All Chapters of THE HIDDEN FLAME OF LUTHERCHRIS: Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
38 chapters
CHAPTER 11: Ashes of the Fallen
The rain stopped at dawn.Smoke still rose from the ruins of Aldrath, curling into the gray sky like whispers of the dead.Collins stood among the ashes, silent. His hands were blackened, trembling, and the once-golden glow in his eyes had dimmed to a hollow ember. The air smelled of burnt earth and sorrow.Seris knelt a few feet away, healing Kael’s wounds with faint blue light. Her face was pale — not from exhaustion, but from fear. Every few seconds, her eyes flicked toward Collins, then quickly away again.When she finally spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.“Do you… remember what happened?”Collins didn’t answer. He stared at his hands instead. “I tried to stop it. I swear, I did.”Kael groaned, pushing himself to his feet. “You didn’t summon that fire, Collins… the Flame inside you did. It reacts to fear, anger, pain.”He looked around at the destruction. His expression hardened. “And once awakened… it devours everything.”The words stung, though Kael didn’t mean them c
Chapter 12 — The Shadow That Walks Behind the Flame
The night air in Elarion City was thick with fog. Lamps burned low along the cobblestone streets, flickering as if whispering secrets to the darkness. Collins walked alone, his hood drawn over his face, the faint pulse of the orb still warm in his pocket.He shouldn’t have returned to the city. Not after the Hunters of Veylar had marked him. But something had been calling to him in his dreams — a voice that sounded almost… familiar.> “Find the mark beneath the temple ruins… and you will find me.”His mother’s voice.Collins stopped in front of an abandoned shrine. The stone archway was cracked, vines crawling over the carvings. The name had long faded, but he could feel it — the energy beneath it. It thrummed through the ground, soft but alive, like a heartbeat buried deep below.He knelt, pressing his palm against the stone. The moment his skin touched it, the orb in his pocket flared, glowing through the fabric of his cloak.Then the ground moved.Rumbling echoed through the ruins
Chapter 13 — The Ember Temple
The world burned around him — not in pain, but in color.Collins opened his eyes to find himself standing inside a vast hall of fire and stone. The walls shimmered like molten glass, glowing veins of crimson light pulsing through them. The air was heavy with warmth, yet oddly calm, like a heart beating in perfect rhythm.He staggered forward, his boots scraping against the marble floor etched with runes that seemed alive. The sigil that brought him here still glowed faintly under his feet.“Where… am I?” he whispered.> “You’ve entered the Ember Temple,” a voice replied — deep, ancient, and resonant, echoing from everywhere and nowhere at once.Collins spun around, searching. From the columns of flame emerged a tall figure — robed in ember-red silk, eyes burning gold. His presence felt divine, almost suffocating.“I am Icarion, Keeper of the Eternal Flame,” the figure said. “And you, child, are standing in a place that has not been seen by mortal eyes in a thousand years.”Collins too
Chapter 14 — The Gate of Cinders
The light faded slowly, like the last breath of a dying flame.When Collins opened his eyes, he found himself lying in ash. The sky above him was dark crimson, torn apart by streaks of black lightning. The ground glowed in patches — molten veins snaking across cracked earth. The air was thick with smoke and the scent of burning stone.He pushed himself up, coughing, blinking hard.“Icarion?” he called out.No answer.The only sound was the low hum of the wind and the distant crackle of fire.He was alone.Or so he thought.From the haze ahead, a faint light flickered — not red like the burning ground, but pale and cold, like a candle lost in fog. Collins hesitated, then walked toward it. Each step echoed in the eerie silence.As he got closer, he saw it: a gate, ancient and half-destroyed, forged from black stone and ember glass. Strange markings ran across its arch — runes that pulsed weakly, as if clinging to life. This must be the Gate of Cinders Icarion spoke of.But something fel
Chapter 15 — The Face of the Shadow
The world seemed to stop breathing.Ashes froze midair, firelight dimmed to a trembling glow. Collins stood motionless, eyes wide, staring at the man framed in the doorway — Ravel.His heart pounded, every beat echoing louder than his thoughts.It couldn’t be true. It shouldn’t be true.Yet… Ravel’s face — the sharp jaw, the storm-dark eyes — it was like looking at a shadowed reflection of his father.“Father?” Collins whispered, his voice barely holding steady.Ravel smiled faintly — not cruelly this time, but with something worse: recognition.> “So… you finally see it.”Collins stepped back, shaking his head. “No… my father died. I buried him. I—”> “You buried a lie,” Ravel cut in, his tone smooth, almost sorrowful. “The man you thought was your father was the shell of what I left behind.”Collins’s pulse quickened. “Left behind? What are you talking about?”Ravel’s eyes glowed faintly crimson. The air around him rippled like heat over stone.> “Your father — Elyon Lutherchris — w
Chapter 16 — The Fifth Flame
The night had no stars.Only the dim shimmer of ash drifting across the cracked horizon.Collins stood on the ridge overlooking what once might have been a valley — now only ruins and molten scars. His body still trembled from what Ravel had shown him. The air around him pulsed faintly, gold and black streams of energy weaving together like fire and smoke.He could feel it. The two within him — the flame of light and the flame of shadow — circling, wrestling for dominance.> “You already are,” Ravel’s words echoed in his head.He clenched his fists, trying to steady his breathing. “No… I’m not you.”The wind hissed across the wasteland, carrying whispers — faint voices that seemed to come from the ashes themselves. He couldn’t make out the words, but they all sounded the same: burn, rise, fall.Suddenly, a figure appeared from the haze ahead.She was cloaked in gray, moving with eerie calm, her eyes glowing faint silver.> “You survived the Gate,” she said softly. “Few do.”Collins to
Chapter 17 — The Order of Ash
The ruins still smoked when the dawn came.It was a pale dawn — not the warm gold Collins remembered from his village, but a gray haze that carried the scent of burnt iron and sorrow.Lyra stood a few paces ahead, her cloak torn, staff dimmed. She was staring at what remained of the Order of Ash — nothing but armor fragments and dust that refused to settle.> “They shouldn’t have attacked like that,” she murmured. “Not without reason. The Order never moves unless something greater commands them.”Collins leaned on a fallen rock, his chest still aching from the power surge. “Then what were they after? Me?”Lyra turned to him slowly. “No. Not just you. The thing inside you.”Collins frowned. “You said they serve no light or dark. What could they possibly want with the Fifth Flame?”> “Silence,” Lyra said quietly. “They believe true peace is the absence of all power — that if every flame, every current, every spirit is extinguished, the realms will finally rest. You are a threat to that
Chapter 18 — The Voice of the Throne
Silence.Then, a heartbeat.Then another — slow, heavy, echoing like thunder in a void.Collins opened his eyes.He wasn’t standing anymore. He was floating, surrounded by an endless expanse of shifting mist and ember light. The floor — if it could be called that — rippled like molten glass beneath him.His flame burned faintly in his chest, but it didn’t hurt this time. It hummed, as though it recognized the place.> “You hear it, don’t you?”The voice came from behind him — calm, knowing.Collins turned sharply. A man stood there — tall, cloaked in black flame that didn’t consume. His eyes glowed faintly gold, the same shade as Collins’s own when his power awakened.Collins froze. “You…”The man smiled gently. “Yes. It’s me.”“Father?” Collins whispered.The man nodded. “Eron Lutherchris. Once a guardian of the Flame. Now… a memory bound to this place.”Collins’s breath caught. He’d imagined this moment a thousand times — questions piling in his chest for years. Why did you leave? W
Chapter 19 — The Awakening of the Realms
When Collins’s eyes opened again, the world had changed.He was lying on a bed of silver grass beneath a burning red sky. The air shimmered, thick with raw elemental energy — flames that didn’t burn, winds that whispered names, water that glowed faintly blue as it pooled nearby. Everything felt alive.He sat up slowly, clutching his head. The faint mark of the Fifth Flame still pulsed on his palm — not as a wound, but as a heartbeat.> “You’re awake.”Lyra’s voice came from the ridge above. She was alive — bruised, dust-covered, but her eyes were sharp as ever.Collins stood, his balance unsteady. “How long was I gone?”Lyra’s expression was grave. “Three days. But, Collins…” she hesitated, “the world hasn’t been still while you slept.”She gestured toward the horizon. Collins followed her gaze — and froze.The distant mountains of Veylar were burning — not with fire, but with molten light rising from beneath them, forming glowing veins that spread like cracks across the land. Rivers
Chapter 20 — The Leviathan of Storms
The sky split apart.Lightning crashed in sheets across the Zephyr Range, turning night into violent daylight. Wind howled in every direction, a scream from the heavens themselves. And in the middle of it all, Collins stood on a jagged cliff, his flame barely visible against the tempest’s fury.Lyra shouted something behind him, but the storm swallowed her words.The Leviathan emerged fully now — a monstrous serpent made of living wind and thunder, its body stretching for miles. Its eyes blazed like molten suns. Every breath it took tore clouds into ribbons.> “So… you are the one who woke the Throne,” the creature’s voice rolled through the air like thunder. “You who bear the Fifth Flame — the end and the beginning.”Collins steadied his stance, his heart hammering. “I don’t want to destroy anything. I’m here to fix what I broke.”The Leviathan coiled, lightning sparking from its scales. “Then prove your heart is stronger than the storm.”The wind struck first.A cyclone slammed into