Myths are forged and tempered by fire. The world is created in flame. Mud heated from clay, the big bang, the hot, burning blood of giants.

He looks into the candle's flame.

Fire...Everything is fire...Burning...Twisting...Turning...Unquenchable...A flame so significant that it blazes through the retinas and sears the mind. A cyclopean fire. A fire to consume the world. To obliterate the soul. A fire so strong that it would keep on feeding on everything around it until nothing existed. A voracious, carnivorous, greedy, thing; fingertips of red-orange-yellow light grasping and caressing everything in sight, setting it ablaze. Unifying the world into a gargantuan blaze the roars out hotly into space like a molten star.

If you stare into a fire for too long, your eyes begin to water.

He takes the kunai and stabs it through his hand. No pain. He takes it out, watches the hole seal over with nothing more than a small dribble of blood to warrant it ever existing. Again, he stabs himself, this time twisting the kunai hard enough to hear something snap.

"You've never been good enough, Naruto."

His voice trails off into the darkness, reflecting and rebounding off the walls. There's a myth about echoes. A man once fell so in love with himself that the woman who pined for him lost her voice calling for his name. Every echo is the woman's voice, trying to find the man she could never captivate. Another version is that the woman loved the man so much she would only repeat what he said, thus losing free-will and becoming nothing but his Echo. Another has the woman's father, a God, turning the woman into what held the man's attention the most: the reflection of his face on the surface of a lake.

"You've always been...Naive."

He wrenches the knife from his hand. The swirling wound seals over backwards, skin and bones reknitting counterclockwise. Another myth finds a child and his father escaping life imprisonment by building wings out of wax and flying away from their death with the father warning the son about flying too high. The son thought himself better than everyone else; then everything else; and climbed higher than his father advised to go, challenging the gods.

"Everyone told you...Not to take the risk. Not to stop and ask yourself, why am I doing this?"

In one version, the child flew too close to the sun and his wax wings melted. In another, the gods thought him too proud and burned his wings, casting him downwards from their glory.

"Flew too close to the sun...Burned it all away."

The Kyuubi belongs in myths, as well. It plays a part in a rather epic tale, having a dual role as both antagonist and savior. It is said that a Serpent will awake the Ninetails and that the Ninetails will rampage across the lands, seeking this Serpent. During this time, the Ninetails will find and confront those who would stand in its way; those who would rather have its power than its friendship; and it will slay and eat them all, gaining their strengths.

"...I never...I never actually..."

Naruto dips the kunai into the candle flame, waiting for the end to get red-hot. When it is sufficiently heated, he plunges it into his skin and listens to the loud hissing noise of his flesh, blood, and musculature burning. As a being of Fire, the Kyuubi will spread across the land and consume all who stand in its way. When it confronts the Serpent, it will ask it why it was awoken. Why it was forced to cause so much destruction.

The serpent will smile, and say: 'I never hurt anyone I wasn't willing to lose. You killed everyone in your way just to get here, and now, what?'

'I...I'm...I'll kill you.'

'You killed everyone else. What's one more person?'

'...You...You planned this, didn't you?'

'No. Not exactly, but...Let us not argue semantics.'

'I...You...Why would you do this...'

'Fulfilling a promise? Curiosity? Morbid obsession? Who really knows. Maybe I just like fucking with people.'

'No one will mourn you when you die, Snake.'

'Oh, but they will remember me when I die...'

Naruto wrenches the kunai from his hand, watching as his skin heals over just a bit slower. Just a bit less.

'As a nightmare.'

'As a Dream...As an Aspiration...I am the most hated shinobi the Leaf has ever produced aside from Uchiha Itachi, and mothers will whisper my name to placate their fool children in the night...You, however...'

The fire finally scars, on the last try.

'...Will just be a very bad memory.'