Short Story: The Flame without Ashes
The silence of prayer swathed the summit of Mount Avahana.
Below, the sea stretched in ripples of gold, but on top of the temple’s highest tier, all eyes were laid upon the girl who was kneeling before the sacred flame. Arya’s head was deep between her knees, her newly shaven scalp dusted with ritual ash of sandalwood scattered by the head of the monks, Bhante Samiddhi, beginning the ceremony. A crescent of ash traced across her brow. The monks began chanting a mantra, which echoed in a low, harmonious tone, blending seamlessly with the wind that threaded through the ancient stone.
Turning eighteen years old, she was the first girl in a generation to be called to the Flame of Bodhivamsa.
All the other monks, known as Bhikkhus, dressed in ochre robes, began to form a ring around her, their hands raised in mudra. The Flame burned in a lotus-shaped brazier at the centre in a blue-white colour, which was said to be unbroken since the First Breath. When the sun and moon crossed paths in an eclipse, the fire’s vision was the strongest. The Bodhivamsa Flame would reveal the aspirant’s inner truth.
Bhante Samiddhi bowed in front of the Flame before taking steps forward. His body was thin as a twig, and his hair had grown white as he aged, but his voice cut through the silence.
“Dear ancestors and Guardian of the Flame, let us be guided through this ceremony. Let the soul now be seen.”
He dipped a ceremonial spoon into a sacred oil and poured it into the flame.
As the oil came into contact with the fire, it flared. Once, and then again. The chant faded.
It did not bloom in radiant blue, as it always does.
For once, it darkened, along with the sky that suddenly turned cloudy. Then it swelled until it burst into a tall black flame, writhing with roaring thunder in the sky. Shadows bent across the courtyard. Gasps rippled through the monks as the fire pulled upward, forming the shape of a human figure—tall, robed, crowned in grey ashes. A masculine form with eyes of ember stood proud within the fire.
Arya looked up and caught the gaze of the figure staring directly at her.
Then, in a gust, the flame collapsed back into its lotus bowl, blue once more.
All the Bikkhus turned pale.
Only Bhante Samiddhi remained calm.
“She was not meant to remember.” He stepped forward and whispered to the flame. He blew the conch shell, alerting other monks to start the drum as he continued with the mantras recitation to complete the initiation ceremony.
The temple snoozed in silence, with its pinnacles towering under the lingering eclipse. The stone corridors of Mound Avahana, which were once filled with the rhythmic chanting of monks, now echoed only the faint breeze of the sea below.
Arya wandered in search of answers.
Sleep had eluded her. Since the ritual, the fire’s black flare and the figure within it, all had refused to leave her thoughts. She had not found the words to speak to anyone about it. Not even to Bhante Samiddhi. Yet her body still burned where the flame had touched her brow.
She walked through the porches without thought, feet bare against the cool stone, drawn downward past the main shrine and its sleeping guardian spirit animals. A side corridor lay partly open, its ancient lintel inscribed with faded characters she could not read. A scent found her: frankincense and dried balsam, tinged with something older—the smell of ash.
She stepped inside a dim, round chamber. Its walls were carved with portraits of ancient monks, arms outstretched toward a lotus-shaped pedestal at the centre. There lay upon a bound manuscript: a palm-leaf text, each leaf strung tightly with copper wire.
Arya could not help but approach it, curious. As her fingers brushed the manuscript, it shifted. The copper loosened with a dry clink. The top leaf curled open on its own.
To Arya’s surprise, the words moved. Not just flickered in lamplight, but writhed, as if it were alive. Changing languages, restructuring, reasserting. Sanskrit evolved into Pali, then transformed into a form that seemed to reach into her, a language her heart intuitively knew.
“She shall rise bearing the flame…”
The text rippled, “He shall rise…”—then stammered back again. “She.”
She spun. Bhante Samiddhi was standing in the doorway, robes loosely draped, eyes unreadable. His voice was not sharp with reprimand, but weary.
“You should not be here,” he claimed.
He stepped inside and saw her holding the manuscript.
“You were meant to find it. Only the bearer ever does.” He moved to her side and turned a few leaves until the script revealed an image: a city in flame, temples shrinking under the weight of fire, a crowned silhouette in the centre. Below it, a name: Rudra.
“The last bearer of the flame,” Samiddhi murmured. “The one who annihilated the Srivijaya empire. They called him the purifier. A god reborn. Others…called him the endless terrors.”
Arya stared at the name. Chill struck down her spine.
“I heard the elders were talking. And the prophecy had it that I would be the first spiritual leader of a new era,” she whispered.
Samiddhi stared at her, his eyes softened with sorrow.
“You may be. But the flame has never built anything without first burning what came before.”
Arya tossed side to side, finding it difficult to shut her eyes.
For the past few days, sleep came to her, but it was not rest. Following her encounter with Siddhanta Leaf, her dreams unravelled into lucid episodes. Too vivid to be called imagination, too foreign to belong to her alone.
The first night, she wandered through halls of fire where bells tolled with no hands to strike them. Statues turned as she passed. From the smoke, stepped a man adorned in fluctuating flames, wearing a crown of broken stone. He did not speak. He only watched, and his eyes were as if they were her own.
On the second night, she dreamt of herself standing at the top of a temple as it collapsed beneath her. Screeching screams rose from the streets below as fear erupted. The man’s voice came from within her chest, “You hesitate. Do you know what hesitation breeds? Generations of rot.”
She jolted from her sleep, choking on incense smoke that was not there. Her bed mats were charred at the edges.
By the third night, Arya no longer waited for sleep to find her. She knelt in meditation, her mind was thick with dread, as she let herself drift.
This time not distant, not regal. But, closer. Intimate.
“You fear me because I’m you,” Rudra whispered behind her ear. His breath was cold flame. “You think being born a woman will change what we are? The flame does not care for shape. Only for the purpose.”
Arya turned. He circled her now, barefoot in ash, trailing embers. He touched her shoulders.
She fought to steady her voice. “Why must we destroy?”
“Because they never learn. The kings grow fat with wealth from the people’s harvest. The scribes sell virtue. The priests forget their silence. We teach what cannot be taught—truth through collapse.”
His voice turned mocking.
“You would usher in a new age with gentleness? Teach the corrupt with forgiveness? What stories will they tell of you, Arya? That you loved them into virtue?”
He laughed. It cracked the ground beneath her feet.
“They will carve your name into coins and temples as they did mine. Until your compassion becomes doctrine, and doctrine becomes decay.”
His hand reached toward her chest, fingers sinking through her flesh.
Arya screamed. The dream shattered. She awoke to the taste of ash on her tongue.
Outside, the Bodhivamsa Flame danced steadily on the summit. But now, when she looked at it, she knew: it was not a symbol, it was a summons.
And something inside it was waiting to claim her.
Arya stood at the summit of Mount Avahaṇa, alone before the Bodhivamsa Flame. The monks remained in the lower sanctum, their chants hushed, uncertain. No one had told her to come. No one dared stop her.
The sky darkened in slow increments, like ink spilling across the heavens. Shadows swallowed the terraces. The sacred brazier pulsed, blue at its core, but at its edges, already licked with black fire.
She inhaled deeply and stepped forward.
The flame stirred at her presence. It recognised her.
She knelt. Her palms opened skyward.
“I know what you are,” she whispered. “I know what I’ve been.”
The flame surged upward, twisting into the crowned silhouette once more—Rudra, the figure of judgment. He stepped out of the fire, fully formed, eyes smouldering with that ancient, cold certainty.
“So you’ve stopped running,” he said.
“I didn’t come to surrender.”
“You came to finish what we started.”
Arya stood face-to-face with him now. “No. I came to end it.”
Rudra circled her, slow and deliberate. “You cannot end what you are. We are not conquerors, Arya. We are consequences. The dharma rots; the flame restores. They always beg for light, but never ask what must be burned to find it.”
His voice grew louder, deeper, layered with echoes from lifetimes. “We have worn a thousand names. In every age, we are reborn not to lead but to cleanse.”
Arya’s heart pounded, but she didn’t look away. “Then I refuse all names.”
She stepped forward. “No coins. No scriptures. No statues. You want me to rule as fire, but I am not here to be remembered. I am here to be forgotten.”
The flame around them recoiled, hissing like a wounded thing. Rudra’s form flickered.
“You would erase yourself? Betray the very purpose of rebirth?”
Arya raised her arms. The flame wrapped around her wrists, but did not burn. “No. I won’t erase myself. I will absorb you.”
His expression cracked for the first time.
“You cannot carry me. You are too small.”
She smiled, sad and resolute. “Then I will grow large enough.”
The moment their forms met, the flame exploded—blue and black intertwining like serpents. Heat seared the air. Time bent. For an instant, there was nothing but white silence. No breath. No thought.
Arya stood alone inside the flame. Rudra vanished.
The fire softened to silver, flickering like a lotus in the breeze.
At the foot of the mountain, Bhante Samiddhi opened his eyes. The Siddhanta Leaf, locked for generations, curled inward, its script fading to blankness. No prophecy. No name. Just quiet parchment, like fresh snow.
Back upon the summit, Arya turned from the brazier. Her robe was scorched at the hem. Her eyes finally shimmered with presence.
No monks bowed. No one sang.
She descended the steps alone, like the calm after rain.
In the years that followed, no doctrine bore her name. No temple was raised in her likeness. Some said she vanished into the forests. Others claimed she became the flame’s keeper, walking the earth nameless.
But in every age since, when fire danced without consuming, and leaders listened before ruling, and temples burned only to be rebuilt with grace, there were whispers:
That the one who bore the flame had chosen mercy.
And left nothing behind but silence.
Word count: 1930 words
© Champaca L. Figlar, 2025
This is a short story that made its submission to Elegant Literature: July 2025 under the theme Timeless Terrors and keyword 'flare'. The good news is that it's made into an honorable mentions in the magazine.
