The world burned white when Zeke grabbed the shard.
The crystal's light hit his eyes like lightning, flooding through every nerve, every drop of blood, until he could no longer tell where his body ended and the fire began. The sound was deafening—a hum that roared, a scream that sang. The camp around him vanished. There was no air, no ground, only weightless, blinding force pouring straight into his chest.
Seraphine shouted his name, but he couldn't hear her. The shard twisted in his hands, spinning faster, melting into light. Then it struck him square in the chest, straight into the mark.
The symbol flared gold, red, and black all at once, its lines searing brighter than any forge flame. He fell backward, arms wide, choking on light. His heart thundered once—then everything went still.
When the light finally broke, Seraphine was the only one left standing. The fire had gone out. The cultists were gone, their bodies scattered like burned leaves. The altar lay shattered, the runes dead.
Zeke lay motionless beside the wreck, smoke curling from his coat, his skin pale as stone. The mark on his chest still glowed faintly through the torn fabric, pulsing in a rhythm far too slow to be human.
Seraphine knelt beside him, pressing two fingers to his neck. A heartbeat—faint, but there. She exhaled and wiped ash from her brow. "Damn fool," she whispered.
Behind her, the surviving soldiers stumbled from the treeline, faces blackened with soot. Eran among them, limping but alive. He froze when he saw Zeke. "Is he—"
"He's breathing," Seraphine said, her tone cutting off the question. "Get water. Bandages. Move."
They built a small camp by the edge of the burned clearing. Night came fast, bringing wind and the smell of rain. The clouds glowed faintly from the still-simmering ruins, and the mark on Zeke's chest pulsed brighter whenever thunder rolled across the sky.
He didn't wake. His breathing stayed even, but shallow, as if he were somewhere else entirely.
Seraphine sat beside him through the night, sharpening her blade out of habit more than need. She watched the horizon—the glow of other camps, the distant chants of other cultists regrouping. They would come again. They always did.
She looked down at Zeke, at the faint light under his skin. "You better have a plan, cowboy," she murmured.
Rain started falling, hissing as it met the burned ground.
Inside the storm of his mind, Zeke drifted.
He was no longer lying in the mud or breathing smoke. He was standing on glass—endless, black, and rippling underfoot. Above him stretched a sky made of nothing but motion: streaks of gold, red, and violet, moving like the inside of a living storm.
He turned, and the horizon bent with him.
"Where am I," he said, or thought he said, though no sound came.
Then he saw it—the shadow.
It rose from the far end of the horizon like a mountain lifting itself from the ocean. Two eyes opened in the dark, vast and ancient, burning with the memory of fire. Wings unfurled, the size of continents. Chains the color of molten iron dragged across the void, each link heavy enough to split stars.
The dragon.
Zeke stepped back, but there was nowhere to go. The chains coiled and clanged as the creature shifted, lowering its head until its snout hung before him. The air rippled with heat, the ground cracked.
Its voice rolled through him rather than around him.
"You have taken my fragment."
Zeke gritted his teeth. "Didn't exactly see your name on it."
A sound like a laugh—low, thunderous, without warmth.
"It was mine before your kind learned to shape fire. But now… now it binds to you."
Zeke looked down. The mark on his chest was glowing again, its lines changed, more intricate—threads of light weaving outward like veins of gold across his ribs.
"What do you want from me?"
The dragon leaned closer, each word shaking the air. "I do not want. I am. You carry what was torn from me. The key and the chain."
Zeke's hands clenched. "You're saying this thing's part of you."
"It is part of everything that holds this world together. The Gate. The Lock. The fire between realms."
"Then take it back."
The dragon's eyes narrowed. "I cannot. Not yet. You are the vessel now. You will break what must be broken."
"I didn't ask for that."
"You were chosen the moment you bled in the dark."
The chains around the dragon shifted again, groaning like the weight of a dying world. Sparks rained from them, dissolving before they hit the ground.
Zeke looked up at the massive links holding the creature bound. "These are what's keeping you from crossing over?"
"Yes."
"And you want me to break them."
The dragon's gaze burned through him. "Only you can."
Zeke stepped forward. "And what happens if I do?"
For a long time, the dragon said nothing. Then its eyes softened, the fire inside them dimming to embers.
"Freedom. For one of us."
The void trembled. Zeke felt his body fading, the vision collapsing around him. The last thing he saw was the dragon lowering its head again, its voice like distant thunder.
"Chosen Chainbreaker."
Zeke's eyes snapped open to the sound of rain. The campfire had gone cold. His chest burned like a forge.
Seraphine was asleep against a rock, sword across her lap.
He looked down at the mark on his chest—no longer faint, no longer just a scar. It glowed steady and bright, a single pulse of golden fire under the skin.
He didn't know what the title meant, or what came next. Only that the world felt heavier, and his name now carried something ancient behind it.
He sat up slowly, wincing as the storm rolled overhead. Somewhere beyond the forest, lightning struck, and the ground answered with a deep, distant rumble.
Zeke watched it for a long time, then whispered to no one, "So this is what being chosen feels like."
The firelight flickered against his face, and far above the clouds, something vast stirred in answer.