I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 872: Come forth, Emberion!

The descent through the spiritual threshold felt less like falling and more like being hurled through the cracked hull of a burning ship.

Jack hit the ground at terminal velocity.

The impact was concussive. A deafening, metallic crack tore through the quiet expanse as his boots slammed into a jagged shelf of deep crimson obsidian.

Spiderweb fractures spread fifty paces in every direction, dislodging ancient slabs of scorched stone that tumbled into lightless fissures below.

Jack didn’t stumble. He didn’t drop to a knee.

He stood completely upright, his dark spiritual coat snapping in a dry, howling gale that carried the stench of sulfur, pulverized iron, and centuries of cremation ash.

Above him, the sky was not the cold, reflective glass of the Dark Sector. It was a churning, suffocating vortex of bleeding crimson, revolving slowly around a bloated, motionless blood-moon that cast long, razor-sharp shadows across the cracked caldera.

Before his vision could fully clear, the realm welcomed him.

A tidal wave of white-hot spiritual flame surged over the lip of the plateau, forty spans high, curling forward with the fury of a collapsing mountain.

It was an atmospheric purge.

An ambient firewall designed to incinerate any foreign consciousness that dared enter the Crucible without the blessing of the flame.

Jack didn’t reach for a barrier. He didn’t move an inch.

The roaring inferno slammed into his chest with enough kinetic force to shatter a fortress wall.

Nothing happened.

The white-hot spiritual fire washed over his shoulders, parted around his neck, and flattened harmlessly against his pale skin. To Jack, the catastrophic conflagration felt like nothing more than a warm, tepid spring breeze.

Fire Immunity.

The fundamental law woven into his very existence held with cold, unyielding perfection. The fire swirled past him, shedding dead gray embers into the crimson dust behind his boots, leaving his dark clothes and skin completely unmarked.

Beneath the fabric of his shirt, against the skin of his back, the Dark Sigil pulsed once. A cold, light-swallowing heartbeat radiated along his spine, anchoring his soul core into the burning tectonic bedrock.

“Well,” Jack muttered, his breath coming steady, cold, and slow. “At least the welcome is predictable.”

“Intruder!”

A voice like two iron shields grinding together shattered the howl of the sulfur wind.

From the jagged basalt spires encircling the plateau, five silhouettes detached themselves from the rock. They fell like solid iron meteors, slamming into the perimeter of the crater Jack had carved with his arrival.

The impacts threw up blinding clouds of glowing red grit. As the dust settled, five figures rose, their presence radiating ancient, suffocating martial intent.

They were massive, past Soul Wardens of the Fire Soul Realm.

Each was clad in heavy, brutal plates of soul-iron forged from blackened slag and glowing crimson steel. In their grips rested greatswords broad as gravestones, double-bitted waraxes, and barbed polearms, every single weapon wreathed in roaring, concentrated spiritual flame that hissed against the stone.

The lead warrior stood a head taller than the rest, his broad chest encased in an interlocking cuirass of volcanic basalt, an iron half-mask welded directly into his scarred jaw. He lowered the heavy point of a massive halberd until it leveled at Jack’s throat.

“A living soul crawls into the Crucible,” the lead Warden growled, his voice carrying the deep, wet rattle of an old battlefield wound. “Unarmored. Empty-handed. You reek of the surface. But you look so weak. Why are you missing a hand?!”

A second spirit stepped forward from the right, twirling a pair of jagged broadswords that trailed arcs of liquid fire. He tilted his helm, his burning eyes scanning Jack’s spiritual matrix with clinical assessment.

“Look at the meridians,” the swordsman sneered, tossing his head back in contemptuous laughter. “A Blank! Not a single natural spark of flame in his entire vessel. He slipped through the atmospheric wash with a cheap, borrowed ward. He thinks he can walk Malakai’s proving grounds without the blood to burn!”

“A pretender who stole the key,” a third warrior barked, raising a spiked war-maul above his shoulder. “Break his legs. Drag his spirit to the caldera vents. Let the magma flay the stolen titles from his meat!”

Jack stood fifty paces away, his right hand resting casually in his pocket, his empty left sleeve fluttering in the volcanic gale.

In the Dark Soul Realm, the spirits had been thinkers. They had gathered like scholars in an amphitheater, analyzing his flaws, waiting for him to justify his existence with theory and words.

These men were not thinkers. They were warmongers, butchers, and duelists who had spent centuries rotting in a stagnant spiritual purgatory, starving for violence.

They didn’t want an explanation. They wanted to crush an outsider’s skull against the stone to remind themselves they had once been kings.

“You talk entirely too much,” Jack said.

His voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the roaring wind with the precision of a razor.

The lead Warden’s grip on his halberd tightened. “What did you say, whelp?”

“I said you talk too much,” Jack repeated, taking a single, measured step forward. “You think because I lack a natural affinity, this realm belongs to you? You think fire is something you command because you wear red iron?”

Jack reached deep into his spiritual foundation, past his mana, past the dark wellspring of his core, straight into the ancient, burning covenant anchored to his name.

Emberion.

Deep within his soul, the Primordial Dragon opened its eyes.

Intricate, blazing crimson tattoos erupted across Jack’s skin, burning through his dark coat like lines of molten wire. The draconic script crawled aggressively up his neck, tracing the edge of his jaw, and wrapping his right arm in patterns of primal, blinding heat.

His heterochromic eyes shifted violently. The pale orange and deep gold collapsed, replaced by a pair of sharp, incandescent amber irises split by razor-thin, vertical reptilian slits.

A wave of ancient majesty crashed over the plateau.

Behind Jack, the fabric of the crimson sky fractured. A colossal, translucent manifestation of Emberion tore through the spiritual firmament.

A draconic sovereign spanning fifty spans wide, spreading massive wings of undying, primordial fire that completely blotted out the bloated blood-moon.

The dragon opened its jagged maw, releasing a soundless, seismic roar of pure draconic authority that flattened the surrounding ash dunes and sent shockwaves rippling through the obsidian bedrock.

The five Fire Wardens froze dead in their tracks.

The blazing flames dancing across their weapons flickered, sputtering and bowing toward Jack in instinctive, biological submission.

The warrior with the twin broadswords took a sudden, involuntary step backward, his iron boots scraping against the slag.

“Emberion…?” the swordsman choked out, his arrogance crumbling into disbelieving dread. “That is the Sovereign Flame! Malakai’s first creation. The beast he carved with multiple elemental sigils to forge an apex monster!”

“Impossible,” the lead Warden rasped, his knuckles whitening on his halberd shaft. “No Soul Warden in history could bind Emberion! The beast broke every contract offered to it across thousands of years! How does a mortal walk with its primordial soul tethered to his flesh?!”

“You wanted to see fire,” Jack said, his voice dropping into a double-layered, reptilian timbre that made the air vibrate. “I don’t need an affinity when I hold the leash of the beast your master created.”