Chapter One Hundred and Eleven: Dark Fire's First Spark
Section One: Dark Fire's First Spark
Night lay like furnace ash, heavy on the ruins. Code shards pulsed faintly in blood pools, a heart's final gasp. Of thirty-six fire guardians, twenty-nine knelt, palms pressed to blood-sealed shards, gazes fixed to the ground, oaths frozen in life. Wind carried rust, char, and blood, choking the throat. Maria stood at the front, blade bloodied, tip low, glinting in sand. Wei Ran gripped his rope, knuckles white, scanning the silence. Jason stood high, squinting over scorched earth.
No one spoke. The ruins were a dead cauldron, breaths dull as mud.
Sand churned, like corpses stirring.
---
Maria tilted her head, sharp, "They're here."
Wei crouched, fingers on the ground, feeling faint tremors—rhythmic, orderly, not refugees or stragglers.
Jason's gaze darkened, "Not to fight—to burn."
---
Figures emerged—tattered armor, cracked skin, gray eyes. Each bore a code shard, fire pulsing, but unsteady, disjointed, like pus bubbling before a boil.
Maria locked on the front figure, blade ready. Wei's rope slithered, snake-like.
Jason eyed the pulses—Fire Heart Project, false fire, fake frequencies.
Beyond, nine factions' sentries lurked—Fire Trade remnants, Qingwu Society stragglers, Barbarian Valley bandits, refugee militias, Iron Tomb Cult fragments—hiding in shadows, watching, waiting for Fire Trust to implode.
Maria hissed, "Nine factions watch us like we're dead."
Wei cursed, "Waiting for us to crack, to feast on our corpses."
Jason squinted, "We won't let them wait. We crack first."
Maria's grip tightened. Wei's back tensed like a bow.
---
Infection teams closed, their false fire pulsing, jarring guardians' nerves. Shoulders trembled, eyes wavered.
Jason exhaled, "Prepare."
Maria nodded, blade reversed, tracing arcs in sand. Wei crouched, rope coiling wrist.
A guardian stirred—left flank, knees buckling, body swaying, ripples spreading. Second, third followed.
Code shards flickered, a skipped beat.
Jason's voice was a blade sharpening, "Kill."
---
Maria moved first, blade flashing, severing a guardian's throat. Blood sprayed, body collapsing, splattering rubble like rotten fruit.
Wei followed, rope snaring another's neck, pulling tight, throat bones snapping, silent.
Jason lunged, no blade, just a palm gripping a third's jaw, twisting—neck cracked, body slumping.
Blood splashed, bones scattered, like rust flowers, like mud stains.
Remaining guardians knelt firm, nailed to earth, no more trembling.
---
Infection teams froze, then stirred. Knives drawn, guns raised—Fire Heart ignited early.
Maria slashed throats, Wei strangled, Jason shattered knees, stabbing hearts. Blood sweetened the air.
Code shards steadied, pulses firm. Wind carried only blood, no doubt.
---
Nine factions' sentries erupted—not explosions, but chaos.
Fire Trade cursed, "No crack in Fire Trust?"
Qingwu sneered, "Faith holds. Iron Valley's lost."
Barbarian Valley, militias, Iron Tomb exchanged glances—not amusement, but greed.
Iron Valley's faith stood, but they could raid, betray, bite while Fire Trust bled.
Wind tightened. Blood spread. Code shards held.
Dark fire sparked—not in ruins, but in blood, bones, lives.
---
Maria stood in corpses, blade dripping. Wei wiped blood on his pants. Jason scanned shadows, "They'll move."
Maria gritted, "We move first."
Jason eyed the factions' shadows, "Clear a batch."
Wind chilled. Fire reddened. Dark fire burned—in blood, not ruins.
---
Section Two: Igniting the Rift
Wind swirled sand, night pressing like a black iron lid, suffocating. Code shards lay still, unmoving. Twenty-nine guardians knelt on crusted blood, like fire-branded monoliths. Jason stood by the shards, boots silent on broken bricks. Shadows stirred—Steel Gate scouts, the hungriest wolves among the nine factions.
Maria crouched behind rubble, blade against thigh, eyes like steel needles. Wei hid by a wall, rope slithering. Wind carried blood and rust, unyielding.
"They're watching," Maria said, peering at Steel Gate's mining zone.
Wei exhaled, "Waiting for us to crack, to peel."
Jason didn't turn, "We move first."
Maria's eyes sharpened, "Steel Gate?"
Jason nodded, expression a knife's hilt in rubble.
---
Steel Gate scouts prowled, torchlight flickering like broken hands. They waited for Fire Trust to fracture, for blood to draw them in.
Jason's jaw clenched, "Crack them first. Let them eat themselves."
Maria gripped her blade, "How?"
Jason picked up a broken ID tag, blood-stained. He wiped its cracks, "Spread fire."
Wei frowned, "Spread?"
Jason nodded, "Spread memetics. Rumors. Fire Trust seeds."
Maria's lips twitched, eyes glinting. Wei tightened his rope.
"They don't fear attack," Jason said. "They fear their own trusting fire."
---
Steel Gate's camp glowed, tires burning, shadows twisting. Men drank diluted liquor, cursing, betting on Fire Trust's fall, whispering of codes, fire.
Maria asked, "How to spread?"
Jason pulled a Fuxi terminal, its screen webbing code pulses. He tapped, revealing code, "Fake Fire Trust codes. Show them."
Wei grinned, rust-scraping. Maria's eyes chilled.
"Three teams," Jason ordered. "Two fake code tags each. Plant them at Steel Gate's camp. Make them think their own hold fire."
Maria and Wei rose, swift. Maria tucked a blade and tags, Wei coiled rope.
They weren't fighting—they were igniting faith's fire, memetic fire.
---
Guardians scattered, silent as flowing blood. Jason watched Steel Gate's camp—drinking, laughing, gambling on Fire Trust's collapse.
"You bet on Fire Trust's fall," Jason hissed. "Fire doesn't bet on you."
Maria hid a fake tag under a mine cart's wheel. Wei slipped one into a barrel stack. Guardians spread tags like embers in ash.
No shouts, no cries—only faint code pulses, brief, weak.
Memetic fire caught. Faith's poison spread.
---
In Steel Gate's camp, a man found a tag under a wheel, frowning. No one answered his shout. Another found a tag, cursing. Tags bore cracks, faint pulses—Fire Trust's mark.
Eyes shifted, not to enemies, but to each other.
Maria returned, three tags left. Wei crouched, thumb on rope.
Jason watched—firelight swayed, barrels spilled, knives drawn, not at outsiders, but at kin.
Faith's fire didn't burn bodies—it burned hearts.
Shouts erupted, "Check! Is it you?" Blades flashed, blood sprayed. The first to fall was a brother, not an enemy.
Jason whispered, "It's begun."
Maria pressed her blade's spine. Wei exhaled, "Fire's burning."
---
Steel Gate's camp roared—self-slaughter, not enemy strikes. Code tags, blood-drenched, pulsed like spasming hearts.
Jason said, "Next."
Night blackened. Wind froze. Fire gleamed—not faith's, but blood's.
---
Section Three: Bone-Burning Fire
Fire sparked in the mining zone—not vast, but scattered, blood-soaked, like torn wounds festering. Steel Gate hacked their own, axes swinging, saws cutting, eyes red. No one knew who held Fire Trust. No one dared trust.
Jason watched from the ruins, still. Maria crouched, thumb on her blade. Wei's rope coiled, eyes on the chaos.
Curses, roars, and clashing steel erupted. Gunshots cracked, brief, final.
Sentries tried order, but throats bled, fire burning in bones.
Jason didn't order attack. Fire burned itself.
---
Maria asked, "Strike now?"
Wei gritted, "Cut in?"
Jason shook, "No. Let them bleed dry."
Firelight lit rusted iron red. Bloodier fights, brighter flames. Code tags pulsed, hearts convulsing.
A voice screamed, broken, "Why not rebel?"
Silence, then chaos—rebel? Against whom?
Maria's eyes flashed, "They're breaking."
Wei grinned, a hunter's smile.
Jason exhaled, "Wait for rebels to come."
---
Fire scorched. Jaws unclenched. Knives dropped, knees hit ground, some ran—toward Jason.
First deserters arrived—not a flood, but scraps of flesh cut loose, dragging wounds, stumbling to the ruins.
Maria's blade trembled. Wei's rope tensed.
Jason said, "Only kneelers."
Maria's smile was sand-cold.
---
Deserters saw Jason, blood pools, pulsing shards. Some knelt—seventeen.
Maria hissed, "Only seventeen?"
Jason stared, eyes nailing their backs.
Second wave hesitated—some to kneel, others to run.
One drew a knife. Wei's rope snapped, coiling his neck, snapping it. He knelt—dead.
"Not kneelers, kneel dead," Wei spat.
Three more knelt, others paled.
---
Maria approached a kneeler, blade on his shoulder, slicing skin, drawing blood. "Fire Trust isn't words—it's blood on your shoulder."
He banged his head on a shard, blood flowing. The shard pulsed.
Maria nodded, "Passed."
Jason said, "Blood isn't for saving. It's for trust."
Others knelt, broke knives, slashed shoulders, blood pooling by shards.
Fire reddened—not burning, but blood-hot.
---
Jason eyed the kneelers, "Steel Gate's broken."
Distant firelight dimmed—fighting ceased, only death, flight, or kneeling remained.
Maria asked, "Next?"
Jason looked to Refinery Guild's smoke stacks, shadows stirring.
Wei grinned, rope sliding, "Wait for fire. Spread again."
Wind swept, unquenching shard light, nor blood-fire's mark.
---
Section Four: Subtle Flame Eats Bone
Wind thickened, scraping like dull knives on rags. Fire flickered in the mining zone, Steel Gate shattered, corpses and kneelers blood-red.
Jason stood by the shards, bloodstains dry, Fire Trust's mark unburied.
Maria sheathed her blade, fingers tracing its worn grip. Wei coiled his rope, eyes night-cold.
"Rise," Jason said.
Steel Gate's deserters stood, trembling, avoiding shards, heads low.
---
Jason looked to Refinery Guild's slanted smoke stacks, faint, oily light glowing beneath—corpse-fire.
Maria hissed, "They're moving."
Wei felt tremors, "Footsteps."
Jason squinted—Refinery Guild's factory zone, once a furnace heart, now a den of chaos and drugs. Its people believed not in codes, but survival.
Perfect for burning.
"Move," Jason said.
Maria drew her blade, light hidden in sand. Wei slid his rope, slow, cold.
---
They took seventeen deserters—not to fight, but to spread faith's fire.
The team crept, steps light as night wind.
Refinery Guild's guards slouched, rifles old, eyes glazed. Maria whispered, "Dead men's eyes."
Jason signaled—two deserters pulled fake code tags, pulses faint, spreading like dying breaths.
Guards didn't hear, but their hearts did—low-frequency pulses, like tinnitus, clouding eyes.
---
Jason waited. Maria gripped her blade. Wei's rope slid.
Pulses thickened, venom in veins, miasma in mud.
Guards shook, guns wavered, some rubbed temples, frowning.
"Move," Jason said.
Deserters spread, viruses in ruins, each carrying a pulsing tag, burning hearts in drugged air.
---
Maria slipped into a warehouse, Wei a collapsed workshop, Jason a furnace relic.
Refinery workers, gaunt, numbed, gray-eyed, believed in drugs, in fleeting lives—not codes.
But pulses spread—unheard groans, choking gasps.
Some clutched heads, gasping. Others rambled. Some crept to tags, driven not by faith, but survival's hunger.
---
Maria pressed a blade to a thin man's back, "Want to live?"
He nodded, corpse-like. She slipped him a tag, "Trust it, live."
Wei pinned a slumped man, slapping a tag on his chest, "No trust? Die."
Jason tossed a tag into a fire, pulses twitching like a heart. A worker reached, trembling, face twisting as pulses seeped into blood, bones.
---
Refinery's ruins filled with moans, coughs, curses. Workers writhed, clutched tags like lifelines, not kneeling to faith, but to life.
Maria returned, "Strike now?"
Wei grinned, "Cut half, scare half."
Jason shook, "Wait. Let them stab their own."
Flames danced. Code pulses rooted in bones—not body-fire, but life-fire.