MILA ENTERS THE INFERNOThe heat nearly seared the flesh from her bones the moment she crossed the threshold. The chamber was a blazing inferno of stormfire and molten stone, yet Mila’s steps did not falter.Her eyes widened at the sight Lucas bound in living obsidian, the throne towering like a god of flame and shadow. “Lucas!” she screamed, her voice cutting through the roaring storm.The throne turned, its stormfire eyes narrowing. “Another insect dares intrude? Very well You may burn alongside him.” A sweep of molten fire surged toward her.Mila’s AwakeningBut Mila did not flinch, She raised her hands, and for the first time the strange markings hidden beneath her skin flared to life. Intricate patterns of silver light coursed up her arms, forming luminous chains that resisted the stormfire.The throne recoiled slightly, its laughter momentarily faltering. “Impossible”. Mila gritted her teeth, pushing forward. “You don’t get to take him, not while I can still stand.”Lucas’s Stru

Black silence, no breath, no heartbeat, no sound of war. For Lucas, it was as if he floated in an endless void, suspended between existence and nothing. His body no longer answered him. His senses had burned away in the eruption. All he knew was darkness an abyss too deep to climb out of.Yet within that silence, something faint stirred. A pulse not his own, Mila’s. He felt it through the last remaining silver thread that bound them Fragile, trembling, but alive. His soul clawed toward it like a drowning man reaching for a drifting plank.Pain exploded through him the moment he touched it, pulling him back into the prison of his broken body. He gasped, ragged and raw, as sensation returned in shards. Fire in his bones. Lightning in his veins the void cracked, light stabbed through.The World OutsideOn the battlefield beyond the throne’s chamber, everything had gone still. The armies that had been clashing moments ago stood frozen, every soldier staring at the ruin ahead.The titanic

The ruins still bled heat.Ash swirled in the choking wind as Lucas dragged himself out of the shattered earth. His body was shredded ribs broken, skin split open in jagged cuts, stormfire leaking out of him in weak, uneven pulses.Every muscle screamed at him to fall, to stop, to surrender to the merciless weight of his wounds. But Mila was beside him, and that was enough.Her silver eyes fluttered weakly, her breath ragged as she leaned against him. She was pale, blood streaking her temple, the shimmer of her chain-woven power broken and burned. Her strength was gone, drained into the fight and into the ruin that had nearly swallowed them alive.Lucas planted his feet on the edge of the crater. The stone beneath him was cracked and slick with heat. He could feel it vibrating beneath his boots like the land itself was breathing. The whispers, once faint, were now thunder in his ears. “Come down” “Come home“ "Take the weight” “Become.”The voices weren’t merely sounds, they were cla

The night wind howled through the shattered ruins of the hall, carrying with it the metallic tang of blood and the acrid scent of smoke. Lucas stood in the eye of the storm, his chest heaving, his eyes blazing like twin suns.The energy around him was volatile, crackling with a destructive force that made even the stones at his feet tremble. He had unleashed himself, no restraint, no veil, no mask of civility.The battlefield lay in chaos bodies strewn across fractured marble, flames licking the torn banners that once represented the pride of the Council.Mila, standing just beyond the collapsing dais, could barely steady her breath. She had seen power before, raw and merciless, but nothing that rivaled this. Lucas had crossed the threshold of human capability.“Impossible” muttered Elder Kael, the one who had dared to strike first. His arm once glowing with the radiant energy of the Binding Seal was now a scorched husk, dripping with molten blood. “You what are you?”Lucas did not an

The earth convulsed like a living beast. The crater’s walls split, stone groaning as molten veins bled upward from the ember-heart.Lucas stood at the edge with Mila half-collapsed against him, every breath in his lungs searing like molten glass. His stormfire hissed and sputtered, each spark threatening to gutter out. But he refused to bow. Not to the whispers. Not to the hunger. Not to the thing rising from the abyss.The Birth of the FirstThe molten core cracked wide open from within, a shape clawed its way upward first a hand, massive and skeletal, wrapped in links of glowing chain. Then a torso, forged of living flame and shadow. Its crown was jagged iron, half-shattered, yet it radiated dominion.When it finally stood, it towered over the crater like a god sculpted from ruin. Every whisper became one voice layered, ancient, merciless. “I am the First Chain, the origin of all shackles, the architect of order.”The survivors at the crater’s edge dropped to their knees as one, the