Kael: Rise of The Fire Heir

Chapter 07

Chapter 7. The Prison of Darkness

The stone walls felt like ice, sucking the life from Kael’s pores. As the iron carriage door slammed open, the harsh torchlight pierced his eyes, which had grown accustomed to the darkness. He was dragged out, his legs still weak from the lingering poison, stumbling against the rough stone stairs leading into the bowels of the earth.

"Get inside, scum!" shouted one of the black-clad soldiers.

Kael was thrown into a narrow cell. His body hit the cold, damp floor. The heavy iron bars clanged shut, echoing through the seemingly endless underground corridor. The black iron collar around his neck still felt suffocating, pulsing with dark energy that suppressed every spark of fire within his veins.

He tried to stand, but every time he attempted to summon his energy, the collar would release a painful electric shock. Kael groaned, leaning his back against the cell wall. This entire room was made of anti-magic stone, a material specifically designed to extinguish powers like his.

Mother... Master... where are they? he whispered to himself.

Two days passed in agonizing silence. The only interaction he had was when a guard tossed a piece of hard bread and a bowl of murky water into his cell. Kael didn't eat because he was hungry; he ate because he needed the energy to think. His mind never stopped working, searching for a flaw amidst this deadly stone enclosure.

"Eat up, Little Charcoal," the guard mocked on the second day, his face barely visible behind the iron bars. "Tomorrow, the Sovereign will dissect you to take that fire. He says he wants to see if your heart is truly made of embers or just rotten meat."

"Where is my mother?" Kael’s voice was hoarse, his throat feeling as if it were filled with sand.

The guard laughed, a sound that made Kael want to burn his face off. "That woman? She’s in a place far worse than this. Pray that she dies quickly before the experiments begin."

The guard walked away, leaving Kael in a frozen rage. The collar on his neck stung again as his emotions flared, but this time, Kael didn't fight it. Instead, he tried to sense the energy pattern of the collar. Over the course of two days, he had realized something. The anti-magic stone and this collar didn't destroy the fire within him; they only dammed it up.

The fire is not an element. The fire is will, Kael remembered the words of the Shadow Sovereign and his ancestors from the vision in the cave.

If he tried to erupt the fire as usual, the energy would be immediately absorbed by the stone. But what if he didn't erupt it? What if he focused all that heat into a single, tiny point?

Kael sat cross-legged, ignoring the piercing pain from his iron collar. He closed his eyes, visualizing a small sun in the pit of his stomach. He didn't try to push the sun out. Instead, he imagined the sun shrinking, condensing, and becoming as sharp as a needle.

Cold sweat poured down his temples. The collar began to vibrate violently, emitting purple sparks that scorched the skin of his neck. Kael gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. He moved that extremely dense heat point toward the tip of his index finger.

Focus. Don't let it spread. Become a piercing light, his mind commanded.

Slowly, his fingertip began to glow with a blinding white light, not orange. It was pure, intense heat, yet concentrated in an area as small as a pinhole. Kael brought his finger close to the base of his cell's iron bars.

A small hiss was heard. The smell of vaporizing metal began to waft. The anti-magic stone around the cell did not react because the energy Kael released was too small to be considered a magic attack, yet the intensity of the heat was capable of surpassing the resistance of ordinary metal.

Kael's finger shook violently. The heat began to burn his own flesh, but he did not stop. Drop by drop, the iron—as thick as a man's arm—began to melt, creating a small gap that slowly widened.

A little more...

After a struggle that felt like hours, one bar finally broke free from its socket. Kael slumped down, gasping for breath. His fingertip was blistered, but he had succeeded. With his remaining strength, he repeated the process on the bar next to it.

When the gap was large enough for his thin body to pass through, Kael crawled out. He moved like a shadow through the dimly lit prison corridors. He knew he had to remove this collar, but without a key or cutting tool, it was impossible. He had to find the guardroom.

His footsteps were silent on the stone floor. At the end of the hallway, he saw two guards sleeping in front of a large teak door. Kael had no weapons, but he had ingenuity. He picked up an iron chain lying on the floor, and with a swift motion, he throttled one guard's neck and slammed their heads together until they were unconscious before they could scream.

He searched the guard's body and found a ring of keys. With trembling hands, he tried them one by one on the collar around his neck.

Click.

The black iron opened and fell to the floor with a melodic clang. Instantly, an overwhelming sense of relief flooded Kael's body. The flow of heat that had been blocked for so long now flowed freely, healing the abrasions on his neck and finger in seconds. He felt alive again.

Kael didn't run straight for the exit. He remembered the guard's words about his mother. He had to know where they had taken Mara. He slipped into the room that had been guarded, which turned out to be the fortress's archive and strategy room.

The room was silent, illuminated only by moonlight streaming through a small skylight. In the center of the room was a giant wooden table covered with sheets of ancient parchment. Kael approached, his heart pounding as his eyes caught a large map spread across the table.

The map depicted their entire continent, from the northern mountains to the southern coast. However, something was wrong with the map. Red lines were drawn to form a six-pointed star pattern, connecting major cities and natural energy sources. At every junction, there was a skull symbol and notes in an ancient language Kael recognized from his visions.

"This isn't just a conquest," Kael whispered, his eyes widening in horror as he read one of the notes on the edge of the map.

It read: Initiation of the Sky Cleansing Ritual. Target: Entire Human Population. Execution Time: Black Eclipse.

The Sovereign didn't want to rule this world. He wanted to erase it. Those red lines were energy flow paths that would be detonated simultaneously to trigger a global apocalypse. And what made Kael's blood run cold was the large "X" over Eldara Village and Wuni Village—places they had already destroyed just as initial tests of power.

Kael saw a large red dot in the center of the map, located right in the heart of the imperial capital. Beneath it was written a name that made his breath hitch: Mara - Core Binding Vessel.

"Mother..." Kael gripped the edge of the table until the wood cracked.

His mother wasn't just a prisoner. Mara was being prepared to be a living sacrifice in a ritual that would destroy the entire world. The Shadow Sovereign had planned this long before Kael awakened his fire. Kael realized that his escape today wasn't just about his own safety, but the beginning of an impossible race against time.

Suddenly, the sound of a warning bell echoed throughout the prison.

"Prisoner escape! Close all gates!" the shout rang out from the corridor.

Kael grabbed the strategy map, folded it quickly, and hid it beneath the guard's cloak he had stolen. He stared at the exit, which was now being surrounded. His eyes flashed with a fire that no longer wavered.

He had to get out of here. He had to warn the world. And most importantly, he had to stop this madness before his mother became the key to the destruction of everything.