Oracle studies me over the rim of his own mug, and for a moment, I understand why even monsters listen when he speaks. There’s gravity in his gaze. Centuries carved into the lines around his eyes. Death, rebirth, and loss carried so long it’s fused with his essence.
“It will help you remember,” he says. “Not what you are becoming. What you already were.” His eyes don’t leave mine. “When the Bloodfire rises, and you’re standing in the middle of battle, when your Bloodsight is tearing reality open, and Lilith is whispering annihilation is easier than restraint, you will need something stronger than power.”
I swallow. “And what’s stronger than power?”
“Identity,” he answers simply. “The fire doesn’t destroy you all at once… it convinces you. It tells you the fastest solution is the only one that matters. That mercy is weakness and lives are acceptable losses.”
“But I’m not human anymore.”
“No.” His flames flicker beneath his skin, glowing through translucent patches where death and rebirth have worn him thin. “But you were human. You chose compassion when it cost you. You learned how to stand in chaos without becoming it. That memory is not sentimental, it’s tactical.”
Understanding begins to thread together in my chest.
“When the darkness presses, and the monster wants to overtake…” Oracle continues, “… you won’t overpower it. You will outlast it. By remembering what it felt like to save instead of destroy. To see a life and choose to preserve it. That memory anchors you… it gives you something the darkness cannot rewrite.”
The word ‘monster’ hangs between us, unspoken but heavy.
I don’t ever want to be one.
So, I lift the mug.
The liquid scalds its way down my throat, sharp and unforgiving, then the world fractures, and suddenly, I am no longer in the clubhouse.
I stand inside Oracle’s memories as they bloom behind my eyes, vivid and merciless. Battlefields slick with blood, cities collapsing into ash, empires rising and falling in the span of heartbeats. I see him die again and again, burned alive, torn apart, drowned in darkness. Every death is agony, but every rebirth is worse. Golden fire ripping him back into existence, leaving him powerful, terrible, and bone-deep exhausted.
But, woven through the carnage, I see the pattern.
The moments where he hesitates.
The lives he spares.
The choices that cost him more than violence ever did.
I see the times he illuminates instead of incinerates.
And I understand.
This isn’t about showing me how powerful he is. It’s about showing me the price of forgetting why that power exists.
When the present snaps back into place, my breath comes fast and shallow. Tears streak my face, unbidden, my grip tightening on the mug as if it’s the only solid thing left in the world.
“The fire always wants to consume,” Oracle says quietly. “Bloodfire, phoenix flame, Lilith’s darkness… theyallhungerfor absolutes.” His gaze sharpens. “Your job is not to extinguish It but toaimit. To remember the woman who healed when destruction would have been easier.”
The lesson settles into me, not as comfort, but as armor.
Before I can respond, the floor beneath us groans.
Not the sound of old wood settling.
Not the creak of a tired building.
This is deeper.
Heavier.
The earth is bracing for what comes next.
Oracle simply nods at me, lesson over. He takes the mug from my hand, and I follow the sound to the garage where Grizz works. The bear shifter braces his massive hands against the concrete, eyes closed, veins bulging as the ground answers him. Understanding sparks without words, his reach punches through cement and steel, beyond decades of blood and machinery, sinking into the bedrock below.
