The wind carried the scent of ash long after the fire had gone.
I stood still, breathing in the silence. The place where the soldier had once stood was nothing but scorched earth now—blackened stone, smoke coiling from a melted ridge. The canyon around me trembled with the memory of that flame. Blue, cold, searing… and absolute.
It had not only destroyed. It had unmade.
Yet beneath the ruin, something stirred—a pulse in the air, faint but unmistakable. A glow, not heat. The stone where the fire had burned was cracked wide open, but within the fissure bloomed… something alive. A sliver of vine, no wider than a thread, glowing with pale, translucent color.
A flower.
Fragile. Impossible.
Growing from the wound left by death.
I knelt.
The flower bent toward me as if in recognition, and I understood—dimly—that the fire was not simply a force of ruin. It was dual. Fire to destroy. Fire to renew. Flame that cleanses, and flame that gives birth. It was not mine.
But it had chosen me.
Footsteps echoed behind.
David emerged from the ridge, Eve in tow, her hand clutched tightly in his. His breath was ragged, and his eyes found the burn in the ground before they found me.
"You stopped them," he said.
I rose. "One."
David approached the edge of the scorched stone and looked down. His face darkened at what he saw. "This… this is god-fire."
"I did not summon it," I replied. "It answered on its own."
He looked at me carefully. "That is worse."
Eve peeked from behind him. "Is he gone?"
"Yes."
Her gaze fell on the little flower blooming in the stone. She tilted her head.
"Why did that grow?"
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe something needed to."
We continued forward, now deeper into the canyon. The terrain flattened slightly, marked with ancient ruins—arches and black monoliths, inscriptions half-buried in rubble. The Aelaran had not returned. For now.
We camped again in the skeleton of an old temple, half-collapsed. The air here was thicker, laced with sulfur and something older—like rust, or dried blood.
David finally spoke after hours of silence.
"They were not men, you know."
I looked at him. "The soldiers?"
He nodded. "Aelaran Reclaimers. Purified by flame. They are stripped of name and history. Their tongues are split, their eyes hollowed and filled with god-ember. They do not remember what they were."
"Then what do they believe?"
David stirred the fire. "That Yahweh failed. That divinity fled the world when we proved unworthy. In his silence, a new god arose—unnamed, faceless, hidden behind sun and sword. They call it the Rekindler."
"A god of fire?" I asked.
"No. A god of purification." His mouth curled. "They believe the world must burn to be made clean. That only through destruction can paradise be made."
"And I?"
"They will call you a heresy. A False Flame. Because your fire creates as well as kills. Because you do not cleanse—you become."
Eve curled up beside the fire. "They want to kill you because you're a different god?"
"They want to kill him," David said grimly, "because they fear what he might become."
I leaned back, staring at the ruined ceiling above. The stars here did not shine. Only embers floated in the heavens, as though the sky were still smoldering from some ancient war.
"Why now?" I asked. "Why awaken me in this age? Why let the world rot so long before stirring the dead?"
David hesitated.
"Because," he said, "something older than Yahweh stirs again."
I looked at him.
"What do you mean?"
"Yahweh was not the first," he said quietly. "Before him, the stars were ruled by things darker and colder. Beings that did not love the world, but fed upon it. It was said you struck them down in the First Fire."
"And they're returning."
"I believe so. The world's silence speaks of it. The gods are dead or sleeping, but something else moves in the cracks. That's why the Aelaran burn every shrine they find. They hope fire will keep the dark at bay."
I thought of the Watcher. Of its stitched mouth. Of the phrase it had whispered:
"The End That Waits."
A cold settled in my chest.
Then, softly, David said, "There is a city. Beyond the Rift. Buried beneath glass and time. If you want answers… we must go there."
"What's it called?"
"Seraphen. The City of the Drowned Flame."
We traveled for five days.
The land changed as we moved. The rivers of fire grew fainter, replaced by obsidian sand and jagged cliffs. Bones no longer lay on the ground, but were carved into it—giant remains, as if titans had fallen here and been swallowed by the earth.
On the sixth day, we saw it.
Seraphen.
Or what remained of it.
Once, it had been a city of light. Now, it was a husk—half-buried beneath crystal and slag. Great towers, melted into curved spires. Roads turned to rivers of glass. The outer walls were black and scorched, but intact. The main gate was sealed with a massive disk of stone, cracked straight through.
We descended slowly, and with care. The closer we got, the more the air shimmered with heat—not from fire, but from memory. I could feel the city's grief.
David placed a hand to the ground. "The last place the Asura stood," he said. "This was your throne, once."
"And now?"
He looked up at me. "That's for you to decide."
We passed through the broken gate. The city was silent. Ash drifted through the streets like snow.
Yet something watched us.
I could feel it—beneath the stone, inside the glass.
Not hatred. Not reverence.
Recognition.
We passed murals burned into the walls, half-preserved. In them, I saw myself—not as I was, but terrible and radiant. A being of golden flame, eyes like collapsing stars, standing above kneeling masses.
In another mural, Yahweh stood behind me. A featureless figure of white fire, taller than mountains.
In the last mural, I lay broken on a black altar, pierced by seven spears. Above me, a tear in the sky.
The murals ended in ash.
Eve reached out and touched one gently. "Is this you?"
"Was," I said.
And in the silence of Seraphen, I felt the fire stir within again—not as rage, but as invitation.
Something beneath the city was calling.
And I would answer.