The Abyss Hungered.
Christian barely rolled aside as the Scorch-Eater's claw slammed down, shattering a floating stone platform into mist. The creature had changed—grown.
Its body, once molten and skeletal, now dripped with shadow-embers—tendrils of broken spirit energy leaking from its frame like dying stars.
The Abyss was feeding it.
Twisting it.
Perfecting it.
---
Survival Meant Movement.
Kien shouted, her ice-spear shimmering with a new eerie darkness as she darted across the ruins. The Void-Ice Flame still burned inside her—but it flickered, struggling against the alien pressure of this place.
Christian followed, panting, feeling the Void core inside him throb—like a second heartbeat, deeper, colder.
The Scorch-Eater struck again.
A wave of Abyssal fire chased them, burning the very laws of physics in its wake.
They had minutes—maybe seconds—before it adapted completely.
---
A Memory Awakened.
When Christian's foot slammed into a broken slab of obsidian, something strange happened.
Visions—
not his own—
flooded him.
He saw a man in silver armor, flames like banners streaming from his fists—
Vaelen Sol, last of the Flameborn Kings.
He saw Vaelen kneeling before a great rift in the sky, blood pouring from his chest—
a black, laughing shadow reaching through.
"You cannot save them all."
Vaelen's sword fell.
A spark—the last spark—fell into the rift.
Into the Abyss.
And there, something caught it.
Something that waited.
Something that became... Christian.
---
The Fight Turned.
Christian staggered, blinking the visions away.
Kien grabbed his arm.
"Stay with me!" she shouted, voice raw.
"If you fall here, I fall too!"
Their bond pulsed—bright, jagged, real.
And through it, Christian understood:
He wasn't just a wielder of the Void Core.
He was the inheritance of Vaelen's final stand.
A piece of the last hope—and the last mistake.
---
The Final Stand—Or Fall.
The Scorch-Eater roared—its form now nearly unrecognizable, a titan of broken flame and hunger.
Christian tightened his grip on Kien's hand.
Together, they turned.
Together, they rose.
Their Void-Ice Flame burned higher than ever before—
not perfect, but alive.
This world wanted to erase them.
The Scorch-Eater wanted to devour them.
But they had one thing neither understood:
Choice.
And in that shattered place beyond life and death, Christian and Kien chose to fight.
---
End of Chapter