The gravely wounded were carried to the spring first. Novice healers rinsed blood, fed pills, and coaxed life-essence into shattered meridians. Those with lighter cuts ringed the perimeter, weapons ready. Years of warfare taught them prudence even inside Jared’s ward.
Others knelt among newborn flame spiritual plants, clipping each stalk like fragile glass, packaging portions for the patients who could best absorb its blaze. The encampment, moments ago a panicked mob, began to hum with ordered purpose.
Gavin and Yvette healed fast. The pair volunteered to help look after heavily injured folks. Yvette gently settled Clara beside a warm, glassy slab at the spring’s edge.
Clara swallowed one of Jared’s pills, then sipped the crystalline water. Cool vitality threaded through every nerve. Charred channels sent back pinpricks of relief so pure she nearly moaned.
She gathered her focus and set the Sky Scorching Sword Art flowing. Strands of mild fire energy from the secret realm seeped into her veins, mending flesh at a speed the outside world could never match.
Only after order returned did Jared finally lift his eyes to the tallest crystal peak nearby, a mountain crowned by phantom golden halls aflame.
At its summit stood a solitary figure in scarlet robes, back turned to the camp, face toward the deeper inferno.
Heat whipped his sleeves, yet an air of chilled solitude clung to him—dignity laced with quiet sorrow.
It was Reiner.
Jared’s body dissolved like mist. He reformed an instant later beside Reiner, shoulder to shoulder on the sun-hot ridge.
Reiner’s frame shivered, barely a breath, yet he did not turn. As though he had foreseen Jared’s arrival from the very start. No words. Only the distant bellow of flame oceans below and the hiss of furnace winds between them—two masters sharing a silence that needed no translation.
In the end, the silence fractured.
It was Reiner who spoke first, the proud edge gone from his voice. What replaced it was a tangle of emotions: wonder, fatigue, and something like grudging respect, all vibrating beneath his words.
“Who in the heavens are you, really? You stand at Level Seven of the Human Immortal Realm, yet a moment ago, when you unleashed your technique, your aura all but transcended its cage…”
“I felt it crest, ready to break through at any breath. No ordinary Level Seven Human Immortal could do that. You dispelled, soothed, and even commanded the raging fire-spirits that rule this canyon, and what you wielded bears no mark of any heritage known to Level Ten. And that sword stroke you showed outside the gorge—what intent was that?”
“I have honed both flame and blade for several millennia, yet I have never witnessed, much less understood, an intent that seems to stand above the Five Elements themselves, beyond every written law.”
Jared did not answer. His gaze drifted over the wounded figures below, now being tended within the pocket of calm he had carved out of the inferno, then he looked deeper into the secret realm where the flames burned even hotter, even stranger.
Only then did he speak, and it was a question, not an answer. “Sir, what ties bind you to the Fire Spirit Lord and the Fire Demon Lord? How much do you truly know about this Blazefire Secret Realm?”
Reiner stiffened, as if Jared’s words had scraped across some secret buried deep. Slowly he turned and, for the first time, studied Jared as an equal.
The youth’s face was placid, his eyes deep and calm, yet within those depths flickered the reflection of boundless stars and an ocean of flame.
Long seconds passed. Emotions—struggle, nostalgia, bitterness—flitted across Reiner’s face before he let out a long, weighty sigh, the sound of a man laying down a burden he had carried too far.
“Very well… You master the Blazing Stride, you speak the Demon Lord’s name without hesitation, and you command a sword intent that defies reason. Perhaps fate itself means for you to know.”
His gaze drifted toward the deepest heart of the realm, where the colors of the fire were most violent and the power most inscrutable.
When he spoke again, his voice seemed to travel out of some far-distant past.
“The Fire Spirit Lord and the Fire Demon Lord…” Each word felt heavy enough to bend time. “They are my seniors…”
“Senior?” Jared’s brow arched, the answer so unexpected it cut straight through his composure.
The Spirit Lord and the Demon Lord tried to kill each other the instant they met; nothing about them had ever suggested brotherhood, let alone the bond of shared tutelage.
Reiner nodded, a crooked smile mixing nostalgia with self-mockery. “Yes… That was a very long time ago, so long that Level Ten had not yet settled into its present shape…”
“Back then, I was little more than a vagrant child, scrambling from day to day, holding life by its tattered edge. Because I carried a faint ember of the Solar-Flame bloodline, I survived a calamity that should have ended me…”
“In that desperate hour, an old wanderer appeared—plain of face, humble of dress, yet his eyes seemed able to pierce the past and future alike, reach into the marrow of the cosmos itself. We called him Master Flame… He saw that, though my talent was meager, my heart was unyielding and my bond with fire absolute. So he broke his own rules and took me in as a disciple…”
“Back in those days,” Reiner said, his voice low yet bright with memory, “our master already counted two staggering prodigies beneath his wing: my first senior, Lucas Ashborne, and the second, Flegel Emberly.”
“Lucas? Flegel?” Jared asked, tasting the names as though they were half-forgotten notes of an ancient song.
Hearing the names, he realized at once that Lucas was none other than the Fire Demon Lord, while Flegel was the Fire Spirit Lord.
