2025-12-15 20:35:04Asta stood up slowly, still feeling like the floor was swaying under him.
“I… I really appreciate you telling me all of that, even if it feels like someone just dropped a mountain on my head.”
He said, his voice low.
Old Man Kael was already at the door, wrestling with an ancient iron key that looked older than the academy itself.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine.”
He grumbled, jiggling the key left, right, up, down, then left again.
“I just need to lock this damn door before the rats throw a party in my scrolls.”
The key refused to turn, Kael muttered curses under his breath, shook the handle like he was trying to choke it, then kicked the bottom of the door so hard the whole frame rattled.
“Come on, you rusty piece of…”
Asta pressed his lips together so hard they hurt. A tiny laugh was trying to escape and he was losing the fight.
Kael whipped around, one white eyebrow raised so high it nearly touched his hairline.
“What’s so funny, boy?”
“Nothing, sir!”
Asta squeaked, his eyes wide and innocent.
Kael narrowed his eyes, turned back and gave the door another furious jiggle.
“Stupid thing’s been broken since the third Empress, I swear…”
Asta bit the inside of his cheek.
“Uh… sir? Let me try.”
“I got it.”
Kael snapped.
“I insist. Please.”
Kael froze, key halfway twisted. He stared at the door like it had personally insulted his mother. Then he let out a long, dramatic sigh and stepped aside with a grand sweep of his arm.
“Fine. Be my guest. There’s no way you can even make it shift an inch. This door is forged from star-forged obsidian iron, tempered in the breath of a volcano wyrm, and enchanted by the Fourth Flame Emperor himself. It weighs more than three warhorses and laughs at normal human strength.”
Asta stepped forward, rolled his shoulder once, grabbed the handle, and slammed the door shut.
CLANG.
It closed perfectly. The lock clicked like it was happy to finally behave.
Silence.
Kael’s mouth actually fell open. His cloudy eyes went round as coins.
Asta turned, looked at his own palm, then back at the door.
“That… didn’t seem like something to struggle over.”
Kael blinked. Once. Twice.
“How in the nine hells…”
“I just pulled.”
Asta said as he shrugged.
“And pushed. That’s it.”
Kael scratched his scarred cheek and muttered.
“That door has humiliated generals, archmages, even a prince once. He cried.”
Asta gave a tiny, sheepish grin.
“So… am I strong now?”
Kael barked a laugh that echoed down the tunnel.
“Strong? Boy, you’re still as weak as a wet kitten. That wasn’t your muscle. That was the dragon strength leaking out and mixing with your blood. A single drop of its power is worth more than a thousand normal men.”
Asta’s grin faded.
“Leaking?”
“Exactly. And if we don’t teach you how to control the leak, one day the whole dam breaks and the empire drowns.”
Kael started walking.
“Come with me. I want to show you something.”
They walked deeper than Asta had ever gone. The torches grew farther apart, the air colder, the stone older. A rusty iron sign hung crooked from the ceiling:
HIGHER SENIORS ONLY—DEATH TO TRESPASSERS.
Asta swallowed hard.
“We’re allowed down here?”
Kael didn’t answer. He just lifted one gnarled hand. A small, steady flame bloomed in his palm,pure golden-white, clean and bright like a sunrise on snow.
Asta stopped walking.
“Wait. You can make fire?”
Kael rolled his eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn’t fall out.
“What, you thought I was just a retired janitor? Didn’t you listen to a single word of my story upstairs?”
Asta rubbed the back of his neck.
“I… might have zoned out a little when you got to the part about slaying the lava titan. Sorry.”
Kael snorted.
“This is Dawn Lotus Flame, pride of the ancient Kael clan from the Eastern Isles. One of the purest healing-support flames in the world. Also excellent for lighting dark hallways when rude boys don’t pay attention.”
He waved the flame ahead like a lantern. The golden light danced on wet stone walls and made the shadows retreat.
Asta jogged to keep up.
“So… what’s my flame called? Dragon something?”
Kael’s flame flickered. He stopped walking and turned, giving Asta the most sarcastic look imaginable.
“Boy, do you ever stop asking questions?”
Asta took one dramatic step back, hands raised.
“Sorry! Sorry!”
Kael shook his head, but there was a tiny smile hidden in his beard.
“I don’t know yet. First I have to figure out exactly which dragon is sealed inside you. There were nine Legendary Dragons in the old myths, each with its own flame, personality, and favourite way to destroy continents. Until we know which one chose you as its jail-slash-partner, we can’t name the fire.”
Asta opened his mouth,then closed it fast when Kael’s eyebrow threatened to launch into orbit again.
They kept walking. The tunnel sloped down, down, down, until the air felt thick and humming with old power. Finally they reached a pair of enormous double doors,black wood bound with crimson steel, carved with phoenixes and dragons locked in eternal battle.
Kael placed his palm on the door. The Dawn Lotus flame flared bright, traced a complicated symbol in the air, and the doors swung inward without a sound.
Asta’s breath caught.
The space beyond was impossible.
A cavern so huge he couldn’t see the ceiling,just endless darkness lit by floating rivers of pure fire that flowed like upside-down waterfalls. Bookshelves taller than palace towers rose in perfect rings, connected by bridges of living flame. Students,real students, seniors in different crimson-and-gold robes,were flying.
Some had wings made of fire sprouting from their backs, beating slowly and gracefully. Others wore boots that left trails of sparks as they skate through the air. A girl shot upward like a rocket, laughing, trailing a tail of blue-white flame, and snatched a book from a shelf a hundred metres up.
The smell of old paper, smoke and magic was so strong Asta could taste it.
He stood frozen in the doorway with hi
s mouth open.
Kael stepped beside him, arms folded, looking proud and a little smug.
“Welcome.”
He said, his voice low with something like reverence.
“To the Grand Crimson Library.”
The doors boomed shut behind them…
Previous Chapter
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Chapter 858
They didn't have the luxury of celebrating the bridge's outcome for long.Word reached them two days later, carried by a rider Sera's remaining trusted contacts had sent ahead, Emberfall, the border city they'd once saved from a single feral Choir fragment weeks earlier, was burning again, and this time the scale dwarfed anything the squad had faced there before."How bad." Asta asked, already moving toward the horses before the messenger had finished catching his breath."Bad." The rider said. "Whatever hits the city isn't one fragment anymore. Reports describe multiple sources of uncontrolled flame, civilian casualties climbing by the hour, and Council forces either unable or unwilling to intervene effectively.""Unwilling." Roderick repeated, sharp. "Why would they be unwilling?""Because the soldiers on the ground are saying it looks exactly like what happened at the bridge." The rider said, grimly. "Except nobody stabilized this one. It's still spreading."Vex's expression
Chapter 857
The light and dark flame collided in a violent, churning column above the shattered carriage, and Mira, thrown backward by the shockwave along with half the squad, watched in horror as the eleven fractured voices continued screaming, no longer coordinated, no longer speaking as one, a cacophony of grief, confusion, and raw, remembered pain pouring out of eleven bodies that no longer knew how to be a single harmony and hadn't yet remembered how to be separate people again."It's destabilizing." Emrick shouted over the chaos, having insisted on accompanying the strike team despite his weakened condition, his eyes fixed on the churning light with grim, focused intensity. "Exactly as theorized, but faster, more violent than I predicted. The resonance broke all eleven bonds at once instead of gradually.""Is that good or bad." Roderick shouted back, blade raised against the chaos while trying to keep the reeling, disoriented Council soldiers from regrouping around them."I don't know ye
Chapter 856
They reached the convoy's projected route on the fourth day, cresting a ridge that overlooked a long, winding stretch of road cutting through a narrow valley, the kind of terrain, Yuki noted grimly, that made for excellent ambush ground and equally excellent killing ground, depending entirely on who controlled the higher elevation first."This is it." Lucien confirmed, studying the road below with the particular certainty of a man who'd memorized this exact route during his months of forced service. "The convoy passes through here tomorrow morning, assuming the schedule hasn't shifted. There's a narrow bridge crossing about two miles further along, the only viable route through this section of terrain. Everything funnels through that point.""A bottleneck." Roderick said, already assessing the tactical shape of the ground with a soldier's eye. "That's our best chance to isolate the transport carriage from its full escort.""It's also the most heavily guarded section of the entire
Chapter 855
The next two days blurred into a grinding cycle of riding, planning, and stolen hours of sleep, the squad pushing hard toward the convoy's projected route while Yuki and Emrick refined their theory into something that might actually survive contact with reality."Resonance isn't a weapon." Emrick said, for what felt like the third time, sketching another diagram in the dirt as the fire burned low around them. "It's a condition. You can't simply throw fire at eleven merged voices and expect coherence to shatter. You need something that speaks to what's holding them together in the first place.""Which is what, exactly." Roderick asked, patience visibly thinning after two days of theory without a clear plan of execution."Shared trauma." Emrick said. "That's the foundation every successful bond I studied was built on. The Choir isn't eleven separate people cooperating. It's eleven fractured identities that found it easier to stop being separate at all. The harmony holds because sep
Chapter 854
They rode through the morning in near silence, the weight of Emrick's revelation pressing down on the whole company harder than exhaustion or the dwindling clock on the convoy ever had. Kael rode near the back, alone, refusing the company even Asta offered, and Emrick kept his distance at the opposite end of the line, watching the old man's back with an expression Mira couldn't quite name, not forgiveness, not yet, but not pure hatred either. Something unsettled in between.They made camp at midday out of necessity, the horses needing rest and Seris still weak enough that Sera insisted on a proper stop rather than pushing straight through toward the convoy's projected route.It was Yuki who finally broke the uneasy quiet, approaching Emrick with the same careful, methodical curiosity she brought to every piece of the puzzle they were still assembling."You said you studied for twenty years." She said. "Do you know what they were trying to learn? Specifically?"Emrick considered her
Chapter 853
Roderick's blade met the first guard's with a screech of metal, driving the man back into the second before either could raise a full alarm, and for a handful of desperate seconds the narrow corridor became nothing but steel and breath and the grim, practiced economy of a soldier who'd learned, the hard way, exactly how to make three seconds last as long as thirty.He dropped the first guard with a strike to the temple, disarmed the second before he'd finished raising his blade, and was already turning to follow the others when a third voice, not a guard's, called out from a cell further down the block, low and urgent."Wait. Please. Whoever you are, wait."Roderick hesitated, torn between the escape already underway and the desperate plea echoing off stone, and something in the voice's raw, worn quality stopped him from simply running past.He found the source in the block's last cell,an older man, gaunt, scarred along both forearms in patterns that looked disturbingly familiar, eyes
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