The heat crawled under my skin, not from the sun, but from the memory of it. The burn. The way it smelled like sulfur and regret. I traced the scar on my palm, a jagged white line that twisted like a viper. It wasn’— a clean cut. Not precise. It was messy, furious, and desperate. Exactly like everything else I’d touched since I was seventeen.
The boy, Leo, always called me ‘Phoenix’ because of it. Said I rose from the ashes. He liked the sound of that. A little dramatic for my taste, but Leo liked drama. He liked the way my eyes burned when I remembered. He liked the way my fingers trembled when I traced the scar. He said it was beautiful.
Beautiful, like a broken thing.
I stared at the target, a black silhouette pasted onto the dusty plywood. The range was empty, just me and the ghosts of what I was supposed to be. I’d spent the last three years pretending I could forget, pretending I could build something new. But the gun felt right in my hand, the weight familiar, the cold steel a promise of something real.
“Remember the drill,” Old Man Tiber said, his voice gravelly as always. He didn’t need to yell. He didn’t need to motivate. He just *was*. A rock in the desert, weathered and unyielding.
He’d found me after the fire, a mess of ash and rage. I’d been trying to disappear into the canyons, to burn everything down until there was nothing left to feel. He hadn’t tried to fix me. He hadn’t offered platitudes about healing. He just handed me a gun and said, “Shoot.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat, tasted the metal tang of fear. This wasn’t about killing. It was about control. About the space between the impulse and the action. About the quiet hum of power in my hand.
I brought the gun to my shoulder, the familiar weight settling me. I focused on the target, on the black shape against the dull wood. The boy’s voice echoed in my head: *“You’re a phoenix, Elara. You’re a goddamn phoenix.”*
He was gone now. Dead. Another fire. Different kind.
I breathed out slowly, my finger tightening on the trigger. This wasn’t about him. It was about the ache. The hollow space where his touch used to be. It was about the need to feel something—anything—again.
I squeezed.
The shot cracked, echoing in the stillness. Dust bloomed on the plywood, obscuring the target. I didn’t look. I didn’t need to. It was always about the feeling. The recoil, the heat, the way my pulse hammered in my ears.
Old Man Tiber didn’t say anything. He just watched me reload.
“Again,” he said, his voice flat. “Again and again and again. Until the feeling is gone.”
I didn’t ask why. I didn’t need to. I knew. It wasn’t about the target. It was about the fire inside me. The one that wouldn’t let me burn. The one that demanded to be fed.
I loaded another round, the click of the slide a cold, sharp sound. I raised the gun again, the barrel pointed towards the black silhouette. And I waited for the feeling to come back.