All Chapters of THE HIDDEN FLAME OF LUTHERCHRIS: Chapter 51
- Chapter 60
149 chapters
Chapter 51 — The Whispering Tower
The closer they got to the Obsidian Spire, the quieter the world became.No birds.No wind.Even their footsteps seemed to sink into silence, swallowed by the dead air that surrounded the ancient tower. The structure itself loomed impossibly high, black stone glinting faintly like glass, as if it drank the last light of day.Elyndra’s voice broke the stillness. “It feels like the world stops breathing here.”Collins nodded. “That’s because it does.”The shard he carried — the fragment of the Spire — had begun to vibrate, tugging gently toward the colossal door at the tower’s base. Strange runes pulsed faintly on the black surface, shifting like living symbols, rearranging themselves every few seconds.He placed his palm on the cold stone. Instantly, the runes flared red, and a thousand whispers flooded his mind.> Collins Lutherchris... you return to the flame that birthed you...He pulled his hand away, gasping. “It knows me.”Elyndra frowned, readying her blades. “Then it’s alive.”
Chapter 52 — The Heart of the Flame
The interior of the Obsidian Spire was not what Collins expected.It wasn’t a hall of darkness or a tomb of ash. It was alive.The walls pulsed faintly like veins carrying molten light, and every step they took echoed softly, like the tower was listening. The air was warm, humming with energy that prickled against their skin.Elyndra’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “It feels like we’re walking inside something that’s… breathing.”Collins nodded, scanning the glowing paths that wound upward and downward in endless spirals. “The Spire isn’t just stone. It’s a conduit — built to channel the Flame.”They descended deeper, guided by the pendant’s dim golden glow. As they moved, they began to hear faint murmurs — not words exactly, but memories. Fragments of laughter, crying, chanting. The tower held the echoes of everyone who had ever come here.“Your father,” Elyndra said after a while. “He came here once, didn’t he?”Collins’ gaze darkened. “Yes. With my mother. They thought they co
Chapter 53 — The Trial of Fire
Heat.Endless, suffocating heat.Collins couldn’t tell where the ground ended and the sky began. Everything was red and gold — a storm of flame swirling around him. It wasn’t just heat that burned his skin, but memory, emotion, willpower. Every ember in this place pulsed with life.He realized, with a shudder, that he was standing inside the Fifth Flame itself.A vast plain stretched before him — molten rivers cutting through glowing sand. Strange shapes moved in the firelight, like creatures made of smoke and sparks, watching silently.Above them, the sky burned with shifting faces — the echoes of souls who had once tried to control this power and failed.> The Heart welcomes you, a voice murmured — deep, ancient, neither male nor female. The heir of the sealed fire returns to claim his fate.Collins clenched his fists. “I didn’t come to claim anything. I came to understand it.”> Understanding demands surrender.The flames surged, swirling into a vortex before him. Slowly, a figure
Chapter 54 — Ash Beneath the Sky
The wind that greeted Collins outside the Spire was not the same one that had brought him here.It was colder. Sharper.And laced with ash.The once-radiant plains of Lutherchris now stretched gray and cracked beneath a sky that bled crimson light. Rivers that once shimmered like glass now flowed thick with black water. The scent of burning earth hung heavy, as though the world itself had been scorched by a divine hand.Collins stepped forward, boots crunching against brittle soil. Every step sent faint ripples of gold from the sigil on his palm.The mark pulsed, almost as if it knew this place.Or feared it.He scanned the horizon. The cities he had known — the towers of Nareth, the silver bridges of Vallor — were now distant ruins swallowed by haze. What remained were shadows that moved even when the wind stood still.> You awakened it, a whisper slithered through his mind. Now the world remembers.He froze. The voice wasn’t his father’s — nor the ancient spirit of the Flame.It was
Chapter 55 — The Whispering Ice
The road north was silent.Too silent.Collins had been walking for hours, each step crunching against frostbitten ground. The air grew colder with every mile, the warmth of his inner flame barely holding back the creeping chill. The pendant around his neck — once golden and warm — now pulsed faintly blue, as though the artifact itself was guiding him toward something hidden in the tundra ahead.The world had changed since his encounter with the Warden. The crimson skies had paled into gray, and the wind carried voices — faint, broken whispers that faded whenever he stopped to listen.At first, he thought they were memories of the battle echoing in his head.But tonight, as the moon rose over the horizon like a silver wound, he realized the whispers were coming from the ice itself.He reached a frozen ravine that split the land in two. At the bottom, half-buried beneath the ice, lay what looked like the ruins of a cathedral — its spires snapped, its doors sealed in frost. He climbed d
Chapter 56 — The Chain of Two Flames
The tundra stretched endless before them — a wasteland of frozen ridges and howling winds.Each gust stung like needles against Collins’ skin, but the cold wasn’t what made him shiver.It was the echo.Deep beneath the ice, something moved — slow, vast, and alive. The earth groaned with it. Every few minutes, the frozen ground vibrated underfoot, like a sleeping beast breathing in its slumber.Collins tightened his cloak and looked at Avera. Her breath came out as misty plumes, her sapphire eyes scanning the white horizon.“We can’t stay here,” she murmured. “The Whispering Core is fully awake. The Ice won’t remain still now.”“Then where do we go?” Collins asked, his voice strained. “You said the Flames are connected — if this one’s rising, the others—”“—will soon follow,” she finished grimly. “And the Warden will be waiting for that moment.”The wind shrieked through the canyons.A sound followed it. Not the wind. Not the earth. Something else.A low, rhythmic thudding — heavy and
Chapter 57 — The Crown of Stone
The journey to the Dead Peaks took six days and six nights.Through endless snowfields and valleys buried in mist, Collins and Avera pressed forward — the faint blue and red glow of the pendant guiding them like a twin star.By the seventh sunrise, the ice began to give way to barren rock. The wind carried dust instead of frost, and the ground vibrated faintly beneath their boots.In the distance rose the mountains — black, jagged, and unnaturally still.“The Dead Peaks,” Avera whispered. “Once the heart of a kingdom. Now, nothing but stone.”Collins adjusted the cloak around his shoulders. “What happened here?”“Pride,” she replied softly. “The people of Craven believed themselves unbreakable. They mined too deep — searching for the Crown of Stone. When they found it, it gave them the power to shape earth itself… until it claimed them in return.”They climbed through the narrow mountain path. Every few steps, Collins noticed strange shapes in the rock — not boulders, but statues. Men
Chapter 58 — The Breath of Storm
The wind never slept in the Stormlands.It screamed through canyons like a living thing, bending trees to the earth, flaying the skin from stone. Collins and Avera wrapped their cloaks tight as they crossed the salt plains, the air filled with electric haze that flickered like lightning caught in glass.They had been traveling for three days since the Dead Peaks.The ground beneath them still trembled now and then — faint echoes of the Crown’s awakening. Collins felt it under his feet like a restless heartbeat. The power he had absorbed from the mountain hadn’t settled. It pulsed and twisted inside him, molten and heavy.Avera noticed. “You’re holding too much energy,” she said, voice raised over the howling gale. “The flames… they’re bleeding through your aura.”“I know,” Collins muttered. “But if I release it now, it could burn half this desert.”“Then hold it,” she said flatly. “We still need the fourth.”He nodded grimly. The fourth essence — the Breath of Storm — was said to rest
Chapter 59 — The Mirror of Flame
The sky trembled.The two Collinses faced each other across the glasslike expanse of the Stormland’s core — one blazing with gold and scarlet fire, the other shrouded in a cold, black flame that devoured light instead of casting it.Wind hissed through the silence like a whisper from the dead.Avera stood frozen behind him, her sword half-drawn. Elyndra’s face had gone pale; she had seen things beyond the veil before, but nothing like this.The darker Collins — older, sharper, with eyes that seemed to see through time itself — tilted his head slightly. “You look surprised,” he said, voice eerily calm. “Did you really think the Fifth Flame could be so easily forgotten?”Collins swallowed hard. “Who are you?”The figure smiled, though it wasn’t warm. “I’m you. Or what’s left of you from the last time this world burned.”The words hit like a spell. The air thickened. The wind stilled completely, and for a moment, all Collins could hear was the thud of his own heartbeat.“That’s impossibl
Chapter 60 — The Ash Between Worlds
The silence after the storm was worse than the storm itself.Clouds that had once glowed with lightning now hung motionless and grey, as if the world had stopped breathing. Collins stood at the edge of the floating platform, staring into the endless sky, where cracks of pale light stretched like veins through the heavens.Avera sheathed her sword, her expression caught somewhere between exhaustion and fear. “He’s gone… right?”Elyndra didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes glowed faintly with the wind’s residual power, her gaze fixed on the horizon. “He didn’t vanish,” she said at last. “He was pulled back. To wherever the Fifth Flame sleeps.”Collins said nothing. The words of his reflection still rang in his ears — You’ll wear this face again.He could still feel that presence deep inside him, like a shadow beneath his heartbeat, waiting.When he finally spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “My parents… they did all this. They sealed him — sealed me — and tore the world apart to do i