The assassin's blade shone with sickly runes, each one writhing as if alive. Power radiated from it—wrong, twisted, undeniable. The very air seemed to bend around its glow, like heat rising from a furnace.
The prince froze. His newfound speed, his wolf senses, his trembling confidence—all of it collapsed under the suffocating pressure. His breath caught in his throat. His body screamed to flee, but his legs locked in place.
This is it. This is where I die.
The assassin's eyes narrowed, his lips moving in a low chant. The runes on his weapon burned brighter, pulsing in rhythm with his words. Each syllable scraped across the prince's bones like claws. He had heard whispers of forbidden techniques before, the kind only high-born assassins were granted. Techniques meant not just to kill—but to erase.
"Your survival ends here, cripple," the assassin said coldly. His blade swept down, not fast but inevitable, a stroke of death itself.
The prince's body moved sluggishly, every muscle screaming as though he were caught in tar. His heart hammered in his ears, deafening, desperate. He saw flashes in his mind: his brothers laughing, his father's indifferent gaze, the outlaws' jeers, the corpses of those he had already devoured.
And then—Lira's face. No. Not Lira. He blinked, but her image lingered in the void of his mind, a phantom girl who wasn't here yet, who shouldn't exist in this moment. A fragment of hope, maybe a memory of the caravan girl's pleading eyes before. A reminder. Someone could still believe in me.
But belief alone wasn't enough. Not against death.
The Codex stirred, voice sliding into his mind like oil on water.
"Do you feel the weight of that blade? It will carve not only flesh but soul. Your essence will scatter into nothing. No rebirth. No glory. Only emptiness."
The prince shuddered. I don't want to die…
"Then don't."
The assassin's strike descended. The runes on the blade howled silently, an arc of death poised to cut him in two. The prince tried to move, to run, to anything, but his limbs refused him. Terror gripped him harder than any chain.
The Codex whispered again, low and urgent.
"Do not resist me this time. Yield, vessel. Open. And I shall burn your enemies for you."
Burn. The word struck something deep inside him. A memory of fire, of the black flames that had engulfed him during the ritual. The fire that should have killed him but hadn't. The fire that marked him as something unnatural, something wrong.
"No… no, I—"
The blade cut down.
Instinct tore the choice from him. His body convulsed, his mouth opening in a ragged scream. And from that scream—flame erupted.
Not red. Not gold. But black. Black as the void between stars, black as a wound in the world. It surged from his chest, his arms, his very blood, devouring the light of the assassin's runes. The sound of it was not the crackle of fire but the roar of something deeper, hungrier.
The assassin's eyes widened. His blade met the flames—and shattered. The runes screamed, twisting, burning away as if consumed. In the next instant, the black fire swallowed him whole.
His scream echoed across the plateau, high and piercing, cut short as his body dissolved into ash. Nothing remained but a smear of soot carried away on the wind.
The prince collapsed to his knees, chest heaving, hands trembling before him. His fingers were wrapped in flame, the fire dancing lazily across his skin as though it belonged there. Yet it did not burn him. It licked at his flesh lovingly, possessively, as if it had always been his.
He stared, horrified.
"What… what is this?"
The Codex purred, its voice filled with delight.
"The Nether Flame. The mark of the abyss. Forbidden, yes. Feared, yes. But yours. Ours."
His hands shook violently. He wanted to fling the flames away, to scrape them off like filth, but they clung to him. They were him. A part of his blood, his soul, his very breath.
"No… no, this isn't me. I never—"
"Isn't it?" The Codex laughed, low and cruel. "You begged to live. And now you live. You begged for strength. And now you hold it. This flame answers your heart's true cry. You are no longer a weakling, no longer prey. You are death itself. Look at what remains of your foe."
The prince turned his head. Where the assassin had stood, there was nothing but a blackened scar on the stone, the very rock scorched and warped. Not even bones remained.
He gagged, bile rising in his throat. The power was intoxicating and revolting, beautiful and monstrous. Every breath he took fed the fire, every heartbeat made it swell stronger.
The other assassins, who had moments ago mocked him, now staggered back. Their masks of confidence were gone, replaced with raw fear. They saw not a crippled prince, not the weakest of heirs, but something unholy, something the Empire itself had forbidden.
One of them stammered, voice cracking. "Impossible… that flame is sealed… only the Emperor—"
The Nether Flame flickered in the prince's palm, and the man choked on his words.
The Codex pressed closer in his mind, warm and suffocating.
"Kill them. Burn them. Feed me their essence. You tasted speed, you tasted strength—now taste fear. Devour it, and rise."
The prince's throat was dry. He wanted to deny it. To scream that he wasn't a monster, that this wasn't who he was. But his body was already moving, his flames already surging. The assassins scattered, but too late.
Black fire arced across the plateau, a living tide. It engulfed them one by one, their cries short-lived as the Codex drank deeply. Each death sent a pulse of power racing through him, filling his limbs, thickening his blood. By the time silence returned, the ground was littered with scorched marks and nothing more.
He stood amidst the ruin, his chest heaving, eyes glowing with the sigil of the Codex. His hands curled into fists, flames still whispering around them like eager serpents.
And for the first time, the assassins' words—weak, cripple, unfit—felt distant. Wrong.
Because the truth burned before his eyes.
He was no longer the weakest.
He was something else. Something worse. Something greater.
The Codex's voice rang like a hymn.
"And so, Page One opens: Essence Devourer. Let all who fall before you become fuel for your rise."
The prince shivered. He had survived. He had killed. He had burned.
But as the flames curled lovingly around him, he whispered into the silence:
"…what am I becoming?"
The flames did not fade.
They lingered long after the last assassin's scream had dissolved into silence, coiling around his arms like chains of living night. They licked at his shoulders, drifted from his chest in dark plumes, and yet… they did not consume him.
The prince staggered back, nearly slipping on the scorched stone. His vision swam, the edges of the world shimmering as though the Nether Flame was burning reality itself. His chest heaved, every breath pulling more of the black fire into his lungs until he could not tell if he was breathing air or smoke.
His stomach twisted violently. He dropped to his knees and vomited—black sludge mixed with streaks of red. It splattered across the ground, hissing where it landed, steaming like acid. His entire body trembled.
I shouldn't be alive. I should've been erased.
And yet he lived. Worse, he felt stronger.
Beneath the nausea, beneath the terror, his veins throbbed with raw vitality. His wounds—gashes, cuts, bruises—sealed before his eyes, flesh knitting back together with unnatural ease. His heart no longer raced with fear but with something else. Something ravenous.
The Codex crooned in his mind, velvet and venom.
"Do you feel it, vessel? Their deaths are yours now. Their essence burns in your blood. Fear not this flame—it is your inheritance, the true mark of the forsaken."
He pressed his palms against his ears, as if he could shut the voice out. "I didn't want this. I didn't…"
The Codex laughed softly. "Liar. In the marrow of your bones, you begged for survival. Power answered. Did it not feel… good?"
The prince squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to deny it, but the memory clung to him: the moment when the assassin's forbidden blade shattered like glass, the surge of dominance as black fire swallowed a foe who thought himself untouchable. The thrill had been intoxicating. Terrifying, yes—but intoxicating all the same.
His hands shook harder. He pressed them against the scorched stone, desperate to ground himself. The ground was warm, still smoldering from the fire that had spilled from him. Around him, only silence remained—an empty plateau marked by death. No birds. No wind. Even the world itself seemed to recoil from what he had become.
He forced himself to his feet. His knees wobbled, but the flame buoyed him, unwilling to let him collapse. His reflection wavered in a pool of blackened rainwater nearby. He staggered to it, peering down.
The eyes that stared back were not his own. They glowed faintly, pupils narrowed to predatory slits, the sigil of the Codex etched faintly in the irises like burning brands. Shadows curled at the edges of his face, faint horns threatening to push through his hairline.
"No…" His breath broke into a sob. He splashed the water, shattering his reflection, but when he looked again—the monster remained.
The Codex spoke with a patient cruelty.
"Your siblings sent blades to erase you. Instead, you stand while they are ash. Weak? Unfit? Broken? Tell me, vessel—who is broken now?"
The prince's throat clenched. Rage simmered beneath his fear, anger at the assassins, at his brothers, at his father's indifference. He wanted to scream, to curse the empire that had cast him aside like garbage.
Instead, he whispered hoarsely:
"…I'm still me. I'm not your puppet."
The Codex chuckled, deep and knowing.
"We shall see."
For the first time since his exile, the plateau was empty of enemies. But it did not feel like victory. It felt like a bargain sealed in blood and fire.
As the Nether Flame flickered and slowly receded into his skin, the silence pressed down again. The assassins were gone. Their weapons, their bodies, their very souls—devoured. Nothing remained but scars on the stone and a prince whose shadow burned blacker than night.
He turned from the battlefield, staggering into the dusk. Each step echoed with the same question, beating in rhythm with his heart: