The staircase was narrower than the one above.
No light stones. No guiding sigils. Just ancient bone set into the walls like ribs, and the faint glow of heat rising from far below.
Yanlong walked with slow, deliberate steps.
Each footfall echoed, but not in his ears.
In his chest.
---
His flame was silent now.
Not gone.
Coiled. Watching. Like it no longer obeyed him—but waited for a signal.
That was the worst part.
He could feel his own power growing louder in the dark.
And it didn't sound like his voice anymore.
---
He descended for what felt like hours.
The temperature didn't rise.
But the pressure did.
The deeper he went, the more the walls seemed to lean in. The staircase curved like a spine, and the air grew thick with… not ash. Something older.
Memory.
This place remembered him. Or rather, what he used to be.
---
At the base of the stair, he found it.
The door.
Not stone.
Not metal.
Not spirit-forged jade.
Flesh.
Veins ran across it, blackened and cracked. It pulsed—slowly. Barely alive. A massive, sealed gateway of dragonhide and ancient marrow.
The kind of door only blood could open.
His blood.
---
Yanlong stood before it.
His breath came shallow.
He had fought gods. Defied Heaven.
But this—
This was different.
He wasn't sure what lay beyond this door was meant to be fought.
Or if it was meant to be inherited.
---
He pressed his palm to it.
Heat surged beneath his skin.
The veins lit up, glowing faint crimson.
The door shuddered.
Then—
Opened.
---
Not with sound.
With stillness.
The kind of silence that eats noise whole.
Yanlong stepped through.
And the door sealed behind him.
---
The chamber beyond was vast.
Circular. Roofless. Like a hollowed-out crater in the center of the mountain.
And in its center stood a statue.
At least, it looked like a statue.
A dragon—full-formed, towering, mouth open in an eternal roar.
But it was made not of stone, nor bone.
Charred flame.
Like someone had sculpted it from the remnants of a fire that had never gone out.
---
Yanlong stepped toward it.
The flames in his chest stirred.
This wasn't a shrine.
It was a memory made solid.
An echo of what once was.
---
As he approached, the dragon's eyes lit.
Not gold.
Not red.
But silver-white. Like the last glint of starlight before the sky breaks.
---
And the voice returned.
Inside him.
Around him.
Through him.
---
"You made it."
---
Yanlong didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
The statue turned its head—slow, deliberate.
Not alive.
But not dead.
---
"You came to seal me again?"
"No," Yanlong said quietly. "I came to see if you were still here."
"And if I am?"
"Then I'll decide what to do."
---
The dragon's head tilted.
"You've grown arrogant."
"No," Yanlong said. "I've grown tired."
---
The dragon's flame flared once.
Then dimmed.
"You think you have a choice?"
"Don't I?"
"You're already burning."
---
That was true.
He could feel it.
Since stepping into the tomb, his qi had shifted. The fire no longer flowed like his. It curled inward, not outward. Devouring. Shaping. Preparing.
Preparing for what?
That's what terrified him most.
---
He took one step closer.
"I'm not your successor," Yanlong said.
"Not yet," the voice agreed.
"But you came down here. Alone. Unarmed. And you opened the door."
"Because I had to."
"Did you?"
The dragon's gaze sharpened.
"Or because part of you wanted to?"
---
The question sliced deeper than any blade.
Yanlong didn't answer.
---
He couldn't.
Because deep in his soul—
Somewhere he hadn't dared look—
A single ember had started to glow.
And it didn't burn with guilt.
It burned with hunger.
----
The air shimmered.
The flame around the statue surged without heat, rippling like cloth in a storm.
And suddenly—he wasn't in the chamber anymore.
---
He stood on a battlefield.
But not the kind mortals spoke of in legends.
This was older.
He recognized the stone spires. The sky without a sun. The horizon cracked like shattered glass.
The Ash Court.
The last place he and Vengralis had fought side by side.
---
Except this time… Yanlong wasn't watching.
He was within it.
He looked down.
His body wore the same ancient armor as in the forgotten days. Scaled black, veined with crimson. A blade forged from the bones of heaven itself rested in his hand.
This wasn't a dream.
It was a memory.
Not remembered. Relived.
---
Opposite him: celestial warriors. Dozens. Clad in light, wings sharp like blades.
They didn't speak.
They just attacked.
---
And Yanlong—no, the version of him in this memory—moved like fire incarnate.
One swing of the blade cleaved a valley.
A roar sent three generals crashing through time itself.
He laughed as he burned through divine technique after divine technique, unfazed, unstoppable.
The battlefield was not won.
It was devoured.
---
But in the middle of it, something changed.
The laughter stopped.
The flames turned inward.
---
He turned—and there stood Vengralis.
Not in chains.
Not in smoke.
Alive.
Whole.
And burning with eyes that mirrored his own.
---
"You see it now," the voice whispered in his mind, even as the vision continued.
"You weren't my savior. You were my mirror."
---
The memory flickered.
Time jumped.
Now the battlefield was silent.
Ashes. Bodies. Ruined heavens.
And Yanlong—alone, covered in blood not his own, holding Vengralis' broken horn in one hand and his own reflection in the other.
---
He dropped to his knees.
The weight of what he'd done crushed him.
And in that moment of collapse…
He sealed the tomb.
With his own flame.
With his own guilt.
With his own soul.
---
The vision shattered.
---
Yanlong gasped, staggering back into the present.
The statue still loomed, unchanged.
But he wasn't the same.
His body burned.
Not in pain.
In reminder.
---
"You killed me," the voice said softly.
"And in doing so, you made yourself the only one left capable of replacing me."
---
Yanlong gritted his teeth.
"You're not me."
"Not yet."
"I won't let you take me."
"You already did."
---
The dragon's statue leaned forward slightly, and its voice dropped to a whisper.
"Tell me, Yanlong… if you were given the power to stop every war, burn every tyrant, save the girl who still pities you—"
"Don't bring her into this."
"Wouldn't you take it?"
---
The chamber pulsed.
The flames roared.
And inside his heart, the last seal—the one he never even knew he'd made—cracked.
---
Lianxin.
---
He saw her face.
Not as she was now.
But as she was in that first life.
Before betrayal.
Before Heaven.
Before everything.
---
She had looked at him then the same way she does now.
Like he was a storm she wanted to believe was just a passing cloud.
---
He fell to one knee.
Biting his lip to hold back the scream.
Because now he understood.
The tomb was not just a prison for Vengralis.
It was a crucible.
And he—Yanlong—was being reforged.
---
Not to become Vengralis.
To become something worse.
A flame born from guilt and power both.
---
And when he stood again…
His eyes glowed gold and black.
The fire in his chest no longer waited.
It whispered.
"Use me."
---
End of Chapter 10