The air broke before the sound reached them.
A pressure wave rolled through the forest, tearing bark from trees and scattering leaves like ash. The ground convulsed under Kael's feet. Serah staggered backward, barely keeping her balance.
Through the rising fog came the Inquisitors.Not men this time — not entirely. Their armor pulsed with runes of light, their eyes burning hollow white. Chains hung from their wrists, glowing like molten gold. They moved as one, silent, merciless.
"Kael of the Crown," one of them intoned, voice metallic and vast. "By decree of the High Throne, your flame is forfeit."
Kael's reply was a whisper.
"Then come and take it."
The Battle Begins
The first Inquisitor lunged — a blur of steel and light. Kael met him halfway, their blades colliding with a shockwave that cracked the ground. Sparks cascaded like falling stars.
Serah fired her crossbow, a bolt of silver slicing through the mist and shattering against a shield of pure light. She cursed under her breath and drew her daggers.
Kael spun, cutting down another attacker — but as his sword struck, golden fire erupted from the wound, consuming the body in seconds. The air filled with screams that weren't human.
He froze.Their voices echoed in his skull — hundreds of them. Each one a whisper of someone he had burned before.
"Kael…"
He shook his head violently. "Not now."
"Kael!" Serah's voice cut through the haze. "Behind you!"
He turned — too late.A chain wrapped around his arm, burning through cloth and flesh. The Inquisitor yanked hard, dragging him to his knees.
Kael's hand flared gold. The fire burst outward, melting the chain, searing through armor and bone. The Inquisitor's body disintegrated in a halo of light.
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then the power didn't stop.
The fire crawled up Kael's arm, spreading across his chest like veins of molten glass. His heartbeat thundered, echoing like drums of war.
Let go, whispered the voice inside. You were never meant to hold back.
The Unmaking
Kael screamed.
The light erupted from him, not as flame — but as raw, divine force. The forest exploded outward in a ring of gold. Trees were uprooted, earth turned to glass. The Inquisitors were thrown like rag dolls, their armor melting midair.
Serah fell, shielding her eyes from the blinding glow.
When she looked again, Kael was no longer standing.
He was floating.
The fire surrounded him like a storm, his cloak disintegrating into ribbons of light. His eyes burned white-gold, his expression blank — neither rage nor mercy, only inevitability.
"Kael!" Serah shouted. "You have to stop!"
He didn't hear her.The world itself bent toward him, drawn by the gravity of his power.
Inquisitors tried to flee, but their shadows burned before they moved. Kael raised his hand, and with a single gesture, the light consumed them — bones turning to dust, armor collapsing inward like crushed stars.
Serah's tears evaporated before they could fall.
"Kael, please!"
The sound of her voice pierced the void.
For a moment — just a flicker — Kael's gaze shifted. The light faltered. His expression changed, as if her voice reached something buried beneath the fire.
He fell to his knees, gasping, the light dimming around him.
The battlefield was gone. Only ash remained.
The Price of Power
Serah ran to him, falling to her knees beside his trembling form. His skin was scorched, his hands cracked and glowing faintly from within.
"Kael… what have you done?"
He looked up, dazed, his eyes flickering between gold and black. "I stopped them."
"You destroyed everything."
He blinked, staring at the devastation around them — the forest reduced to a wasteland, the ground littered with blackened armor and bone.
"I didn't mean—"
"You never mean to."
Her voice broke. "But every time you fight it, more of you disappears."
Kael looked down at his hands — trembling, fractured, glowing faintly from within.
"It's him," he whispered. "He's closer now."
"Then we need to get far away. Before—"
A deep tremor silenced her. The ground cracked open behind them, golden light spilling from below like blood from a wound.
Kael's voice was hollow.
"He's waking."
The Crown's Whisper
That night, Kael sat alone at the edge of the ruined forest.The sky burned with faint auroras — ripples of gold and black, like the world itself was bleeding light.
The voice came again, no longer distant.
"You felt it, didn't you?""How the world bends when you stop pretending."
Kael didn't answer.
"You cannot flee from what you are. The gods feared you because you were mercy unchained. Do you remember now, my king?"
Kael's grip on his sword tightened until his knuckles cracked.
"I am not your king."
"You will be."
He rose, his shadow stretching impossibly long across the ruined earth.
Behind him, Serah slept by the dying fire, unaware of the faint golden light crawling up his spine — shaping itself into a crown of flame.
The Last Line
Kael looked toward the horizon, where the mountains burned faintly beneath the dawn.
"If destiny wants a god," he murmured, "it will have to make one from what's left of me."
The wind carried the whisper of laughter — his own, and something else's — as the light behind his eyes flared once more.