Chapter 46: The Hidden Inferno
It began with a scream.
Then the ground shuddered—deep and wrong, like something waking up beneath them.
Echo raced through the eastern corridor of the Council Tower, flame dancing across her fingers. Ash was already ahead, coordinating evacuation orders.
"The main tunnel's collapsed," he said, breath short. "The power grid is surging. Overload protocol kicked in, but…"
"But it's too late," Echo finished grimly.
Smoke curled from the cracked marble walls.
"Report said someone triggered the emergency fusion vent from inside the core control chamber," Ash added. "That door's been sealed for years."
Echo's stomach turned. "Unless someone unsealed it."
By nightfall, Sector Nine was gone.
Melted.
The lower rings collapsed into a sinkhole of twisted steel and blackened flame. Three hundred displaced. Twelve missing. Six confirmed dead.
And in the heart of the ruin, spray-painted in blood-colored flame residue, the message burned again:
BOW TO HER OR BURN.
The council convened in the lower chamber.
Kara's voice cut the silence like a knife. "You said they couldn't access the new grid."
Kael stood still, eyes dark. "They shouldn't have."
"They did," Calder said. "Which means someone gave them access."
All eyes turned to Kael.
Aria looked uncertain. "Do you still talk to them?"
"I spoke to them," he said calmly. "I didn't arm them."
"Then who did?" Kara demanded.
Echo rose from her chair. "Enough."
She looked at all of them. "This isn't a debate anymore. It's war. And we're already bleeding."
Later, in her chambers, Echo sat alone with a hollow ache behind her ribs. Kael entered quietly, his steps almost soundless.
"You think it's me," he said, voice unreadable.
"I don't want to," she replied. "But I don't know who else had the schematics."
"I told you—I memorized your rewrites. I never shared them."
She looked up at him.
"Then someone else did."
Kael leaned against the wall, folding his arms.
"They're preparing something. You felt that quake. That wasn't just sabotage. They're destabilizing the whole core."
She nodded. "They want to ignite it. Burn the foundation out from beneath us."
Kael's eyes flickered like lit coals.
"Then we go into the dark. Find them. End it."
The plan was reckless. It had to be.
A small team. Off-grid. Unregistered. Only those Echo trusted completely.
Ash. Kael. Echo.
And—surprisingly—Kara.
"I'm not doing this for him," she said, strapping her knives to her belt. "I'm doing it for the people he'll get killed if he hesitates."
Kael didn't respond.
He just opened the map.
"The lower vents connect through the abandoned hydrowell caverns. If they're hiding, they're there. No surveillance. No light. Just pressure and fire."
Ash grunted. "Sounds cozy."
They descended in silence.
Through tunnels so old they bled rust.
The air was hot. Metallic. Alive.
Each step echoed like a memory they didn't want to relive.
Halfway down, Echo spotted signs of passage—scorched footprints, recently broken stone.
"We're close," she whispered.
Then the walls lit with flickering fire.
And a voice rang out ahead.
"You came after all, Flameborn."
The Reclaimers stood in a ring around the final vent chamber.
Dozens.
Some masked.
Others bare-faced.
But all carried flame the color of blood.
Their leader stepped forward.
And Echo froze.
Because she knew him.
His name was Veyr.
He had once been her tutor.
"Echo," he said, smiling as if they were old friends at tea. "Still chasing peace?"
"You destroyed an entire sector," she said. "This isn't faith. It's terrorism."
"It's correction." Veyr tilted his head. "You think Seraphine was wrong to rule. I think she was unfinished."
He turned to Kael.
"And you—her son. You were meant to inherit fire, not negotiate it."
"I was meant to end it," Kael said, stepping forward. "Not spread it."
Veyr raised his hand. The room filled with heat.
And behind him, Echo saw the device.
A compact flame core detonator—wired to the mountain's structural veins.
One spark could collapse everything.
Kael and Echo moved in sync.
She launched fire upward to blind the crowd.
He dove low, sweeping fire like a whip around the base of the chamber.
Kara vanished into the smoke—silent and lethal.
Ash took out the nearest saboteur with a slam of metal pipe.
Then the detonator started ticking.
Ten seconds.
Echo raced for it.
But Veyr grabbed her wrist, slamming her into the wall.
"Too late," he hissed.
Kael shouted her name.
But Kara got there first.
She plunged her knife into the detonator's stabilizer.
And it stopped.
The silence that followed was brutal.
Then the Reclaimers fled—most into the tunnels, some into flame.
Echo knelt beside the device, panting.
Kara stood above her, breathing hard, blood on her cheek.
"You still want to negotiate?" Kara asked.
Echo shook her head.
"No."
She stood.
"We end this."
They returned to the Sanctuary as heroes.
But Echo knew better.
There was no victory here.
Only delay.
And far below, in the tunnels still untouched, more fires waited.
But now… they had each other.
And fire no longer divided them.
It forged them.