The sky above the ruins had turned sick with smoke.
Ash drifted over the shattered cityscape like snow, coating everything in shades of gray and black. The air was thick with the scent of burned metal and oil, and even the wind carried a strange heat—unnatural, suffocating. Valen stood on the edge of a crumbling overpass, the collapsed city beneath him glowing with dull orange embers. From this height, the world looked dead.
But the heat was rising.
And something new had awakened in the deep.
A trail of fire scarred the streets below, weaving through what had once been part of the old capital. Buildings twisted by Riftborn corruption leaned like skeletal giants, their forms twitching subtly with the same breathless hunger that haunted the Riftborn themselves.
Behind Valen, Lira approached with urgency in her step.
"It's him," she said, her voice tight. "The rogue commander we lost three months ago. Vannik."
Valen's eyes narrowed. "He turned?"
Lira nodded grimly. "Not just turned. He's using Blackfire."
The name sent a cold shiver up Valen's spine.
Blackfire. A Riftborn mutation of flame—fire that didn't burn with heat, but with memory. It twisted not the flesh, but the mind. It was forbidden for a reason.
"Where?" he asked.
Lira pointed beyond the ruins. "An old reactor station. He's drawn power from the Rift beneath it. We don't know how stable it is."
Valen clenched his fist. His Echo of the End flickered to life around him—shadows licking across his fingers, wrapping him in a protective mist.
"Then we put him down."
Into the Fire
The approach was brutal.
Valen moved through flame-laced ruins with Lira and a small unit of rebels in tow. Blackfire clung to the wreckage like tar, burning cold and unnatural, warping metal and stone alike into jagged, impossible shapes. Buildings bled molten shadow. Light bent strangely here.
"Keep your distance from the flame," Valen warned the others. "It doesn't kill like normal fire. It consumes."
He pressed forward alone, scouting ahead while his Echo resisted the pull of the corrupted heat. The deeper he moved, the louder the voices became—not from the camp, not from any rebel.
But from inside the fire.
They whispered in echoes.
His name. Over and over. Distorted, layered, wrong.
"Valen… Valen… come see…"
He ground his teeth and shut it out.
Ahead, the ruined shell of the reactor station loomed, pulsing with Rift energy. Blackfire curled out of its busted windows and vents like a living thing, winding up into the air in long, flickering ribbons. The heat wasn't heat. It was pressure, like standing beneath an ocean of flame.
And then he saw him.
Vannik stood in the heart of the reactor, body half-armored in twisted Riftborn plating. His skin glowed with sick red sigils, and fire leaked from his mouth and eyes like poison.
"You came," Vannik rasped, voice brittle, cracked like burning paper.
Valen stepped forward, unfazed. "You were one of us."
"I still am," Vannik said, spreading his arms. "I just stopped lying to myself. The Rift doesn't destroy. It transforms."
Valen raised his hand.
Black tendrils of Echo curled around his wrist.
"We're done talking."
The Blackfire Duel
Vannik moved like lightning—fire bursting from his legs, launching him across the chamber in a streak of burning shadow. Valen raised his shield just in time to absorb the impact. The force threw him back, boots skidding over melted flooring.
The chamber exploded into chaos.
Blackfire surged in waves, licking across the walls, raining sparks and ash. Valen dove through it, his Echo adapting mid-motion—shaping into long blades along both arms. He clashed with Vannik, steel on fire, shadows against hell.
The flames burned deeper than the skin.
Each blow was laced with memory—visions of the past twisted into nightmares. Valen saw his mother's face, warped and screaming. His childhood home, burning in red ash. His own corpse, surrounded by laughing Riftborn.
But he pressed on.
Gritting his teeth, he struck Vannik across the chest, sending him crashing through a wall of twisted rebar and glass. The rogue commander coughed blood—but smiled.
"You're not ready," he hissed. "You still fear what you could become."
Valen stepped through the fire, breathing slow, measured.
"I don't fear it. I've seen it."
He drove a spike of Echo through Vannik's shoulder, pinning him to the cracked floor. But just as he went for the finishing blow—
Vannik screamed—and the Blackfire exploded.
The Baptism
Valen was thrown back as the entire chamber bloomed into unnatural flame. His vision went white. The ground beneath him broke apart.
And he fell.
Through flame. Through memory. Through something deeper.
The fire curled around him—not burning, but searching. Tearing through his thoughts, rifling through his soul.
He saw Lira dead. Kira dying. The rebels slaughtered.
He saw himself at the center of it all, eyes gone dark, the Echo of the End devouring the world.
"No," he growled, gripping his own chest.
But the flame whispered.
"You are the fire. You were made for this."
In that moment, Valen stopped resisting.
He opened his hand.
And let it in.
Rebirth in Flame
When he rose, the flames were gone.
The air shimmered with residual heat, and the reactor chamber was in ruins. Vannik lay dead, his body split in two. But Valen's own figure had changed.
His Echo now burned faintly, tinged with Blackfire. It coiled along his arms like serpents of flame and shadow, dancing at the edges of his form. It didn't feel wrong.
It felt… complete.
But the cost was carved into his skin.
Burns laced his forearms—deep and blackened, the mark of the fire that had tried to unmake him. His heartbeat was different now. He could hear it echo.
Lira rushed in moments later, rifle raised—but froze at the sight of him.
"Valen…"
"I'm still me," he said.
But he wasn't sure how true that was anymore.
The Aftermath
Back at the sanctuary, silence reigned as Valen was escorted into the med bay. Kira met him at the door. She stared at his arms, at the new, smoking patterns along his veins.
"You touched it," she said.
"I survived it," he replied.
"For now."
He didn't respond.
Later that night, alone in his quarters, he stood before a broken mirror. His reflection shimmered—eyes darker than before, the fire flickering within.
The voice inside whispered again. Not with malice.
But with invitation.
"We are closer now."
Valen turned away from the mirror and clenched his fists.
He didn't yet know what this power would become.
But if war was coming—he would burn before he bent.