The skies over Kīlauea had darkened, a crimson hue bleeding across the horizon like a wound. The ground trembled in intervals beneath Kael's boots as he stood at the edge of the Mauna Loa crater, volcanic fumes rising like whispers from the underworld. Beside him, Elara's gaze was locked on the yawning abyss below—a pit of churning magma glowing with the promise of both death and rebirth.
Kael stood still, his eyes unfocused, as if staring beyond the present. Something inside him was calling—not just a pull, but a magnetic rip through his blood, like a long-lost melody returning to its origin. His veins pulsed with heat. The volcano, ancient and angry, recognized him.
Elara stepped back, her brows furrowed. "I can feel it," she whispered. "The heat... it's alive. It's watching."
Kael nodded slowly. "It recognizes the blood. This place isn't just a volcano... it's a vault."
Elara exhaled shakily, wiping a bead of sweat from her temple. "You said we had to come here, but Kael, what exactly is down there?"
Kael didn't answer immediately. The tug in his cells intensified—gentle, but impossible to ignore. Like fire whispering his name. "A memory," he finally said. "Or something older. Something that once breathed through my ancestors."
Elara bit her lip. "Do you... even know if we'll survive?"
"No," Kael said, the corners of his lips twitching in grim amusement. "But if we don't try, you won't survive what's growing inside you either. The celestial blood needs something to settle it."
She went quiet. Her transformation had begun the moment his blood touched her tongue. It had burned like a thousand suns, and though she survived, her body hadn't stabilized. Her aura was unstable, pulsing between celestial clarity and human fragility. And Kael, He needed power. The kind that only the core of this world's fire might offer.
He stepped forward and offered her his hand. "I'll keep you safe."
She hesitated, fear and trust battling in her eyes. But she took his hand.
They stepped into the molten world beneath, surrounded by steam and ash. The path wasn't natural ,it bent like a tunnel through lava, held open by ancient remnants of a forgotten will. Kael's skin shimmered with resistance, his presence parting heat like an invisible shield. Elara clung to his arm, her breaths shallow, eyes wide.
"Feels like... we're walking into a god's throat," she murmured.
Kael offered her a brief glance. "You're not far off."
They swam deeper—weightless in the molten liquid, though Kael's power shielded her from the fatal heat. Time twisted. Minutes felt like hours as the pressure increased, gravity and heat testing their will. Elara's body trembled.
"I—Kael—I can't... it's too much—"
He turned, gripped her shoulders firmly. "Breathe through me." He pressed his forehead against hers. "Trust me. Focus only on my heartbeat."
She clutched him tighter. "If I die, I'll haunt you."
"What are you already doing now??" He replied with a playful glint in his eyes, quite the opposite atmosphere that one should expect from someone who was hundreds of feets deep within molten lava.
Then they sank deeper, following the gravitational pull Kael felt through his blood. The lava grew darker, heavier... until suddenly it vanished. They were suspended in an obsidian chamber glowing with golden veins—at the center, a core the size of a boulder, pulsing like a living heart.
Kael's eyes locked on it. "This is it."
"Elara, stay back."
She did, dropping to her knees as waves of pressure pulsed out from the core. Kael stepped forward. His hand reached out.
The moment his fingers touched the molten orb, light exploded.
The Memory of Flame
Kael's vision vanished.
He stood now under a storm of black thunderclouds, lightning flashing in sheets across a blood-red sky. Rain pelted a vast battlefield. The scent of sulfur, steel, and burning flesh filled the air.
In the center of the chaos stood a man.
White hair danced in the stormwind, piercing silver eyes like distant stars. Flames erupted from his back like wings, and crimson armor clung to his frame like the very blood of the volcano. The figure smiled.
Kael knew him.
The Emperor Dragon.
He roared, his voice shaking the world, and then charged.
Thousands awaited him—titans carved from stone, giants wielding mountains, spectral warriors stitched from shadows. The Emperor met them like a living storm.
Each step he took melted the earth beneath.
He spun, a blazing wheel of flame. His fist crushed a titan's chest, shattering its ribs like glass. He leapt, somersaulted in mid-air, and drove his foot down,erupting the land in a volcanic burst. Ten more enemies evaporated.
Kael watched, entranced. The man was alone but he fought with the fury of a nation. And he smiled through it all.
"You only die if you forget who you are!" the Emperor laughed mid-battle.
With a thunderous scream, he unleashed a final torrent of flame so vast it swallowed the battlefield.
Then—silence.
The illusion ended.
Kael gasped and blinked. Elara was beside him, her hand on his arm. Her eyes wide.
"You stopped breathing... for ten minutes."
Kael stood, and golden cracks pulsed faintly across his skin before fading. "I saw him."
"Who?"
"My blood. My legacy. The one who gave me this fire."
Elara didn't know what to say, she felt like Kael seemed to meet a new person in each memory and slowly his view of the world was changing, his once tired and uninteresting eyes now looked even more distant as tho they could see far beyond just this colours that makes up the world picturesque.
They left the chamber. As they ascended through the cooling magma, Kael's body radiated a heat that didn't burn—it drew in power. Yet it was unstable. Unrefined.
"I need to train," Kael muttered. "I'm... a walking bomb."
"We'll find a place," Elara said softly, but the worry never left her gaze.
Meanwhile, The Demigod Council
In a highest floor of the building were the Demi gods held their meetings, once again they were all summoned.
A circular table formed from crystallized time sat between them, the fragments laid bare in its center.
The Demigod of Sight frowned. "We must destroy them."
The Demigod of Water swirled her fingers. "No. They may be the only key left. We cannot erase what we do not understand."
A third slammed his fist down. "They're weapons. Bargaining chips, we could possibly use this to hold him down."
The argument spiraled. Dozens of voices, old as mountains, clashing like blades.
After hours of relentless debate, the eldest among them—the Demigod of Stone—finally stood.
"Enough," he rumbled. "Let fate decide. For now, the fragments remain with their current holders. You can do what you like with them but do remember that he'll definitely come for it, so I hope you don't do something foolish ".
The room fell into reluctant agreement.
But far beyond stars....in the endless Void
Where no time ticks, where no light shines, something blinked.
Not a creature. Not a god. Not a thought.
Something wrong.
It moved in silence, the whisper of forgotten creation rippling through dead space.
And it awoke.
Not because it wanted to.
But because something touched a memory that should never have been known.