Chapter 27: Ash Crowned
The fire should've been screaming. Instead, silence reigned. Absent was the roar, the rush, the collapse. Only ash remained.
Soft flakes drifted through the air, glowing faintly like dying stars. The sky was a bruise above them, thick with smoke, and the only sound was the wet slide of a body slumping forward.
Impact. Unyielding. Leaden. Then came the void of sound once more.
The young bloodhound didn’t look down right.
Muscle memory outpaced thought. His arms became cradles of instinct
Makori.
The name came too late to matter.
Blood soaked through Soren’s shirt, hot and immediate. It was pouring. Not a wound. A flood. A spear jutted through Makori’s side, the shaft trembling as if it had just finished vibrating from the throw. The angle was wrong. Deep. Close.
Makori's chest convulsed. The sound bubbled like a man submerged. Crimson leaked from the seam of his lips.
“Soren?”
Just a whisper.
Soren didn’t speak.
He couldn’t. His throat had locked around his breath.
The blood was too warm.
Too familiar.
Makori sagged deeper into his arms, eyes wide but unfocused, like he was trying to find something beyond the smoke.
“Didn’t… mean to come back.”
Leather ground against granite at their backs.
“M-makori?”
Ishar.
He lurched ahead, his mask of composure shattered, exposing something primal Soren had never witnessed.
No calm. No focus. Just horror.
“No… y-you were s-supposed to be gone… you were supposed to be gone…”
He dropped beside them, knees crashing into the soot-slick ground. His hand reached out, hesitated at the shaft protruding from Makori’s body, then hovered above his shoulder, shaking.
Makori’s breath rattled. Each inhale shallower than the last. A smile tried to form—flickering and thin—but faltered under the weight of blood pooling between his teeth.
“Didn’t want to… leave you….Either of you…Ishar always… overthinks.”
Soren’s arms locked. Not to save. Just to anchor him in place. A second longer.
The tactician’s composure cracked,head shaking like he could rattle time backward, fists trembling with the need to undo. “No. No, you stupid bastard, don’t do this, not now—not again. We’ll find someone, we’ll fix this, just breathe. Breathe.”
His lips fluttered, like a page catching wind. One last breath tried to surface. Failed.
“Too…late.”
His gaze slipped upward.
“I think… I see her.”
Ishar’s voice cracked. “Don’t. Don’t go.”
Makori turned his head, just enough to press his temple against Soren’s shoulder. His body convulsed with a final breath.
“Mom…”
Makori's mortal moment met with merciless silence.
No more breath.
The spear still trembled.
Soren didn’t move.
He couldn’t.
The Ny’Kelos tactician made a sound—a broken, helpless growl— “No. No, no—you’re not—you’re not gone. You’re not allowed to be gone.”
Soren stared down at his hands. At the red soaking into the cracks of his knuckles.
Not again.
The warmth faded slowly.
But not fast enough.
Something inside him flickered. A pulse. A breath that wasn’t his.
Ishar's throat tore open with sound as his knuckles punished the earth, sending dust billowing around trembling fists. "I'LL KILL YOU!"
The words cracked the air like thunder, a raw animal sound that didn’t belong in Ishar’s mouth. Not the Ishar they knew. Not the one who always kept his thoughts precise, his movements measured. That version shattered, left in Makori’s blood.
The Illusionist’s laughter rose somewhere beyond the smoke. Slow. Cruel. Mocking.
Soren stared down at Makori, the boy who came back for them. Who threw himself into hell because he couldn’t leave them.
Because he believed in them.
Something pulled at the edge of his memory. The same position. The same blood.
He blinked—and it wasn’t Makori anymore.
“My little storm…”
The voice,not his. But the scent hadn’t changed.
He blinked again.
Makori.
But the scent hadn’t changed.
Blood, smoke, guilt.
Still warm in his arms.
Too warm.
And too quiet.
Say something.
But his throat didn’t work.
Ishar rose in a blur of movement, face twisted into something violent and unrecognizable. The wind around him began to churn. Smoke recoiled.
And Raekor’s voice cut through the fire.
“Well now,” he said, as if wiping a tear, “didn’t that hit a little too hard?”
“He really came back for you? That’s adorable,” Raekor said, almost pitying. “Too bad belief doesn’t stop a spear.”
“I don’t even know your name,” he said, voice light, conversational—a professor discussing an interesting specimen. “Isn’t that funny? All this screaming, all this rage—and I don’t even know who you are.”
“I didn't even have to kill him myself, you know. That boy. Makori." Raekor's fingers traced the air, creating illusion that shimmered between them. "I just made sure you saw the wrong thing at the right moment. Your own spear, your own hands—beautiful irony, isn't it?"
Ishar's breathing stopped. The world tilted beneath him.
"You did something," he whispered, voice like stone grinding against stone. "You made me see things."
Raekor's eyes flicked toward him, lips curling. "Already broken by what you've done. I just wanted you to understand exactly how—"
The Ny'Kelos-born spat blood into the dust, eyes gone wild. No calculation. No restraint. Just heat and hurt.
“You think I’m letting you leave,”
Raekor didn’t flinch.
“Let me?” tasting the phrase. “You’re not built for permission, relic.”
He just stood over Ishar, the polearm’s tip resting against the cracked earth like a staff. His chest rose and fell—slow, amused. A streak of blood slid down his temple from the earlier blow, but he made no move to wipe it.
“Name won’t change what comes next, ” Ishar spat.
A slow curl of the illusionist’s lip revealed too many teeth—white, jagged, catching flame like bone pulled from an open pyre. “Still clinging to pain like it earns you something? It doesn’t buy you mercy.”
He leaned down slightly, his voice almost gentle, the way one might speak to a child who doesn't understand.
"I'm not here for you. I was never here for you."
“I was here for the market.”
Ishar’s eyes lifted, confused.
A dry sound grated from his throat—humor twisted by heat and something worse.. “You think this was a war? A raid? No. No—this was procurement. The village, the people… they’re currency. And your little rebellion? Background noise. You’re all just… product.”
Ishar surged upward in a wild swing, but Raekor stepped back with dancer’s ease, the spearhead missing by inches.
"You protect them like they're sacred," Raekor went on, circling.
"Like your traditions, your land, your little moral compass means something in the new world we're building."
A sudden jab—polearm cracking across Ishar's cheekbone. The impact sent him crashing down again, mouth red with blood.
"What's it like?" the native tactician spat through bloodied teeth.”—burning down villages just so someone might remember your name?”
The illusionist’s gaze caught fire—not light, but a flicker of recognition, of challenge accepted.
He didn't pause this time. He stepped over Ishar's body and drove a boot into his ribs.
"You cling to broken legacies."
“All that blood, and still no name of your own.” Ishar gritted his teeth through the pain
Another kick.
"Dead names."
Raekor’s boot landed like punctuation across his ribs–then again.
But the third kick never landed clean.
Ishar twisted—not away, but into it—shoulder slamming forward to catch Raekor’s shin with raw defiance. His elbow rose, struck the inside of Raekor’s thigh. Not enough to drop him. But enough to make him stumble.
“I’m not done,” he growled.
A quick thrust upward—knee to gut. Raekor buckled, breath punched out.
Ishar rose with him.
Fist cracked against Raekor’s jaw. Another drove into his ribs. One-two, Ny’Kelos pattern, short-range punishment.
Blood now smeared both their faces. But only one of them was grinning.
Raekor’s.
But as he reeled for the third, his foot stuck.
Ishar's fingers locked around Raekor's ankle, bloodied knuckles whitening with desperate strength. The ground beneath them seemed to pulse with each heartbeat, dust rising and settling with their struggle.
"And you'll die... for nothing but coin."
Raekor wrenched free, face twisting.
"You think this is about money? This is about the future. Your kind has no place in it."
“You talk like you were born with a name. But we carved ours from dirt. And you? You’d burn the whole world because no one said yours loud enough.”
Raekor went still.
That crooked grin twitched. Not from amusement. From pressure.
He straightened slightly, eyes narrowing—not in fury, but in something quieter. Pity. Or maybe self-preservation dressed as confidence.
“You really don’t get it,” he murmured.
No snarl. No sneer.
Just the edge of something that believed in nothing.
“You still think this was about war. About loss. You think I wanted power?”
He tilted his head, studied Ishar like a poorly written thesis.
“I didn’t kill him because it was strategy.”
Pause. Breath. Something darker settled behind his eyes.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“I killed him because he believed.”
“Because people like you keep teaching people like him that hope matters."
He stood upright again, spinning the polearm lazily.
"The world doesn't need hope. It needs cleansing. Fire. Pressure. Evolution” The polearm dropped like a guillotine waiting for gravity.
"And you? You're a fossil." The blade fell like the end of a sentence–unquestionable, final.
Ishar's body twisted away, leaving only dust where his heart had been. The blade struck stone with a frustrated ring.
He wasn’t fast enough to strike back.
But he wasn’t dead either.
And Raekor just laughed. “Come on then. One last dance, relic.”
Ishar didn’t back down. His body twisted at the last second, the guillotine blow missing his chest by inches. He surged upward, elbow slamming into Raekor’s jaw with enough force to jolt his head sideways. Not elegant. Not precise. But full of rage.
The illusionist stumbled, momentarily stunned—but then pivoted with unnatural grace, grinning.
“Better,” Raekor said, cracking his neck, “but still too slow.”
Ishar struck again. A shoulder slam. A jab to the ribs. His spear swept with brute fury, not calculation. And for a few seconds, Raekor gave ground—smiling through blood-streaked teeth.
Then the smile slipped.
Raekor’s hand shot forward, catching Ishar’s wrist mid-swing. His other hand curled into a brutal hook, driving into Ishar’s side.
A wheeze. A crack of ribs.
Raekor didn’t stop.
He ducked the next desperate swing, stepped in, and spun—bringing the butt of his polearm crashing into Ishar’s temple with a sickening thud.
But Ishar wasn’t done yet.
He surged forward, shoulder catching Raekor off-balance. Elbow slammed into his gut, striking low across the shins. A roar tore from his throat—no technique, just fury.
Ishar crumpled without a sound.
He twirled the weapon again, stance loose, playful—predator circling wounded prey.
Ishar’s hand clenched into the dirt. Every breath burned. His vision swam.
But he rose.
Slow. Shaking.
Still breathing.
Raekor tilted his head, grin narrowing.
Ishar struck again—faster this time, hitting Raekor's ribs with a crack that bent him sideways. The illusionist staggered but laughed through the pain, eyes alight. He was enjoying this.
"Not bad, relic," he sneered. "But you're tiring."
A sudden sweep of Raekor’s foot took Ishar’s stance. The follow-up came fast—polearm to gut, elbow to jaw, then a burst of illusion. Fire and shadow lashed out, not just to blind, but to mock. The forest native reeled. Then fell.
The ground took him in a heap of limbs and blood. Eyes still open—breath shallow—unconscious. Raekor turned away, victory assumed. That's when the fire bent. It didn't crackle but recoiled, heat retreating as if in fear. The earth whispered like something ancient had stirred beneath the skin of the world
A breath escaped him.
Not a laugh.
Not this time.
“…Oh.”
Soren
Ishar began to fade.
Not in movement.
In memory.
Like smoke curling away from fire—Soren blinked, and Ishar’s outline bled into the haze. His steps echoed wrong, stretched too long, the illusion crawling under his skin.
And then the battlefield was empty.
Not truly. But in his mind.
Raekor had made it so.
And then there was nothing.
No clash.
No scream.
Just stillness.
Soren didn’t move.
The blood crept down his arms in thick ribbons, settling into his knuckles, like it wanted to stay.
But it wasn’t the warmth that paralyzed him.
It was the familiarity.
That same heat. That same smell. That same feeling in his arms.
The same as her.
A breath caught in his throat.
Makori hadn’t moved. Still cradled like something fragile, head limp on Soren’s shoulder—half-smile lingering like he’d made peace before the others even saw it coming.
The world narrowed.
The fire blurred. The rubble faded. Even Ishar’s cries vanished, swallowed into ash.
All that remained was weight. Blood. And memory.
His voice came out barely a whisper. “It’s just like before…”
Makori didn’t answer.
Of course he didn’t.
He was already gone.
No.
Not gone.
He blinked.
And for a second—just one, just enough—Makori’s face shifted.
Dark hair curled differently. Lips parted to say something she’d said before.
His mother.
Slumped against him.
Not in a dream. Not a nightmare.
In this moment.
In this ruin.
In his arms.
Blood dripping from her mouth.
“…M-my little storm”
His throat convulsed.
His body refused to move.
The fire warped around him, heat pressing in on all sides, but inside—everything was frozen. Breath shallow. Muscles numb.
A throb echoed behind his ribs.
It wasn’t pain.
It was hollowness.
And then—
Then the voices came.
Not loud. Not screaming.
Just… whispering. All at once.
“You weren’t fast enough.”
“You stood there. Again.”
“It always ends like this.”
“You couldn’t save her.”
“You couldn’t stop him.”
“Always a disappointment.”
A thundering in his skull.
The same voice. His father’s. But warped—like it had been buried too long and crawled back out with rot clinging to the syllables.
“Weak. Always were.”
“You think this is new?”
“This is who you are.”
He shook his head.
But nothing moved.
Makori was still there.
The smile hadn’t faded. Neither had the blood.
“Stop it,” he whispered.
But the voices grew louder.
Clashing. Overlapping. Like knives on metal, grinding in his chest.
Every breath he didn’t take screamed in his lungs.
His hands twitched.
The blood moved with them.
Hot. Alive. Too real.
And all at once—
Everything rushed in.
Like the moment snapped back into motion without warning.
His breath ripped from his lungs in a choking sob. One foot staggered backward. His balance wavered. Hands shaking.
But his arms felt wrong. Like they didn’t belong to him. Like this wasn’t his skin. This wasn’t his life. This wasn’t his story.
He clenched his jaw, but his teeth ground like stone.
And in the roar behind his ears—another voice.
Not from memory.
Not from guilt.
Not from trauma.
From within.
Breathe.
He sucked in air, but it didn't feel like air.
The fire didn’t surge—it settled. Like it had always been there, waiting for space to remember. Each heartbeat spread not blood but light, ancient and knowing, recognizing its vessel at last.
Heat unfurled from the soles of his feet like roots seeking soil, spiraled up his spine like vines claiming abandoned ruins, and nestled behind his eyes like an old friend come home.
He doubled over—gasping, not from pain, but pressure. Like his body had become a furnace, and something inside had struck the match.
The flames in the clearing trembled.
Flickered.
The blood on his hands began to simmer. Not boil. Not sizzle.
Simmer.
Like the heat knew it belonged there.
Like it recognized him.
“You were always afraid of it,” the voice whispered again—his voice. “You knew it was there. You just didn’t want to look.”
Soren’s head snapped up.
And the world slowed.
A sound split the silence.
Not a roar.
Not a scream.
Something else.
Like a blade being drawn through molten glass.
A deep, resonant hum that rang in his teeth. In his bones. In the marrow of the air itself.
Light bled into his eyes.
Orange. Fierce. Unnatural.
The fire didn't touch him—it recognized him, like a loyal hound reuniting with its master after years apart.
Every flicker reached for him with desperate familiarity, tendrils of flame weaving between his fingers as if trying to become his skin.
Makori’s body lowered gently to the ground, his grip steady now.
Not a man rising—but a monument remembering
No more tremble in his hands. No more shake in his breath.
Just heat.
Controlled. Coiled.
The ground around him cracked. Thin lines of molten light webbed across the stone like lightning frozen in earth.
Soren took one step forward.
The flames answered.
The golden crackle of fire wasn't deafening—it was delicate. Almost reverent.
Sparks kissed the air and curved around his limbs like dancers.
The inferno that had once raged felt soft against him now.
Each breath drew in heat that should have scorched his lungs but instead settled like mulled wine warming him from within.
The scent of ash transformed from acrid to familiar—like coming home to a hearth long abandoned. Even the air tasted different on his tongue, sweet and metallic like blood and honey mixed.
And in the distance, Raekor paused. The illusionist turned mid-swing, just long enough for Ishar's fist to slam into his ribs and stagger him back.
Raekor coughed, spitting blood, eyes narrowing as he turned toward the center of the clearing.
The upturned corners of Raekor's mouth faltered, his eyes darting side to side as certainty abandoned him like moisture fleeing drought-parched wood thrust suddenly into flame.
Recognition cracked his face open.
He stepped through the smoke. Not walking. Manifesting. The ground burned beneath his heels. Where his fingers brushed air, oxygen recoiled then returned, eager for contact. His eyes lit with that same orange glow, but "glow" was too soft a word for what lived there—a furnace glimpsed through keyholes.
The smoke parted before him, not from movement but from recognition—one ancient thing making way for another.
Flames curled at his shoulders like they belonged there—like they had always been part of his silhouette, merely invisible until now.
The fire held its breath. Not wild. Not hungry. Just waiting.
“Oh…” he breathed, reverence cracking under disbelief. Like he’d glimpsed something divine—and found it staring back.
“…You.”
But Soren didn’t speak.
Didn’t blink.
When he inhaled, the flames contracted like the chest of a slumbering beast; when he exhaled, they expanded in lazy, predatory ripples. Not imitation but synchronicity—two hearts finding the same rhythm after too long apart
Like it had been holding its breath.
Just waiting.
Raekor let Ishar’s limp form drop from his grip. The body hit the stone with a dull thud.
“So that’s what you were hiding,” he whispered, almost to himself. Then louder, laughter cracking out of him like dry branches snapping. “Finally! A real spark! Was that all it took? A corpse in your arms? Gods, you’re as dramatic as they come.”
Soren stepped forward.
Not fast.
Measured.
But something in the air changed.
With every step, heat followed.
Ash lifted, slow and weightless, orbiting him like snow caught in an invisible tide.
Raekor’s grin widened.
“You think this means something? That it makes you special? No. It makes you useful. And I will break you like the rest.”
He flung his hand wide.
And the world cracked.
Illusions fanned out from him like smoke.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
They looked like fire. Sounded like ash. But they weren’t real. Not truly.
Raekor’s weapon was memory. Manipulation. Perception spun into blades.
He conjured not flames—but the fear of burning.
Shapes of flame and shadow and ash all warping into twisted visions.
His mother.
His father.
Makori, again—bleeding, choking, eyes locked on Soren.
Raekor’s voice came from everywhere.
“You think this ends with me? I’m just the beginning. The world is cleansing itself. You, your little band of failures, your precious morality—it all burns the same.”
The images wavered—not just illusions, but memories clawing their way out of the ash.
His mother’s scream.
His father’s voice, twisted into something jagged.
Heat pressed in on him—not from outside, but inside his veins, like magma where blood should be.
You’re not strong enough.
But the fire didn’t believe that.
And neither did he.
But the fire didn’t respond to Raekor.
It bent.
To Soren.
The illusion of his mother stepped forward.
Eyes glassy. Blood on her lips.
You couldn’t protect me then. You won’t protect anyone now.
Soren didn’t flinch.
The flame behind his eyes dimmed.
Then surged.
The illusion of his mother opened her mouth, but where words should have formed, only embers emerged—her familiar shape collapsing inward like a paper lantern consumed by its own candle, leaving nothing but glowing dust in the air between them.
His mind felt impossibly clear while his body screamed with fury.
Each calculated step betrayed by the tremor in his fingers.
Chain snapped free from his hip.
Sword drawn in the same breath.
No ceremony.
No warning.
Fast. Fluid. Furious.
The nearest illusion shattered.
Then another.
His face remained a mask of ice even as his blood boiled beneath the surface.
Then Raekor was in front of him. Polearm sweeping low, carving heat and smoke aside.
Soren ducked beneath it, boots sliding across stone.
His chain whipped out, wrapped the haft of Raekor's weapon, and pulled.
Raekor abandoned the polearm like deadweight and slid in close–dagger blooming from his gauntlet like a venomous fang.
Steel met steel.
Sparks. Firelight.
Soren twisted, shoulder catching the next blow. He hissed. Burned. But didn’t stop.
Escrima sticks now.
A flurry.
One slammed into Raekor’s wrist, jarring the blade loose.
The other cracked against his jaw.
Blood sprayed.
Raekor reeled back—then vanished.
Another illusion.
Soren turned without pausing.
Blade arced behind him.
Caught real flesh.
He was bleeding now. Breathing heavier. But he fought like a man backed into the last inch of shadow.
They circled each other, firelight between them like a shifting tide.
They weren’t fighting in a straight line anymore.
Each strike, each dodge, each reckless burst of illusion sent them arcing wider across the camp—past shattered stone, burning tents, collapsed walls. The battlefield curved around them like fire dancing around the wick of a dying candle. They were circling something.
No, not something.
Someone.
The ground changed—softer, familiar. Ash had fallen thicker here. The smoke had thinned just enough to reveal what lay at the center of this spiral of violence.
Makori’s body.
The fight had dragged them back.
Neither had meant to return.
But fire has gravity, and grief does too.
Raekor didn’t notice.
Soren did.
Chain met steel. Sparks rained.
Soren’s escrima clashed once—twice—then fell from his grip.
He kicked it. Hard.
It screamed across the stone—whistled through the air—and slammed into the earth beside Raekor with enough force to crater the stone.
Raekor froze. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple.
“You’re getting reckless,” he growled.
"No, I'm done holding back," Soren replied. The fire behind him agreed.
Raekor jerked back, lip curled, eyes flashing like he tasted something foul.
“You’re learning.”
Soren still said nothing.
The fire curled tighter.
The fire didn’t flare.
It dropped.
Dead quiet.
A whisper threaded beneath the roar. Not Raekor’s. Not his own. Just three words, quiet and cold.
Hold the line.
The heat steadied as his breath sharpened. Soren became flame. A blur of calculated violence. Three precision strikes—gut, throat, again—each impact a deliberate note in a storm's rhythm only fire could comprehend.
Raekor faltered.
Breathing ragged.
Eyes wide.
His illusions sputtered—broken, faltering in the heat.
He tried to vanish.
Tried to blend into smoke.
But the flame betrayed him.
Showed him.
Soren followed.
Not as a man.
As something more.
His body moved on instinct.
Not strong enough. Not fast enough. Not yet.
Chain to blade.
Weapons switching with impossible fluidity.
Makori's smile. Blood on his teeth. Move faster.
Fist to fire.
Heat surged beneath his skin like molten ore, lacing through tendons and bone.
Mother's eyes. The warmth fading. Never again.
Blade to fist.
Each strike left trails of fire under the surface, pain blooming sharp and bright before fading into the next blow.
Reality pulsed around him—crystal clarity one moment, smeared impressions the next—as if the world itself couldn't decide whether to burn away or solidify.
In the spaces between heartbeats, he saw too much: the microscopic beads of sweat on Raekor's brow, the individual motes of ash defying gravity around them, the hairline fractures spreading through the earth beneath their feet But he didn’t stop.
Couldn’t. Not while the fire was moving through him like it belonged.
Raekor couldn’t keep up.
Every illusion died before it finished forming.
Each swing distorted the air—heat trailing not just from fire, but nearness. The space between them shimmered, warped like glass over coals. Raekor stopped pressing in. Flinched. Avoided. The fire didn’t just threaten—it punished closeness.
Every dodge brought Soren closer.
Every strike peeled away the mask of control Raekor wore.
Until the predator was panting.
Bleeding.
Afraid.
Raekor lunged in desperation.
Polearm back in hand.
He swung wide—wild, teeth clenched, snarling.
The fire-born slipped beneath the arc, pivoted like heat curling off steel, and drove his boot into the haft with brutal clarity
The polearm flew from Raekor’s hands.
The lunge fell short.
Chain lost. Sword gone. Only flame-wreathed fists remained—trembling, not from fear, but from heat trying to hold shape.
Raekor’s retreat wasn’t graceful. A stutter in his stance. Eyes flicked past the fire, past the man.
Toward freedom.
Not calculation.
Escape.
Fingers curled—too slow.
The illusion never formed.
Heat moved.
Not a man charging. A memory catching up.
The fire bit skin and nerve, but he didn’t flinch.
Pain answered like prayer—
Proof he hadn’t burned out yet.
That something inside still wanted to.
Raekor stumbled.
Then the ground caught him.
A shockwave unraveled through the ash—
Not fire. Not stone.
Illusion wrapped in ruin.
It struck Soren like memory.
Ribs buckled.
Flame dragged him across the wreckage—
Until the wall slammed the breath from his lungs.
Time fractured.
The battlefield swam—colors bleeding, edges softening.
Fire crawled along the horizon like it was searching for something.
And then—
There he was.
Makori.
Just beyond the veil of smoke.
Neither of them had meant to return.
But fire curved everything back to its source.
Soren’s foot caught on rubble. The ground tilted under his weight.
That spear still jutted from Makori’s spine—unmoved, unforgotten.
Raekor turned—weapon lifted.
Soren moved.
Not strategy. Not power. Just instinct dragging exhaustion forward.
The strike wasn’t clean. But it was fast.
Raekor wasn’t ready.
His hand trembled. Not from fear. From intent.
He whispered something under his breath—old, guttural, wrong.
The fire around him bent the wrong way.
A glyph seared itself into the air behind him—twisting, malformed.
For a moment, everything around Soren slowed.
The flames dimmed.
The world… paused.
Raekor smiled.
“Let’s see how long you can burn.”
Soren roared, snapping through it—breaking the illusion with a wide swing, and his heel crashing into Raekor’s knee.
The glyph burst into embers, never reaching full form.
Soren’s grip tightened.
Raekor’s fingers twitched.
Steel screamed.
Soren vanished forward in a blur of fire.
Raekor barely caught the swing.Savage strikes sent sparks scattering like stars, heat peeling off in waves as their weapons locked and split again in the same breath.
Soren wasn't fighting.
He was translating flame into motion.
Every step wrote sentences of fire across the ground; every strike punctuated the air with burning syllables. No thought interrupted the language flowing between him and the inferno.
Each strike carved a path into the earth. Walls behind Raekor split. The ground cracked beneath their feet.
Raekor grit his teeth and pivoted, pushing off rubble. He dipped low, then launched himself back—polearm spinning wide, illusion bursting outward in a flash of five afterimages.
All of them charged.
Soren didn’t dodge.
Didn’t falter.
The air screamed.
Four illusions split apart like paper in the wind.
Only one met him.
Raekor hissed, arm trembling as their weapons locked again, this time not with trickery—but fear.
His illusions stuttered now. Glitches in the seams. Echoes that didn’t line up, shadows that lagged a second too long.
His hands twitched, intentions misfiring. The illusions no longer obeyed.
The mastery that once felt divine now cracked like overused glass.
"What are you?"
Raekor’s lips moved, but no words came. Not planning. Just afraid.
The fire rippled behind Soren’s eyes.
He twisted, stepped in close, and dragged Raekor’s arm down—his elbow cracking against the haft of the polearm—then slammed his head forward, colliding with Raekor’s nose in a brutal snap.
Raekor stumbled, blood blooming across his face. He staggered back, arms wide, breath ragged.
“Don’t think this means you’ve—”
Again.
The sound that tore from him wasn’t a scream. It was an unraveling—panic made audible.
His hands flew, the illusion faltered.
The blade caught his side, dragging open his ribs in a shallow but punishing slice.
The illusionist flew back, crashing into a low wall, dragging his fingers through the stone for stability. As he collided with the wall, a burst of illusion—more concentrated than before—exploded outward.
Soren's sword met the wave of distortion. Metal shrieked, vibrating at a frequency that shattered steel. The blade exploded into fragments, leaving him with nothing but a useless hilt.
And just beyond Makori's body lay still.
Soren stood disarmed, the broken sword hilt slipping from his fingers.
Eyes wide.
The fire dimmed.
Raekor saw it.
His lips curled. “That’s right,” he spat, voice wet with blood.
“Still warm, isn’t he?” Raekor rasped. “You couldn’t even keep hold of him.”
Soren didn’t speak.
But his body twitched—not from rage. From something else. A memory. A flash.
Makori’s last breath.
A moment too warm.
Too final.
Too much like before.
Raekor pushed to his feet, laughing through the blood. “Oh, don’t tell me this is the part where you cry? Don’t tell me—”
Soren didn't hear him anymore.
Something pulled at him—not instinct, not strategy, but the fire itself. It turned his gaze toward the spear still transfixing Makori's flesh. Wrong. Incomplete. The fire wouldn't let death remain unpaid for. Wouldn't let the weapon stay buried in innocent flesh.
He turned.
Not away from Raekor.
But toward Makori.
His knees bent slightly.
The broken sword hilt fell from his fingers.
It hit the ground with a hollow, final clang.
Then he moved.
Whatever came next died in his throat, crushed under the weight of what Soren became.
Because Soren’s hands wrapped around the spear that still protruded from Makori’s back—the one Ishar had driven in, illusion-blinded, too late to stop it.
And he ripped it free.
Blood clung to the shaft.
The weight of it almost dropped him.
But he held it.
His limbs trembled. Fire crackled through his veins like broken glass. Each step now cost him breath. Each heartbeat thudded like it might be the last. The world shimmered—heat haze or blood loss, he couldn’t tell. His fingers wrapped around the spear—not with precision, but survival.
There wasn’t energy left for anything cleaner.
Only this.
And for a heartbeat, Raekor laughed.
A choked, wild sound—half hysteria, half relief.
Not because the spear had missed.
Because he thought it would kill him.
Eyes bulging, body airborne, he screamed something wordless—an idea unraveling mid-birth, arms flailing like he could still twist the outcome. The world spun. The heat roared.
…the spear hadn’t hit his heart—he thought he was alive. The air crackled with his disbelieving laughter. And in that breathless descent,
“HAHAHA YOU THINK THIS IS IT?”
Then he stopped.
He was still airborne.
A shadow passed through the smoke above them. The air pressure changed, suddenly heavy with presence.
Panic pooled in his pupils as predator became prey, gravity finishing its cruel promise.
A shadow.
Below, the Ael Mirra waited.
Wings whipped whorls through wavering smoke as the air ruptured above them, the beast's silhouette slicing across the skyline. Each massive wingbeat commanded the flames, sweeping them inward then smothering them completely in concentric circles of darkness. Fire that had devoured the village now surrendered to something more ancient. The Ael Mirra descended like judgment, its approach extinguishing flame in rhythm with its wing-beats.
In a single heartbeat, three forces converged, Soren's spear finding its mark, the beast's talons seizing Raekor mid-air, and dying flames retreating in waves. Elements aligning to pass sentence.
Claws struck Raekor's body before he hit the ground.
He didn’t even have time to scream.
The beast caught him mid-fall, dragged him upward, then tossed him—once—like a dog flinging prey.
Raekor's cry warped into something animal—the sound of philosophy meeting tooth and claw. He started laughing, the intellectual's last defense against terror. But it cracked along fault lines of certainty. Splintered where dogma met power it couldn't categorize. Folded into a scream born not from pain, but from the vertigo of a man who'd built his identity on controlling others only to discover he wasn't at the top of the hierarchy after all.
"No... this isn't—this isn't how it ends—" The words scrambled out, a scholar suddenly illiterate with fear. His hands gestured as if still trying to shape an argument that might save him.
The sobs caught between ragged chuckles—the sound of a worldview collapsing.
"It was supposed to matter," he whispered, eyes reflecting the beast above him and the man wreathed in flame below. His voice dropped to a confession:
"I was supposed to matter."
Ael Mirra didn’t care. Neither did the fire.
The Ael Mirra twisted, caught him again midair, jaws widening.
The Ael Mirra had made its judgment in the same breath that Soren's fire began to quiet. As if the two were connected, bound by purpose beyond understanding.
Only torn cloth and blood hit the ground.
The great beast hovered, wings creating gravity rather than defying it—the air itself bending to accommodate something so ancient. Its head turned with the deliberate motion of mountains considering whether to move. One eye—gold and endless, holding libraries of violence and wisdom too vast for human comprehension—locked on Soren.
Not a threat, for threats require equality. Not a warning, for warnings imply choice.
Recognition.
A conversation without words between things that remembered when the world was younger and less solid.
The Ael Mirra's pupil contracted slightly.
Just a look. A knowing. A passing of something unnamed between them.
Not a warning.
An acknowledgment.
Then it rose.
Wings beating once.
Twice.
And then it was gone.
Flame scattered in its wake.
The battlefield left quiet.
Broken and still.
Stillness clung to him like ash. Shoulders sagged.
The fire had left his skin, but not his blood. It pulsed—slow, painful. Like glass dragged through veins.
A ragged breath escaped. Not a sigh. Not relief.
“Shit.”
He turned, eyes scanning the bodies like he wasn’t the one who left them in pieces.
Inventory the dead. Mourn later. Maybe.
His hands moved like they remembered a life he didn’t live—steady, practiced, too calm for someone who’d just watched a friend die.
Muscle memory. Survival twitch.
Not grief. Not rage. Just the quiet work of someone who didn’t want to feel anything at all.
He looked down at the blood crusting over his fingers.
Still trembling.
