Ash Reforged

Ash slipped into stillness as if entering a different dimension. The room dissolved. His body vanished. Only awareness remained—fluid, luminous, unbound.

Then came the structure.

It rose around him like a temple made of mirrors. Infinite reflections shimmered in all directions, each surface holding a different Ash.

One was lean and fast—an ultramarathon runner pounding through endless desert. His eyes were weary but filled with patient strength.

Another was massive and muscular, fists dripping with blood. A champion. A destroyer.

Another was pale, cloaked in robes, bones sharp from hunger. A hermit who hadn't spoken in years.

They all turned to look at him.

He felt naked under their gaze.

"Which one am I?" he whispered.

But no voice answered. Only the sound of wind, or breath, or memory. Then one of the mirrors shimmered.

In it, he saw himself—not stronger, nor faster, but still. Radiating light from his core. A silent force surrounded him, yet nothing about him seemed forced.

This Ash did not conquer. He harmonized.

"Not the runner. Not the fighter. Not the monk," the voice finally came,

"You are the resonance of them all."

Ash suddenly understood.

Every action he had taken… every impulse resisted… every dream abandoned—they had continued elsewhere.

In other timelines. Other selves.

And now they stood before him, waiting for acknowledgment.

"You do not need to become them," the voice continued,

"You must integrate them."

A golden circle appeared at his feet, inscribed with symbols he couldn't read, but somehow understood.

Time folded again.

He saw food, breath, energy.

He saw how everything he consumed—physical or emotional—left a trace.

He saw how some versions of himself were crushed by overindulgence, while others wasted away in denial.

Then he saw another possibility—

A self who breathed light.

A self who drew sustenance not from food, but from silence, rhythm, stillness.

"This is not starvation," the voice warned,

"This is resonance. Breath as fuel. Stillness as fire."

The circle at his feet began to glow.

Ash felt a shift inside him—not hunger, but clarity.

Not emptiness, but spaciousness.

The fire was changing. It no longer sought to burn. It wanted to refine.

He opened his eyes.

The room was the same.

And yet everything was different.

He walked to the kitchen. Opened the fridge.

Then slowly closed it.

He wasn't hungry.

Not in the old way.

He walked back to the center of the room and sat.

Tonight, he would not eat.

Tonight, he would feed on light.

To be continued…..