**Chapter 7: The Immortal Master**
"Who...What are you people?" Aelar's voice shook as he asked the questions weighing on his mind.
The beautiful woman in shimmering azure robes looked down at him with a serene smile. "I am Luminaria. This is Praxis," she said, gesturing to the stern-faced warrior beside her. "We've come to guide you, Aelar."
The young boy's eyes went wide at hearing his name spoken so familiarly by strangers. "Guide me? I don't understand..." He glanced between them with a furrowed brow. "How do you know my name? What's happening to me?"
Luminaria opened her mouth to respond, but Marn, the old vagrant, cut her off with a scratchy cackle.
"Can't you see, whelp? These are no ordinary folk!" He pushed himself up with visible effort. "Why, you've been blessed by the great powers themselves with your awakening!"
Praxis leveled Marn with a severe look. "That's enough from you, derelict. Go find a gutter to sleep off your ramblings."
Marn shrank back, cowering at the warrior's imposing presence and tone. Luminaria rested a hand on Praxis's armored forearm.
"Peace, my friend. Let him have his truths, flawed though his perception may be." She turned back to Aelar with sympathy shining in her eyes. "You burn with many questions, I can see. Sadly, some answers must come later when you're better prepared to understand."
Praxis grunted. "The boy's future lies on a path of fire and struggle, Luminaria. We should make plain what's to come if he's to have any hope of—"
"Hope?" Aelar couldn't stop the desperate bark of laughter that erupted from him. "You speak of hope when I've awoken to horrors that should be impossible!"
He thrust out his burned hands, the scorched flesh still inflamed and grotesque. "Look at what I am, what I'll always be - a gutter wretch not fit for even the lowest rungs of your 'great powers'!"
Tears of anguish sprang to Aelar's eyes, but he angrily blinked them away. "So unless one of you has some miraculous insight into how I'll make future ashes of myself once this...this curse finishes its unholy work, I don't want to hear another word!"
An uncomfortable silence fell over the squalid alcove, broken only by Aelar's ragged breathing. Marn looked at the fuming boy with something like wistful pity. Praxis's mouth thinned to a grim line.
Luminaria, however, slowly knelt in front of Aelar until they were eye to eye. There was no condescension or judgment in her radiant gaze - only patient understanding.
"You've suffered more than any child should bear, haven't you, my spark?" Her lilting voice was tender. "And now cosmic forces have thrust upon you abilities and destinies you never wanted or can yet comprehend."
One cool hand cupped Aelar's burned cheek with gossamer-light tenderness. Soothing energies instantly flowed from her touch, banishing his pain and erasing the burns beneath in ripples of azure light. Aelar gaped soundlessly, watching his mangled flesh rapidly knit back into smooth, unblemished skin.
"There is still so much I'm unable to reveal, even to one so pivotal as you," Luminaria continued in that same gentle yet weighty tone. "But know this - the flame you now carry is sacrosanct. One of transcendent importance and might beyond what our era has witnessed."
Her thumb brushed his cheek in a motherly caress. "You face innumerable hardships ahead, little spark. More than I care to foresee while you're still so tender. But you need never fear this awakening as a 'curse' to damn you."
Aelar found himself calming at her soulful words and touch, his panic ebbing despite himself.
"Then...what is this fire raging inside me?" he asked in a small voice. "Nothing in my pitiful life should have granted such an impossible boon."
"I cannot reveal all truths surrounding your awakening," Luminaria replied with naked remorse in her ageless eyes. "But some insights I can share to illustrate the profundity stirring within your fledgling flame. A sacred truth others dare not speak aloud."
She clasped his unscarred hands between her palms and leaned closer, as if bestowing a coveted secret. "You burn, Aelar, with the primordial embers of an Ancestral Celestial Firemana Core."
Whatever Aelar expected her to say, those words struck him like a thunderbolt. Whispers of those legendary cores were recounted in the most hallowed tomes and exalted cultivation texts, spoken of with reverence typically reserved for divine forces of creation. He stared at Luminaria, unable to process that such pureness could ignite within his wretchedness.
"B-But I'm nothing!" he burst out. "Just a forlon nameless child discarded by the cruelest streets! How could I, of all people—"
"Enough!" Praxis's bark startled Aelar into silence. The towering warrior's weathered face held a sobering blend of grim acceptance and fatalistic resolve. "The truth of what you carry has been uttered plain. All that remains is whether you have the spirit to bear that blessed pyre's immense weight upon your road ahead."
The burly man turned his smoldering stare fully upon the young urchin. "Nurture that firemana's transcendent spark properly with teachings and guidance, and you may one day achieve astounding ascensions most only dream of. Neglect it or rail uselessly against your glorious burden...and those peerless embers will consume you unfathomably, leaving your path as no more than cooling ash."
Aelar swallowed hard, the weight of Praxis's dire avowal ringing with inexorable truth. Beside the taciturn warrior, Luminaria radiated sorrowful empathy. She gave his hands a final comforting squeeze before rising gracefully.
"But you need not begin treading that monumental road this very night," she said in a reassuring tone. "For now, you require rest and recovery in a sanctuary beyond this wretched place. When you are hale, then we shall speak further of the choices before you."
Aelar rose unsteadily, fatigue crashing over him all at once as the evening's shocks threatened to overwhelm his slip of a form. Looking up into Luminaria's radiant, beatific features, he managed a tremulous nod.
"A-Alright....I'll come with you. There must...be more to this than just ramblings of a delirious rat, for good or ill." He exhaled a shaky breath. "Tell me more of this road you chart for me, Luminaria. Because even if I comprehend but ashes scattered on the wind now...I cannot help but wish to keep that blaze flickering, no matter how it sears or binds me."
Luminaria regarded him with a look of profound sadness warring against wistful wonder. Lifting one delicate hand, she traced a symbol in the air beside Aelar's face--a sinuous, unknown glyph that sparked with sapphire flickers when her fingertips traced its path.
"Then let this celestial cipher be your first lesson, little spark," she intoned with solemn gravity. "And the prelude to many more momentous teachings...if you can bear scorching your wings upon the grandest pyre this cosmos has ever witnessed igniting."