CHAPTER 1546: STORY 1546: THE CHOICE OF FIRE

The battlefield burned with more than flame. It burned with decision.

Elara staggered forward, the boy clutched against her breast, her body trembling from the weight of his ember-light. Every flicker from his chest sent shudders racing up her arms, scorching her flesh, but she held him as though he were her only anchor. Her eyes were wide, streaming tears that hissed as they struck the fire curling from her cheeks.

“Kael,” she choked, her voice breaking beneath the roar of the colossus. “If he takes the boy—if I don’t stop it—there will be no chains left to break.”

The scarred woman surged beside her, spear gleaming red, desperation turned to frenzy. “Then stop it now! End the tether before it unravels us all!” Her warriors echoed her cry, their voices ragged, drenched in terror.

Kael stood frozen between them, jagged blade dripping molten ichor from the beast’s last wound. His chest heaved, his vision swimming from blood loss, but his voice cut through the chaos. “No. If he dies, the Gate opens. Do you not see? His chains are our chains. The child holds them still—barely.”

The colossus bellowed, staggering, molten cracks widening as though the boy’s presence gnawed at its core. Its chains lashed again, gouging the earth, scattering fire and survivors alike. Yet even as it faltered, its maw gathered flame once more, a furnace-light swelling to consume them all.

The boy’s cry pierced through it: “Closer... father... closer...”

The words split Kael’s resolve like a blade. His eyes darted upward, to the Gate itself. Behind its veil of fire and chain, he saw it—the silhouette of a figure vast and terrible, straining closer with every pulse of the child’s light. The Unborn was reaching, clawing against its prison, pulling at the tether of blood.

Kael’s blade shook in his hand. He could end it—one stroke, one death, and the boy’s light would fade. No tether. No fuel. The Gate might fall silent. But he remembered the first chain’s shatter, the Gate’s hunger at every spilled drop. He remembered the Unborn’s whisper. Sacrifice was never silence. Sacrifice was permission.

“Elara!” he roared, charging toward her. Not to cut, not to kill—but to stop her. “Don’t! He wants you to! That’s the trap!”

Her flames surged as he neared, wild and desperate, a wall of fire that threatened to burn him to ash. Her eyes were mad with grief, her voice torn from her throat. “Then tell me, Kael! Tell me another way before he breaks them all!”

The colossus reared back, furnace maw yawning wide, fire enough to erase them gathering in its gut.

Kael raised his blade, standing between Elara, the boy, and the beast’s coming fire. His voice was a roar against despair: “Then we hold him together! Not as enemies, not as pawns—together, or not at all!”

The scarred woman screamed in fury, torn between her spear and his defiance.

The colossus struck, the world drowning in fire—

And the chains above did not sing.

They screamed.