Phoenix sighed softly as she stared at her arm, it wasn't injured, bruised, nor in any form of discomfort, she was doing her best to keep herself from shaking. She should be used to this by now, so she wondered why...why did her body still act the way it did? Still combust everything around her in a blink of an eye? Why can't she keep a harness on it?

Pheonix let out an exhale she forgot she was holding from a breathing technique she found on Inter-Knot. Slowly inhale through the nose...deeply and steadily...and slowly exhale out the mouth steadily.

Repeat.

Slowly inhale through the nose...deeply and steadily...and slowly exhale out the mouth steadily.

Repeat.

Slowly inhale through the no-

HIK!

Pheonix's pupils shrunk as her breath hitched, and as if on queue to reveal the mastermind behind it all, the six thin sharp flares of flames behind her on her back bloated and suddenly expanded dangerously, its heated orange color shifting darker to red, the inner flares that were blue and white indicating intense heat grew from the inside, all at the same time as those six flares sprouted outwards uncontrollably as if trying to escape, yearning for freedom, singing a completely foreign melody of roaring, a high pitched engine.

Two flares sinked into the rubble she rested upon, carving right through without an ounce of resistance. Phoenix merely glanced to the bottom left flare, her eyes calm and focused, unbothered even. She clenched her arm just a bit, and kept breathing.

Slowly inhaling through the nose...deeply and steadily...and slowly exhaling out the mouth steadily.

The roaring flames on her back...were quiet. The only sounds present was the sound of her soft steady breathing, the safe faint humming of the flames on her back that retracted back to their normal length, and most prominently the bubbling lava surrounding her.

She never walked or jumped to the debris floating in the middle, at the first pang of loss control she fell to her knees and could only wait as her flares melted the area around her. She didn't panic, didn't call for help, she simply waited for her self control to catch up with herself, accepting her predicament, staying in one spot.

The hollow was a heat wave because of her, the heat probably seeped out of the hollow, she couldn't imagine how hot being at the center of it all would be for the average person. This is why she takes commissions alone. More than anything, she'd hate to hurt anyone because of this ability. It was lonely, but safer. Even most ethereals steer clear of her like the plague. Who even was the real monster?

All she could do was wait for the heat to die down, but inevitably, those flames would once again, who knows where or when she's fighting, rise from the ashes of her regrets.

"Im slowly cooling down, just a bit longer..."

She tried encouraging herself, looking up from the orange and black setting around her. The hole her flames created didn't even shine a light down at her, was this not an event worthy of a spotlight?

No, it wasn't, because the true event appeared when the ceiling above her cracked. At first she thought this was it for her, or maybe the extra rubble would just add to the lava in here. She watched the collapsed, and out came a person...

Immediate eye contact.

One dutiful. The other a loss for words.

She watched as the person firmly landed on other debris floating on lava.

"What're you..."

Despite the heat outside from just being near the hollow, inside the hollow itself, and even approaching its source, you were leaping over towards her. Her amber eyes were wide as they followed you.

"Stop...stop it…if you fall you’ll-…”

Maybe it was all just a hallucination. Why was this person risking their life for her, was the heat not unbearable? When she opened her eyes she was met with a hand that extended out to her.

This…was real.

Her finger twitched, her subconscious yearning for it. She held herself back…When was the last time she held hands with someone.

“Why…are you doing this for me?”