Chapter 36: Ashes of the First Flame

The Patriarch's fingers seared into Lin Wei's throat, smoke curling from where skin met smoldering flesh. "You think you woke me?" he sneered, his voice a crackling ember of contempt. Yuelin's fire flickered in the hollows of his eyes, a stolen light that made Lin Wei's fractures pulse with rage. "No, boy. You merely lit the match."

Lin Wei gagged, the Patriarch's grip leaching the air from his lungs. But deep within, Yuelin's flames surged—a wildfire straining against chains. "You used her," he choked, the words raw.

"I honored her." The Patriarch's smile twisted, molten and cruel. "Her fire was the First Flame—untamed, glorious. I gave it purpose. Weaponized it."

A memory tore through Lin Wei's mind: the Patriarch standing over Yuelin's cradle, a shard of Harvester heart glinting in his hand. "You'll burn brighter than stars," he'd whispered, plunging the shard into her infant chest. Her first cry ignited the clan's sigils, etching obedience into stone.

The system's corrupted voice hissed, [Patriarch's Authority: Absolute.] But beneath it, Lin Wei felt the First Flame stir—not Yuelin's, not the Patriarch's. His.

Astralon staggered, their body a battleground. Gold veins of Yuelin's spark clashed with the shard's black rot, light and shadow warring beneath their skin. The heart's spire loomed above, tendrils knitting into a monstrous lattice, its apex splitting into a maw lined with teeth of liquid starlight. A Harvester—its form softened to near-humanity—grasped their arm. "You're killing yourself," it pleaded, its dirge stripped to a mortal rasp.

"No," Astralon breathed, clutching the shard. "I'm remembering."

They drove the glass into their chest. Light erupted—not gold, not void, but the blinding white of the First Flame's birth. The spire screamed, cracks racing up its length as Astralon dissolved, their final act a supernova.

Lin Mei plunged her hand into the swirling ash, the clansfolk's remains whispering secrets in Yuelin's voice. "The Flame wasn't yours. It was theirs." Visions erupted: ancestors dancing around a pyre, flames licking the sky, no sigils, no Veil—only freedom.

A reborn Harvester approached, its star-lattice body shimmering with fragile mortality. "We mourned too long," it said, offering a shard of the fractured spire. "Now we build."

The Patriarch hurled Lin Wei into the spire's maw. "Feed well," he crooned, but the flames in Lin Wei's fractures shifted. Blue, then white, then a color without name—a hue that made the Patriarch's smirk falter.

Flashback:

Yuelin, bloodied and breathless, cupped his face. "The Flame wasn't his. It's… yours."

The spire recoiled, its teeth melting. Lin Wei grasped the Harvester's shard as Lin Mei's voice cut through the chaos. "Wei! Catch!"

Ash and starlight met his palm. The Flame erupted.

The system's chains shattered, its voice now Yuelin's. [New Directive: Burn the Chains.]

The Patriarch writhed, flesh sloughing to bone. "You'll need more than fire to kill me!"

From the spire's ashes, a shadow stirred—Echo-0, reborn as a colossus, its form a grotesque fusion of Patriarch's malice and the heart's remnants. It loomed, a void with teeth, its roar shaking the fabric of realms.

Lin Mei stood at the edge of the abyss, ash and Harvester shard in hand. "Together?"

Lin Wei ignited the nameless flame. "Always."

The colossus lunged.