The crater still smoldered, its edges blackened and glowing like the breath of a slain beast. Jackie stood at its rim, Yara at his side, both their faces lit by the pulsing red heart of whatever had fallen from the heavens. The scent of scorched earth and ozone filled his lungs, thick and hot. Above them, the stars were veiled behind a rolling tide of ash-laced clouds that churned like living things.
A wind swept through the trees behind them, strange and sudden. The howling it carried wasn't natural—it was deeper, primal, as if the mountain itself were exhaling a buried truth. Jackie's hand moved instinctively to the Heartstone at his belt. It pulsed. Warm at first, then hot, then burning.
Something stirred in the center of the crater.
The others—Yara, the stone-skinned scout Graal, the quiet mystic-child Amiri—backed away in unison as tendrils of flame unfurled like serpent tongues from the broken core. Sparks floated into the night like ghost-lanterns. Jackie held firm, squinting through the swirling smoke.
From the heart of the ruin, a figure began to rise.
It wasn't flesh.
It wasn't spirit.
It was both.
A towering form emerged, cloaked in burning robes woven from stormfire and starlight. His crown, shaped like jagged antlers and molten iron, pulsed with ancient heat. His eyes blazed twin suns beneath a spectral helm carved from the skull of some forgotten beast. Each step he took shook the crater walls and rippled through the forest floor like a drumbeat from the world's origin.
Jackie's party fell to their knees.
All except him.
He stood still—heart hammering, mouth dry, body screaming to run—but he stood.
The figure stopped. The flames around him calmed slightly, revealing tribal markings etched into his ghostly flesh—tattoos in a language long dead, perhaps even to the Ancients themselves. His voice rolled forth like distant thunder.
Jackie didn't know the words, but he knew their weight. Challenge. Judgment.
Heat struck him like a hammer, washing over him in waves. His legs buckled, but still he stood. Every scar across his back burned as though the past itself had awoken in them.
He clenched his fists.
This is the test I was born for.
The Ancient King raised a clawed hand, wreathed in dancing flame, and lowered it slowly—beckoning.
Jackie inhaled through his nose, steady and deep, recalling the hermit's sacred breathing. The chill from the Sacred Peak still lingered in his bones, sharpening his mind like a whetstone to steel. He let go of fear. Let go of doubt. Let go of everything except the truth in his blood.
He stepped into the crater.
The heat grew unbearable. His vision blurred. His skin blistered where his armor was thin.
But he moved forward, eyes locked with the flame-crowned being before him.
Suddenly, the Heartstone at his belt flared white. Not just heat—energy. A rush of strength poured through his limbs. He felt his bloodline surge, the ancestral fire igniting within his chest.
"Wolfflame," he whispered. "I am of fire and fang."
He dropped to one knee.
And drove the base of his spear into the earth.
A column of fire erupted upward, not as an attack, but as an offering.
Wolfflame spiraled from his chest to his arms, and from his hands it danced through the shaft of his weapon—blue and gold, flickering like a living thing. It reached toward the Ancient King and wrapped around him gently, like a cub nuzzling a slumbering elder.
The spirit did not flinch.
It watched.
Waited.
Then it moved.
The flaming king stepped forward and pressed one burning claw to Jackie's shoulder. It should have seared through bone. But it didn't. The fire sank inward, into his very soul. Jackie's knees buckled fully this time. He collapsed forward, his hands digging into the cracked earth.
His breath caught.
Visions struck him all at once—
A battlefield of giants roaring beneath crimson moons. Thunder lords shaping mountains with their fists. A winged woman carved of obsidian flying over seas of fire. Then a memory not his own: the Ancient King standing at a high cliff, holding a newborn wrapped in bear fur. Whispering a name.
Then everything went white.
And still.
And quiet.
When Jackie opened his eyes, the King was gone. The crater was dark, its flames snuffed. Only a strange warmth lingered in the stone under his palms.
Yara rushed to his side. Her voice was distant, like through a thick fog.
"Jackie! Are you—?"
He sat up, slow and trembling. "I saw him. I saw... everything."
She pressed her forehead to his. "You're burning up."
"I think I carry something now," he murmured. "A piece of him."
Amiri stepped closer, staring at him wide-eyed. "He marked you."
Jackie nodded. The clawprint still glowed faintly on his shoulder, seared through fabric and skin. A tribal totem burned into his flesh—half wolf, half flame, surrounded by a sunburst spiral.
Graal knelt and touched the earth. "He didn't attack you."
"No," Jackie said, still dazed. "He tested me."
"And?" Yara asked.
Jackie looked up at the sky, where the comet trail had faded. "I passed."
A low howl echoed from the hills.
It wasn't natural.
Yara tensed. "You hear that?"
Jackie slowly rose, using his spear to steady himself. His whole body throbbed with new power, but also a strange sorrow, like he had inherited not just strength but grief. "That was a warning."
Graal stood and narrowed his eyes. "You think it was the only Ancient?"
Jackie's hand clenched around his Heartstone. It still pulsed. Not just with warmth—but with rhythm. Like it was responding to a distant call.
"No," he said grimly. "There are more."
Yara looked up sharply. "Then what was this one?"
Jackie stared at the now-silent crater.
"A king," he said. "One who watched."
The wind shifted again. This time from the north, thick with the scent of ash and blood.
Later, back at the village of Emberholt, word spread like wildfire.
The boy marked by fire had stood before an Ancient—and lived.
The elders gathered by the Sacred Flame, whispering prophecies older than any scroll. Some called it a blessing. Others a curse. Still others spoke in hushed tones of balance being disturbed.
Jackie sat near the central hearth, his eyes half-lidded, feeling the breath in his lungs like the tide of a mighty sea.
He could feel the shift inside him.
The Wolfflame obeyed him now not just as fire—but as memory. As legacy.
He opened his palm. Flame bloomed, quiet and controlled.
This is not the fire of destruction, he thought. This is the fire that watches. That remembers.
Yara approached quietly, a small cloth bundle in her hands. "You need to rest," she murmured.
Jackie looked up. "Rest comes after purpose."
She sighed and sat beside him. "Then promise me something."
"What?"
"That when the next Ancient comes… you won't face it alone."
He hesitated.
Then nodded.
"I won't."
Yara handed him the cloth bundle. He unwrapped it slowly. Inside was a necklace—wolf fang and obsidian bead woven together with red silk.
"For protection," she said. "And… remembrance."
Jackie tied it around his neck, letting it rest over the glowing claw mark on his chest.
Suddenly, Amiri ran into the hearth circle.
"Jackie!" she called, breathless. "The dreamers saw something!"
He turned sharply. "What?"
Her eyes were wide. "A new comet. Falling fast. But not fire. Ice. And with it—a shadow with wings."
Jackie stood, feeling the heat flare in his veins again.
"A new threat?" Yara asked.
He shook his head slowly. "Or a rival."
The fire at the center of the village snapped and roared high, unbidden.
The Age of Ancients had truly begun.
End of Chapter 38