Within the Crucible Hall—a sanctum carved from ever-burning obsidian—Flame Regent Aurelion stood unmoving, framed by cascading firefalls. His eyes were locked on the slowly rotating projection of the divine realm: ley lines, court-boundaries, and now... distortions. Phantom gaps where power once flowed.
"They cut three streams in a single rotation," murmured his shadow-advisor, a woman wreathed in smoke and cinders. "No declarations. No marks of aggression. This is a ghost war."
"No," Aurelion rumbled, voice like magma shifting beneath stone. "This is rebellion. Someone tests the walls of heaven."
He turned, pacing toward the Reliquary of Wills, where ancient armaments pulsed faintly behind locked wards. "The Obsidian Court is no longer dormant. And I see the shape of an old pattern rising in the flames."
"You suspect Lysaria?" the advisor asked carefully.
"No. I suspect hope has returned," he said coldly. "And that is more dangerous."
He motioned to a silent lieutenant—his daughter, General Kaelis of the War Choir, cloaked in red-scaled armor, her blade humming with stored flame.
"Begin silent mobilization. No war banners. No court proclamations. I want our Watchers seeded through the lower dominions. If the Obsidian Court is sheltering this threat, we'll know."
Kaelis bowed. "And if it is them?"
Aurelion's molten eyes flared. "Then we turn the divine war from prophecy... into execution."
Elsewhere in the Flame Court...
In the Ash Library, where every divine traitor's name was recorded in soot-bound scrolls, a scribe uncovered a page that had begun to burn at the edges—without touch, without flame.
The name?
Chen Ming.
Below it, another script was slowly forming, as if written by unseen hands:
Soulflame. Godborn. Courtless. Unknown Path.
The scribe's hand trembled. He turned, clutching the page. "Archivist! We have a new deviation."
And deeper still... in a chamber even Aurelion rarely entered...
Bound in crimson chains, a being of lightless fire stirred. Sealed by divine decree millennia ago, she now lifted her head, lips curling with cruel delight.
"A new God of Lust… Soulflame, you say? Intriguing."
The chains glowed brighter, responding to her presence. But they no longer burned her.
"I wonder… if he'll come here. If he'll awaken me."
She laughed, soft and dangerous. "Let the Flame Court scramble. The true spark… has only just ignited."