The passage of time inside the Cradle of Echoing Flame was notoriously unreliable. While days might have been cycling outside, down here, in the eternal twilight of the volcanic caldera, time was measured only in heartbeats and the rhythm of burning mana.

  Seven cycles. A week spent in the forge of creation.

  “Too forceful!” Bennu chirped, ducking his head as a whip of my Ashen Flame lashed out wildly, cracking a slab of basalt in half.

  I hissed, shaking my hand as the recoil burned up my arm. “It’s erratic. The Flame is hungry, Bennu. It eats everything it touches. If I don’t leash it, it burns the air itself before I can even project it.”

  “Because you are shouting at it,” Bennu hopped onto a higher perch, preening a feather made of molten gold. “You command the Flame like it is a soldier. ‘March!’ ‘Burn!’ ‘Explode!’”

  “Is that wrong? It’s a tool.”

  “Is your hand a tool?” Bennu asked, tilting his head with avian curiosity. “Is your heartbeat a tool? The Flame is not a sword you picked up. It is the blood that forgot it was liquid. You do not shout at your blood.”

  I paused, letting the white fire dissipate from my palms. My [Domain] hummed around me, agitated. I was used to domination, just like how I controlled mana before Thoth’s lessons. I dictated reality. The idea of asking my own mana to cooperate felt… counter-intuitive.

  “Show me,” I said, sitting cross-legged on the heated stone.

  Bennu glided down. He didn’t use wings; he rode thermal currents his own presence created. He landed softly.

  “Look,” he whispered telepathically.

  He opened his beak and exhaled.

  It wasn’t a roar. It was a sigh.

  A plume of fire drifted out. It didn’t explode. It didn’t rage. It flowed like water, swirling around Bennu’s feet, curling affectionately around his talons. It pulsed in time with his breathing.

  “You treat it like a partner,” I observed, watching the flames caress him.

  “Like a friend,” Bennu corrected, nuzzling the fire. “Or a hatchling. The Flame wants to consume, yes. But it also wants to be warm. It wants to dance. If you remember how to invite it to dance, Enki, it will follow your steps without you needing to drag it.”

  I closed my eyes.

  I reached deep into my Soul. The Ashen Flame sat there, a dense knot of entropic potential. It felt sharp. Volatile.

  Usually, I grabbed it. I forced it through my meridians like high-pressure water through a pipe.

  This time, I just opened the door.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I thought, not as a command, but as an invitation.

  The Flame surged. But instead of the usual aggressive fire, it felt warm. It slid through my veins eagerly, rushing to my hands not because I pushed it, but because it wanted to see the outside world.

  I opened my palms.

  White fire pooled there. It was quieter. Denser. Instead of leaping ten feet into the air, it sat heavy in my hand, humming.

  “Oh!” Bennu trilled, hopping closer. “It likes you!”

  I manipulated the shape. ‘Spiral,’ I suggested.

  The flame twisted into a perfect helix. No wasted mana. No sputtering sparks. It obeyed with a terrifying enthusiasm.

  “It feels…” I searched for the word. “Eager.”

  “Enki always loved the Flame,” Bennu said softly, his voice echoing in my mind with an ancient reverence. “But the Flame always loved him more. It has missed you, I think. That is why it burns so hot when you touch it. It is happy you are back.”

  I looked at the ball of fire — a force capable of melting starships — and felt a strange pang of emotion. It wasn’t just energy. It was a legacy.

  “My parents,” Bennu continued, settling down next to me, resting his fiery head on my knee. “They told me stories. In the Realm of the Thousand Suns, hierarchy is heat. The hotter you burn, the higher your perch.”

  He looked up at me with eyes that held millennia of memory.

  “But Enki… your Flame was different. It wasn’t just very hot. It was Ascended. It was the highest form of the Flame that burns and births. My parents saw that. They said, ‘Go with him, Bennu. Follow the One who Burns. He will show you a hearth of Flame we have never seen.’”

  He let out a contented sigh, smoke curling from his nostrils.

  “And you did! You showed me White Fire! And Silent Fire! I was learning so much, Master! And now I am learning again after so long! I will be the wisest Phoenix in the realm!”

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  I stroked his head, the feathers warm and smooth. I felt a lump in my throat. I had spent so much time building Bastion, fighting Vayne, leveling up… I had neglected the innocent, child-like Phoenix who's been a most loyal companion to a friend.

  “I’m sorry, Bennu,” I whispered. “I’ve been… distracted.”

  “It is okay!” he chirped. “Heroes are busy. They have to yell at things and stand on cliffs. But I am glad we have the Cave training now.”

  “Me too.”

  I focused back on the fire.

  “Let’s try the harder lesson,” I said, standing up.

  I engaged [Void Walk].

  The world turned grey. The heat of the caldera vanished, replaced by the sterile cold of the In-Between.

  ‘Come on,’ I thought, trying to coax the flame out into the Void.

  Resistance. Immediate and heavy.

  The flame didn’t want to come out here. It sensed the lack of food to consume. It sensed the hostility of the vacuum.

  ‘Trust me,’ I projected, pushing gently. ‘I’ll guide you.’

  A spark flickered in the grey. Then another. It wasn’t the raging inferno I had summoned against Korthos — that had been desperation, a massive dump of Essence that completely depleted my reserves. This was an attempt at control.

  The Flame appeared as a thin, trembling candle-light in my palm. It flickered, terrified of the absolute cold nothingness surrounding it.

  “Good,” I whispered, sweating despite the lack of temperature. My mana bar was draining fast just maintaining the ‘context’ for the Flame to exist.

  “Feed it from within,” Bennu’s voice echoed in my mind. “Don’t use mana. Use your Authority.”

  I focused. I became the fuel. I became the logic that said Fire Exists Here.

  The Flame steadied. It grew from a candle to a torch.

  It wasn’t much. A combat-grade fireball in the Void was still beyond me without risking burnout. But it was a start.

  “Slowly,” I murmured, dismissing the Flame and stepping out of the Void.

  Bennu was waiting, bouncing on his toes. “Did it burn? Did it eat the grey?”

  “It nibbled,” I smiled, sitting back down, exhausted but satisfied. “It was weary, but it listened.”

  We spent the rest of the week like that. Hours of meditation, followed by frantic bursts of experimental magic. Bennu showed me how to weave plumes of fire into shields that spun, deflecting kinetic energy instead of just absorbing it. We played games of ‘Catch the Cinder,’ passing a super-heated bead of plasma back and forth, seeing who dropped it first. When I first lost, Bennu’s happiness was so overwhelming that I always lost.

  It was grueling. It was dangerous, the Substrate not meant to Burn. And it was a lot of fun.

  By the seventh day, I could maintain a sword of Ashen Flame inside the Void for ten minutes without my mana reserves screaming.

  “Progress,” I said, looking at the white-gold blade hovering in the grey air before stepping back into reality.

  “You are learning,” Bennu nodded approvingly. “The Flame remembers. Soon, you will be burning holes in Stars just by thinking of it.”

  My comms stone buzzed against the floor where I had discarded my gear.

  I picked it up.

  “Eren?”

  It was Freja. Her voice was sharp, electric, carrying the background noise of wind and shuffling troops.

  “Here,” I answered, wiping soot from my face. “Is it time?”

  “The scouts are back. Route confirmed,” Freja said. “The road to Noren is rough, high Tier monsters have repopulated the valleys since the Flood, but it’s passable. We’re moving out in the morning.”

  “Understood.”

  I stood up, the joints of my armor clicking. I looked around the Cradle. It felt strange to leave. This place, with its welcoming warmth and simple logic, made sense. The outside world — with Empires and conflict — was messier.

  “I have to go, Bennu,” I said, looking down at the massive firebird.

  Bennu drooped slightly, his feathers dimming from blinding white to a somber crimson. “The Quest?”

  “The Quest,” I confirmed. “We’re taking back a city. I need to make sure the lightning doesn’t kill my friends.”

  Bennu perked up. “Lightning is just spicy fire! You can eat it!”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I laughed. “I’ll be back soon. We haven’t finished the Void-Flame training yet.”

  “I will wait!” Bennu promised, puffing out his chest. “I will make the hearth warmer for when you return! We can practice the ‘Void Supernova’ technique next!”

  “Maybe something smaller first,” I advised. “See you later, Bennu.”

  “Fly well and Burn bright!”

  I left the Cradle, the heat washing off me as I teleported to the Veiled Path and exited the Void into the courtyard of Bastion.

  It was dawn. The sky was the strange, iridescent pearlescent of the Flood era. The air hummed with potential.

  Freja was waiting by the main gate. She wasn’t bringing an army this time.

  Just her, Astrid and Bjorn.

  Freja looked every inch the Storm Queen. Her armor had been upgraded by Leoric — polished steel inlaid with blue agate that hummed with charge. Bjorn was sharpening a massive axe that looked like it was made of jawbone. Astrid was tossing a coin, leaning against the gate post. And Nyx — who I asked to join us — was simply… existing in a patch of shadow.

  “Light team?” I asked, approaching them.

  “Scout force,” Freja corrected. “If we march a battalion, we draw every beast and Kyorian scout from here to the mountain. We need to thread the needle. Get to Noren, secure the Nexus, open the Portal gate from the inside.”

  “Makes sense,” I agreed. “Who’s going to stay within to make sure Bastion is protected?”

  “Lucas,” Freja said. “And Arthur. Plus your Lion friend seems intent on guarding the ‘cubs,’ as he says.”

  “We’re in good hands then,” I adjusted my bracers.

  “Ready?” Freja asked, offering a hand. Her grip was strong, her palm rough with callouses and residual static.

  “Let’s go take back your home,” I said.

  I looked back one last time at the Keep. At the smoke rising from the forges. At the life we had carved out of the apocalypse.

  Then I turned West, toward the mountains and the memories of the first battle.

  “Walking?” I asked.

  “Unless you want to carry us while you fly,” Bjorn rumbled, grinning.

  “Walking it is.”

  We stepped past the translucent, shimmering line of the Prime System shield and into the wild, tangled forest of the new world.

  The Essence Flood was still raging. The monsters were stronger. The Empire was waiting.

  But as I fell into step beside the Storm-wielder and the Shadow-assassin, I felt a familiar, cold focus settling over me.

  It was time for a practical exam.