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Chapter 7 - Chapter 7: The Veins of Power

The wind howled as if mourning something long lost.

Kairo stood at the edge of the ancient cliff, gazing into the valley of ruin where time had twisted stone and spirit alike. Trees curled unnaturally, their bark etched with cryptic glyphs. Rivers no longer flowed with water but with shimmering threads of light lifeforce remnants of those who had once lived, fought, and perished here.

His fingertips tingled.

Again.

It was the third time that day. The sensation ran up his arm like crawling electricity, and this time, it didn't stop at his shoulder.

"Something's waking up" he whispered.

Behind him, Akari emerged from the jagged trail, her silvery hair tied back in a knot and her white boots stained with old blood and newer dust. "You feel it too," she said. It wasn't a question.

Kairo turned to her, his red eyes glowing slightly in the shadow of dusk. "It's not just a feeling. It's a memory. I've stood here before. In another body. Another life."

Akari's face tightened. "You remember?"

"Not all of it. But flashes." He closed his eyes, pressing two fingers to his temple. "I remember my hand drenched in blood. But it wasn't mine. It was his."

"His?"

Kairo opened his eyes again, and a dark cloud passed overhead.

"Lucien. My brother. The first time I died, he was the one who killed me."

The name cracked through the silence like thunder. Akari's breath hitched.

"The Imperial Demon of the Forgotten Court?" she asked.

Kairo nodded.

A silence stretched between them heavy, pulsing, sacred.

Then the ground beneath them trembled.

"Kairo," Akari said urgently, "We have to leave. Now."

He didn't move. He bent to the ground and touched the glowing veins running under the soil veins of ancient power that pulsed like arteries of a dead god. The instant he touched it, the symbols on his back the ones burned into his skin since birth lit up.

A voice echoed in his mind, old as the stars, deep as the abyss.

"Unseal the Rite of Echoed Flame."

Kairo's body spasmed. His vision blurred as memory merged with magic.

He was no longer in his body.

He saw a golden battlefield. His past self stood tall in black robes lined with silver flame, wielding a staff that hummed like thunder. Armies of non-humans, beasts, and shadow-born warriors bent before him.

Then betrayal.

Lucien his own blood plunged a blade of obsidian into his back. The memory seared Kairo's soul.

He gasped and stumbled back into the present.

Akari caught him before he hit the ground. "What did you see?"

"Everything I needed to," he whispered. "My rebirth wasn't an accident. It was a countdown."

"To what?" she asked.

Kairo turned to her with a smirk that didn't quite reach his haunted eyes. "To the return of the Crimson Order. And I'm the spark."

Suddenly, a sonic boom cracked the air, and a monstrous roar echoed from the trees.

From the woods emerged a hulking beast with three heads, each snarling in a different tongue one of flame, one of ice, one of shadow.

"The Blood-Trial Beast of the Ancient Gate," Akari murmured. "They were supposed to be extinct!"

"It's testing us," Kairo said, standing firm as power surged through his limbs.

Akari drew her twin blades. "Then let's show it what a reincarnated immortal and an exile prodigy can do."

They fought as one.

Kairo's body pulsed with ancient power. His palm glowed, forming a sigil mid-air that summoned a blade made of golden fire. Akari spun and sliced, her movements precise, beautiful, brutal.

But the beast was no ordinary challenge.

It adapted.

For every cut Akari made, the creature grew another limb. For every flame Kairo summoned, the beast swallowed it into its shadow maw.

Then Kairo did something reckless.

He stabbed his own hand, letting his blood drip onto the sigil. His power exploded outward. Symbols from a language older than time filled the air. The beast paused, confused.

Kairo roared.

"By the Rite of Echoed Flame, I call upon the First Sigil of Ascension BURN!"

A pillar of divine fire shot from the heavens, engulfing the creature in light so pure, it made the ground crack.

When the light faded, the beast lay scorched, twitching.

Kairo collapsed to one knee, panting.

Akari rushed to his side. "That power, it wasn't yours. Not entirely."

"No," he said with a grim smile. "But it's waking up."

They both looked toward the dark horizon, where a red moon began to rise.

This was just the beginning.

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