Episode 5 – The Depths of Flame
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The next trial came without rest.
The candidates—now reduced to four—were given a single hour to recover.
Zane sat in the Temple's open-air courtyard, the moonlight now giving way to a bleeding sunrise. Aether mist curled around the marble floor like silent fog. His muscles still ached from the psychic toll of the Echoes. His mind throbbed from what he'd seen—the chained gods, the bone crown, himself as a tyrant.
He hadn't told the others. He didn't know if they'd seen their own versions of damnation.
The other survivors sat in silence as well.
One was a girl named Kaela, her white cloak frayed and stained with blood. Her hands never stopped trembling.
The second, a boy with obsidian eyes and silver hair—Ren—was unnervingly calm, reading a floating scroll inscribed with burning glyphs. He hadn't spoken a word since returning.
The third, an older teen named Grath, was already doing pushups, muttering to himself. Either he was trying to shake off fear… or distract himself from it.
And then there was Zane.
Alone with his thoughts, his doubt, and the mark on his hand—still pulsing faintly, like a heart tethered to something far older than him.
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When the trial horn sounded, they were led down into the Temple's lower catacombs—far beneath the foundation of the Sanctum.
The walls here were different. Not marble, but obsidian veins carved into red volcanic stone. Torches here burned not with fire, but soullight—the ethereal remnants of long-dead elementals bound into magical crystal. They screamed softly if you listened too closely.
Sylfa led them, her face unreadable. Behind her, High Magister Vaelik carried a staff carved from the bones of a fire wyrm.
"The next trial," Vaelik said, his voice echoing in the chamber, "is one of survival. Combat. Pain."
He stopped before a sealed gate of rune-etched black steel.
"You will each descend into the Depths of Flame—a dungeon formed from the dying body of an Infernal Titan slain in the last god-war."
Zane blinked. "You mean... it's alive?"
"Dead, mostly," Sylfa said. "But its magic lingers. Its heart still pulses somewhere in the depths. The deeper you go, the stronger the flame becomes. And so do the things that dwell within."
Grath cracked his knuckles. "Finally. Something I can punch."
Vaelik ignored him. "Each of you will enter alone. The trial ends when you either reach the heart chamber... or when the fire consumes you."
Kaela swallowed. "Are we allowed to use magic?"
"You must," Sylfa answered. "But no outside relics. No summons. Only what you've learned, or will learn, inside."
Zane's stomach sank. "Wait… 'will learn'?"
Sylfa gave him a look. "The Depths teach. Through flame. Through fear."
Vaelik tapped his staff once.
The gates groaned open.
---
Zane entered last.
The instant he stepped across the threshold, the world shifted.
The air became molten.
He stood inside a cavernous tunnel lined with glowing lava veins. The floor pulsed with red-hot breath. Far above, skeletal remains of a long-dead titan fused into the ceiling like a prison of bones.
Then came the sound.
A low, echoing growl.
A beast.
Zane stepped forward slowly, eyes narrowing, senses flaring. His magic—it stirred on instinct, as if the very dungeon pulled on it.
From the shadows ahead, something moved.
A Flame Hound—its body made of molten ash and bone, eyes burning like suns. Its snarl melted the ground where it stepped.
Zane backed up. "No grimoire, no summon—"
The hound pounced.
Zane dove to the side, rolling to avoid the bite. He struck out with a burst of raw mana—an unstable blast that cracked the floor and seared the hound's flank.
The creature howled but didn't fall.
Zane stood, panting, hand outstretched. "C'mon… think…"
The hound leapt again.
This time, Zane didn't dodge.
He reached inside himself—to the mark, the shard, the primal magic he'd touched in Episode 1.
And the voice returned.
> "Call it."
Zane clenched his fist. "Call what?!"
> "Your echo. The one that answers only to you."
The mark on his hand ignited.
Dark tendrils of summoning energy spiraled outward.
The hound was mid-air, jaws wide.
Zane screamed—not in fear, but in command.
> "Respond to my call! From beyond the veil… I summon you!"
The floor cracked.
A shadow burst forth from the mark—shaped like a jagged blade of bone and starlight, screaming like wind through the void.
The hound was impaled mid-air by a curved obsidian horn.
And then, the beast that emerged towered over Zane.
A Nightmare Beast—a summoned guardian shaped from his deepest fears and raw potential. Its body was a swirling mass of tendrils, its head adorned with a jagged mask like a broken mirror.
Zane stared.
The creature growled softly… and bowed its head.
> "Bound. Claimed. I am yours."
---
Zane had summoned his first Familiar.
Not a creature from the Summoner's Codex.
But something older. Something his.
---
By the time he reached the heart chamber, Zane's cloak was burned, his skin blistered in places, and his mana nearly drained. But he walked alone through the flame.
And the flames bowed to him.
When he emerged from the Depths, Sylfa met him with wide eyes.
"You bonded," she whispered. "With something that isn't registered…"
Zane collapsed into her arms, breathing hard.
"Then maybe the registry's out of date."