His face was hidden behind a blackened mask—shaped like a jackal’s snarl, its metal jaw forever half-open as if tasting the air. No eyes showed. No sound came.
At his side hung a rod of bronze and obsidian, coiled like a serpent. He stopped beside the brazier and, without a word, set the rod among the coals. The metal hissed. The air filled with the sound of searing heat and the stench of old flesh.
He waited as the weapon glowed, the color shifting from dull orange to white-hot brilliance—until it looked like a shard torn from the sun.
“The Sovereign of Flames,” one of the guards whispered, awe threaded through fear.
A chill crawled up my spine. The air felt too thick to breathe.
“On your knees!” another guard barked.
I hesitated.
Hands slammed between my shoulders, driving me down. My knees hit the packed dirt hard, splitting my skin. My wrists—still chained—were yanked back until my spine arched, my chest thrust forward. The iron bit into flesh and drew blood.
I turned my head.
Lazarus knelt beside me, his jaw locked, his body rigid against the drag of the chain. His face was frozen with defiance, but his eyes?—
His eyes were storm and fire.
“Who wants to go first?” asked the Sovereign of Flames. His voice was low, smooth—like heat given breath.
“He does,” the Enforcer answered at once, pointing at me.
The Sovereign inclined his head, a slow, measured motion. Then he reached forward, seized the back of my neck, and dragged me into the center of the circle as though I weighed nothing at all.
“Seize his arms,” he ordered.
Two guards obeyed, their hands like iron clamps. They locked onto my upper arms, spreading me wide to the fire. My chains rattled. The heat from the brazier licked my bare skin.
The Sovereign turned to me. The sunlight caught the sharp lines of his jackal mask, making the bronze jaw glow as though it smiled.
“You think you’re a man?” he said, lifting the brand from the coals.
The rod was white-hot, the metal pulsing like a living heart. The heat distorted the air between us, bending it, breaking it.
“Prove it.”
Embers clung to the obsidian edge, writhing like fireflies desperate to escape.
He moved closer—slow, methodical—letting the heat speak first. It washed over me in waves, blistering the air. Sweat rolled down my spine, stinging the open wounds from the restraints.
I struggled against the guards’ hold, but they held fast—unyielding, pitiless. The chain bit into my wrists. The smell of hot metal filled my nostrils.
Then the heat kissed my shoulder, and agony roared through me.
The brand sank into flesh with a hiss like a serpent. My skin blistered on contact, bubbling and splitting as blood met fire. The scent of burning flesh filled the yard—thick, oily, suffocating.
The pain was more than pain. It wasn’t something to endure; it was something to survive. It crawled through me like lightning, through every muscle, every bone, branding not just my body—but something deeper.
I could hear myself screaming, but it didn’t sound human.
The rod pressed harder, long enough for the mark to take, for the flesh to blacken and curl. The guards didn’t flinch. Their hands were unmoving stone.
When the Sovereign finally pulled the brand away, I smelled my own ruin.
The world collapsed to heat, blood, and silence.
