Ember Reborn: The Flame That Defied Fate

I recalled that day.

The day the sky turned crimson.

The battlefield where the land cracked and bled with the screams of heroes, the skies ablaze with infernal fire and divine light clashing in a never-ending storm. That was the day the heavens wept and the earth trembled beneath the boots of the Demon God's army.

I remembered the warmth growing cold as it lay in my arms.

"Why...?"

It had all gone so wrong.

In the face of overwhelming power, we had no choice but to retreat. I had seen the tide of battle turn — not slowly, but all at once — like a dam shattering beneath a rising flood. In the moment when despair reached its zenith, I told them to flee. My comrades. My students. My friends. I stayed behind, a single spark against the hurricane.

It wasn't some grand gesture of heroism worthy of legend. I wasn't sacrificing myself because I was noble.

I was the one who couldn't die.

The Primordial Flame made me immortal. As long as even a trace of it lingered within me, I would rise again, over and over — through fire, pain, death. So I offered myself up, not out of courage, but calculation.

An immortal body makes for a convenient decoy.

If I could buy even a second for them to escape, then it was the most logical course of action. The smart choice. The cold, efficient one.

Of course, the enemy wouldn't merely kill me. I knew that.

Torture. Desecration. Magic that gnawed at the soul. The kind of agony that turns time to tar and the mind to rot.

But pain doesn't kill.

Suffering doesn't end me.

Even if they shattered my bones, burned me alive, or scattered my ashes to the winds—

I would return.

So I stayed. I fought. I endured.

And then—

"Iris?!"

She shouldn't have been there. She wasn't supposed to be there.

She had already escaped, or so I thought.

But in the moments when my limbs no longer moved and my mind drifted into fire and oblivion… I heard her voice.

And she was standing there. Bleeding. Radiant. Terrifying in her resolve.

She had come back.

To save me.

"Why… Why did you do it! Why did you come back?!"

I screamed as I held her failing body in my arms, feeling her blood soak through my hands.

Iris used a miracle. A true, divine miracle — the kind that rewrote fate itself.

She exchanged her life… for mine.

Even now, I still don't understand it. How could she?

My life was a pebble by the riverside. One among countless others, meaningless and easily forgotten. A tool to be used and discarded.

Hers was the light people followed through darkness. The hope humanity clung to. The Saint of the Seven Stars.

And yet she smiled.

As blood stained her lips and her limbs trembled, she smiled at me.

"Heh... heh..."

Her hand rose weakly and brushed my cheek.

"I'm... so glad."

"Glad? Glad about what?!" My voice cracked with pain and disbelief.

Everything was wrong. Everything was burning. The Demon God's army pressed in all around us. She was dying, and all we had gained was me — a man who should have perished long ago.

It wasn't worth it.

It couldn't have been worth it.

"I'm... really... glad..." she whispered.

And smiled.

With no regrets.

No hesitation.

Peaceful, like the end of a long journey.

She closed her eyes.

And I screamed into the storm.

The memory vanished like mist beneath sunlight.

Now, I stood in a world shrouded in violet haze.

The academy's lower district had been engulfed in a barrier—a vast dome of distorted mana that bent sound, sight, and presence. From outside, none would hear the screams. None would see the Saint kneeling in pain.

Inside the barrier, only silence and suffering remained.

Iris's breaths came ragged and shallow, her pink hair clinging to her sweat-slicked face. Despite the pain twisting her body, her eyes remained sharp—glaring at the man before her with hatred pure enough to burn.

"...You bastard," she spat.

Profanity from the lips of a saint. Once unthinkable. Now inevitable.

"Oh dear," the man replied with a chuckle, brushing nonexistent dust from his professor's robes. "Isn't it a bit much to say such things to your teacher?"

Morpheus.

The once-respected professor, now revealed as one of the most insidious threats lurking within Reynald Hero Academy.

"Shut up!" Iris snarled. "You're no professor. Just another cult dog in disguise!"

"Harsh," Morpheus sighed, shaking his head. "And here I thought we shared a rather amicable rapport."

He grinned, eyes glinting like obsidian. "But I suppose I should thank you. I was wondering how long you could maintain that saintly composure before cracking."

With a snap of his fingers, purple lightning surged around Iris.

"Aaagh!"

The aura crushed her like an invisible vice, forcing her down on one knee. Her scream echoed in the warped air.

Morpheus clicked his tongue in mock disappointment. "You've been terribly noisy, Saint Iris. Can't you behave like Cadet Camilla over there?"

He gestured lazily to where Camilla, the orphanage children, and Priest Antonio lay slumped in a heap. Their eyes were unfocused, dazed—drugged or enchanted, perhaps both.

"Ugh..." Iris trembled, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. She bit down a fresh scream and met Morpheus's gaze.

And then—

Her eyes changed.

A kaleidoscope of color ignited within her irises. Seven hues spiraling at once: red, blue, gold, green, violet, silver, and white.

The Seven Eyes.

The manifestation of the divine covenant with the Celestial Archons.

The purple aura around her didn't just flicker.

It vanished. Burned away as if it had never existed.

"Haa... haa..." Iris gasped, shoulders heaving as she rose shakily to her feet.

Morpheus's grin faltered, but only for a moment.

"...Neutralized by a single glance," he murmured, voice laced with awe and desire. "Even among saints, the Seven Eyes are rare. Astonishing... truly astonishing."

His eyes shimmered with greed.

And worse—familiarity.

Because I had seen that gaze before. Long ago.

In the last life, before the skies turned red.

He was one of them.

A hand in the Demon God's return.

A wolf wearing a teacher's smile.

And this time, he would not take her from me.

Not again.