The primordial beast of ash

Chapter 6

"You are a ghost walking in a world of giants, Vance," Julian mocked, his hand sliding smoothly to the hilt of his tamer sword. "Did you really think you could crawl out of the gutter and dictate terms to me?"

Ethan didn’t answer with words. He took a heavy, deliberate step forward, pulling a silver and gold signet ring from his pocket—the one he had stripped from the unconscious assassin back at the workshop—and tossed it onto the merchant's glass display counter. It slid across the smooth surface with a sharp, echoing clink.

"Look closely at the crest, Malek," Ethan rasped, his voice cutting through the thick smell of sulfur. "That belongs to a specialized clean-up unit under the Crest family’s direct payroll. Your elite buyers sent him to murder me in the dark. Right now, he is tied up in my workshop, singing about every illegal transaction, under-the-table bribe, and unregistered core that passes through this vault. If the City Guard arrives before I get what I came for, we all burn together."

Merchant Malek’s round face drained of all color. He looked at the ring, then glanced nervously at Julian, his fat fingers twitching against his silk robes. "Young master Julian… I cannot afford a structural investigation from the high elders. If the Crests are playing a double game—"

"Shut up, you coward!" Julian snarled, drawing his blade. The steel hissed in the damp air. "He is bluffing! His core is broken, and his beast is a genetic joke. Watch your mouth, Vance, or I will let my hound tear your tongue out."

Julian snapped his fingers, and a massive, ash-furred Fire-Hound materialized from a crimson summoning circle beside him. The beast’s jaws dripped with liquid embers, its predatory eyes locking onto Ethan.

"Warning," the violet text in Ethan’s vision pulsed frantically, the digits bleeding into a dark, unstable blur. "0 hours, 00 minutes, 42 seconds remaining. Cellular collapse imminent."

Solis shivered against Ethan’s chest, letting out a weak, agonizing click. The golden mist rising from his skin was fading, replaced by a terrifying grey ash.

"Solis," Ethan whispered, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his hunting knife. "Just a pulse. Give me anything."

The Fire-Hound lunged, a roaring cascade of flame erupting from its maw as it leaped across the stone floor straight for Ethan's throat.

In that fraction of a second, the tiny dragon’s eyes snapped open. A localized wave of absolute, freezing black pressure rippled outward from Ethan’s chest. It wasn't an attack; it was a passive rejection of the world's physical laws. The moment the Fire-Hound's flames hit the invisible perimeter, the fire simply ceased to burn, snuffing out instantly into dead black smoke. The hound itself crashed to the floor, its legs buckling under a sudden, localized spike in gravity that cracked the stone tiles beneath its paws.

Julian gasped, stumbling backward as the sheer weight of the aura pressed against his chest. "What… what kind of trick is this?"

Ethan didn't waste the second. He ignored the paralyzed hound and bounded over the cracked stone, his hand striking like a viper. He didn't grab his knife—he reached straight past Julian and tore the Corrupted Fire Core right off its stone pedestal.

"Vance, drop that!" Malek shrieked, ducking behind his counter. "You will blow us all to pieces! It requires a containment suit!"

The moment Ethan’s bare fingers wrapped around the core, a horrific hiss echoed through the vault. The raw, unrefined volcanic energy tore through his skin, blistering his palm and melting the leather of his glove in a fraction of a second. White-hot agony flared up his arm, burning through his meridians, but he refused to let go.

"0 hours, 00 minutes, 05 seconds."

"Eat it!" Ethan roared, dropping to his knees and forcing his blistering, smoking hand right to the mouth of the dying lizard. "Solis, swallow it!"

The tiny, hairless creature opened its jaws, its abyssal black eyes locking onto the blazing core. With a desperate, feral snap, Solis swallowed the fist-sized crystal whole.

For a heartbeat, the entire room fell dead silent. The crackling of Julian's hound, the patter of the storm through the ventilation shaft, the desperate panting of Ethan's breath—everything stopped. Solis's body stiffened, his tiny limbs locking straight out.

Then, his chest ruptured.

Not with blood, but with a blinding, blinding torrent of liquid golden magma. The sheer heat of the eruption vaporized the stone floor beneath them. Julian screamed as the backdraft scorched his silver-trimmed uniform, forcing him and the merchant to flee toward the exit as the vault walls began to warp and melt.

The magma didn't spray outward; it curled like living tendrils, wrapping around Solis and violently snapping toward Ethan. Before Ethan could even draw a breath, the molten gold encased him entirely, hardening within seconds into a massive, smooth, and completely impenetrable crystalline cocoon that thrummed with the terrifying heartbeat of a waking myth.