My girlfriend is trapped in my superpower

The air was smoke and ash.

The Wyrm towered over the ruined training yard, black scales glistening like obsidian, its body weaving with serpent grace despite its monstrous size. Every breath it exhaled was molten, turning stone to slag and steel to liquid. The ground was already a glowing wound beneath our feet.

The Masters were faltering. Their chants, once booming and confident, had become ragged cries carried on cracked throats. One of them—Master Idris, the same man who had first scoffed at me—lay pinned under rubble, blood streaming down his temple. Another clutched a mangled arm, still trying to weave sigils through the air.

Bram's sword dragged against the ground, nicked and nearly broken, but he refused to let it drop. "On your feet, Kael!" he roared, chest heaving, sweat and soot staining his face. "Don't just stand there—"

"I can't!" The words tore out of me before I could stop them. My legs trembled under me, useless. My lungs burned. The Wyrm's voice still rattled in my skull, each syllable a chain. "I can't fight it—"

"Then we die here," Mira snapped, blood trickling from a gash on her cheek. She moved to shield me with her spear anyway, teeth grit, her body swaying on its last strength. "Because this thing isn't leaving without you."

Lyra's flames flickered beside us, no longer the roaring inferno they had been. Even she looked tired—tired. The thought chilled me. Her smirk was gone, replaced with something tight, dangerous.

"Kael," she said, her voice quieter, lower, almost human. "It's time."

I shook my head, panic surging. "No, I—if you go back in, you'll—"

She stepped close, flames curling around my shoulders like a mantle. Her eyes bored into mine, molten gold with no mercy. "You're not hearing me. If I stay out here, we all burn. If I go back, you rise."

The Wyrm reared back, shadow eclipsing the last light of the fires. Masters screamed. The ground split again, magma rushing through.

I felt Bram's hand slam onto my back, steady and unyielding. Mira's voice broke beside me: "Do it, Kael. Whatever it is—do it now."

The roar came. The Wyrm descended.

"Kael," Lyra whispered, smiling with that wicked curve of her lips, though her eyes were sharp as blades. "Say the word."

My throat was dry. My heart tried to crawl out of my chest. But somehow, I managed it.

"Let it burn."

Lyra laughed—sharp, wild, triumphant—before her form shattered into embers and shot straight into me.

I collapsed. No, not collapsed. Shifted.

My veins lit like molten rivers. My eyes snapped open, and the world wasn't the same. The air itself bent, shimmering, every particle humming with power. My body lifted from the ground, feet no longer touching the dirt. Flames licked up my arms, curling around me like living serpents.

The Masters froze mid-chant.

Bram's mouth fell open. "Bloody hell."

Mira shielded her eyes from the glare. "Kael—"

But it wasn't just me anymore.vIt was us. My voice echoed, layered with Lyra's, as if fire itself spoke through my throat. "This ends now."

The Wyrm struck. Its jaws came down like a collapsing mountain. I raised my hand—no, our hand—and the flames surged outward in a tidal wave, slamming into the beast with a force that cracked the very air.

The training yard disappeared in firelight. The Wyrm's jaws closed around me. Only—they didn't.

The flames burst from my body like a storm. They weren't just fire anymore. They were pure, radiant force, molten symbols burning across the air as though my very existence was rewriting reality. The Wyrm reeled, its teeth snapping on nothing but searing light.

I hovered, my body wreathed in fire so hot the ground beneath me had become glass. My hair, black before, burned with streaks of crimson flame that whipped like banners in the windless heat. My eyes—Lyra's eyes through mine—blazed molten gold rimmed with fire, and when I opened my mouth, my voice cracked with power.

"Your hunger ends here."

The Wyrm screamed, shaking the city itself, its scales splintering as it lashed out. Its tail whipped through stone pillars, shattering them like kindling, hurling rubble at Bram, Mira, the Masters.

With a thought, I moved. Not running. Not flying. Simply appearing.

One instant I was across the yard, the next I was before the monster, my fist wreathed in burning sigils. I drove it forward, and fire tore from my arm in a spiraling torrent, slamming into the Wyrm's chest. Its black scales cracked and peeled, exposing glowing veins beneath.

It staggered. Bram, half-stunned, half-grinning, shouted, "That's my bloody partner!" before barely rolling aside as a molten boulder struck where he had stood.

Mira wiped blood from her lip, her expression frozen between awe and terror. "Kael, that isn't just Lyra—what are you?"

I didn't have an answer. The flames spoke for me.

The Wyrm roared and lunged again, massive wings spreading, creating a shockwave that flattened everything around it. I raised both hands, and the fire coiled, forming into a blazing spear that hummed with energy.

"Let it burn!"

I hurled it. The spear whistled through the air, splitting it open, before slamming into the Wyrm's shoulder. The explosion shook Ashthorne to its bones, light swallowing the training yard as the beast was driven back, its roar choked with pain.

But it wasn't done.

From its wounds poured rivers of molten venom, dripping acid fire that scorched through everything it touched. One stream splattered toward Bram and Mira. Without thinking, I extended my arm—flames erupting into a shield that curled around them like wings.

Mira gasped, staring up at me from behind the blaze. "You're—protecting us?"

Lyra's voice, layered with mine, laughed low and sharp. "Don't act so surprised."

The Wyrm coiled, then shot upward, blotting out the sun with its sheer size, before plummeting back down like a mountain falling from the heavens. The Masters screamed, diving aside, their spells faltering in panic.

"Kael!" Bram shouted.

I didn't move. I couldn't. My body burned, my veins molten, my heart hammering to the rhythm of Lyra's. So we raised our hands together. And when the Wyrm descended, we caught it.

Flames erupted skyward, forming colossal arms of fire that braced against its skull, holding the monster aloft as the ground shattered under the force. My boots barely touched the ground, ash swirling around me, my hair snapping in the inferno wind.

The Wyrm thrashed, shrieked, bit, but the fire held. My fire. Lyra's fire. And then, from somewhere deep in my chest, I roared—not with fear, not with rage, but with raw, unshackled power.

"BURN!"

The flames erupted outward, an explosion so massive it swallowed the Wyrm whole, drowning its scream in firelight that turned night to day.

The Masters were thrown to the ground. Bram clung to Mira as the heat wave tore through the yard. The walls of Ashthorne trembled.

And then—silence. When the flames cleared, the Wyrm lay broken, its body a smoldering husk of blackened bone and ash.

I lowered to the ground, my feet touching stone again, the flames dimming, retreating, flickering down until they were nothing more than embers crawling across my skin. My hair fell back dark. My eyes… still glowed faintly, golden-red.

My chest heaved. My body shook. But I was still standing.

The Masters stared, wide-eyed, some horrified, some whispering among themselves, their gazes sharp with something worse than fear—want.

Bram let out a low whistle, grinning despite the cuts on his face. "Remind me never to piss you off again."

Mira didn't smile. She just stared, her spear lowered, voice quiet. "Kael… what have you become?"

And inside me, Lyra purred.

The silence after the firestorm was louder than the Wyrm's roar.

Ashthorne's training yard was half-ruin, the cobblestones melted into black glass, the air so hot it shimmered. Smoke curled from broken pillars and scorched earth. The Wyrm's carcass—what remained of it—was already disintegrating, flakes of black ash drifting upward like snow.

I staggered, breathing hard, though the power still throbbed in me like a second heartbeat. Lyra coiled inside my chest, not spent, but amused. "They've seen it now. No turning back, little wolf."

The Masters slowly rose to their feet. Their robes were scorched, their dignity cracked. Their faces were masks of conflict—fear, awe, envy.

Master Corvin was the first to speak, his voice cutting sharp through the smoke.

"You shouldn't exist."

Mira's head snapped toward him. "He just saved your lives."

But Corvin wasn't looking at her. He was staring at me like a starving man at a feast. His fingers twitched, and I didn't miss the way they curled, as if itching to cast a spell, to take.

Master Deyra, pale and trembling, clutched her staff. "The Wyrm… it would have taken half the city. He controlled it." She sounded almost reverent. Almost.

Master Rhys laughed, a brittle, rasping sound. "Controlled? No. Consumed. Do you not see what's inside him? That isn't a boy wielding power—that's a vessel brimming with fire. And fire destroys what holds it."

Lyra chuckled in my head, low and mocking. "They're not wrong. But they'll never admit what they really want. They don't fear you, Kael. They fear they won't get to use you first."

Bram pushed himself to his feet, dusting off ash, his grin wicked despite the blood on his cheek. "I'd say that was impressive, wouldn't you, Masters? Or are you just angry the boy upstaged you?"

Corvin's eyes narrowed to slits. Mira stepped protectively closer to me, her spear still in hand, shoulders tense.

Then Rhys leaned forward, his voice almost conspiratorial, though loud enough for all to hear.

"If we could separate it—him—from the fire, the vessel would break, yes. But the flame… the flame could be bound. Harnessed."

The words dripped poison. The air went taut. Even Bram stopped smirking. My hand curled into a fist. The faint glow of fire licked my knuckles again, unbidden.

Lyra's voice coiled around my thoughts, a whisper, half-danger, half-pleasure. "See? Already, they dream of carving you open. Already, they want me. You'll never be safe among them, Kael. Not unless you burn them first."

I clenched my jaw, forcing the fire down, even as my skin itched with it. "Try," I said, my voice hoarse, "and you'll learn what happened to the Wyrm wasn't luck."

The Masters stared. Some with hatred, some with calculation. And that was when the bell tolled—deep, thunderous, echoing over Ashthorne. An alarm.

Bram groaned. "What *now*?"

Mira turned toward the distant towers, her face pale. "That was the outer ward bell. Something else is coming."

Corvin's lips twisted. His eyes never left me. "Something always comes for fire that burns too brightly."

The heat of the ruined yard clung to me, but a deeper chill had settled.

This wasn't over. Not by a long stretch.