The forest was dead.
Not in the way a place fades when the seasons change, but in the hollow, echoing silence that follows after life has been consumed.
Kaelen led the small squad forward through the valley where the smoke still clung low to the ground. The air was thick — metallic, almost sweet, like the aftertaste of burnt incense. Each breath made his throat ache.
Ren raised his hand to signal a halt. The team stopped, weapons half-drawn.
"Spread out," he whispered. "Stay within range of the barrier seals."
Kaelen crouched, pressing a hand to the ground. The ash gave way under his touch, fine as silk. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, extending his senses outward.
The world rippled faintly in his mind — like looking into dark water. Residual Qi currents flickered and twisted in unnatural loops, pulsing faintly from deeper in the vale.
Not just fire, his serpent murmured inside him. It eats Qi itself.
"I know," Kaelen breathed quietly, eyes narrowing.
He felt it clearly now — a rhythm, faint and irregular, as if something was breathing beneath the burned crust of the earth.
Ren's voice came low. "Report."
Kaelen stood. "There's movement below the surface. Not human. Might be feeding off the leftover Qi."
Ren grimaced. "We'll scout the lower ridge, check the ruin mouth, then pull back before dawn."
The others nodded.
Kaelen's eyes lingered on the direction of the pulse. It wasn't random — it was following a pattern, converging toward a single point.
Toward something.
They moved quietly, boots crunching through ash, the faint red glow from the still-smoldering fissures painting their faces in shifting light.
When the valley floor began to rise again, Kaelen saw it: the remains of an old shrine half-buried in stone, its entrance framed by melted pillars. The carvings on the surface had been scorched beyond recognition — except for one, faint and jagged, burned into the lintel like a brand.
A serpent of flame, devouring its own tail.
Ren swore under his breath. "That's… an old corruption mark."
Kaelen's chest tightened. No… that's not corruption. He knew that flow. That curve of energy. That was Joren's technique, twisted and turned inward.
The same spiral he'd once flaunted in training — now etched in flame into the bones of the mountain.
Before he could speak, a low sound rolled from within the ruin. Not a growl. Not a roar. Something slower, wetter — a dragging breath through molten air.
Ren signaled for weapons. The squad fanned out.
"Formation Four!"
Kaelen's hand hovered over his spirit seal. The serpent inside him stirred, cold and alert.
Then, from the shadow of the shrine, it came.
A creature pulled itself into view — all sinew and charred scales, its eyes two slits of burning gold. It had once been a mountain wolf, maybe, but now its body shimmered with streaks of crimson flame that pulsed with every movement.
Kaelen saw it immediately — the mark seared into its chest, glowing faintly. Joren's spiral.
"By the heavens," whispered one of the disciples. "He's branding beasts now?"
The creature lunged.
Kaelen barely dodged as its claws carved through the ground where he'd been standing, molten sparks flying. The squad reacted fast, spells flaring — shields, arrows, bursts of spirit light. But every strike that hit the creature only fed the flames licking along its spine.
"It's absorbing Qi!" Ren shouted. "Cut it off from the flow—!"
Kaelen didn't wait. His serpent flashed through his meridians, mapping the creature's circulation pattern in an instant. He saw the rhythm — erratic, unstable, but traceable.
There. A single breach in its flow, where the branded spiral twisted the energy inward.
He shifted his stance, feeling the familiar weight of the technique he'd been refining in secret — the spatial spiral strike. His palm glowed faintly as he drew the energy into motion, coiling it just enough to hold, then released it in a clean, quiet pulse.
The strike hit the beast dead center.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the spiral pattern on its chest collapsed, the flame inside guttering out with a sound like a dying breath. The creature fell, convulsed once, and stilled.
The valley went silent again.
Ren turned to him, breathing hard. "Stormveil… what was that?"
Kaelen wiped a streak of ash from his cheek. "A stabilizing technique. Something I've been experimenting with for containment."
Ren stared at him for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "You may have just saved our lives."
The others murmured quietly — not admiration exactly, but the kind of uneasy respect that follows something they don't quite understand.
Kaelen said nothing. He only crouched beside the corpse, fingers brushing the mark that still smoldered faintly beneath the surface.
Even dead, the flame wanted to spread.
He reached inward, letting his serpent absorb the faint remnants of that energy — not to grow, but to read.
Flashes came in broken fragments — Joren's face, his eyes burning with something too fierce to be human, his hand pressing against a seal of fire as if branding his own soul.
Then, a whisper that wasn't his.
"Devour the flame. Become the flame."
Kaelen's breath hitched. The voice didn't belong to Joren. It was older. Deeper.
He snapped his hand back, heart hammering.
Ren called from behind. "We're pulling out! The readings are spiking again."
Kaelen rose, glancing once more at the shrine. The serpent of flame on the lintel had begun to pulse faintly — like a heartbeat.
It's spreading, his serpent warned.
Kaelen turned and followed the others, but his mind was no longer on the mission.
Whatever had taken Joren hadn't finished yet. It was reaching outward, threading itself through flame and ash, looking for something new to claim.
And for the first time, Kaelen wondered — when that fire found him, would it recognize what he was?
A shadow born of devouring.
A reflection waiting to be lit.