ajin kept crawling, crying, begging through blood and dirt.
"Loka… Bodin… please…"
When they realized he truly posed no threat, the soldiers lost interest.
One scoffed,
"Waste of time."
They returned to guarding the burning gate.
Ajin coughed violently, tasting iron.
He dragged himself on his elbows, moving sideways toward the bamboo fence—now half-collapsed and half on fire.
He knew he couldn't enter through the gate.
So he tried the only path left—
Through the flames.
Ajin took a breath—
And dove through.
The heat was instant.
Alive.
A creature that clawed his skin and seared his lungs.
His robe caught fire.
He slapped at it frantically as he ran through embers and falling sparks.
The wooden floor beneath him was already glowing with red heat, burning through the soles of his feet.
He didn't care.
Nothing mattered except—
"LOKA! BODIN! WHERE ARE YOU?!"
He sprinted through the burning courtyard toward the children's dormitory.
What remained of it.
The door had collapsed inward, black with soot.
Ajin rammed it with his shoulder—
feeling the jolt vibrate through bone as the charred wood gave way.
Inside—
Ajin's world ended.
The dormitory was a grave.
The ceiling had collapsed.
Scorched beams and collapsing rafters blocked most of the floor.
The straw mats the children slept on were nothing but blackened husks—
melted into the floor.
Some shapes…
some outlines…
Ajin's stomach lurched violently.
He gagged, collapsing to one knee as bile—and something darker—forced its way up his throat.
The smell—
The smell was wrong.
It wasn't wood.
It wasn't cloth.
It was flesh.
Burned.
Cooked.
Clinging to his nostrils and refusing to let go.
He forced himself forward through instinct alone.
"No… please… PLEASE…"
Where were they?
Where were the children who clung to his robe every morning?
Where were the little hands tugging his sleeve, asking for bedtime stories?
Where—
was—
Something glinted beneath a half-burned bunk frame.
Ajin's breath caught.
He reached for it with trembling fingers.
A bracelet.
A tiny bracelet of wooden beads—
the one he carved for Loka two weeks ago because she said she "wanted something pretty like the older girls."
It was still warm.
Ajin froze.
His tears didn't fall.
They exploded from him—
a sound ripped from his throat that wasn't human anymore.
It was the howl of a beast.
A creature who had lost everything.
He collapsed onto the burning floor, ignoring the pain tearing his knees apart.
He gathered the ashes near the bracelet—he didn't know what he was holding.
He didn't want to know.
He pounded the ground with his fists, again and again, skin splitting, blood mixing with ash.
"WHY—WHY—WHY—WHY!"
He screamed until his voice shredded.
He clawed at his own face, leaving bloody streaks across his cheeks.
He shook, convulsed, gasped, choking on smoke and grief.
His entire world—
the only kindness he had ever known—
was gone.
Something inside him cracked.
Deep.
Irreparable.
A rupture in his spirit.
A soundless shattering.
And the moment it broke—
The scroll stirred.
The Forbidden Scroll beneath his robe pulsed.
DHUG.
Ajin froze.
DHUG. DHUG.
The rhythm matched his heartbeat.
Matched his grief.
Matched the hatred now seeping into the cracks of his broken soul.
The scroll was warm now.
Almost hot.
Like a beast finally waking after centuries of slumber.
Ajin lifted his head slowly.
Tears stopped.
Breath stopped.
Thought stopped.
His eyes—once warm and gentle—were now dry.
Cracked.
Empty.
He stood.
The flames flickered across his face—revealing a man whose soul had just died.
He looked at the inferno consuming the dormitory.
He looked at the bracelet clenched in his fist.
He looked at his own trembling reflection in the shattered window frame.
His heart was no longer soft.
It was no longer whole.
It was gone.
The words he had been called echoed in his ears.
"Kind teacher."
"Weak teacher."
"Useless."
"Worm."
Ajin exhaled, voice ragged as if scraped out from inside his bones.
"If this world…"
He lifted the scroll slowly.
"…wants to crush me…"
The leather binding burned his palm.
The dried blood seal seemed to throb with hunger.
Ajin's fingers curled around it.
Not with fear.
But with rage.
"I'll break it first."
He tore at the seal.
The blood cracked.
The leather binding snapped.
The Forbidden Scroll—
opened.
A blast of heat and wind roared outward.
Symbols—ancient, curved, jagged—burst from the parchment in glowing red ink.
They writhed like living creatures, dancing across the air.
The entire room filled with a deep, pulsating red light—
the color of blood illuminated from within.
Ajin's hair whipped wildly.
His robe flared.
The flames around him bent inward, pulled toward the scroll like hungry serpents.
The scroll's voice—
not spoken, but felt—
whispered through the deepest chambers of his mind.
"You have broken."
"You are ready."
"Let us rebuild you."
Ajin's torn lips parted.
His voice was almost a whisper.
Almost reverent.
"Show me."
And the scroll answered.
The symbols surged toward him, slamming into his chest, his arms, his spine—embedding themselves into his skin like molten brands.
Ajin screamed.
Not from fear.
From transformation.
From rebirth.
The firestorm around him roared higher, as if bowing to the birth of something new—
something forged in grief
and tempered by rage.
Tonight—
Rogo Pavilion burned.
And from its ashes—
the first disciple of Baja Angkara Batin was born.