"To remember fire is to remember who you were before you were named."
The old forge lay buried beneath the eastern slope of Emberheart, hidden behind collapsed corridors and sealed stone. Once, long ago, it had been the heart of the Sect's beast-tempering rituals—before the traditions of beast and flame were forcibly split.
Now, it was little more than ruin.
Or so they believed.
Shen Li stood before the warped archway, fingers brushing stone blackened by centuries of forgotten fire. He pressed his palm to the cracked symbol of the dual phoenix—a mark no longer used, yet burning in his dreams.
The seal flared faintly, recognizing blood.
The door opened.
He descended alone.
Inside the chamber, the heat pulsed from the mountain itself. Lava did not flow here, but the stone walls still glowed with old warmth, as if some ancient breath stirred behind them.
He unrolled the scroll, reverently now, no longer just curious—but committed.
"Let the blood remember."
"Let the beast awaken."
"Let fire no longer be tamed."
He sat cross-legged at the room's center, the floor etched with forgotten runes that flickered faintly under his qi. The Beastmark at his chest pulsed, restless.
This was not simple meditation.
This was invocation.
He placed one hand over his heart, and the other flat against the scorched stone floor.
He began.
Shen Li drew in a slow, steady breath.
Qi surged to his core, then bent not upward through his dantian as in Sect-approved patterns—but outward, spiraling across his limbs and into his bone marrow.
He gritted his teeth as his body strained.
The scroll warned of this:
The beast will reject control. The flame will demand memory.
The dual paths inside him—cultivator and beast-blooded—collided like opposing tides.
Visions assailed him.
A forest aflame, a great stag screaming as fire consumed its antlers.
A mother's voice—his mother?—shouting in an unknown tongue, blood on her hands.
Liansheng, surrounded by flame, his expression grief-stricken as his fellow Elders turned their backs on him.
Shen Li's eyes snapped open, but they glowed now—lit from within.
He could feel it: the beast-essence in his blood no longer dormant, the phoenix-ember rising in tandem.
Two halves. One core.
The power surged again, harder now.
Flame qi erupted from his pores in spirals—raw, untamed—and the mark on his chest expanded, climbing across his ribs and shoulders in tendrils of red-black fire.
His vision blurred.
"Endure," he muttered, shaking. "Endure or break."
Each breath seared.
Each heartbeat roared like a forge hammer.
And still—he endured.
He forced the flame not into control, but coherence. He did not bend the beast aura. He let it rage through him—then wrapped it in his own will, forging it into purpose.
Like sword and sheath.
Like breath and fire.
Not beast. Not man.
Emberborne.
The chamber pulsed.
Old glyphs lit underfoot.
The flames around him began to slow. Not fade—but dance, no longer wild.
They answered him now.
As the final glyph blazed, a shape emerged from his shadow.
Not beast.
Not illusion.
A wreathed creature of fire and smoke—part fox, part hawk, part something older—stood beside him, watching with molten eyes.
He recognized it.
His own blood-beast.
Not one he had tamed.
One that had waited.
The beast inclined its head.
And stepped into him.
Pain exploded—then vanished.
The flames died down.
The chamber fell still.
Shen Li collapsed, gasping, as sweat poured from him. But his skin no longer burned. His pulse no longer raced.
He felt… clearer.
Whole.
"So this is what they feared," he murmured hoarsely. "Not chaos. Not madness."
"Unity."
He lay there for long minutes.
His vision swam with afterimages—Liansheng's final stand, the Beast Court's silent betrayal, and the fire that had once engulfed half the mountain to protect the Sect, not destroy it.
He had not merely glimpsed a technique.
He had reawakened a path buried in his bloodline.
And now that it stirred, it would not rest.
He rose, trembling but resolute.
No one must know.
Not yet.
But when the time came, when the Sect stood again at the edge of war—he would not fight as the heir they expected.
He would fight as the heir fire remembered.
The Emberborne.