The first thing Joren noticed when he woke was the stillness.
No birds.No wind.Even the heat seemed to hold its breath.
He sat up slowly. The world around him was blackened—rocks melted into glass, trees collapsed into skeletal shapes. His skin gleamed faintly under a thin crust of soot. When he exhaled, the air shimmered as though it couldn't decide whether to turn to flame or flee his touch.
The Ember Vein throbbed under his ribs, faintly pulsing like a second heartbeat. Each beat whispered something new: More… feed me… there's still more to burn.
Joren clenched a fist. "You're not my master."
The whisper laughed—soft, warm, almost affectionate. No. Merely your reflection.
He tried to rise, but his legs trembled. The previous night's fusion had scoured his meridians raw. Every motion left trails of sparks along his arms, every breath tasted of iron and smoke. When he looked at his reflection in a puddle of glassed water, his eyes glowed faintly crimson.
He almost didn't recognize himself.
He spent the morning testing what he had become.
A flick of his wrist summoned a spiral of flame that burned blue at its core. He hurled it at a boulder. The explosion was silent, almost polite—until the air collapsed inward and the rock evaporated into molten dust. Joren staggered, gasping, as the world tilted.
The backlash hit like a hammer. His vision swam. The edges of the trees bent inward, shadows bleeding color. For a heartbeat he thought he saw faces in the smoke—disciples, elders, Kaelen—watching him from the haze.
This is the power they denied me, he told himself. The power they feared.
Yet the tremor in his hands wouldn't stop.
He looked down; his skin was cracking, faint fissures glowing with dull light. They sealed a moment later, but the message was clear—every use of this new flame was consuming him as surely as it consumed everything else.
By the second day, hunger replaced exhaustion.
Not hunger for food; that was trivial. This was hunger for energy, for life itself. The Ember Vein demanded it. The scar's corrupted Qi wasn't enough anymore. His body itched with emptiness.
So he hunted.
He found a den of beasts near the edge of a dead forest—monstrous things with shells like obsidian and eyes of liquid heat. Once, facing three of them would've meant death. Now, he moved through them like a blade through silk.
The fire didn't just burn. It devoured.
When the last creature fell, Joren stood amid the ashes, panting, the crimson glow under his skin spreading to his neck and shoulders. He could feel the beasts' energy inside him, folding into the flame, refining it.
He felt alive.
He felt limitless.
But as the adrenaline faded, nausea twisted in his gut. The smell of burnt flesh clung to him. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in a cracked obsidian shard—the faint outline of the flame-figure from the scar hovered behind him, its expression unreadable.
"You're feeding too much," he muttered. "I control this."
The figure's mouth curved in a smile that wasn't his.
You said you wanted power, it whispered. I'm only giving it shape.
That night, Joren dreamed.
He stood in the sect's main courtyard again, sunlight spilling across the marble steps. Disciples bowed as he passed. The elders nodded approval. Everything was as it should have been—until the sunlight shifted, turning red.
The courtyard melted into fire. The disciples' faces warped into empty masks. The elders' robes became ash. In their place stood Kaelen, calm and distant, his eyes like mirrors.
"You burned everything," Kaelen said quietly.
"No," Joren protested, stepping forward. "I claimed what was mine."
"Did you?" Kaelen's tone didn't change, but the ground between them cracked open, spilling molten light. "Or did it claim you?"
The voice of the Ember Vein whispered from the fire, He envies you. Feed on that, too.
Joren reached for his rival's throat—and woke up screaming.
The forest around him was gone. Nothing but cinders remained.
By the fourth day, Joren stopped trying to rest. He walked endlessly, the Ember Vein's rhythm keeping time with his heartbeat. Every so often he saw distant lights—villages of rogue cultivators, wandering sect patrols—but he avoided them. His instinct to hide was fading, replaced by something heavier: curiosity.
Would they fear him now?
Would they kneel?
The thought both thrilled and disgusted him.
Near dusk he reached an abandoned outpost at the edge of the scar. The stone walls were half-melted, but the sigil of the sect still lingered faintly on one pillar. He ran his fingers over it, tracing the grooves.
"You built your walls on fear," he murmured. "And called it order."
The sigil flared under his touch, reacting to his Qi. For a brief instant, an image of the sect's mountain peaks shimmered in the air—a memory echo from the barrier network. Joren stared at it, transfixed.
Home. Rivalry. Recognition. And the endless, silent judgment of elders who smiled only when he bowed.
His hand tightened. The image fractured, scattering light like glass.
"Never again."
The flames leapt higher, climbing the ruined walls. They shaped themselves into the faint outline of a serpent—a warped echo of the beast he'd lost. It flickered uncertainly, then dissolved into a column of smoke.
Something inside him twisted at the sight. A flicker of grief, gone as quickly as it came.
By dawn, his control began to fray.
He would think a word and the air around him would ignite. His footsteps left smoldering prints. Even his breath carried heat. When he tried to meditate, his thoughts circled endlessly between pride and fear until both blurred into hunger.
The Ember Vein's voice grew stronger.
You are almost ready, it said. The boundary is near. Break it, and you will be free.
"What boundary?" he rasped.
The one between will and flame. Between man and what you could become.
He laughed—a hoarse, broken sound. "You want me to burn myself away."
No, the voice said gently. I want you to stop pretending there's anything left to save.
The world shimmered. His knees buckled. For a moment he saw himself from outside—a lone figure surrounded by a sea of embers, each pulse of light devouring more of the night. His outline flickered, half solid, half flame.
Then the vision snapped, leaving him gasping.
By the week's end, Joren reached the edge of a desert of black sand. The sky above was a bruised red, the horizon pulsing faintly. Something vast slept beneath the dunes—he could feel it through the Ember Vein's tremors.
The Ancient Ember rests here, the voice murmured. Its heart beats once every thousand years. Take its breath, and none will stand above you.
He should have hesitated. But hesitation had burned out of him days ago.
He stepped forward, bare feet sinking into the ash-hot sand. The ground quivered. Each step sent waves of crimson light rippling outward.
Flame answered flame.
The desert began to move.
A shape rose from beneath the surface—massive, formless at first, then coalescing into a titanic serpent made of molten fire. Its eyes were twin suns, its breath a storm. The air screamed around it.
Joren stood still, dwarfed by its enormity. His heart thundered.
"So that's what you are," he whispered. "The first flame."
The serpent lowered its head until its gaze filled his vision.
Feed me, it rumbled. Or be consumed.
Joren smiled, weary and wild. "Why not both?"
He stepped into the creature's maw.
The explosion lit the horizon for miles.
From far away—at the sect's mountain gates—the night sky flared crimson for a single instant. Disciples paused mid-training; elders looked up in uneasy silence. The light vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving only faint echoes that hummed through the barrier wards.
Deep in his meditation chamber, Kaelen's eyes snapped open. For a heartbeat, the flame sigil inside his Soul Palace quivered like a heartbeat out of sync.
He didn't know why. Only that somewhere beyond the mountains, something had awakened—and it carried the same hunger he'd felt once before.