The heat was unbearable.
Flames danced across the walls of the chamber like living serpents. The shattered coffin smoldered with crimson-gold embers, casting shadows across the ice-rimed floor that rapidly melted into steaming water.
Raen Xirian knelt amidst the growing warmth, eyes locked on the girl who had just risen from death's slumber.
She sat calmly on the edge of the broken crystal bed, her gaze sharp and regal despite her weakened aura. Her long silver-gold hair flowed down her back like a cascade of burning moonlight. Her skin glowed faintly, as though fire coursed beneath it.
"Your spiritual aura is unfamiliar," she said, tilting her head slightly. "This is not the Emberlight Sect. Nor the Year of Flame's Oath. Where am I?"
Raen blinked.
"You've… been sealed for a long time."
Her eyes narrowed. "Who won the war?"
Raen gave a short laugh and gestured at the crumbling ruin above. "Who do you think?"
She was silent for a moment. Then, her golden eyes shimmered with something like grief. "Then we lost."
The flames around her flickered.
Raen took a cautious step forward. "You're of the phoenix bloodline, aren't you?"
Her eyes sharpened.
"You have the scent of cauldron fire and corpse spirit," she replied. "Are you an alchemist… or something else?"
Raen didn't answer immediately. His gaze turned to the Myriad Void Cauldron rune pulsing under his robes.
"I'm… walking the Heavenless Path. Whatever that makes me."
She stood. The chamber quaked faintly with her movement.
"Then you are not my enemy," she said softly. "My name is Eyla Veiryn, heir to the Eternal Embersong Clan… or what's left of it."
Raen's brow lifted slightly. So she really was a high-born phoenix cultivator.
"Raen Xirian," he said, nodding. "Survivor of a dead clan. Let's call it even."
Their eyes met for a heartbeat—wariness, recognition, and a flicker of shared loss.
---
Moments Later – Inside the Soul Garden
"You what?" Eyla blinked, genuinely stunned.
They were now inside Raen's Soul Garden, a realm of crimson soil, thick with corpse-fed energy and strange spirit plants. Raen had invited her in after she nearly collapsed from spiritual exhaustion, sensing her condition was deteriorating.
"Your body was frozen for too long," Raen explained, checking a flame-threaded leaf pulsing nearby. "Your Phoenix Flame is unstable. Your bloodline's essence is sealed. But the cauldron's energy can stabilize it."
She stared around in awe. "This… is your inner world?"
Raen nodded. "It's called the Myriad Void Cauldron. It lets me grow herbs using death. Absorb bloodlines. Forge pills. Even temper beasts."
Eyla knelt beside the Fire-Essence Vine Raen had grown from a spirit beast corpse hours ago.
"Your cultivation path is insane. Alchemy from corpses? Growing spirit herbs in soul soil? This… this breaks every law of the heavens."
"Good," Raen muttered, crushing a soulfruit into a pill mixture. "Then I'm on the right path."
---
Refining the Flame Core Pill
With Eyla's permission, Raen began refining a custom Phoenix Flame Core Pill using:
Her residual flame essence
A slice of the Fire-Essence Vine
A Blood Orchid petal
Ash from her shattered casket
His own spiritual blood to bind it
The cauldron roared to life. A spiritual formation spun around him, complex and ancient. The air shimmered with pressure as essence converged.
"Stabilize. Forge. Bind!"
Raen's hands moved in fluid gestures. Eyla watched silently as flame and blood coalesced into a deep-orange pill that pulsed with radiant power.
"Take it," he said, handing it to her.
She hesitated. "You forged this… for me?"
"No," he said. "For the version of you that'll fight beside me."
Her eyes glinted. With a single motion, she swallowed the pill.
---
Baptism by Flame
As the pill dissolved within her, Eyla convulsed. Flame burst from her back in twin wings of fire. She screamed—not in pain, but in release. The chamber trembled.
Her body levitated slightly above the ground as phoenix markings bloomed across her skin. Heat swirled violently, but Raen didn't flinch.
[Soul Garden Enhancement: Phoenix Bloodline Flame Detected]
[Flesh Forge Resonance: Compatible Flame Acquired – Temporary Channel Created]
[New Enhancement Option: Flame-Refined War Veins]
Raen's heart pounded. "I can refine my own body using her awakened flames?"
He stepped into the spiritual fire without hesitation.
The pain was immediate. His skin bubbled, muscles tore, and his bones screamed—but the cauldron suppressed the damage, converting it into refined war essence.
Eyla opened her eyes mid-flight, shocked to see Raen standing inside her flame baptism, laughing like a lunatic.
"You're insane!" she shouted over the roar of phoenix fire.
"No," he grinned through blood, "I'm a cultivator on the forbidden path."
---
Outside – The World Shifts
Hours later, both emerged from the cauldron space, their auras subtly transformed.
Raen's War Veins were tougher, refined by flame. His skin glowed faintly, and his saber Vorruk had absorbed some phoenix heat, now faintly ember-rimmed.
Eyla no longer looked on the verge of collapse. Her eyes gleamed with radiant focus.
"I owe you," she said finally. "And I don't give my loyalty lightly."
Raen shrugged. "Then don't call it loyalty. Just stand beside me when I tear the heavens open."
She smiled. "Fine. But you'll have to keep up."
---
Hours Later – Outside the Ruins
Raen and Eyla left the Emberlight Sect ruins, stepping into the dark forest surrounding the mountain.
Suddenly, Vorruk pulsed sharply in Raen's hand.
"Bloodlust ahead," he muttered. "We're being watched."
A flicker of movement—then a dark arrow zipped through the trees, aiming for Eyla's heart.
Raen reacted instantly. Vorruk deflected the arrow in a flash of black and ember.
Then the forest came alive with robed assassins, each marked with the sigil of the Skyborne Saint Court.
"Found him!" one shouted. "Kill the heretic! Take the girl!"
Raen's grin widened.
"Perfect timing. Vorruk's been hungry."
The saber screamed as Raen vanished into the shadows—
—and reappeared behind the first assassin, slicing him in half.
"Let's begin."