Chapter Text
Sapnap’s first memory is of heat. Blazing heat. The way it burned his skin and the way embers felt trickling down his throat and the way the tears evaporated off his cheeks. He thinks he screamed but he was a child in the Nether. No one came for him.
So Sapnap cried in his crib until the blaze rods resting next to him began to lose their smolder. Until all the fire suffused into his veins and left him to rise from the ashes himself.
He thinks he was human once but that past is lost to him. Sapnap’s family was one of the rare human ones in the Nether. But whatever happened that day, it changed him.
It should have killed him. Instead Sapnap became something… else. Something other than human. Something less than human.
(The idea that he could ever be more, that he could even be equal to a real human had been beaten out of him a long time ago.)
It took his family a while to realize fully what had happened. He was injured by the blaze rods, burned, but he had ultimately escaped less hurt than he should have. The scalding heat should have killed him. At the time, they thought he was just lucky and that the burns across his cheek and forehead would eventually fade.
Instead Sapnap left the white bandage wrapped around his head for months longer than expected. It wasn’t until his mother walked in on his changing that his parents saw him for what he truly was.
Magma cracks fractured his smooth skin. His fingertips, usually hidden under gloves, were still stained soot black. A tail tipped in eternal flame snaked around his leg. The fire hadn’t burned anything yet, not until his mother screamed and Sapnap felt his fear ignite.
That is the first time Sapnap realizes how dangerous he is. When he accidentally sets his room on fire. When his parents run from the burning house. When he gets a glimpse of himself in the mirror and sees red irises and lava crackling out from under his eyes and teeth sharpened in fangs and so much black and red and orange and so much fire.
He walks out of the house unscathed but his parents don’t take him back. Blazes are some of the most dangerous creatures of the Nether, with no thought other than to burn and destroy. How could they accept a son who had become what they hated?
Part mob. Part monster.
-
In all his years wandering alone through the Nether, learning how to fend for himself, Sapnap never learns where the blaze rods came from. His family lived in the Nether, sure, but far from any bastions. No human in their right mind would make their home that close to mobs.
Blaze rods are a tricky thing regardless. Supposedly valuable but no one knows their true use. They’re beyond rare because of how hard they are to attain. Anyone who does manage to get some usually risks their life.
How blaze rods ended up in Sapnap’s crib is a mystery. A horrible, life changing, mutilating mystery.
-
Sapnap is nine when he finds the portal.
He stumbles through it and for the first time, he sees the sky. Boundless and beautiful and so so blue. He didn’t even know that color existed beyond the occasional sapphire gems piglins kept. He thought the world existed in shades of red and orange and fire. That’s all he’s ever known. Fire and how it burns.
He wonders if it will be obvious how out of place he is in this world. If the real humans will know just by looking at him that he doesn’t belong.
As he glances around though, he doesn’t see another soul. The portal wasn’t protected. There’s no one to tell Sapnap to go back to hell, not yet. Sapnap doesn’t want to stick around and wait for someone to find him so he goes.
He goes and he goes and he doesn’t stop.
He never finds his way back to that portal. And that’s just fine by him.