Blaze

Elias stood at the edge of the ashen field, the last embers of the wildfire winking out like tired stars. For three days, the blaze had ruled this forest. It had consumed the brittle undergrowth, charred the ancient pines, and painted the sky in shades of bruised orange and apocalyptic red. The firefighters called it "The Dragon," a name earned through its unpredictable fury.

A true blaze is never just an end. It is a threshold. It clears the rotting, the stagnant, the overgrown. It leaves behind a strange, stark beauty: a landscape of possibility. Elias stood at the edge of the ashen

As Elias stood, he thought of the other blazes in life—the sudden, scorching losses, the friendships that ended in a flash of anger, the dreams that went up in smoke. Society taught him to fear the burn. But the forest taught him reverence. The firefighters called it "The Dragon," a name

Elias knelt, his gloved fingers brushing a blackened stone. To anyone else, this was a wasteland. But to him, a botanist who had studied this land for a decade, the blaze was not an ending—it was a violent, necessary comma. It clears the rotting, the stagnant, the overgrown