Chapter 73: Moment Within

Moments ago, Scar had been at the brink of death. Now he stood somewhere that felt vaguely familiar, and yet he was certain he had never been there before.

A quick look at himself confirmed what shouldn’t have been possible. Every injury that had him on death’s door was gone. Strange didn’t cover it.

But despite the confusion, he found himself hoping, quietly, that this was something helpful. And not hell.

He stood in nothing; a space, darkness in every direction with no sense of boundary or depth.

Then the world around him shifted, the emptiness folding itself into something else entirely. A forest rose in its place, abyssal and dark, the trees dense enough to feel like walls.

And somewhere within them, at a distance that made the details hard to confirm, something stood. A bizarre creature. Chained.

The chains were massive, the kind of thing engineered to restrain something incomprehensible, heavy enough to drag mountains from their foundations.

And yet the creature they held wasn’t particularly large. No taller than Scar himself, by the look of it, though the distance made clarity difficult. That detail alone felt wrong in a way he couldn’t articulate.

What pulled at his familiarity were the flames standing beside the creature. Six of them, and each one was distinct.

Three were figures formed from dark flames, burning low and deliberate. One was blue, and the other was ethereal purple. The sixth was harder to categorize. It was shadowy, more absence than presence, as though it existed in the space between light and dark.

At first, he assumed they were the creature’s guardians. The longer he stared, the harder the realization hit.

Then he remembered…

It clicked. The fourth wielder of the Flames of the Unknown, King, had seen something like this in the moments before his death.

Only three of the dark creatures, not six, but the place itself hadn’t changed. The details lined up in a way that left no room for doubt. This was the same place.

Scar frowned.

“Wait… King died right after he returned from here. Does that mean I’m next?”

The worry was plain in his eyes, layered with impatience and something that hadn’t quite settled into calm since he arrived.

He was still processing all of it when the first figure moved, one of the three made entirely of dark flames, separating from the others and beginning to approach. Another realization came with it, and this one hit differently.

King had seen something like this, and now the pieces were connecting. The figure approaching was Kendrick, the first wielder of the Flames of the Unknown.

Which made the rest of them predecessors too, each one accounted for among the six. That much Scar absorbed quickly. But it wasn’t what held his attention.

If the figures were his predecessors, then what was the creature in chains?

Soon…

Kendrick’s form changed. The dark flames that composed him surged outward and reshaped, building into something nearly twice the size. It was jagged at the edges, horned, winged, and the whole thing burned dark.

“I get it now… I’m supposed to fight you, aren’t I?”

It wasn’t about winning, he understood that without being told. He just needed to land one strike on Kendrick.

The knowledge arrived fully formed, etched into his mind without a word passing between them, as though some prior communication had taken place that he hadn’t been conscious of.

King had been in this same position. He just hadn’t done anything about it. He was too fed up with the weight of the Inheritance, too done with all of it to raise a hand.

Scar assumed his stance. Kendrick mirrored him. Then, without preamble, Kendrick charged, and Scar moved around it with ease. He noticed something at that moment.

The Moon’s Blessing wasn’t present, and no enhancement to his strength. He was operating on his own terms entirely. That should have been worrying. But knowing his situation, losing here simply wasn’t something he could allow himself to do.

Scar didn’t linger. He charged, and the strikes came… one after another, relentless, each one carrying intent. Kendrick moved through all of them. Every strike avoided, cleanly and without apparent effort.

He felt nothing like the person who had just been torn apart by Adisa. His body was fresh, strength sitting in him as it had never been spent. And still, for all of that, he couldn’t land a single attack on Kendrick.

He shifted his focus, trying to read Kendrick’s movements rather than overpower them, hunting for a weakness. What he found instead gave him pause.

Something strange and unsettling enough to make him question what the Flames of the Unknown actually were.

Wherever Kendrick planted his essence. The ground, the leaves, the trunks, and everything in his immediate vicinity decayed, visibly and without hesitation.

It wasn’t the kind of thing his mind was willing to simply move past, and yet it had to. The observation sat there, but something more pressing was louder than the curiosity. He had a feeling that living or dying hinged entirely on whether he could land a single strike on Kendrick.

Scar stayed close, trailing Kendrick’s movement, and sent a feint toward his chest. The plan was to use the momentum to redirect to power a kick that the feint had set up.

But Kendrick moved through it cleanly, fast enough to turn the whole sequence around and land a strike. It was clean across his face, and the impact carried him straight into the ground.

“Fuck… that could have snapped my neck.”

Kendrick was the strongest among all seven wielders of the Flames of the Unknown. Two years with the Inheritance had built him into something formidable. Scar came in right behind him, not to brag, but that proximity meant something.

It meant this wasn’t impossible. With the right amount of wits and strength, he could still take this. On the opposite end of the spectrum sat Brenda, the second wielder and arguably the weakest, having died only a few days after the awakening.

Scar had expected to draw blood. Instead, his face began to decay. He held his ground anyway.

“Come on, bro. Bring it on.”

A confident smirk crossed his face as he gestured for Kendrick to come. Kendrick accepted without a moment’s pause, charging straight at him.

Scar held his ground and took the strike on purpose, reaching for Kendrick’s hand in the same motion. He tried to use the momentum to make the hit mean something.

Kendrick was too fast for it. The grab missed, the force of the punch was unforgiving, and Scar went skidding backward with nothing gained.

Scar didn’t stop. This time, he held his ground entirely, letting Kendrick pour attack after attack into him without retreating.

Every strike spread decay, but Scar’s will anchored him, holding him through the process. He knew what this was. His only chance at winning, his only chance at surviving. He stood through it.

After a few more hits, with his body already decomposing around him, Scar found the last of what he had and used it.

He grabbed Kendrick’s strike the instant it made contact and, without pause, kicked him in the gut with everything remaining. Kendrick slammed into the ground.

He stood there panting, each breath feeling like something was pulling at his heart from the inside. But he had known.

After allowing Kendrick to land that many attacks unchallenged, any sudden attempt from Scar was bound to catch him off guard. Confusion was only natural. He had counted on it.

Phew…

“So what now?”

Kendrick walked toward him and settled nearby without speaking. Scar kept his eyes on the remaining figures, half expecting them to move forward, to take their turn.

But nothing came from that direction. What came next wasn’t from any of them. It was from his own body.

The flesh began to tear away from him, and panic surged until he realized what was happening.

He wasn’t coming apart. He was changing. Each layer that peeled back revealed a blinding light from beneath, brighter with every shedding, until the process was complete and his body held no flesh at all. Only light, from every inch of him.

He was confused, but it didn’t last. The moment the transformation finished, new memories arrived and filled his mind.

He had become a white flame. Unique, like each predecessor before him had been unique in their own way. That was what the Flames of the Unknown were.

The meaning of being a white flame was still beyond him. It was something he would have to unpack later.

What he did understand was simpler and more immediate. To earn all of his predecessors, he had to fight them, one by one, the way he had fought Kendrick.

That was the condition. And with Kendrick already on his side, something shifted. What Adisa had put out of reach was becoming possible again.

The moment the realization struck, everything vanished. When his eyes opened again, he was on the floor. The pain burned through his body like the sun, the portal to hell still opening beneath him.

He had spent what felt like forever in that bizarre space, and yet not a single minute had passed in reality.

Despite everything, words left him almost immediately. Hoarse, rough at the edges, but there.

“Emotional State, Third Form, Decaying Hands.”

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