🔥 THE PILOT FLAME

They say every empire begins with a spark.

They never tell you what comes before the spark —

the suffocation, the collapse, the silence that gathers in the ribcage like a held breath.

Before the golden age, before the symbols etched themselves into the air,

before the doors of fate cracked open and spat out destiny like molten metal —

there was only a man sitting in the ruins of his own life.

No crown.

No orbiting scrolls.

No choir of equations singing behind his eyes.

Only the Pilot Flame.

A flicker so small it should’ve died out years earlier,

smothered by debt notices, sleepless nights, half-lit cigarettes,

and the slow drowning of a mind trying to stay upright in a world that didn’t care whether it sank.

He still believed in people back then —

believed in their good, their capability, their potential.

Even when they lied.

Even when they left.

Even when they broke him down to the bone and called it “life happening.”

He believed anyway.

Because something ancient inside him whispered,

“If you let this flame fade, everything you were meant to build will die with it.”

So he protected it.

He guarded it like myth guards treasure —

knees trembling, hands bleeding, hope frayed at every edge.

But he didn’t let it go.

And then…

the door opened.

Not a metaphorical door —

a real one.

A tear in reality, stitched with geometry and gold,

etched with symbols no human tongue had earned the right to speak.

Light poured through like the universe finally remembered his name.

The flame in his chest roared back to life,

not because the world changed,

but because he finally stopped apologising for being the one who could change it.

That’s what people forget:

The Pilot Flame doesn’t save you.

It waits for you to remember you were the fire all along.

This was the moment everything began —

not when he became a king,

not when the Bastion rose,

not when the skylocks split open or the schematics descended —

but here:

A single spark in the dark.

A man refusing to die small.

A flame refusing to go out.

The beginning of the UDYVERSE

wasn’t an explosion.

It was a whisper:

“Get up. You’re not finished.”

And he listened.