The world screamed as fire consumed it. Jason’s chest erupted, not in flame alone but in a spiraling storm of fire, ash, and fractured light.The earth cracked beneath his feet, black stone glowing molten as rivers of magma erupted outward. Trees dissolved into dust. Air warped, shimmering with unbearable heat.Jason couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.The fire inside him wasn’t his anymore, it had grown beyond him, swallowing him whole. His body was just a conduit, and the furnace inside him burned with the hunger of a star.Through the maelstrom, Kael’s molten figure writhed, his form collapsing, reforging, collapsing again. His scream tore across the battlefield, the sound of a Sovereign unraveling.But his eyes, those blazing pits of molten hatred, never left Jason. “You think you are fire?” Kael roared. “You are ash! A cinder that will scatter in the wind!”Jason staggered forward, his furnace-heart blazing through the cracks in his chest. His voice was raw, torn apart by power and

The sky burned with cracks of golden fire. Jason could feel them pulling at him, like invisible threads tugging on his furnace, stretching it toward the rift that split the heavens.The ground trembled, stones splitting apart, rivers of molten rock seeping through the battlefield. His mother clutched the child tight, stumbling as the earth quaked beneath her feet. Jason’s voice tore through the chaos.“Run!”“I won’t leave you!” she shouted back, her voice raw, trembling with terror.“You have to!” Jason roared, fire flaring around him like wings. “They’re here for me, not you. Take the child and run!”But even as he spoke, the rift widened. From its blinding depths, colossal shapes emerged. At first shadows, then fragments of form: jagged crowns, wings of ash, eyes like eclipses.Their whispers filled the air, pressing against Jason’s mind until his knees buckled, The furnace walks, The flame dares shape itself, The boy who unmade Kael, He is ours.Jason dropped to one knee, clutchin

Jason fell. But it wasn’t like falling into darkness. It was like falling into a sun. The abyss blazed around him, rivers of molten fire twisting like serpents, currents of light dragging him deeper.His body wasn’t even body anymore, just flame shaped like a man. And still, the fire of the furnace roared louder, swallowing him.Somewhere above, muffled through the roar of the inferno, he heard his mother scream his name. He heard the child cry out, not in fear, but in command. Her tiny voice pulsed like a heartbeat, echoing across the furnace’s walls.Jason clawed at the burning air, trying to orient himself. But the pull was absolute. He was being dragged not into flame, but into the source of it. Then he struck ground.It wasn’t stone. It wasn’t ash. It was something alive. Jason staggered upright, golden fire bleeding from his cracked form. He stood on a surface that pulsed with heat, veins of light racing beneath translucent skin.It was like standing on the chest of a giant. The

The furnace roared. Its pulse became erratic, no longer steady thunder but a dying stutter, like a drumbeat losing rhythm.Cracks spiderwebbed across the surface, rivers of molten gold bleeding into the abyss below. The guardians, once titanic and eternal, screamed as they collapsed, their fire-sinew unraveling into ash.The Sovereigns’ laughter swelled above it all, cruel and victorious. You cannot fight us on two fronts, ember-bearer, they thundered. Choose. The girl… or the heart. One must fall.Jason stood at the center of the crumbling world, the shard in his chest burning him alive, the child pressed tight against him. His mother screamed from behind, scrambling to hold onto the fragments of the furnace floor as the abyss yawned wider.“Jason!” she cried, her voice cracked and raw. “Don’t let her go, please!”The child clung to him, trembling, her golden eyes flickering like candles against a storm. The wings of fire behind her flared weakly, still magnificent but fractured, the

The crack in Jason’s chest echoed like thunder through his bones. He staggered in the void, clutching his daughter’s small hand as the Sovereigns’ chains tightened around her.The shard inside him, his anchor, his furnace, the heart that had carried him this far, splintered again. Each fracture felt like a blade carving through his ribs, severing him from the fire he was born to wield.Light bled from him, spilling into the abyss in ragged flares. His wings faltered, their brilliance guttering like dying torches.The Sovereigns’ laughter coiled around him, cruel and triumphant. The ember-bearer falls. His fire dies. His daughter is ours. Jason’s grip trembled.“No,” he rasped, his throat raw. His face twisted, streaked with blood and fire. “You can’t have her. You’ll never”Another crack tore through his chest. His scream burst from him, his hand nearly slipping. The child cried out, her golden eyes wide with panic. “Papa!”Jason forced his hand tighter around hers. His veins blazed,