EMPIRE OF HER NAME

Chapter 1:

Luca's pov:

I didn’t burn that night. Not completely. The fire took the house, the past, and maybe a piece of my soul—but it left behind everything that mattered: the rage, the memories… and her name.

The first thing I remember is the heat. Not the fire itself, but the heat that smothered me, the thick black smoke that clawed at my lungs. It burned my skin, scorched my clothes, and crawled under my eyelids. I had no idea if I was dead or alive. But I knew I had to move.

I rose from the wreckage with nothing but the faint memory of the flames. My body screamed in protest, pain flashing across my every inch, but there was a quiet that followed the chaos, a suffocating silence that pressed against my chest. I crawled through the rubble, my fingers slick with soot and blood. There was no sound, just the distant crackle of the fire devouring what was left of my past.

The house was gone. Everything is gone.

I barely noticed the flames licking at my feet as I dragged myself from the wreckage. The fire had taken it all—my memories, the life I thought I had, and the future I had envisioned. Yet somehow, I was still here. I was still breathing.

Why?

I crawled through the charred remains of the house, the walls of my life crumbling around me. I could hear nothing but the thumping of my own heart, and it was enough.

When I finally stumbled outside, the first thing I saw was the sky—dark, bruised, and full of smoke. The estate was gone, reduced to ash and memories. People were gathering, shouting, running to the perimeter, but I wasn’t interested in them. I wasn’t interested in anything but the deep, gnawing emptiness inside me.

I looked down at my hands—bloody, burned, unrecognizable. But they were still mine. I felt nothing but the sharp sting of every moment I had lived for, every mistake I had made, and every choice I hadn’t been able to reverse.

Neveah.

Her name echoed in my mind, a soft whisper that cut through the chaos. It didn’t matter that I was the one who had set the fire. It didn’t matter that I was the one who had doomed everything in my rage. She had seen me as nothing but a monster—an obstacle in her life, an echo of a past she could never escape. But I was a monster she couldn’t ignore. I was the one who had burned everything to the ground.

The fire had consumed all of it—her love, her fear, and my hope. And now, there was nothing but this lingering, bitter darkness.

I did this. I did this for her.

The people were still shouting, their voices growing faint in the background, but I didn’t care. They could never understand what it felt like to be on the edge of everything you thought you wanted, only to have it slip away in the blink of an eye.

I stood up, my body ached in ways I hadn’t imagined, but still, I stood. And I walked.

It had all started so simply. The fire, the wine, the conversation—those moments before the walls started closing in, before the heat of the room became too much to bear. Zeynep’s voice, her laughter, the way she looked at me with those eyes that saw right through me, to the broken parts I tried so hard to hide.

But she didn’t love me. She never would. I wasn’t the one she wanted.

I could feel it—the emptiness in her gaze. The way her attention drifted, like she was waiting for something, someone else. He was always the one she wanted. Not me.

I didn’t understand. How could she not see what was right in front of her? How could she not see what I had become for her?

So I did what anyone would do in that situation. I made her see me. I made them all see me. The fire wasn’t just a symbol. It was a message. A warning.

It didn’t matter that I had been a fool, that I had allowed my own desires to burn everything around me. I had become what I needed to be. And it was too late to turn back.

I wasn’t the boy who had once walked through that house with hope in my heart. I wasn’t the same man who had loved her so blindly. That version of me had burned with the walls, with the past.

But the fire hadn’t claimed everything. It hadn’t claimed me—not completely.

The rage still lived inside me, a fire that couldn’t be extinguished. It smoldered in the deepest corners of my mind, the embers still glowing, waiting for the right moment to burst back into flames. I could feel it, an itch beneath my skin. The memories, the anger, the endless, aching need for something I couldn’t have—it was all still there.

I looked down at the charred earth beneath my feet, the world around me shifting with the cries of the crowd. They could never understand what had happened here. They could never know the fire that burned in my soul, the one that had claimed everything I cared about, but never me.

And then, her name returned, unbidden, and it stung like salt on an open wound.

Neveah.

Her face, her touch, the way her eyes had glinted in the firelight. I had told myself I was finished with her, but even now, she lingered in the dark corners of my mind. I would never be free of her.

I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of the smoke and the heat, knowing there was no going back.

I would return. But not as the man they once knew.

I would return as the man the fire had made.