CHAPTER 230: NEWS FROM THE DISTRICT

She tried. Gods, she tried. But the fire was rising, filling her chest cavity, pushing outward with pressure that made breathing difficult, that suggested her ribs might crack if it continued building.

Someone in the crowd made a strangled sound of alarm. "Your Majesty, the sky, "

Soren’s gaze snapped upward, and Eris followed despite the pain, despite the fire trying to claw its way free.

The clear blue sky that had presided over their ceremony was darkening. Not the natural darkness of sunset, the sun was still visible on the horizon, still providing light that should have illuminated the mountaintop for at least another hour.

This was something else. Wrong color. Sickly purple-black, like a bruise spreading across the heavens, originating from the direction of the capital city and expanding outward with speed that suggested supernatural rather than meteorological causation.

Priests looked up with confusion transforming into horror as they recognized what they were seeing. Nobles murmured nervously, their celebrations dying in throats as survival instinct registered threat even if conscious minds hadn’t processed specifics yet.

The wind picked up, not the constant mountain breeze they’d been enduring all day, but something new, something that carried scent alongside temperature change.

Smoke.

And beneath that, something worse. Something that made even Soren’s nostrils flare with recognition before his conscious mind could identify it.

Burning flesh. The specific smell of human bodies subjected to fire, unmistakable once experienced, impossible to mistake for anything else.

"The capital," Soren said, his voice gone flat and cold, all warmth draining from his expression until he looked like the Ice Emperor of reputation rather than the man who’d been playfully feeding his fiancée moments ago.

The fire pushed harder against the wavering seal. Each line that spread released more pressure, more power, creating a cascade effect where damage begat more damage, where the structure that had held for decades was discovering that time and stress had weakened it beyond repair.

Her eyes flickered, Soren saw it, she knew he saw it, the crimson of her natural iris briefly overwhelmed by glowing gold-orange that belonged to something divine rather than mortal. Dragon eyes. God eyes. Something that shouldn’t exist in human sockets looking out through her face, assessing, hungry, eager to be free.

Veins glowed beneath her skin, faint at first, then brighter, creating traceries of light across her arms and neck and anywhere flesh was visible.

Like she was transforming from woman into lantern, like the fire inside was strong enough to shine through meat and bone, like her body was becoming transparent under the strain of containing power it was never meant to hold.

Her hands trembled despite efforts to steady them. Breath came hard and fast, each inhalation an exercise in control, each exhalation releasing heat that steamed in the cold mountain air.

Everyone was watching now. The celebration had died completely, all attention focused on the future Empress who was glowing like a beacon, who was clearly struggling with something terrifying and powerful and potentially catastrophic.

Priests backed away nervously, their hands moving in warding gestures, prayers spilling from lips with the desperation of those who recognized divine power running amok and had no tools to contain it.

Soren’s hands tightened on her shoulders, his ice magic flaring instinctively in response to her heat, frost spreading across the ground beneath his feet even as the air around Eris shimmered with temperature that could melt steel. "Eris, look at me."

She forced her eyes to his, forced focus through the fire that wanted to consume everything, through the dragon that was waking and would soon demand freedom through the pain of containing something that had grown too large for its prison.

"Eris look at me." he said again, his voice steady despite the fear she could see in his eyes. "You’re holding it. Keep holding."

Her jaw clenched hard enough that her teeth should have cracked. Muscles stood out in sharp relief along her neck and arms, every fiber of her being dedicated to the singular purpose of not exploding, not releasing the fire that would probably kill everyone on this mountaintop if it got free.

Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the cold, despite the fact that she should have been frozen at this elevation, despite everything. Her temperature was spiking, she could feel it, could see the way snow within ten feet of her position was melting, creating a perfect circle of wet ground in the sea of white.

But she was holding. Actually, impossibly holding. The seal threatened to crack but not yet. The fire was pressing but not escaping. Through sheer force of will and perhaps divine intervention or possibly just the stubbornness that had kept her alive through everything else, she contained the dragon that wanted desperately to be free.

For now. Just for now. She didn’t know how long this could last, didn’t know if the seal would stabilize or continue degrading, didn’t know if she’d measured her remaining time in hours or minutes or seconds.

But for this moment, she held.

The thunder of hooves on mountain path cut through the tense silence. A rider appeared on the trail leading up from the capital, an Imperial guard, his horse lathered and panicked, foam flying from its mouth, its eyes rolling white with terror that suggested it had seen things horses were never meant to witness.

The guard dismounted before his horse had fully stopped, stumbling, nearly falling, recovering through pure momentum and desperation.

He ran the final distance to where Soren stood, falling to his knees before his Emperor with enough force to crack ice, his breath coming in ragged gasps that spoke of hard riding and harder news.

"Your Imperial Majesty!" The title was a raw wound, half-scream, half-prayer.

Soren’s face became a mask of glacial stone. "Report."

"The capital—" The guard’s voice broke. He swallowed, a convulsive, terrible motion. "It is under attack, Sire!"

"By whom?" The question was an ice pick, sharp and unyielding.

"Demons, Your Majesty!" The guard’s whole body trembled. "Fire demons. The earth... it split open. In the outer districts. They just... keep coming."

He shattered then, the horror overflowing. "Hundreds are dead! Thousands, maybe... I couldn’t... the district is an oven, Sire, and they are spreading, and the screams... there is nowhere to run—!"

"Compose yourself." Soren’s voice was not kind. It was a lifeline thrown into a storm, a command to cling to. "How long?"

The guard choked, fighting for coherence. "An hour. Perhaps more. Time... broke. I left the moment they emerged. Rode the horse to its ruin."

The court erupted.

A cacophony of noble panic, priests’ fevered invocations to a silent goddess, servants’ muffled sobs. it was the sound of order dissolving.

Soren’s magic answered. Ice detonated from him in a silent, furious wave. The ground flash-froze in a perfect, spreading circle. The very air crystallized, falling around him like diamond dust.

His eyes, no longer warm, no longer cool, went flat. The color of a frozen sea under a dead sky. This was the Ice Emperor. The Winter King. The man who had ended rebellions and buried armies.

"Silence."

The word did not shout. It cut. It severed the noise cleanly, leaving a vacuum of perfect, trembling obedience.

His mind was already a war room.

"We return to the palace. Now. All guards, combat formation. Priests... defensive blessings, ice-affinity only." His gaze found High Priestess Serah.

"You will take the Empress. The secured route. You do not engage. You do not fight. You run. Her safety is your only purpose."

"Your Majesty, I—" Serah began.

But Soren was already turning to Eris. His hands seized her arms, his grip bone-deep. His eyes were a blizzard of fear, duty, and a desperate, furious love.

"Do not use your magic."

"Soren, if the city is burning—"

"I don’t care." The words were a brutal, necessary violence. "Your seal is fracturing. I saw it. If you strain it now... if you let that dragon out..."

He leaned closer, his voice a harsh whisper for her alone. "It will not know friend from foe. Pyronox will burn the demons, the city, and everyone in it. Promise me."

Eris wanted to fight. To be the weapon she was made to be. But she felt the fragile, splintering cage inside her chest. She tasted the truth of his words... ashes and annihilation.

"Fine," she whispered. The word was defeat.

Something in him cracked, just for a second. His grip softened. His thumb brushed a fleeting, tender arc on her arm.

He leaned in. Kissed her forehead. A seal. A branding.

"Please stay alive," he breathed against her skin, a secret plea in the chaos. "Whatever you see. Whatever you hear. Stay alive. I will fix this. But I need to know you are safe."

"Soren—"

He was gone.

Already running, his guards a living armor around him. Ice magic spiraled from his form, a brewing tempest. Frost devoured the path beneath his boots. He was no longer a man, he was a force of nature, hurtling toward the inferno.

Eris stood abandoned in the sudden void he left behind. Powerless. A goddess in chains while her world burned.

Around her, the court shattered into frantic motion. Horses screamed. Priests chanted. Nobles fled.

And above it all, the bruised sky wept smoke, carrying the scent of her homeland’s ending. The celebration was not just over.

It was ash.