All Chapters of THE MARTIAL HEALER: Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
60 chapters
Chapter Eleven – The Other Flame
The violet flames didn’t burn. They shimmered, weightless, like starlight caught in a storm. Rashford stepped onto the stone platform. Lysa stood at its center hands bare, blades sheathed, face unguarded.The last time he saw her alive, she was twelve. Now she was a storm in human form. And yet, in her eyes… was recognition. A flicker of something real. “Rash,” she said softly. He froze.No one had called him that since Oakwood. She stepped closer, slowly. No tricks. No blades. “You came.”“I had to,” he said.A dozen feet between them. That was all. “You died,” he said, voice barely steady.“I should have,” she replied. “I wanted to.”He flinched. She looked away. “But they wouldn’t let me.”“The Empire?”“The forge.”He blinked. “You awakened back then?”She nodded. “When they burned the village… I woke screaming. They found me among the ash.”Her hand lifted slightly. The mark on her wrist pulsed. Violet Soulbrand.“You were Soulbound too,” he whispered.“No,” she said quietly. “I
Chapter Twelve – Fractured Flame
The flame vanished. So did Lysa. The platform lay in ruins, smoking, scattered across the mountainside like shattered bones. But Rashford only saw one thing. Aelira.Her body lay motionless among the rubble. He ran stumbled slid to her side, heart hammering louder than the forge in his chest. Her cloak was scorched. Her lips were pale. But her chest… Still rising. Barely.He dropped to his knees and summoned the Equilibrium Blade, its silver-violet light pulsing weakly in his hand. The balance was off. The soulfire unstable. He pressed it against her ribs. Heal. Heal. Please, heal…The forge responded but with hesitation. The blade flickered. And his Soulbrand, burned. Thren found him an hour later. The old man said nothing at first. Just looked down at Rashford and Aelira, the broken stones, the scorched symbols.Then, finally, “She spared her again.”Rashford looked up, face streaked with ash. “She could’ve killed her. Again. But she didn’t.”“No,” Thren said. “Because she’s not don
Chapter Thirteen – The Tower Wakes
The earth shook, Chunks of stone crashed down the mountainside as an obsidian tower tore through the ground like a blade through skin. Flames licked the air, not red but blue, cold soulfire, ancient and patient.Rashford stood frozen, the broken Equilibrium Blade limp in his hand. The forge inside him throbbed like a second heart.This was not Lysa’s doing. This was older. Deeper, The woman who had summoned it, the Chainkeeper stood calm amid the quake, her crimson cloak unmoving, as if the storm bowed around her.Aelira stirred behind him, groaning. Thren was already shielding her with a low wall of stone magic, eyes locked on the rising tower. Rashford spoke without turning. “This is a Soulbind relic?”The Chainkeeper’s voice was low and resonant. “This is your family’s debt made manifest. The forge chose your bloodline to wield its flame. But the throne demands more than power it demands balance.”Rashford winced, glancing down at the cracked blade in his hand. “I had it. For one m
Chapter Fourteen – The Game Begins
The Final Flame hovered in the air, silent and waiting. Rashford rose slowly, his Soulbrand blazing across his back no longer flickering, no longer fractured. It pulsed in perfect sync with the blade above him. Balanced. Whole. Alive.Veraxis stood at the edge of the dais, arms folded, her dark eyes glinting with amusement. “You always were the favored one.”Rashford didn’t lower his gaze. “You shouldn't be here.”“Oh, but I should,” she purred, stepping forward. “You just inherited the final piece of the game board. And now I’m here to offer you a seat.”He clenched his fist. The Final Flame descended into his hand. It was light. Too light. Dangerously so. “I'm not playing your game.”She circled him slowly. “You’ve already been playing it, Rashford. Since the moment the Empire razed Oakwood. Since your sister awakened her brand in fire and you ran from yours.”He flinched. That truth still burned. “I didn’t run,” he said through gritted teeth.“You did,” she said softly. “And that’s
Chapter Fifteen – The Vault of Wounds
Three days.That’s how long Rashford had before the Vault opened, Three days to gather allies, stabilize his power, and somehow reach the Bloodlandsthe forsaken wastelands where the Vault of Wounds had been sealed in chains older than history itself.The moment he left the tower, the world felt different.The Final Flame was silent in his hand, but it burned against his back like a second spine. His Soulbrand no longer pulsed with pain,It pulsed with expectation.Aelira was already awake when he returned. Her wound had mended with uncanny speed, thanks to Thren’s care and Rashford’s earlier soulflare. She stared at the horizon like it owed her answers.“You look older,” she said.“Do I?”“You walked into that tower angry. You came out… different.”He shrugged. “Carrying an ancient soulflame blade tends to shift priorities.”She turned to him. “Did you see her again?”He nodded. “Not as she is. As she was. Before Oakwood.”“That’s not the Lysa we’ll face.”“I know.”“But you still want t
Chapter Sixteen – Ash Will Answer
The word on the blade pulsed. RUN, But Rashford stood tall. The Final Flame hummed, not with fear but with warning. This wasn’t a retreat command. It was the forge’s ancient instinct speaking. Something was coming. Something no Soulbound had faced in centuries.Aelira stepped beside him, noticing the glow.“What does it mean?”He didn’t answer.The sky above the Bloodlands roiled like a boiling sea. Thunder crackled sideways, painting the horizon in shards of violet and black. And from the Vault’s epicenter, a pillar of screaming flame rose a cyclone of soulfire and memory.Kaelion appeared at the helm of the Windborne ship. “We need to land now or we’ll be torn apart.” Rashford pointed to a crag near the edge of the Vault’s sinkhole. “There.” The ship dove.At the Vault’s Mouth. Lysa stood in the eye of the storm. Her Soulbrand bled through her robes, pouring violet light into the runes circling the Vault. Her lips were cracked. Her eyes burned, Her body shook. But she was smiling.“I
Chapter Seventeen – The Heir and the Hollow
Silence. That was the first thing Rashford noticed. Not absence of sound, but devouring silence the kind that pressed into the bones and drowned thought. He blinked, and the world he knew was gone, No sky, No earth, Just ash.He stood on a field of it, endless and flat. The Vault had swallowed him whole. And across the horizon, ghostfires flickered like dying stars, At the center of it all, a throne. And on it, the Mad King.“You finally arrived,” the King said. “Late. But I forgive you.”Rashford’s voice scraped from his throat. “Where’s Lysa?”“Here. Everywhere. She is the key that broke the lock. And you…”He rose. “…are the door.”Outside the Vault – Reality. Aelira screamed his name, but Rashford didn’t hear. His body stood stiff, eyes blank, flame curling from his fingertips. The Final Flame floated above his palm, spinning slowly. Kaelion grabbed her shoulder. “He’s inside it now. Fully soulbound.” “We have to pull him out!”Kaelion shook his head grimly. “If we touch him whil
Chapter Eighteen – Flamebound
“Rash!” Aelira’s voice cut through the haze. Her face swam into view, eyes wild, arm scorched up to the shoulder but alive. “Lysa,” Rashford rasped.“I pulled you back,” she said. “Just barely. You were gone for minutes. Maybe hours.”He looked around. The sky was clear again but the earth bore a scar: the crater where the Vault had been now pulsed with faint embers and something like breath. Kaelion crouched nearby, covered in ash. “You cracked it from the inside. How?”“I refused the King,” Rashford said. “And I chose someone else.”Aelira stiffened. “What happened to him?”“I don’t know,” Rashford admitted. “But I don’t think he died.”He opened his hand. A single shard of obsidian the Mad King’s crown rested in his palm, still warm, still humming.Later That Night – Campfire on the Ridge.Lysa slept under heavy wraps, her breath shallow but steady. Her Soulbrand flickered softly, like a guttered candle. She hadn’t spoken since Rashford pulled her from the Hollow. Aelira watched her
Chapter Nineteen – The Seventh Flame
Morning After She Left.Rashford stared at the coin, It didn’t glow, Didn’t hum, Just waited.Kaelion sharpened his sword nearby, “She’s real?” Aelira asked quietly. Kaelion nodded. “Too real. The Seer’s only appeared three times in recorded history. Each time, a dynasty fell.”Aelira looked toward the tent. “Then what does that make Rashford?”Kaelion said nothing, But the fire popped. And the coin shimmered, Just once.Elsewhere In the Chains of the Forgotten. The hooded figure stood at the edge of a prison made from sky.A second voice echoed behind him.“She’s seen the boy.”“I know.”“Will you stop him?”“No,” the figure said.“I’ll kill him if you won’t.”The hooded man finally turned. His face was empty. “You’ll try.”And behind him…Seven thrones burned, Rashford didn’t sleep that night, The coin sat in his palm, inert and cold but wrong. Like it wasn’t meant to exist outside the Hollow. Like it breathed in reverse.Each time he blinked, he heard the Mad King’s voice in the silence
Chapter Twenty – The Echo Child
The road to Talvren was gone, Not blocked, Erased. Rashford stared at what remained: a flat field of ash stretching to the horizon. Wind swept across it, lifting dust that shimmered red with soulfire residue. They’d ridden for two days to get here.Kaelion’s voice was grim. “This isn’t destruction. This is memory removal. The place forgot it existed.”Aelira crouched and pressed her fingers to the ground. Her Soulbrand pulsed. “Someone Hollowborn did this.”Rashford said nothing,Because the coin wasn’t gone anymore. It was in him.Lysa stayed behind, She wasn’t well enough to ride, and her brand was still unstable. She’d said it clearly before they left: “If I follow you now, I’ll burn before we reach him.”So she waited, deep in trance, guarded by Thren and a circle of Windborne. She searched the Hollow alone now, And it was searching her back. Out on the ash road,The wind carried laughter.Rashford drew the Final Flame as a figure appeared ahead a boy, no older than ten, walking bare