The immediate aftermath of the scorpion's demise left a void, not just in the tunnel, but within Kael himself. The frantic clamour of the fight, the searing agony of the venom, the desperate expenditure of power, all faded, leaving behind the familiar bedrock of pain and a profound, echoing silence in his mind.For the first time since the initial pact in the fiery depths of the Gauntlet, the God-shard was quiet. Not merely dormant, but utterly still, like a sated parasite retreating into dormancy. Kael tentatively probed the connection, the alien presence that had become a near-constant whisper at the edge of his thoughts. There was nothing. Just the familiar throb of his own reforged body and the hungry pulse of the Rebirth Art’s flame, now burning steadily after consuming the scorpion's dregs.

  Kael thought, the realization a sliver of ice amidst the internal heat.

  He pushed himself upright, leaning heavily against the heat-pitted wall. The silence was both a relief and deeply unsettling. It allowed him clarity he hadn't possessed before, space to think beyond the next agonizing step, the next demand for sacrifice. But it also felt like the watchful eye of a predator had merely blinked, momentarily averted.

  He began to walk, forcing himself into a slow, limping rhythm. The tunnel continued its descent, twisting gently. The air remained thick with heat, but the oppressive presence of the Cinder Valve and the corrosive stink of the mire were behind him. Here, the environment felt subtly different. Strange, vein-like patterns snaked across the walls, not pulsating like the valve, but shimmering faintly with embedded minerals that caught the ambient crimson light, casting intricate, shifting patterns on the floor. In sheltered crevices, patches of unnaturally resilient moss clung to the rock, glowing with a soft, phosphorescent green light – seemingly thriving on the ambient heat rather than succumbing to it. It was the first sign of life, however alien, that wasn't actively trying to kill him. A small, morbid part of him almost admired its tenacity.

  He focused inward again, taking stock. His body was a wreck – burns, puncture wounds slowly knitting together, bones aching where they’d been broken and unnaturally reset. And his … or the cauterized void where they had been. He deliberately cycled the hot Ignis essence that now served as breath. It wasn’t an unconscious reflex anymore; it was a constant, low-level exertion of will, pulling the ambient heat into the furnace within. There was no feel of air expanding delicate tissues, no satisfying exhale of spent breath. Just a hollow cavity cycling raw power, leaving a constant, dull ache in his scorched passages as a reminder of the violation.

  He instinctively tried to take a deep breath, a habit ingrained over sixteen years of life, and the wrongness hit him anew. There was nothing draw deeper. Capacity wasn't limited by lung volume, but by the Rebirth Art's ability to process the essence, by the intensity of his flame. Physical exertion didn’t make him winded; it simply made the flame , its demands sharper, draining his reserves faster if he didn't consciously pull in more fuel. When he’d coughed after the mire, only ash had emerged – the byproduct of his internal combustion? The thought was chilling. Could he even speak properly anymore, without air passing over vocal cords? He hadn't tried. He hadn't dared.

  This change went deeper than the scars mapping his skin or the unnatural resilience hardening his flesh. It severed a fundamental connection to the mundane world. He didn't need air. Suffocation was meaningless now. Drowning? Unlikely he'd encounter enough water here, but the concept felt distant, alien. Yet, this very immunity felt like another cage, another mark of the he was becoming. It underscored the parasitic nature of the pact – survive by mutilation, by replacing vital human functions with monstrous efficiencies dictated by the flame.

  His focus sharpened, pushing past the discomforting thoughts. He was undeniably stronger, despite the horrific cost. The baseline power of the Ember Initiate felt solid now, his flame stable. More than that, his had shifted. His reliance on the heat sense, forced by his impaired vision, was becoming more intuitive. He could feel the subtle temperature gradients in the rock, the faint energy signatures of the glowing moss, the lingering thermal echo of the dead scorpion fading behind him.

  And the . That was the true chasm separating him from everything he’d ever known about cultivation. He remembered overhearing arrogant Verdant Lotus disciples discussing beast cores – precious resources harvested a kill, containing condensed worldly energy that had to be painstakingly refined, purified, and integrated over weeks or months. They spoke of meridians as conduits, of circulating Ignis essence, of dantian refinement, of respecting the inherent energies of heaven and earth.

  What he had done was… different. Grotesque. He hadn't refined ambient energy the scorpion's remains; he had ripped its , its fading consciousness-infused essence, directly into himself. And not just from the dead. He’d it while it still lived, weakening it, fueling himself with its stolen vitality. He vaguely recalled hushed warnings from elders about forbidden demonic arts, whispers about soul-devouring techniques that violated the fundamental laws. Wasn’t the soul meant to be inviolable, the core identity sacrosanct? His orphan’s education was patchy, gleaned from overheard lessons and scraps of conversation, but even he understood that direct consumption of another living being's intrinsic energy was considered an ultimate taboo, a path to madness and self-destruction far swifter than any cultivation deviation.

  Yet, the Crimson Phoenix Rebirth Art it. Pain was fuel. Sacrifice was progress. Consumption was survival. It wasn't merely accelerating cultivation; it was fundamentally altering the rules, operating on principles antithetical to orthodox practice. It explained the fear surrounding the technique, the horror in the voices that whispered its name. It wasn't just self-destructive; it was inherently .

  Then there was the moment during the fight, when the stinger had struck his arm. He hadn’t consciously commanded the resilience, not with the same focus he used later. Who had controlled the essence? His own nascent instincts, amplified by the Art? Or the God-shard, acting directly, puppeteering his flesh for its own ends? Why would it preserve him so actively?

  The word echoed in his mind, tied intrinsically to the Art's name. Was the God-shard merely a passenger, a guide? Or was this shattered remnant of a deity seeking a new vessel? Was Kael just incubating its return, his agonizing journey merely preparing his body to host the full consciousness of the Phoenix God, remade and hungry? The possibility settled cold and heavy in his gut, far more chilling than the ambient heat.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The God-shard was silent now, perhaps weakened, perhaps merely resting. A sliver of opportunity? Could he purge it? Sever the connection? The thought was tempting, a flare of defiance against the parasitic entity guiding his torment. But the notion died as quickly as it arose. He was Tier 1, an Ember Initiate clinging to survival in the heart of hell. The shard, even weakened, was part of the power keeping him alive. It understood this place, understood the Art, in ways he couldn't fathom. Trying to fight it now would be suicide, trading one form of consumption for a swift, final obliteration.

  No. If the shard sought rebirth through him, then Kael would play the part of the perfect vessel. He would endure the pain, make the sacrifices, consume and grow stronger, just as it guided. He would feed it, nurture it, let it believe it controlled him utterly. And all the while, he would learn. He would analyze the Art, understand the shard's connection to it, search for seams, for weaknesses, for the slightest crack in its prison or its power. He would climb, using the shard's own ambition as his ladder. And when he was strong enough, when he stood not as an Ember but as something far greater, then… then he would address the matter of the unwanted guest in his soul. It was a long game, perhaps impossibly long, but it was the only path that didn't end with him as mindless ash or a puppet dancing on divine strings.

  A flicker of crimson light ahead caught his attention, pulling him from his grim calculations. The tunnel was changing again. The relatively smooth walls were giving way to rougher, seemingly charred rock, and the air carried a new scent beneath the ever-present heat and sulfur – the faint, metallic tang of cooling blood, mingled with something else… something that smelled disturbingly like cooked meat. The heat signature ahead felt different too, not the focused intensity of the scorpion, but a more diffuse, scattered warmth, punctuated by points of intense cold.

  His hand instinctively went to the jagged, newly formed scar tissue on his chest. The quiet contemplation was over. The Gauntlet always had another trial waiting. He drew upon the steady, dangerous power coiled within him, his senses alert, his resolve hardened into pragmatic ruthlessness. Let the challenges come. He would endure. He would consume. He would climb.

  Kael pressed forward, pushing past the exhaustion threatening to reclaim his limbs now that the immediate surge from the crystals was fading into a steady, potent burn. He moved with heightened caution, the memory of the Cinder Scorpion ambush fresh in his mind. The silence from the God-shard felt less like peace and more like a coiled serpent waiting. He was truly on his own for now, relying solely on his battered body, the nascent instincts fueled by the Rebirth Art, and his own desperate mind.

  The transition in the tunnel's environment became more pronounced. The strange mineral veins vanished, replaced by walls that were blackened and scorched, as if repeatedly subjected to intense, scouring heat far beyond the ambient temperature. Loose scree and shattered rock littered the floor, some pieces disturbingly smooth, almost melted in places. The metallic tang of blood grew stronger, sharp and coppery, overlaid with the sickeningly sweet, greasy odour of cooked flesh. It made the remnants of his stomach clench, a purely physical reaction he ruthlessly suppressed.

  His heat sense painted an increasingly bizarre picture of the area ahead, around another sharp bend. Not the focused, mobile heat of the scorpion, nor the rhythmic pulse of the valve. This was chaos. Pockets of residual, intense heat dotted the area, like fading embers from multiple small fires. But interwoven with them, confusingly, were distinct points of unnatural . Not just the absence of heat, but an active, leeching coldness that felt like a violation within the God-Wound's fiery domain. The warmth was scattered, disorganized, while the cold felt focused, almost predatory in its stillness.

  He slowed his approach, hugging the scorched wall, his impaired vision struggling to pierce the oppressive gloom ahead. What could possibly create such conflicting signatures? A battle? Between what? Creatures made of fire and... something else? Ice seemed impossible in this inferno, yet the cold spots felt undeniably frigid to his heat sense, like sucking voids in the thermal landscape.

  He reached the bend, peered cautiously around the edge. The tunnel opened into a small, ravaged chamber. The source of the smell and the chaotic thermal readings became horribly clear.

  The chamber was a charnel house.

  Scattered across the floor were the mangled remains of at least three Cinder Scorpions, identical to the one he had fought. They weren't just killed; they were shattered, carapaces cracked open, limbs torn off, their inner heat extinguished, leaving only cooling husks. Splashes of their steaming ichor stained the blackened rock. These were the sources of the scattered warmth.

  But interspersed among the scorpion corpses were other forms – vaguely humanoid, yet utterly alien. They were encased in jagged shells of what looked like black ice, but an ice that seemed to light and heat, radiating that unnatural, penetrating cold Kael had sensed. Frost, impossible yet undeniable, spread outwards from these frozen figures, crackling softly where it met the hot stone floor, creating shimmering plumes of condensation. Several of these ice-figures were shattered, revealing glimpses of pale, multi-limbed bodies within, broken and still. However, one stood hunched near the far wall, seemingly intact, radiating intense cold. Its head, vaguely insectoid with multiple crystalline lenses for eyes, slowly swiveled towards Kael, detecting his heat signature.

  Even more disturbing were the half-eaten remains. One scorpion's carapace was ripped open, its insides partially devoured, scorch marks mingling with frostbite around the ravaged edges. Near one of the shattered ice-figures lay a torn obsidian limb from a scorpion, but its surface was covered in frozen, glistening saliva that steamed faintly.

  Something here fought with both fire ice. Or rather, something icy hunted the fiery natives. And it seemed Kael had stumbled into the messy aftermath of their feeding ground.

  The lone, intact ice-figure near the far wall straightened slightly. Its coldness intensified on Kael's heat sense, a focused pressure that felt actively hostile. Its crystalline eyes fixed on him, unblinking. It hadn't attacked yet, but its posture was coiled, predatory.

  

  The analysis wasn't the God-shard's familiar whisper, but Kael's own mind, running calculations based on the evidence before him. He had barely survived one scorpion. Facing whatever these frozen abominations were, especially one that had seemingly taken down multiple scorpions, felt like suicide.

  He slowly began to back away, trying not to make any sudden movements. Retreat seemed the only logical option. His inner flame was stable but not overflowing; another intense fight, especially against something radiating such unnatural cold, was a risk he couldn't afford.

  Too late. As he took his first backward step, the ice-figure . It didn't scuttle like the scorpion; it glided, unnaturally smooth, across the ravaged floor, leaving trails of frost in its wake. Its movements were swift, silent, and chillingly efficient. Jagged shards of black ice extended from its forelimbs, forming wickedly sharp claws that dripped freezing mist. It ignored the corpses. Its sole focus locked entirely onto the new source of heat: Kael.