The air inside the domain was thick with burning fragments of time. It was as though the very fabric of reality had forgotten how to breathe. In this place, Kael was forced to confront the echoes of his own past — memories twisted, warped, and rebuilt into something unrecognizable. And across from him, the Hollow Prince waited, a creature of stolen memories, now wearing his face.
Inside the domain, the world was scorched glass. Every step Kael took was a risk — each movement threatened to disrupt the delicate balance of time that hummed like a pulse beneath his feet. The fire that burned around him didn't offer warmth, only an endless, unyielding pressure, as if it were closing in on him, wrapping him in a cocoon of isolation.
The Hollow Prince, on the other hand, knelt motionlessly in the center, his body twitching as though it were adjusting to its new form. His eyes locked onto Kael's, and Kael could feel the weight of his stare—heavy, knowing, calculating.
"This is your domain," the Hollow Prince whispered, his voice barely audible over the crackling of the flames. "But I feel... everything."
The words hung in the air, thick with the weight of truth and deception. The Hollow Prince wasn't just experiencing the fire. He was becoming it.
Suddenly, the Hollow Prince laughed, a sound that was half joy, half madness. He stood up, his body shifting, morphing, changing before Kael's very eyes. The once-imposing figure now took on the form of someone Kael knew too well.
It was his own face.
His own flame gear, worn and battle-tested, wrapped around the Hollow Prince's body. Even the scar from the Outrealm trials — the one Kael had earned in the brutal fight with the Wraith King — marked the Hollow Prince's face.
"What—?" Kael breathed, his voice choked with disbelief. "You're forging my memory into you?"
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[LORE UNLOCKED]
The Memoryforge — a forbidden relic of Aeon's design. It was a chamber where emotion was not just felt but sculpted. Pain became stone. Regret, fire. Love became blade. It was a place where memories were forged into weapons, and identities were rewritten.
Kael's heart pounded as the realization hit him: The Hollow Prince was no longer just an echo of Kael's past. He was shaping himself from Kael's most intimate memories, using them as fuel for his transformation.
Kael tried to burn through the transformation — but each strike only seemed to make the Hollow Prince sharper, faster, more Kael than Kael himself. It was as if every time Kael fought, the Hollow Prince learned and adapted, his movements becoming a twisted mirror of Kael's own.
And then, in the midst of the swirling ash, something inside Kael shattered.
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Flashback:
He saw his younger brother, Rael, standing beside him in the courtyard of their childhood home. Rael's face was pale, his body trembling. The trial had come for him, and the flames were rising.
"I'm scared, Kael… if the flames pick me, will I burn from the inside?"
Kael had promised him then, with all the fire in his heart, "Then I'll carry your fire, too."
But Rael never returned from that trial.
The pain — the grief — came rushing back in a wave, drowning Kael in an ocean of regret. He had failed Rael. He had failed the promise.
"This pain…" the Hollow Prince hissed, his voice dripping with venom. "This is your anchor. Your flaw. And now it's mine."
The Hollow Prince's eyes flared with intensity. He raised his blade and attacked.
A strike, not unlike the one Rael had once used against him — the very move that Kael had failed to protect Rael from. The Hollow Prince wielded Kael's grief against him. The memories cut deeper than any physical blow.
But Kael was not just his grief. He was not just the sum of his losses. He wasn't going to let this being — this twisted reflection — define him any longer.
Kael dropped his guard, not in defeat, but in clarity. He had a choice to make. His pain no longer had the power to define his actions. And the Hollow Prince, no matter how much he mimicked Kael, could never take away what was truly his.
Kael remembered Lysara's words — from the very beginning, when they first crossed paths.
"Flame isn't a weapon. It's memory that refuses to fade."
And now, Kael knew what he had to do.
He whispered to himself, a promise and a declaration, "Then let it all burn."
With that, Kael activated the Verse — not from rage, but from truth.
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Flame Verse XV — "Unwritten Testament"
The flames surged not brighter, but truer. They burned with the weight of every loss, every promise, every vow broken and remade. It was not the power to destroy, but the power to transform.
The Hollow Prince lunged, his blade slicing through the air. But Kael, now fully immersed in his own flame, was faster — sharper. He didn't need to match the Hollow Prince's every move. He just needed to be himself.
Kael didn't strike to kill. Instead, he overwrote the Hollow Prince with the truest version of himself — not the strongest, not the fastest, but the one who had learned from his mistakes.
The Hollow Prince began to crumble, his form warping and collapsing under the weight of Kael's true flame. The domain trembled as the Hollow Prince's body began to break apart, fading away like smoke.
In the silence that followed, Kael stood alone, panting, his body battered, but his flame unbroken.
The Hollow Prince's body was gone.
But a faint voice echoed in the ashes, a whisper that made Kael's heart skip a beat.
"You gave me a name…"
Kael, his voice hoarse, whispered back, "Then remember it. You're Rael now."
Lysara rushed to his side, her face pale with relief, but Kael could feel the weight of something else. Something was wrong. Something wasn't over.
From the ashen remnants of the battle, a second Realm Key emerged, pulsing with eerie light. But this time, it wasn't just any fragment.
It was bound to Kael's flame.
[End Of Chapter 30]
As Kael reached for the Realm Key, the ground beneath him trembled, and a dark shadow seemed to stir behind him. He could feel it — the presence of something far greater, far more dangerous than anything he had faced before.
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Chapter 31: Realm of Embers, Gate of GuiltKael and Lysara enter the Ember Realm — the place Kael swore never to return. A place where the weight of past sins transforms into monstrous horrors. As they navigate this treacherous realm, Kael faces the ghosts of his past and the overwhelming truth that some wounds may never heal.