Chapter 71
The void did not roar.
It consumed.
Light bent around it. Sound vanished.Even thought became difficult—like something ancient was peeling away everything that made them real.
Kael stood tall, his breath slow but steady.
The white-hot fire in his chest had no name, no spell, no crown.
It was what came before all of that.
Eliendara stood beside him, her hand in his, her flame trembling.
She was powerful—perhaps the strongest Flamebearer the world had ever known.But this…
This was something else.
And still—she did not step back.
The creature that had followed them through the void finally took form.
No eyes. No face.
Just endless folds of unraveling memory.
"You were not meant to burn," it whispered from everywhere."You were a mistake. A flare in stillness. A blight in the dark."
Kael didn't reply.
He remembered now.
The first moment of rebellion.
The first spark in a world that begged to stay cold.
Eliendara's crown lit with golden fire.
But Kael raised a hand."No," he murmured.
He stepped forward alone.
The fire that moved with him didn't spread.
It collapsed.
Like a dying star.
And from it, came a pulse of heat so ancient it rewrote the wind.
The void flinched.
For the first time.
"You don't fear flame," Kael said."You fear what flame remembers."
He held out both hands.
The symbols carved into his arms lit in full—
Not runes.
But names.
Every god.Every soul.Every truth flame had ever touched.
And they began to sing.
Eliendara dropped to one knee, overwhelmed—but not broken.
Because in the sound, she heard Kael.
Still him.
Still the man who once laughed at bad stew, who held her hand under the stars, who chose love in every life.
And now… chose it again.
The void struck.
Kael didn't dodge.
He opened his arms.
And embraced it.
It screamed.
Because for the first time, the void felt something it had never known:
Heat.
Not destruction.
Not violence.
But life.
And Kael burned.
Not as Caedros.
Not as a god.
But as the flame that refused to die.
And in that moment, the void cracked.
Not destroyed…
But changed.
🔮 Next Chapter Preview – Chapter 72: When the Fire Loved the Dark
Kael's sacrifice reshapes the void into something new.
But now that light has touched the endless dark,something else begins to awaken.
And Eliendara must decide—
Will she pull him back from the brink…
Or let him become something the world has never seen?