Thankfully, darkness had fallen. I slipped out of my quarters with the careful movements of someone who knew exactly how much noise a floorboard could make. I threw barely more than a sleeping robe over my body, hardly appropriate for a king, but modesty wasn't my concern right now.
Some guards noticed me skulking through the corridors. A few servants paused in their late duties, eyes widening.
"Just taking a stroll," I said with what I hoped passed for casual authority.
They didn't press. Whether from respect or confusion, I neither knew nor cared.
Once outside the castle walls, I made for the most precious place in the entire Helios Kingdom. It sat right behind the palace, impossible to miss, impossible to ignore. You could be blind and still feel its presence like heat radiating from a forge.
I raised my gaze to the humongous structure burning above like someone had torn a piece of the sun itself and pinned it to the sky.
This was the treasure of Helios. The reason we existed at all.
The Flame of Helios, born from the founder Apollina's death a thousand years ago. A giant sun hovering impossibly in the air, burning with an intensity that never dimmed, never wavered, never showed the slightest sign of dying. It hung there for every single person in the capital to see, a constant reminder of divine favor and ancient sacrifice.
It was also our greatest vulnerability.
The Flame blessed everyone in the kingdom, yes. Strengthened crops. Healed the sick. Made our soldiers nearly unstoppable in battle. But that kind of power made us a target. Every ambitious neighbor, every desperate nation, every power-hungry conqueror wanted what we had. Wanted to snuff out our sun and claim its warmth for themselves.
Since my father's death, the Flame had grown restless. I could see it even from here, the way it flickered and pulsed irregularly, like a heartbeat stuttering in a dying chest. It had lost its keeper, its guardian, and now it waited.
Now it was my turn.
I approached slowly, each step feeling heavier than the last.
The sun hovered above a tower, ancient and imposing. I'd have to climb it. All of it.
The structure was protected by wards that predated my grandfather's grandfather. Runes etched so deep they'd become part of the stone itself, spells woven so tightly that attempting to unravel them would take decades. No one could enter except those of royal blood. And even if they managed that much, the heat would kill them before they climbed ten steps.
Thankfully my blood wasn't ordinary blood. The heat shouldn't kill me. Probably. The royal line had been bred for this, after all, our veins carrying just enough divine fire to withstand what would incinerate anyone else.
I entered the tower and looked down at the vast chamber below. Large golden circles covered the floor, filled with runes that seemed to writhe in the firelight. Each symbol was a word in a language older than the kingdom itself.
Apollina had built this place with her own hands a thousand years ago, before she'd transformed herself into eternal flame.
Raising my gaze, I saw the burning sun directly above and the long spiral staircase that led to it. The stairs looked impossibly steep, dizzyingly high.
I started climbing immediately.
And gods, the climbing was worse than the heat. Much worse.
My body, this soft, weak, grotesquely heavy body wasn't built for physical exertion. Each step required conscious effort. My thighs burned. My lungs screamed. Sweat poured down my face and back, soaking through the thin robe until it clung to my skin like a shroud.
But I continued.
This was the only way forward. The only path that didn't end with my corpse cooling on palace floors while assassins wiped their blades clean.
Until now, I'd spent a lifetime running from responsibility. Lumiel had been a coward, and even with my Earth memories, part of me wanted to retreat to those old patterns. But I wouldn't. Not anymore.
I had to thank Daniel, my past self from Earth. Whatever he'd been, whoever he'd been, his memories gave me something Lumiel never possessed: the ability to choose courage over comfort.
My fear of disappointing my dead father, of watching this kingdom crumble, had finally overtaken my fear of failure. Because stepping back now would be failure. The ultimate, unforgivable kind.
After ten agonizing minutes that felt like hours, I reached the top.
The heat hit me immediately Before, it had been uncomfortable. Now it was dangerous. Genuinely, lethally dangerous.
I was fairly certain any ordinary person would have already turned to ash standing where I stood. Their skin would have blackened and cracked, their eyes would have boiled in their sockets, their screams would have died before reaching their lips.
I looked ahead at the burning sun, and the light was so intense it blinded me completely. White. Pure white. The kind of brightness that seared itself into your retinas.
I raised my hand to shield my eyes and walked forward through waves of heat that made the air shimmer and warp.
Hotter.
Hotter still and damn dangerously hot.
When I finally reached the edge of the tower, standing directly before the scorching Flame of Helios with nothing between us but superheated air, I lowered my hand. Forced myself to look at it. Really look.
It hurt.
Pain exploded across my face, my exposed skin. I felt my flesh beginning to cook, second-degree burns spreading like wildfire across my arms and chest. The smell of burning meat filled my nostrils. My own meat.
But I didn't care.
I could die here.
Honestly, I probably would.
But if I didn't succeed, if I turned back now, crawled down those stairs and returned to my comfortable quarters I'd die anyway in this damned Game. Assassination within weeks. A footnote in someone else's story.
So instead of dying pathetically, murdered in my sleep or poisoned at dinner, I'd rather die trying. Die attempting to become what I was supposed to be: a true Son of Helios.
"Apollina."
The name felt strange on my tongue. I'd never prayed to Apollina before, never worshipped anyone. The concept of bowing to deities wasn't something that came naturally to someone with memories of Earth's skeptical rationalism. But right now, I needed to call on my ancestor. Needed her to hear me across a thousand years of burning.
"Bless me."
I spread my arms wide, embracing the void before me and the flames beyond.
Then I let myself fall.
Head first.
No hesitation.
Directly into the sun.
Burning sensation crashed over me instantly, pain so pure and absolute it transcended description. Every nerve ending ignited at once. My scream died before it could form, burned away like everything else.
Darkness swallowed me whole.
After what felt like barely a heartbeat, the pain vanished.
Just gone.
Like someone had flipped a switch and severed every screaming nerve at once.
"What the—"
I opened my eyes and immediately threw my hand up, blinded by brightness that had nothing to do with flames. This was different. Softer. The kind of light that came from an open sky rather than divine fire trying to consume you whole.
I pressed my palms against the ground, grass, cool and real beneath my fingers and hauled my upper body upright.
A prairie stretched around me in every direction. Golden grass swayed in a breeze I could feel but couldn't explain. The horizon seemed impossibly distant, bleeding into a sky so blue it hurt to look at directly.
"Is this heaven?" I muttered, more to myself than anyone.
A giggle answered me.
I spun around, nearly losing my balance.
A woman stood there, and calling her beautiful felt like calling the ocean wet, technically accurate but grotesquely insufficient. She had long golden-blonde hair that moved like liquid sunlight, cascading past her shoulders in waves that seemed to generate their own luminescence. Her eyes were amber, but not the dull amber of gemstones. They burned. Actually burned, like someone had trapped two pools of molten sun inside her skull and somehow made it look divine instead of horrifying.
"This is not heaven, no," she said, amusement coloring her voice.
I stared at her, stunned into stupidity. My brain had apparently decided to stop functioning, overwhelmed by trying to process her existence.
"Who are you?" I asked.
She reached out her hand toward me.
When she smiled, it felt like standing too close to a bonfire—warm and dangerous and impossible to look away from.
"You can call me Apollina."