Rise of the Phoenix novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Ash

There was no pain after the first moment.

There was a wide gold quiet, with no floor and no ceiling.

I stood in it with no body, only the feeling of one.

"Well," said the old one. "That went quickly."

She stood in front of me.

I had expected a bird.

She was a tall woman made of embers.

Her face kept changing, young and old and young again, but the dry amused voice was the one I knew.

"Am I dead?" I said.

"You are ash. It is not the same."

"It felt the same."

"It always does."

She tilted her head.

"You are the first of my hosts to shout at me, and the first to say thank you."

"I am tired of losing hosts, little coal."

"Then why do it?"

"I do not do it. Fire does it. Rising is what I am."

She said it simply.

"Every vessel I have ever had went up with me and did not come back."

"You are standing here because of the cold one."

"The file says they built him."

"They built a lock-shaped man," she said.

"I told them what would last. A body that stays cold when a body burns."

"That part was mine, and I confess it."

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