I was fifteen years old when I went into a coma.
They thought my life was over. Every single success I’d had up until that point meant absolutely nothing.
Pam Hart won piano competitions, sang arias in the big opera house. She made state as a gymnast. From the moment she was born, she set every expectation ablaze with skill, talent, and hard fucking work.
But all it took was one moment to undo it all and leave her laid motionless in a hospital bed. The fourteen years leading up to it were washed away.
That’s what they all thought anyway.
Because that time in a coma, the fifteenth year of my life, was a metamorphosis for that little girl. First a spark, then a raging inferno, Pyre burned down the last vestiges of Pammy’s old life.
Everyone looks down on year fifteen for me, seeing it as my lowest point, but the truth is that it was the chrysalis that turned me from caterpillar to butterfly.
When I opened my eyes at sixteen, it was the greatest moment of my life. Life made sense, I had finally become the woman I was meant to be. Powerful. Confident. I was at the pinnacle.
I’m at a similar crossroads now.
Since November, fourteen men, women, and teams have stepped up to fight me, and fourteen times I have defeated them.
Winning fourteen matches in a row? Unheard of in these times.
So now I come to fifteen, and everyone seems to believe my run is over.
They’ve put Pyre on ice, forgetting that she is one half of the longest reigning Tag Team Champions, that she won Triosmania. They forget that I survived Invasion, and don’t have to wait a goddamned minute to take what’s mine.
Everyone thought I was the lesser part of the Bad Mother Fuckers, but I’ve burned away those misconceptions in a raging inferno of momentum.
Now everyone believes I’m back in that coma. That fifteen will not be a win for Pyre, that she will be robbed of momentum in a loss to one of her brothers. The fourteen mean nothing to them.
But defying expectations is what I do.
Because match number fifteen in this streak will not be a loss, it will be the moment of metamorphosis. Everything has led to this, the moment that Pyre steps out of the shadows and burns her place into history.
So no, fifteen will not be my lowest point. It is the chrysalis that takes me from the ground up into the stratosphere.
Because my focus is not on fifteen.
It never was.
It’s on sixteen, the moment that I step into the ring with the OSW World Champion.
Powerful. Confident.
The greatest moment of my life will be when I dethrone Corvus as Champion and take my rightful place at the pinnacle of Old School Wrestling.
And as OSW burns in moaning effigy to the world it once was, the whole world will see it as it now is.
A funeral pyre to a broken past…
…and me standing above it.
All that remains.