Chapter 25: The God Who Bled
The chants didn't stop.
Not even after Liam withdrew from the balcony. Not even after Ella burned the banners fluttering with the mark of Syndael from Ashenhold's highest tower. The crowd kept chanting his name—Liam, Flameborn, Flamebearer, Fire God. The names kept mutating like wildfire in a windstorm. And worse, some of them began to kneel.
Liam had never known fear quite like this. Not in the caves beneath the Wyrmspire. Not even in the moment his own blood sang with divine power.
Because this was belief.
And belief, Ella once told him, was a more dangerous weapon than any sword.
---
A Fire Beneath the City
He didn't sleep that night. He couldn't.
The Emberblade hummed softly at the foot of his bed, glowing gently in sync with his pulse. He stared at the ceiling until the sun rose, then dressed and walked to the eastern chamber of Ashenhold's inner keep—the one no one else dared to enter now.
The flame chamber.
Once a forge, now a sanctum of sorts. When he'd first come back from the Temple of the First Flame, he thought it was coincidence that the old stone here responded to his touch. But now he knew better. Syndael had walked these halls before.
And now, Liam did too.
But he wasn't alone.
"I thought you might come here," Ella said, stepping into the room like a shadow gliding through smoke.
He didn't turn.
"They think I'm a god," he said.
"You carry a god's blood," she replied, calm as ever.
"But I'm not one."
"You killed one. You inherited another."
He turned now. His voice cracked—not with fear, but fury. "That shouldn't make me divine."
She didn't flinch. "No. But that's not your decision to make anymore."
He stared at her. "Whose is it?"
Ella took a breath. "The people. The gods. Fate. Take your pick."
---
Flamebound Council
The next day, a council was called—not of rulers or warriors, but of witnesses. People who had seen what Liam had done. People who had heard Syndael's voice in dreams since the temple was opened. People who were beginning to change.
They called themselves the Flamebound.
And they were spreading.
Liam watched from behind a silken veil in the gallery above the council chamber. Ella stood beside him, cloaked, silent.
One woman, a smith from Blackreach, held up a shard of steel in her palm. It ignited—without tinder, without touch. "When I heard the Flameborn's name, it burned. Not painfully. As if it recognized me."
Another man, a war orphan from the east, said he no longer dreamed of blood—but of golden fire, and a throne that pulsed like a heartbeat.
"I never asked for this," Liam whispered.
"No one ever does," Ella replied. "That's what makes it real."
---
The Secret Rebellion
But not everyone believed in gods—new or old.
Selene brought word of a gathering under the old quarter. Vampires and mortals alike who believed Liam had been possessed, not ascended. That he had been taken by Syndael, and now acted as his puppet.
They called themselves the Ashless.
And they wanted Liam dead.
"Not to destroy him," Selene whispered in the shadow of the council chamber. "To release him. They think they're saving you."
Liam laughed bitterly. "Funny. I don't feel saved."
"They have mages," she said. "Old blood curses. And... they've stolen something."
Ella's eyes narrowed. "What?"
"The Heart of Fire."
The crystal that had burned in Ashenhold's core since the war. It stabilized the Emberblade. It stabilized Liam.
Without it, the power in his veins was already becoming harder to control.
His hands trembled.
His heartbeat echoed in his ears.
Ella caught his wrist. "We get it back. Now."
---
The Tunnels Below
They descended into the catacombs that night. No guards. Just Liam, Ella, and Selene. The place smelled of old war and ancient dust, and the walls whispered with old runes meant to guard the city from invasion—now cracked and defaced.
They found the Ashless not chanting or worshipping, but bleeding.
One by one, their members stood in a circle around the Heart of Fire, cutting palms, spilling blood into a black stone basin beneath the crystal.
"What are they doing?" Liam hissed.
Ella's face was pale. "They're trying to extinguish the flame. By offering mortal blood. Undoing the divine. It's heresy."
"Or desperation," Selene added grimly.
They couldn't wait.
Liam stepped forward, Emberblade drawn. The flame leapt from its edge in a spiraling arc of gold and red.
"Stop!" he shouted.
The Ashless turned.
Their leader was a man with a face half-burned from an old war—someone Liam had once saved from a vampire raid. His name had been Darien.
"Flameborn," Darien said coldly. "I'm sorry. But I cannot let you become another god who forgets us."
He threw a vial.
It shattered against Liam's chest—and pain like molten fire coursed through his limbs.
"Bloodbane," Ella gasped. "They prepared for you."
The room exploded into fire and steel.
---
Blood and Divinity
Liam fought through the agony, through the fire, through the scream of the Emberblade in his hands. He no longer moved like a man—more like a storm.
And when it was done, when the last of the Ashless fell, the Heart of Fire remained whole.
But Darien was alive. Bleeding. On his knees.
"You think you saved the world," he said. "But you're remaking it in your own image. What happens when you can't stop the fire inside you?"
Liam didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
---
The Crown of Flame
Back in the throne hall, the council pressed for a coronation.
Not as king.
As Flameborne Sovereign.
A god-king.
Liam refused. At first.
But then came the dreams again.
Syndael. The Temple. The Fire.
And something worse.
A voice deeper than even Syndael's. Older. Sleeping still... but stirring.
"I am the Hollow Flame," it whispered. "I burn without purpose."
When Liam woke, his bed was scorched.
---
The Promise
He stood on the battlements with Ella that morning. The sun rose, casting golden light over Ashenhold. Peace had returned—for now.
But the silence held weight.
"There's another," he said.
Ella didn't ask who. She already knew.
"They'll keep coming," he said. "One by one."
She nodded.
"And you?" she asked. "Will you keep burning?"
He looked at his hands. The flame no longer scared him.
"I'll burn as long as I have to," he said. "But not for worship. Not for a throne."
He turned to her.
"For you. For this city. For us."
Ella's eyes shimmered—not with tears, but firelight.
She stepped closer.
"And if the fire consumes you?"
He smiled.
"Then you'll pull me back."
She kissed him.
Not as a queen.
But as someone who had seen gods rise and fall—and still believed in him.
---
End of Chapter 25