The scorched remains of Vel'Tharon still smoldered. The fires of the Black Inferno had been quenched, but the land bore its scars — cracks in the stone that bled heat, hollowed towers twisted by shadowfire, and an unnatural stillness that made even the wind seem afraid to speak. Ash blanketed the ground like snow, and the once-defiant rebel banners lay burned to threads.
Yet in the heart of devastation, Raizen walked with purpose.
He moved alone through the ruins of the Flamehold Citadel — once Drax's stronghold, now a silent tomb. Every echo of his boots on the stone floor felt heavier than it should, as if the past itself pressed down on him. The death of General Koba still weighed on his chest like a branding iron. There had been no time to mourn. Not when war still loomed. Not when Drax still lived.
But something in the Citadel called to him.
It had begun as a whisper, buried in the collapse — not a voice, but a sensation. A thread tugging at the edges of his mind, wrapped in flame and memory. He followed it down, deeper than the command tunnels, beneath the old war rooms and black-iron vaults. Past a collapsed bridge where molten steel had once poured like waterfalls.
Eventually, he found it — an ancient chamber sealed behind a wall of fused obsidian.
The obsidian cracked under his palm, responding not to strength, but to will — the very same force Raizen had learned to channel since his awakening. As the stone parted, a rush of old air struck him: dry, scorched, but laced with something… familiar.
Inside, the room was circular. Symbols long lost to the world lined the walls — not in ink, but in etched flame. Burned into the stone in spiraling script, glowing faintly red as though lit from within. At the center of the room floated a single object: a crystal sphere, suspended over a black pedestal of shadowsteel.
Raizen approached it slowly.
And as he neared, the sphere flickered to life.
Flames danced within it, forming images — not illusions, but memories.
A battlefield under two moons. Cities alight with unnatural fire. Figures cloaked in ash and steel clashing beneath a sky cracked with lightning. The memories weren't Drax's. They were older. Much older.
Then came a voice — not spoken, but remembered.
"Before the World Government… before the Great Line… there was only fire and will. The Crown was forged not as a tool of rule — but as a prison. To seal what we could not destroy."
Raizen stared in awe as the images shifted. He saw a younger Drax — not yet a tyrant, but a warrior. Chained. Tortured. Used. Injected with something ancient, his body breaking and rebuilding with every cycle of pain.
"He was the first vessel. The first to survive the Firebrand Ritual."
More flashes — the ritual chamber, symbols drawn in blood and embers, screaming voices as Drax convulsed in a pool of molten light. Then darkness. And from the darkness… laughter.
Raizen stumbled back. His heart thundered. The truth struck him like a blow.
Drax wasn't just a tyrant.
He was created. A weapon reborn from the ashes of a war no one remembered — a war erased by the very founders of the World Government. The Crown of Shadows hadn't been merely a tool of control. It had been part of a containment order for a force too dangerous to exist.
And now, Drax had inherited that power.
Raizen sank to one knee, his fingers digging into the ash-covered stone. The implications were vast. The war they fought wasn't just political — it was primordial. Drax was not trying to conquer the world in the name of tyranny. He was enacting a cycle written long before any throne or rebellion.
He was the echo of a forgotten apocalypse.
The crystal pulsed one last time.
"To break the flame, one must carry it. Beware, Flameheart — the fire remembers."
Raizen stood slowly, eyes blazing with new purpose. The message wasn't just a warning.
It was a call.
The rebellion had become something far more than political resistance. It was a battle for the very memory of the world — and Raizen was the only one who had touched its heart.
As he returned to the surface, the wind picked up — ash swirling into spirals that almost resembled words.
Zuri waited for him at the top of the stairs. "What did you find?"
Raizen looked past her, toward the horizon where new storms gathered. His voice was quiet, but resolute.
"History's greatest lie."
And behind him, the fire still whispered.
END OF CHAPTER13