The mission wasn't sanctioned.
There was no approval glyph. No strategic blueprint from the Free Flame council.
But the world had changed.
And when the flame changed, it moved.
---
The Target
They called it Shardhold Vex, a Sovereign shard fortress built into the ruins of an old Sky Monolith. Not a school. Not a temple. A harvesting center—where the Sovereigns leached cultivation potential from low-rankers deemed "nonviable" and funneled it upward to feed noble flame houses.
Jiang Han stood on the edge of a broken outcropping overlooking the facility.
Tian Xue beside him. Su Lian on comms. Lin Suyin and the Shadowguard twins further back, prepping infiltration vectors.
He adjusted the flamewrap around his wrists and inhaled deeply.
"We're not just liberating prisoners," Jiang said.
"We're breaking a system of theft."
---
Infiltration Begins
The approach was silent. Lin Suyin's flamefield loops ran flawlessly, distorting surveillance threads. The guards saw nothing. The internal nodes flickered once, and then: blind.
The team moved fast:
Tian Xue swept the western towers, disabling elite guards with strike-thread precision.
Lira & Lio cut through conduits in perfect silence, disrupting flameflow across two levels.
Su Lian hijacked the core reactor from a side relay tower, turning the shard's harvest circuits into raw flame fountains.
And Jiang Han?
He walked straight through the front gate.
---
"You're Not Supposed to Exist."
The Sovereign commander—flame rank 6, encoded armor, blade etched in authority threads—met Jiang at the atrium gate.
"You're not listed," the man growled.
Jiang tilted his head.
"Good."
They clashed, and the air fractured.
Jiang didn't just fight.
He stripped away permission.
Each time the commander tried to override him, Jiang's chaos flame bent the attack—unmaking the system that gave it power.
Within moments, it wasn't a battle.
It was a message.
The flame does not belong to you.
And the commander fell—broken not by power, but by the absence of control.
---
Prisoners Freed
Below, in the containment wings, flamebearers of all ages looked up as their cells dissolved.
Some were too weak to stand. Others had forgotten what it felt like to breathe without suppression threads.
Jiang walked among them, flame trailing from his shoulders—not roaring, but warm.
"You don't owe me anything," he said, loud enough for all to hear.
"But you can come with us. And light your spark again. No ranks. No rules. Just fire."
One hand rose.
Then another.
Then the flame rose.
---
The Departure
As the team left, Shardhold Vex burned—not in ruin, but in release. Every confiscated spark lit the sky, sending a message across provinces.
Tian Xue turned to Jiang as they flew.
"You know they'll label us terrorists now."
Jiang glanced at the smoke curling behind them.
"Good."
"Why?"
"Because it means they're scared."
---
Final Scene
Back at Emberveil, the Monolith shard from Shardhold Vex was slotted into the forge. The Nexus lit brighter than ever before. And across the world, disconnected threads pulsed.
Some in silence.
Some in fear.
But others?
In answer.