The flame screamed.
It wasn't a sound of fire crackling, but of a thousand voices tearing through Kaelen's mind at once—desperate, hungry, endless. The candle-bearer's knees buckled as the light tore higher, bending into shapes that clawed at the sky.
Kaelen's pulse pounded in his skull. He knew the truth instantly: if the fire ran wild, the board wouldn't need to destroy them. The flame itself would erase everything.
He shoved the relic into the heart of the blaze.
The world detonated.
Light swallowed Kaelen whole. The relic shook violently in his grip, fighting him, searing through his skin, but he forced his will into it. "You will not consume them! You will not consume her! You burn for us—no one else!"
The relic's threads of light lanced outward, wrapping around the writhing flame like chains around a beast. The fire screamed louder, struggling, sparks tearing the tiles apart as it fought against restraint.
Lyra's voice was distant, drowned in the roar. "Kaelen! You can't hold it alone!"
She lunged forward, pressing her hand over his on the relic. Her strength joined his, her voice steady despite the chaos. "You don't bind fire with force—you guide it. Don't fight it, Kaelen. Lead it."
Her words cut through the noise. Kaelen's jaw tightened. He stopped forcing, stopped wrestling, and instead reached inward—not to command the flame, but to speak to it.
He whispered, almost broken: "You want to burn everything? Fine. Burn with me. Burn for freedom. Not for them."
The relic pulsed. The chains shifted from iron to rivers of light, no longer choking but channeling. Slowly, painfully, the storm bent, funneled into a single controlled blaze instead of a wild inferno.
The candle-bearer gasped, eyes glowing as the fire settled, the candle no longer dripping away but steady, blazing brighter than before.
The board shuddered. The shadows recoiled. Even the eye above dimmed slightly, as though blinded.
And then—the King spoke. Its voice was low, resonant, trembling with something Kaelen had never heard before. Not mockery. Not hunger.
Caution.
"You are not playing the game… you are rewriting it."
The tiles realigned beneath them, forming a fresh arena, wider than before. Towers rose at the edges, glowing with an energy Kaelen hadn't seen yet.
Lyra tightened her grip on her weapon, her smirk sharp and dangerous. "Looks like we scared it. Now it's changing the rules."
Kaelen stood straighter, the relic burning faintly in his hand, the newly bound flame flickering at their side. For the first time since entering the Spiral Game… he felt something more than survival.
He felt hope.