Chapter 1532: Story 1532: The Chains Stir

The guardians thundered forward, each step a quake that rattled the teeth of the weary survivors. Their molten bodies dripped fire, their claws scraping gouges into the stone as if even the earth recoiled.

Kael tightened his grip on the jagged blade, planting himself between the advancing giants and Elara. His voice was raw as he barked to the scarred woman: “Hold your line, or they’ll tear through us like smoke!”

Her people rallied, forming a crescent of shields. Spears bristled outward, though Kael could see their hands trembling. These were not beasts of flesh—they faced the wrath of stone and fire itself.

Elara crouched behind the line, the Ashborn Child cradled close. Its glow flared wildly, spilling across the battlefield like a sickly dawn. The nearest guardian staggered, its molten cracks dimming under the light, but the child whimpered, its body convulsing as if each burst of power shredded it from within.

“Kael!” Elara’s voice cracked, her fire struggling to hold steady. “It can break them—but I can’t ask it again. It won’t survive!”

Kael’s blade met the molten claw of a guardian, sparks shrieking as iron scraped against stone. The impact nearly drove him to his knees. He snarled, pushing back with everything left in him. “If it doesn’t, none of us will survive!”

The scarred woman’s spear darted past his shoulder, piercing into the guardian’s chest. Stone cracked, fire hissed, but it did not fall. Instead, the creature backhanded her aside, sending her crashing into the dust with a cry.

The survivors wavered, terror fraying their line. The guardians pressed harder, one raising its burning arm high, ready to smash the survivors flat.

Then the child screamed.

Light exploded from its frail body, a torrent of white fire brighter than any sun. The chains across the Cinder Gate shuddered violently, ringing like a thousand anvils struck at once. The guardians froze mid-swing, their bodies seizing as the light poured over them. Cracks split across their molten forms, ember blood spraying into the air before they collapsed into heaps of cooling rock.

The survivors shielded their eyes, awe etched into their soot-streaked faces. Silence fell, broken only by the hiss of molten stone cooling against ash.

But the victory was hollow. Elara knelt in the dust, her arms trembling as she looked down at the child. Its glow was faint now, no brighter than a dying coal. Each breath rattled like shards of glass.

Kael stumbled to her side, chest heaving, blade hanging at his side. He saw the truth in Elara’s tear-bright eyes before she spoke. “It’s breaking, Kael. Every time it saves us, it kills itself.”

The scarred woman staggered back to her feet, blood dripping from her temple. Her voice was hoarse but hard. “Then it’s a weapon with one strike left. And we’d best choose where it falls.”

Behind her, the Cinder Gate groaned again. The chains glowed hotter, brighter, as if stirred by the child’s outcry.

Kael felt the tremor in his bones—the Unborn was listening.

And with each cry of the Ashborn Child, the prison holding him was beginning to wake.