The words hang like a bell through the air.
No one speaks. We all just listen.
The quiet after the echo is worse than the fight, too still, like the mountain itself is listening to see if we have a plan for this.
The air hums with anxiety, the glass underfoot vibrates faintly with something distant, rhythmic.
“Circle up,” I say. “Defensive stance.”
The team tightens formation. Every breath is loud in the helm, the heat is dropping, but I know that things are only going to reignite to a blaze soon.
I turn to Iskri. “Take Raarl. Get to the surface and warn the others.”
The sablehound’s mane flares, eyes flashing with refusal. It growls low, head lowered, muscles coiled to stay.
“That’s an order Iskri,” I say, voice firm and commanding.
Raarl stumbles toward my mount, limping from the burn along his calf. “You’ll need me here.”
“Thalos needs you alive.”
Scott puts a hand on his shoulder, steady. “If this thing reaches the surface, they’ll have no warning. You can command the army up top if this thing gets out and we aren’t there.”
He wants to argue, but one look at my face under the pale glow of the helm ends it. He climbs up, gripping Iskri’s collar, and the sablehound lets out a final low whine, not fear, but grief. Then they vanish down the tunnel in a blur of white fur and sparks.
The silence washes back in, and almost takes my sanity with it.
Thalos breaks it first. “We could hide.”
I shake my head. “It hunts resonance. The Hekari hum will lead it straight to us.”
Another roar rolls through the cavern, deeper this time, dragging stone dust from the ceiling. You can feel the grief in it, the kind that comes from something losing a part of itself. Anger built out of love. The heat surges back in waves, pulsing through the floor, as if it is responding to the rage and anger of the male.
Thalos grips the haft of his hammer tighter. “We can’t take another one of those.”
I look around at the rest of the party, they stand tall and firm, but I know they are all exhausted. With the first few rooms, the slime monster and what was supposed to be the final boss with the ashwing, they have done more than enough.
“I know,” I say. “Which means we don’t fight it the same way.”
I glance back at the matriarch’s corpse. The light still leaks from the cracks in its chest, warm as the forge fires of home. The smell is copper and blood and the electric smell of the plasma. The Dominion Chime hums faintly on my arm, as if already guessing my thoughts.
I hate that it’s right.
I turn back to the others. “Buy me time.”
They don’t ask what for, not immediately. But when I draw my sword and walk back to the corpse, my Hekari understand enough to start moving into position.
Scott gives me a wary look. “Kyris, what are you—”
“I said buy me time. I need ten minutes and I will have a way out for all of us.”
The command hits the air like a weight. The Hekari react first, slipping into formation between me and the tunnel mouth. Rhel braces the wreck of his tower shield against a cracked pillar.
Even the Sunforged read the shift and fall into line. Kaira and Raal’s replacement, Hamu, stand shoulder to shoulder, fists and claws ready. The roles have reversed, they’re the defenders of this cave now.
The longswords blade slides through scale with a dry, horrible scrape. Heat rolls out, thick enough to choke on. I part the ribs, the world going red-orange inside, and the smell floods my lungs. It’s like cutting open the sun.
The chat thoughts speed along the edge of my mind, indiscernible for a moment:
[CrypticJester]: “what the hell is he doing?”
[MossLord]: “that’s not loot he’s after…”
[LifelineV]: “I really hope you know what you are doing”
The heart glows like a forge core the size of pumpkin, heavy and pulsing, veins lit with emberlight.
When I lift it, it’s still unbearably hot.
Scott steps closer and in a hushed tone “Hey Kyris, talk to me.”
I don’t answer him, I’m not sure I could.
Because I’m hearing my own voice in my head, older orders, the kind I gave to the Hekari during their evolution trials: ‘You ingest what you wish to become. You merge, you reshape, you sing yourself new. Only do this now on my own orders.’
It’s always been for them. Never for me. Until now.
Narai steps up beside me, three-armed, still favoring the cauterized stump. He plants his spear in the stone and kneels.
“Do what must be done, my king. I will be your shield till you break from the Chrysalis"
The others take the cue, forming a half-circle facing away from the nested eggs, guards at the gate prepared to stop any who wish to pass.
The roar hits again, closer now, shattering a loose wall near the ledge. Sand cascades down the slope in glittering rivers. The beast is nearly here.
I look down at the heart in my hands. It’s hot enough to burn my palms, but I don’t let go.
If I’m right, this is the only way any of us leave this mountain alive.
You can do this, I tell myself. You’re not human anymore. You’re Hekari. You are their King.
I lower to one knee in the nest behind the body. The eggs glow faintly at the edges of my vision. I set the heart down in front of me, draw a breath, and for the first time since the Singing Citadel, I pray. I need to make it through this for them.
The roar comes again and this time, it isn’t through stone.
It’s above us.
The ceiling fractures with a thunderous crack, raining shards of black glass and fire.
Light floods the cavern. The male Ashwing tears through the ceiling like a spear of hate and grief.
I don’t think further, there’s no time for debate, no moral pause, no second thoughts.
I seize the heart, lift it, and bite in.
The taste is blood and lightning.It burns through my throat like molten wire, and for a second, I can’t tell if I’m screaming or breathing.
The Dominion Chime on my arm begins to sing, not a melody this time, but an alarm. The pitch climbs, folding in on itself. My veins feel like they’re filling with boiling water. I can feel every artery, every pulse, every note of the Hekari hum inside me fracturing and re-forming.
The process isn’t meant for me.
It was meant for them, for the brood born of chimes and ash. I learned the rules, found out it took forty-eight hours to fully reweave a soul into new flesh.
I’d tested it once before, on a severed emberheart scale, just to see. I spent tithe like water, burned a day down to minutes. It nearly killed the volunteer that time. But it worked.
Ten minutes. That was the fastest I’d ever managed to push the evolution, but the cost was not worth the speed.
It drained everything I had. Every ounce of belief, every whisper of energy the audience had poured into me.
That’s what it will cost again now.
I reach inward, to that reservoir, the luminous thread connecting me to the stream of watchers, their emotions feeding into me like distant candlelight.
All those eyes. All that faith. All that Tithe.
Spend it all.
The Chime flares white, and I feel the rush like my spine is splitting open. The golden threads unravel out of me, rising into the air like strands of silk, then folding back, wrapping tight around my body.
The world slows.
The air turns to syrup.
Sound collapses into a single, long note that only I can hear.
The light envelops me, not radiant, but viscous. It pools, thick as honey, clinging to every edge of armor. It hardens into a cocoon the color of a dying sun, gold veined with molten orange. The heat inside it doesn’t fade, but instead It concentrates. The heart still burns in my stomach like I swallowed a star.
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I can’t hear the roar of the Ashwing anymore. I can’t hear my people fighting, or the stone collapsing, or the Chime singing. Only the beat. My own pulse.
Then even that disappears.
For the first time since I became king, I am deaf to the Dominion.
Silence.
My body melts into light. The pain becomes background noise, a low throb under the hum of existence. Then the world folds in, color by color, until it’s all black glass reflecting nothing.
When I open my eyes again, I’m sitting at the black table.
The air here is ice cold, sharp enough to bite the lungs after the molten heat of the mountain.
Seth sits on the edge of the black table like he never left, elbows on his knees, that grin plastered across his face, the kind of smile a predator wears when it’s already decided you’re not a threat, just entertainment.
“Well,” he says, voice smooth as poured oil, “I was starting to think you’d never come back.”
I look down at my hands. They’re bare again. Human.
“What is this…?”
Seth gestures lazily at the void around us, the nothing stretching into infinity.
“Consequence. Or opportunity. Depends on your perspective.”
He studies me like I’m a riddle missing its last line.
“I thought this might be a perfect moment to talk. I haven’t really had the time with the whole contest and all. Things are getting interesting, Marcus, or should I say Kyris?”
His smile widens just slightly. “I see you’ve finally realized you’re not human in Nod. You’re beginning to accept it.”
I stay quiet for a moment, then: “Am I still in-”
“The cave? Yes.” He cuts me off gently. “I only borrowed your consciousness for a moment.
Would you prefer to stay aware of the pain your body’s in right now?”
I go quiet.
I hate when he does that, when he answers the question before I even finish asking it, when he reads the thoughts before I can shape them. It’s like he already knows the path before I take a single step.
He tilts his head, grin widening as if he heard that too.
“Maybe I do, Marcus,” he says, almost amused. “Never assume anything. You’d regret it here in Nod.”
He hops off the table and circles me, casual, studying me the way someone inspects a fine weapon, weighing, measuring, amused.
“You’d do well to take better care of your waking self,” he says. “You look a little thin compared to your kingly counterpart.”
“Why have you brought me here?” My patience thins. “I doubt it’s to check on my health.”
He stops in front of me. The grin fades into something smaller, sharper. A smile that looks like it was carved into his face.
“I wanted to present you with options, since you’ve taken such a… decisive leap.”
The black glass table hums before us. Two shapes bloom in the reflection — luminous, moving, alive. Both are me. Both are Kyris.
The first stands clad in jagged, obsidian armor: a silhouette of brutal lines and hooked edges, plates ridged like volcanic glass. Heat radiates from within the cracks, the glow of a forge barely contained. It looks alive, wrathful, powerful.
The second figure is smoother. Polished black armor like mirror-finished marble, elegant, almost ceremonial. No spikes. No glow. Just seamless darkness that catches light and bends it away. A quiet strength, precise and unshakable. Where the first screams power, this one whispers unbreakable defence.
“Evolution is never random,” Seth says. “You are about to define what you’ll become. These are suggestions, not certainties. The vision must be yours.
What do you want this evolution to give you?”
I stare between the two. The first pulses like a heartbeat. The second waits, still and cold.
“I want to keep my defense,” I say finally, “but defense alone isn’t enough. If I can’t fight back, I’m just delaying death. I need to be able to strike. to end threats before they reach the people I protect.”
Seth nods, pleased. “Then visualize it. Your artifacts, your armor, all of it will reshape to match your intent. The Tithe you’ve gathered will amplify it. What you believe you need will become what you are.”
I take a breath and focus, I feel like I can sense the heat of the Ashwing’s heart still throbbing in my chest, the weight of the Dominion pressing in, the faces of my soldiers waiting for a king who can win.
“Why are you helping me?” I ask, not taking my eyes off the figures. “You said you were impartial.”
“Don’t mistake context for kindness,” he says with a soft laugh. “Consider this an extended tutorial. Every nation has its quirks. You just happened to need information on yours sooner. Besides who is to say I haven't given other kings counsel like this.”
He glances at his wrist as if checking a watch that isn’t there. “Oh dear. No time left.”
He starts to fade, his grin cutting the dark like a crescent moon.
“Do try not to die, Marcus. I rather enjoy watching what you do next.”
The table fades. Light fractures.
The world folds in again, and I am burning.
Not from the outside, from within. My veins feel like molten lines being drawn through glass. My bones hum. The Dominion’s song is gone, replaced by something heavier, older… a pulse I recognize from the Ashwing’s chest, that same furnace rhythm.
Move, I think. I need to be able to move.
The ramp. The breath weapons. Every time I’ve fought something faster, higher, stronger, I’ve always had to plant and take the hit. A wall. A shield. But walls crumble standing still.
My lungs seize, the heat isn’t leaving, it’s gathering, condensing behind my ribs like pressure in a chamber. I reach for the Dominion Chime, not with my hands, but my will. It vibrates under the heat, metal glowing from the inside out, reshaping, the hilt stretches, weight redistributes. A single voice rings through my skull: Adapt.
The kite’s edge folds inward, the metal glowing like it’s being reforged in real time. When it settles, the Chime is longer, balanced — a greatsword with a blade that breathes blue-white fire along its edge.
The cocoon closes tighter, gold light folding around me like armor plates. I can’t breathe, but I don’t need to. The air itself vibrates with my heartbeat.
I think of how that beam cut through drones and hekari like paper.
I think of how the air shimmered before it struck.
I need that same control. That precision. The power to cut space without burning myself alive.
My gauntlets harden, claws forming at the fingertips, crystalline edges glowing along the knuckles. My skin hums with heat, but it no longer hurts. The plasma coils inside the gloves, waiting. Contained.
And then my back arches, a split-second of unbearable pressure, and two lines of fire erupt along my shoulder blades. For a heartbeat it’s pain, but then isn’t. The flames shape themselves into wings, not feathers, not flesh, but vents of molten light that flare and fade with every breath. The cocoon breathes with me.
The roar of the male Ashwing shakes the cavern, but all I can feel is the rhythm syncing his rage, my pulse.
I can hear my heartbeat again, but it isn’t just mine. The Dominion hums faintly behind it, as though it’s watching in reverence, waiting for its King to rise.
The cocoon fractures.
When I open my eyes, I no longer feel the heat of the room on my face.
The armor clings like a second skin, plates of black steel veined with dim gold, edges glowing where the heat still leaks through. The Chime hums in its new shape, alive, resonant, ready.
I flex my hand. The claws scrape together, sparking faint blue arcs.
The world comes back in pieces, sound first.
Screams. The sound of glass cracking. The echo of claws striking stone.
I rise from the shell of gold light and see the battlefield reborn in chaos.
Scott is still standing, barely, blood running from his scalp and pooling in the dent of his armor. Ira lies motionless against the slope near the nest, bow snapped in half beside her.
Thane’s trying to crawl toward her, his grappling lines jerking uselessly as the ground quakes under each step of the monster.
The male Ashwing is a storm given flesh, larger than the female, scales darker, its chest glowing with fire trapped beneath obsidian plates. It doesn’t even look at me yet. It’s still blind in its fury, focused on tearing apart what’s left of my team.
I step forward, feeling the stone melt slightly under my heel.
Scott catches sight of me through the haze. His eyes widen.
“Main tank swapping in,” I say, my voice resonating deeper than before, like the words carry the Dominion’s entire weight with them.
I take one breath, then launch forward.
The vents along my back flare open, fire snapping out in twin streams. The air warps around me, and I move—no, detonate—off the ground. The speed tears the sound from the world.
I drag the greatsword behind me, letting the blade gather its own weight in flame. When I come down, I bring the flat across the Ashwing’s skull.
The impact is apocalyptic.
The air erupts in a shockwave that sends shards of glass spiraling upward like rain. The creature hits the ground hard enough to crater the plateau, carving furrows into molten stone as it skids back and claws for purchase.
It shakes itself, shards falling from its scales in a hail of glass and fire. Its eyes finally find me. And when they do, I feel its hate like a second sun trying to burn me out of existence.
“Get the wounded into the nest!” I roar, the sound cutting through the chaos like a blade. “Anyone who can still fight—support only! Don’t pull its focus.”
The Chime hums in my hand, eager, singing like a choir of steel.
I raise it to my shoulder, and the blue-white flame ripples along the edge like it’s breathing.
“I’ll handle the tanking,” I say, stepping toward the beast.
The fire spilling from its mouth bathes the cavern in white heat.
“...and the DPS.”
The Ashwing lowers its head, breath gathering between its jaws.
I plant my feet, sword ready.
When it exhales, the beam hits me dead on,
and this time,
I don’t burn.
The fire breaks across me like water against stone, the energy crawling across the Ashwing Aegis and vanishing into the gold veins of my armor. The air behind me ripples as the excess heat vents through the wing ports, igniting the shattered plateau in streaks of plasma.
For the first time, I see something flicker in its eyes.
Not anger, but recognition.
It sees me as what I’ve become, and it hates me for it all the more.