The echoes of the God-shard's approval faded, leaving only the thrumming heat and the ragged sound of Kael's own breathing. He pushed himself upright, muscles screaming in protest. His body felt simultaneously shattered and wired, like a broken tool crudely reforged in too hot a flame. The raw agony remained, a constant throb beneath his skin, but it was different now. It was interwoven with a faint, predatory warmth pulsing from deep within his core – the captured spark of the Rebirth Art, ravenous and demanding.

  He risked a glance at his hands. The blisters and burns were still there, angry red reminders of the Gauntlet's fury, but the weeping had stopped. The skin beneath seemed tougher, tighter, with an odd, almost metallic sheen in the crimson light. Where the falling rock had scraped his arm, the wound was already sealing, knitting together with unnatural speed, leaving behind a slightly raised, reddish scar that felt unnervingly resilient to the touch. This accelerated healing wasn't a gentle mending; it felt violent, forced, the internal fire consuming damaged tissue and replacing it with something tougher, less human.

  Proof... feed the flame... pain is fuel...

  The God-shard's whisper was quieter now, a subtle undercurrent in his thoughts, like a parasite perfectly attuned to its host's impulses.

  Kael gritted his teeth against a fresh wave of nausea. The power was real. The cost was real. Realer than anything else he’d ever experienced. He forced down the bile rising in his throat. There was no room for regret, only for the next step. He needed to get out.

  He faced the partially collapsed tunnel. Dust and superheated ash still rained down, but the immediate danger seemed to have passed. Beyond the rockfall, the passage continued, though its stability looked questionable. His instincts, sharpened by the pain and the alien presence in his mind, screamed caution. Yet, the way back was unthinkable, and standing still was a slow death.

  With the Rebirth Art flickering within him, the world felt... different. He could almost taste the waves of heat radiating from the rock, sensing the veins of raw Ignis essence trapped within the stone like sleeping serpents. Before, the heat had been a monolithic force of destruction. Now, he could perceive its nuances, its flows, its concentrations. It was still overwhelming, still deadly, but no longer entirely incomprehensible. It felt less like an external enemy and more like a volatile ocean he was learning, painfully, to navigate.

  He approached the debris, his movements stiff but deliberate. He could try to climb over, but the rocks were unstable, radiating intense heat. Or he could try to channel the fire again, absorb more energy, and weaken the stone further. The memory of the excruciating intake of power made him hesitate. It had felt like drinking magma, feeding the volatile core within him, risking overload.

  Caution is weakness. Hesitation is death. Consume.

  The God-shard’s impatience was a palpable pressure.

  Your vessel is weak. Temper it. Burn away the doubt.

  Kael scowled. He didn't need the parasitic god-fragment stating the obvious. He reached out tentatively towards the largest boulder blocking the path. This time, he didn’t just pull; he focused, trying to understand the flow of energy before absorbing it, seeking a weaker point, a thread he could draw without unleashing the full flood.

  He found it – a faint trickle emanating from a hairline crack. He latched onto it with his will, drawing the thread of fire into his palm. It was still painful, a searing jolt that resonated up his arm, but manageable compared to the earlier uncontrolled surge. The rock cooled slightly where his focus touched it, infinitesimal cracks widening. More importantly, the tiny sip of external power seemed to calm the frantic buzzing within him, easing the feeling of imminent combustion, if only slightly. The internal fire was hungry, and feeding it, even a little, brought a twisted kind of relief alongside the pain.

  Emboldened, he found another thread, then another, patiently leeching tiny amounts of energy from the debris, enduring the repeated jolts of agony. It was slow, exhausting work, each absorption leaving him trembling and sweating, but the rocks gradually cooled, their ominous glow fading, becoming less dangerous to touch. Finally, scrambling over the now merely hot stones, tearing his newly formed scars but finding they barely bled, he made it past the rockfall.

  The tunnel beyond twisted downwards, opening into a chamber filled with simmering pools of viscous, black liquid that bubbled sluggishly, releasing clouds of acrid, green-tinged steam. The stench was overpowering – sulfur, rot, and something metallic that coated the back of his throat. The heat was less intense here, but the air was poisonous. Kael covered his mouth and nose with a scrap of his already tattered tunic, but it offered little protection.

  He needed to cross. The passage continued on the far side, maybe fifty feet away. There were stepping stones, jagged shards of obsidian poking through the bubbling mire, but they were unevenly spaced, some barely cresting the surface, others looking dangerously unstable. Worse, the surface of the pools occasionally erupted, spitting globs of searing, corrosive sludge into the air.

  A test of control... and resilience.

  The God-shard's voice was almost clinically detached.

  Fail, and the mire will dissolve your flesh. Succeed... and grow stronger.

  Kael eyed the first stepping stone. It was coated in slick, black residue. A misstep meant falling into that dissolving poison. He took a deep, burning breath. Doubt flickered again. This required balance, agility – things he, the crippled charcoal bearer, had never possessed.

  But the fire within him pulsed. The Rebirth Art wasn't just about raw power; it was about survival, about adapting, about becoming the flame that endures.

  He took the first step. His bare foot landed hesitantly on the slick obsidian. The stone wobbled beneath his weight. He froze, arms held out, every muscle tensed. The fumes curled around him intensely, burning his lungs with every stolen breath, stinging his eyes mercilessly, and making his head swim despite the rag over his mouth. Below, the black mire gurgled obscenely, a globule bursting near his precarious perch, splattering hot, acidic sludge that hissed where it touched the stone.

  He shifted his weight, slowly bringing his other foot forward. The second stone was smaller, barely large enough for one foot. He hopped onto it, a spike of agony shooting up his leg as the impact jarred his newly, unnaturally knit tissues. His balance wavered. For a terrifying moment, he saw the bubbling surface rush up to meet him. His eyes streamed uncontrollably, blurring the treacherous path ahead into a watery, shifting nightmare.

  Foolish pride... clinging to useless senses...

  The God-shard's voice hissed, sharp with contempt.

  Your weakness slows you. Your vulnerability will kill you. Sacrifice is required.

  Kael squeezed his burning eyes shut for a second, trying futilely to clear them. He gritted his teeth, focusing past the distracting sting, trying to glimpse the next stone – a vague, darker shape swimming in the blur. He needed to jump, but judging the distance accurately felt almost impossible, and the fumes made coordinated thought difficult.

  The poison weakens your focus... clogs your feeble lungs...

  The voice pressed, insistent, invasive.

  Burn away your connection to the tainted air. Sacrifice your breath’s petty pleasure. Breathe fire, little ember, not this filth.

  Sacrifice his breathing? The thought was madness. Yet, as another corrosive bubble burst nearby, spattering his leg with searing drops that ate through his ragged trousers and began dissolving his skin, desperation flared. The agony on his leg was blinding, but the dual assault on his eyes and lungs threatened to send him plunging into the dissolving mire. He would fall.

  Taste the fire... inhale purity...

  The command intensified.

  Burn out the useless membranes... cauterize the passages... Seal yourself against this weakness. Breathe only what fuels you.

  His hatred for his own failing body surged. If his lungs couldn't handle this poison, he'd rip out their need for tainted air.

  Do it.

  The mental command was sharp, brutal, born of utter necessity.

  Again, the internal combustion, focused violently within his chest, throat, and sinuses. He felt phantom flames scouring the delicate tissues, searing nerves. He almost collapsed onto the small stone, fighting the urge to curl into a ball, unable to even scream as his entire respiratory system felt like it was being ripped out and replaced with hot coals.

  Panic flared as he momentarily couldn't draw breath. Then, raggedly, experimentally, he pulled. Not air, but the thicker, hotter Ignis essence of the Gauntlet. It flowed into him through his newly cauterized passages. The choking sensation vanished instantly. His mind, starved of oxygen just moments before, snapped into a chilling, disturbing clarity, like ice forming in a furnace.

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  He coughed, a dry, hacking sound, spitting only ash. The poisonous fumes still swirled thickly, but they no longer clogged his lungs or threatened to suffocate him. The assault on his eyes, however, continued with venomous intensity. Tears streamed, blurring the world. He could think with lethal focus now, but seeing the path forward was another matter entirely.

  Adapt... Perception is more than sight... Feel the heat... Feel the void…

  The God-shard whispered, a cold encouragement in his newly cleared mind.

  Kael squinted, blinking furiously against the incessant sting. The mental clarity helped him push past the panic the visual impairment caused. He forced himself to focus beyond the blur, reaching out with his developing senses, straining to grasp the subtle temperature differences between the cooler obsidian stones and the churning heat of the mire. It was faint, uncertain, like trying to read a hidden script through frosted glass.

  He gathered himself, trusting this fragile, nascent heat sense, supplemented by the sheer, cold calculation afforded by his clear mind. He leaped. His landing on the next stone was jarring, unsteady. He stumbled, windmilling his arms, one foot plunging momentarily into the edge of the vile liquid.

  Agony, immediate and electric, shot up his leg as the sludge began dissolving flesh. He yanked it back with a choked cry, scrambling fully onto the stone, hissing against the pain. The damaged skin sizzled, bubbled, but the Rebirth Art warred against the corrosion. New, tougher scar tissue formed unnaturally quickly. The process felt forced and violent, even as the blinding pain lingered, a testament to the brutal transaction he'd made.

  The near-fall, combined with the pain and the still-stinging eyes, nearly broke his concentration. He forced it back, relying now even more heavily on the faint heat signatures. Driven by the clarity of his thoughts and the desperation to escape the pain, he flowed onto the next stone, then the next. Each movement was a tightrope walk, navigating the treacherous gaps by interpreting the faint map of heat upon his senses, compensating for the unreliable input from his weeping eyes. The final jump carried him across the remaining gap, landing heavily but safely on the solid rock floor of the far ledge.

  He collapsed, body shaking violently from shock, agony, and the sheer exertion. He didn't dare touch his burning eyes. He merely knelt there, breathing the hot energy of the tunnel through his reconstructed passages, head bowed, waiting for the worst of the fumes near the pool's edge to dissipate slightly, hoping his sight would clear, as the world still swam before him in a painful blur.

  He touched his throat, his chest. The air entering him felt clean, potent, fanning the internal flame. It felt hollow, alien. He had sacrificed the simple, unconscious act of breathing, traded it for survival, for efficiency. What other parts of himself would he carve away before this was over?

  He pushed the thought down brutally. It didn't matter. He was alive. He was across. He forced himself to his feet, scanning the new section of the tunnel. It appeared blessedly straight, for a time at least, descending further into the bowels of the dead god. A faint, rhythmic thudding sound echoed from the depths ahead. He didn't know what it was, but it was preferable to the bubbling poison behind him.

  With a surge of grim determination, fuelled by pain and the strange, hot energy cycling through his ravaged body, Kael moved onward, deeper into the God-Wound, leaving another fundamental piece of his humanity dissolving in the corrosive mire behind him.

  The tunnel sloped gently downwards, the rock underfoot transitioning from slick obsidian to a rougher, heat-pitted stone that still radiated considerable warmth. He walked slowly, deliberately, letting his burning eyes adjust gradually. The worst of the blurring subsided as the caustic fumes thinned, but his vision remained compromised – dimmer than it should be, colours washed out, prone to momentary flickers and distortions, especially near sources of intense heat. It was like viewing the world through a dirty, heat-warped lens.

  He relied heavily on the rhythmic intake of Ignis essence that had replaced his breathing. Each "breath" sent a pulse of potent heat through his system, fueling the internal flame but also serving as a constant, dull ache in his cauterized passages. It was disturbingly efficient, providing a steady energy source that defied his physical exhaustion, but it also made him feel profoundly other, disconnected from the simple act of living that even the lowest beasts possessed.

  The thudding sound grew louder, resonating not just in his ears but as a palpable vibration through the soles of his feet and the stone walls he occasionally brushed against.

  THUD.

  A pause...

  THUD.

  THUD.

  It was slow, ponderous, immensely powerful. Like the heartbeat of something colossal and dying.

  The tunnel widened slightly, curving around a bend. As Kael rounded it, the source of the sound became terrifyingly apparent. It wasn't machinery, nor any creature he could conceive of. It seemed to be a part of the God-Wound itself.

  A massive, pulsating organ, easily thirty feet high, partially blocked the passage ahead. It looked like a grotesque heart valve carved from living Cinderwood and semi-molten rock, embedded directly into the artery wall. Thick, vein-like structures, pulsing with sluggish crimson light, snaked across its surface and disappeared into the surrounding stone. With each rhythmic THUD, the entire valve contracted violently, shuddering inward, before slowly relaxing open again.

  But the danger wasn't the pulsing valve itself. With every forceful contraction, the valve expelled a concussive wave of pure heat down the tunnel – not flame, but a blast of transparent, shimmering force that slammed into the opposite wall with enough power to make the rock groan and flake. Any living thing caught in that wave would likely be flash-cooked, the moisture boiling out of its tissues instantly. During the brief interval as the valve relaxed, the passage was clear, but the cycle was relentlessly regular.

  Kael stopped, instinctively seeking cover behind an outcrop of rock, his mind racing. He watched the cycle repeat.

  THUD.

  A concussive heat wave obliterated the space ahead. Relaxation - a gap of maybe five seconds.

  THUD.

  Another blast. Five seconds. Barely enough time to dash across the exposed section, even for someone uninjured and unimpaired. For him, stiff, wounded, with unreliable vision? It seemed impossible.

  His heat sense, however, offered a different perspective. While his eyes struggled with the shimmering distortion, his ability to feel the Ignis provided a clearer, albeit foreign, picture. He could feel the massive build-up of energy within the Cinder Valve just before it discharged, a sharp spike in the ambient heat. He could feel the terrifying emptiness of the wave itself as it passed – a void of displaced energy. He could also feel the residual, rippling heat clinging to the walls in the blast's aftermath.

  Timing... Precision... Brutality...

  The God-shard’s whisper slithered through his thoughts.

  Hesitation invites obliteration. The flame consumes the slow.

  He could try to absorb the heat wave, like he'd absorbed energy from the rockfall. The thought made his internal fire surge sickeningly. That wave felt exponentially more powerful than the trickles he'd siphoned before. Attempting to absorb it directly felt like trying to drink a volcanic eruption. Instantaneous self-immolation seemed the likely outcome.

  No, the only path was through the gap. He needed to cross the fifteen feet or so of exposed tunnel during the valve's five-second relaxation phase.

  Could he make it? He glanced down at his legs. Scars criss-crossed his skin, souvenirs from the rockfall and the mire. His muscles screamed with fatigue and the lingering agony of the Gauntlet's initial tortures. Five seconds. It might as well be an eternity or an instant.

  The flesh is weak... unreliable...

  The God-shard prompted coldly.

  But the flame endures. Force it. Burn through the limits. Or perish.

  Was there another sacrifice it wanted? Burn away his fatigue? Sacrifice the pain inhibitors in his nerves? He pushed the thought away. He couldn't afford another major self-mutilation right now, not without knowing the consequences. He had to rely on what he had: the clarity from his altered breathing, his rudimentary heat sense, the unnatural resilience granted by the Rebirth Art, and sheer, brutal willpower.

  He watched the cycle again.

  THUD.

  He felt the energy spike and release. Relaxation begins. One thousand one... one thousand two... one thousand three... one thousand four... one thousand five...

  THUD.

  Another surge.

  He had to move precisely as the heat wave dissipated. Any earlier, he'd be caught. Any later, he wouldn't have enough time. He closed his eyes briefly, relying entirely on the heat sense, feeling the rhythm of the Cinder Valve's deadly pulse. He ignored the sting in his eyes, the throb in his limbs, the hollowness in his chest. He focused only on the cycle, on the infinitesimal moment the path would be clear.

  The heat wave surged, washing over his senses like a physical blow even behind the outcrop. It dissipated. Now.

  Kael exploded from cover. He didn't run gracefully; he launched himself forward in a desperate, shambling sprint, pushing his battered body past its limits. The rock floor felt searingly hot beneath his feet from the recent blast. His lungs – or what passed for them – pulled in searing Ignis essence, fueling his muscles with painful energy. Four steps. Five. The far side seemed agonizingly distant. He felt the energy beginning to build again within the valve, a rising tide of heat registered by his senses. Three more steps. Two. The familiar THUD echoed, vibrating through his bones even before the wave hit. He wasn't going to make it.

  In a split-second decision born of pure survival instinct and the Rebirth Art’s core imperative, he didn’t try to absorb the wave, but instead pushed. He slammed his palms onto the floor and channelled a desperate pulse of his own internal fire outwards, directly behind him. It wasn't a refined technique; it was a raw, uncontrolled detonation of energy – essentially sacrificing a portion of his painfully gathered internal reserves for a violent burst of propulsion.

  The backlash threw him forward the last few feet, tumbling agonizingly onto the stone past the valve's direct path, even as the concussive heat wave shrieked past where he had been a microsecond earlier, slamming into the rock behind him with the force of a giant's hammer. He skidded to a halt, flesh tearing against the rough stone, pain flaring through his body from both the landing and the sudden drain on his internal fire.

  He lay there, gasping scorching energy, chest heaving, watching the Cinder Valve slowly relax again, oblivious to the mortal insect that had just scraped past its deadly cycle. He had survived. Again. But the cost was a chunk of his own precious energy, leaving the internal flame feeling slightly fainter, more demanding, and his body even more battered than before.

  Wasteful... but effective.

  The God-shard’s assessment was devoid of praise, merely a cold observation.

  Replenish the flame. Stronger challenges await.

  Kael didn’t reply. He dragged himself away from the immediate vicinity of the pulsing valve, collapsing into the relative safety of the tunnel beyond, every nerve ending screaming, the taste of ash sharp in his non-breathing mouth. This Gauntlet wasn't just testing his endurance. It was actively forcing him to learn, to adapt, to use the terrible power he'd accepted, even if it meant burning himself out from the inside.