Fifteen

•KILLIAN•

I still remember the moment of my parents'

deaths—the hot flames that swallowed my home as it crumbled. I had watched from afar, sheltered in a tree, and my eyes never left the building until it all turned to ash with my parents inside.

I still remember my ten-year-old self with harsh degree burns on my body, digging through the ash for any remains, only to come upon nothing but a safe my father had kept well hidden.

I remember the password being my birthday as I cracked the safe open and carried the remains of what my father had protected as my legacy and inheritance.

I had walked many miles until I came upon a farmer’s old car that helped me to the seashore, where I boarded a boat like a fugitive with all I owned in a bag. That sleepless, cold night, with the wounds I had feared ……