NOVEL NEXT Chapter 189: Ice
"Fourth Wave: Flame."
The words came with no warning. No transition. Just a simple declaration.
And then the world burned.
It began with a flicker in the air, an unnatural shimmer, like the trembling of space itself.
Damien felt it in the marrow of his bones before he saw it. The atmosphere thickened around him, as though reality had been soaked in oil, and something, some ancient match, had just been struck.
Fire erupted from the heavens, not falling as flame, but as molten judgment. It did not crackle, did not roar. It hissed, high and sharp, like a scream that came not from a throat but from the soul of the world itself.
The sky tore open, and from it fell torrents of hellfire, searing, radiant and burning.
This was not fire born of nature. Not conjured from wood or air or spark.
This was cleansing fire, forged not to destroy structures or forests, but to erase essence.
It was flame that attacked identity. It did not simply burn the skin. It scorched the concept of life from the body, unraveling what made a soul a soul.
It hit Damien like a hammer of light.
The heat was immediate. Not rising. Not spreading. It simply was.
One moment, he stood in silence. The next, his cloak incinerated in a breath, his hair crisped at the tips, and his skin began to crackle under the sheer intensity of the inferno.
Pain followed, blinding and sudden.
It ripped through his nerves with a speed that left thought behind. Every inch of his body felt flayed, not by knives, but by raw energy. His eyes seared in their sockets. His throat felt like it had swallowed cinders. His lungs tightened, every breath tasting of molten air and ash.
He could feel it burrowing deeper.
The fire did not stop at flesh. It entered him.
It seeped through his nostrils, his ears, the corners of his eyes, and down his throat. It rolled into his lungs, scouring the soft tissue, boiling blood vessels with every pulse of breath. It passed through muscle and fat and bone, looking for something beneath, searching for the threads of his soul so it could set them ablaze.
And through all of it, Damien remained still.
He did not scream, though his entire being begged for it.
His body trembled, shaking under the pressure of energy that no human, no dragon should ever endure.
His silver-grade body, once the bastion of his defense, began to bubble. Layers of skin peeled away, regrew, then peeled again, locked in a torturous cycle of destruction and forced regeneration.
But even as his flesh blistered and split, his core held.
Beneath the agony, his necromantic heart beat slow and steady, turning with grim purpose.
Death energy responded like a command executed with discipline.
He raised one hand and willed for a barrier to form.
Death energy spiraled outward from his palm, weaving into a barrier—a dome of pulsing black and violet light. It was not meant to block the flames entirely. That was impossible. This fire was not something that could be stopped.
But it could be redirected.
The dome shimmered with threads of entropy, pulling the heat inward and then bleeding it away into voided space. It was like breathing through a cracked mask during a storm of poison, sufficient to survive, but never truly safe.
The flames struck the barrier.
They hissed violently, like something offended to be denied. The heat slammed against the dome with the force of a falling mountain, each strike sending ripples through the woven energy.
Damien poured more death into it, feeding the structure, bracing its edges.
But the fire kept pushing.
It pierced the shield in places, leaking through in lances of agony. His arms burned anew. Patches of his chest split open again. His legs smoked as mana-etched fire found weaknesses in his defense.
He could feel it, his reserves draining, his endurance fraying.
And yet, through it all, he stood.
His mind, while stretched thin, continued to work.
"This is basically the same trick, just a different shape and form." Damien realized. "If I can't resist it, then I will just devour it!"
The fire could not be outlasted through brute force or elemental resistance. It had to be adapted to.
He called his death energy which had been severely contaminated with the fiery energy inward into his body.
He rewove them all into his tissue, into his flesh.
He guided the deathly and fiery current through his arms and chest, letting it bind to his muscles, harden his skin, reinforce the cracks.
He used death and fire not as a defense, but as a scaffold. He let it shape him anew, layer by layer, like molten steel cooling into tempered armor.
It was a slow process. Every second felt like a century. But it worked.
The damage slowed.
The pain remained, but the destruction lost ground.
His silver-grade body began to change in response. The regeneration adapted.
Instead of rebuilding blindly, it learned. It began forming skin that shimmered faintly with a charred sheen, designed to resist spiritual combustion.
His lungs thickened, restructured to filter toxic air and exhale the heat. His blood itself took on a darker tone, binding fire essence and dispersing it before it could spread.
Then came the shift.
Something inside his necromantic core pulsed heavier than before. A deeper revolution. His control over death energy surged, and the system whispered.
[Status Updated]
[Silver Grade Body: Flame Resistance Increased – 58%]
The flames began to fade.
Not because they were gone. But because he had changed.
He no longer burned as a victim.
He burned as a crucible.
The fire passed, leaving only smoke, drifting like incense in a ruined temple.
Damien stood in the center of it, skin cracked but sealed, death still humming around him like a second heart.
He exhaled, the breath coming slow, deliberate.
He had survived the flame.
And now he carried it inside him. Not as pain, but as proof.
"Fifth Wave: Ice."