For a moment, time cracked like glass.
Kai sat frozen beneath the white-hot beam pointed at his chest. It hummed with restrained devastation—like a caged sun daring to be unleashed.
"Wait—you don't wanna do this!" he shouted.
But Shin didn't flinch.
The heat scorched closer, licking at Kai's skin. In that moment, adrenaline surged like a tidal wave through his veins. Something buried deep in his body—dormant for what felt like centuries—erupted.
Flames.
First in thin tendrils, then in streaking bolts of crimson and gold. Fire marks—ancient sigils—carved themselves across his chest, shoulders, and arms in glowing arcs of embered power.
Kai gasped. "Wait… I remember now… my pyrokinetic abilities."
A third-generation.
The flame didn't come from the world around him—it came from within. His body ignited like a forgotten furnace relit. The cuffs snapped apart with a hiss of molten metal, vaporized by the sudden surge of heat.
In an instant, the room exploded into chaos.
Kai lunged forward, fire swirling off his limbs in rings of spiraling combustion. Shin moved just as fast—calm, precise, and terrifyingly efficient. His arm whipped through the air, launching a controlled blast of solar flame that Kai ducked under, countering with a spinning backhand wreathed in heat.
The entire room shook.
Panels blew out. Pipes burst in jets of steam. A wall collapsed under the force of colliding flames as the two rocketed out of the hidden compound and into the open wilderness beyond.
They landed in a clearing surrounded by pine and ash, the treetops shivering under the temperature spike.
Fire met fire.
Every punch Kai threw was wrapped in streaking trails of flame. His body became a blur of motion—burning kicks, blazing jabs, bursts of pressure like miniature volcanic eruptions. Shin matched it with pinpoint counterblasts, his flames glowing a brighter gold with every movement, his body casting shadows that shimmered from the intensity of his solar heat.
"You weren't expecting this!" Kai roared, unleashing a wave of spiraling flame from both arms. "I told you—I remember everything! I don't care if the Cataclysm was a thousand years ago!"
Shin didn't respond with words. Just a half-smile.
But deep in his golden eyes, a glint of interest shimmered—thin, sharp, like sunlight through a blade.
He was enjoying this.
Fire collided again in a blinding burst, the shockwave flattening nearby trees. The forest ignited in patches as their battle expanded outward, infernos dancing across the landscape.
Minutes blurred.
Smoke curled through the air. The ground itself glowed red from residual heat. Kai's body trembled—not with fear, but with exhaustion. He was pushing himself past his limits, his flame flickering under the weight of fatigue.
But he didn't stop.
His fists flew faster, wilder. The flames at his feet launched him in erratic bursts, allowing him to fight like a meteor bouncing off the battlefield. He was unpredictable. Fierce. Desperate.
And Shin—still calm—was starting to sweat.
"This the best you got?" Shin said coolly, flicking a line of solar flame across the clearing.
Kai ducked, skidded, and shot upward like a rocket, his fist trailing a flame spiral. "Shut the fuck up!"
The impact rocked Shin, sending him skidding back—but only for a second. His smirk faded. Something darker settled into his stance.
The air pressure shifted.
The sky pulsed.
And then it hit.
A clean, silent movement—so fast it looked like light had curved.
Shin appeared behind Kai in a blur, fingers glowing with an intense gold-white blaze.
"Nova—"
Kai turned too late.
"—Blitz."
A deafening boom echoed through the woods. Kai's body twisted as the first hit connected to his ribs, detonating in a burst of radiant force. A second strike hit his shoulder. Then chest. Then face.
The final blow—a spinning heel surrounded by a corona of pure solar plasma—struck his right eye directly.
Light swallowed everything.
When the smoke cleared, Kai lay motionless in a crater of molten earth, flames still licking across his body like dying stars.
His chest rose and fell slowly, barely.
One eye sealed shut.
The other open wide—now a soft, eerie blue, centered by a faint star-shaped pupil.
But his right eye... the one Shin had struck...
It pulsed.
A vibrant, corrupted green shimmered within, shaped like a clover. Four leaves. Glowing. Watching.
Kai was down.
But Adolla was very much awake.
He woke with a choked gasp.
Ash filled his lungs. Pain filled his body.
He clutched his head, his vision split between blurred light and something else. Something wrong.
"What the hell happe—aghh… my eye…"
His hand flew to it, only to recoil instantly. Even the slightest touch sent a jolt of white-hot agony through his skull. The flesh was scorched. Still smoldering.
Kai pushed himself up, shakily, his knees cracking as he stood.
The forest was still burning in pockets. The crater behind him sizzled like magma cooling over stone. But Shin… was gone.
Fire Force had moved on.
He didn't know why they left him alive. Maybe mercy. Maybe cruelty. Maybe curiosity.
Didn't matter.
Kai staggered back through the charred treeline, following smoke-smeared branches until the silhouette of the ruined compound came into view. What hadn't collapsed was flickering in residual flame, like the bones of a dying titan.
He slipped through a side corridor, coughing blood into his sleeve.
Down a shattered hall.
Into what looked like an old supply wing.
Bandages. Disinfectants. Burn gel. He patched himself up in silence, wincing as he wrapped gauze around his torso, over the jagged burn across his shoulder, and carefully over the ruined eye.
Then the locker room.
He stripped out of his scorched shirt and found replacements.
Black button-down.
Black pants.
A black overcoat, slightly too long in the arms but heavy enough to hide the shaking in his limbs.
And finally—
An eyepatch.
It was stiff and worn from age. He tightened it over his right eye, hiding the four-leaf clover glow beneath the fabric. But even as he covered it… he could still feel it. That strange warmth. That watching presence. Like something inside the eye was still awake, still hungry.
He stepped outside again, the cold morning breeze biting against his skin.
He looked like a shadow.
But his flame had never burned brighter.
And whatever Adolla had touched inside him—
It wasn't finished.
Not even close.