NOVEL NEXT Chapter 80: Seraphina's Past
The question hung in the air like a blade.
Why are you here?
Seraphina's shoulder twitched. Her fingers rested on hilts that had seen cleaner days. She kept her face calm, but something tightened beneath the calm.
The corridor did not blink. Obsidian walls took light and gave back a dull reflection. Even breathing sounded smaller here. The stone drank heat and handed back a chill through the soles of her boots.
The answer wasn't in the stone. It lived in old heat.
—
[You have completed "Make it to the safe zone" Quest.]
[You have received six pages of The Moon Castle's lore (4, 9, 13, 22, 26, 31), a part of the Gravehaven Isle's Lore.]
The safe zone had given her shelter and a hand‑me‑down prize.
She read the window twice. Once to be sure. Once to be angry. A page, not a potion or armor, and not a way to keep anyone else upright.
Seraphina folded the page and slid it into her jacket. She left before the stew cooled.
The forest met her with branches that snagged sleeves and shadows that meant it. Skeletons stumbled between roots with jaws that didn't quite close.
She measured distance and stepped once, blades out. Metal kissed bone and the first skull fell neat. The second swung wide; she was already two inches left.
Her cuts stayed short. Her feet stayed quiet. The third went to a knee, then to sand.
[Bone Fragment +3]
Heat breathed from the earth.
It bled through seams in the dirt in thin lines, then thicker ones. Her swords fogged where cold air met rising warmth.
She followed the heat to a wall that wasn't a wall. A seam traced an oval where moss refused to grow.
Seraphina touched it with the flat of her blade. Stone sighed and the oval pivoted inward.
She entered a room that felt like a mouth.
[You have discovered: Withered Shrine of the Immolated — First Floor]
The air was dry enough to crack a thought in half. Red script crawled across the ceiling like veins. Ash drifted from nowhere and landed on nothing.
She took three steps. The floor answered.
Ignis Caro rose as if the ground had decided to remember muscle. Their skin was coal and ember; their eyes were pits with teeth. They hissed without breath.
She moved first. Two cuts, a twist, a third cut to finish. Heat laughed in her face.
The wound she opened closed with sparks. She shifted to joints and sought the small wrong angles: a wrist, a knee, a neck that didn't turn far enough.
Her blades bit. The Ignis Caro didn't care.
Two more pulled free of the floor. Five now. They spaced themselves as if they had trained once in a life they no longer owned.
Seraphina lowered her center. Right blade high in hanging guard. Left blade reversed along her forearm to catch and slide.
The first rushed in with a stomp that sent embers skittering. She shaved the attack on the flat, slid inside the elbow, and cut for the throat. Sparks sealed the line before the blade cleared.
She changed targets. Ankle. Then the opposite knee. The thing collapsed and flowed hot around her boot like coals kicked from a pit.
The second Ignis Caro lunged. She stepped off the line, let heat miss her by inches, and cut into the armpit where armor would be if these bodies deserved armor. The cut bit deep. The hiss rose. The wound stitched shut from the edges.
She adjusted again. Measure, not anger. Small work for small chances.
A third feinted low and went high. She bent at the waist, a passata sotto without touching her free hand to the ground. The strike carved hair and air. Her counter raked the inside of the thigh and found nothing that wanted to stay cut.
They pressed in together. Close enough to smother. Close enough to burn.
Her jacket flashed at the shoulder.
[Status: Minor Burn]
She pivoted on the ball of her foot and let the lead pass. Her left blade caught a reaching wrist and pinned it to the floor with a sharp hook of steel. She stamped the elbow. The arm broke into clinkers and dragged itself back toward the stump like worms that remembered being fire.
Soot and heat stole her breath. She forced a rhythm. In through the teeth. Out through the nose. Cuts on the exhale. Feet before hands.
A fourth Ignis Caro tried to flank. Feeling the shift through her boot, she moved a half step back, then forward, stealing space before the flank set. Her right blade slid under a chin and lifted. Her left snapped a short cut across the eye line. The face caved, then inflated with sparks.
Her breath shortened. The room seemed to grow taller. The ceiling's red script pulsed in time with her pulse.
[Heat Exposure: Moderate]
[Stamina: 68%]
She didn't look away from the enemy to read. She let the numbers hang at the edge of vision and counted her heartbeats anyway.
They learned with her. The fifth grabbed for her off hand not to hold, but to burn the grip away.
One seized her forearm. Skin blistered beneath black fingers.
[Status: Severe Burn]
She tore free and lost skin with it. Pain pushed a sound up her throat that she didn't let out.
She kicked low. The inside of a knee folded. Using the fall, she sprang off the back of its calf and cleared the circle before they closed again.
Two advanced in a stagger: one high, one low. A practiced trap to split attention. She refused the gift. Three quick steps chased the low one. She cut at the hip crease and rode the recoil into a backhand that cleared room for her shoulder.
Heat flared behind her neck. She ducked on feel alone and let hot fingers comb the air where her hair had been a second ago. Her countercut met a forearm that blocked by being there, not by design. Sparks salted her tongue with iron.
[Warning: Structural Integrity Falling]
Her left blade stuttered in her grip. Sweat ran along the handle and made a small river.
Resetting both hands—knuckles white, wrists loose—she set her foot and made the simple choice.
Forward.
She rammed the right blade through an open mouth and held it there. The Ignis Caro climbed the steel toward her face, hands pulling along the blade like a ladder.
A second grabbed her ribs and squeezed. Heat flooded her side and turned her breath into knives.
The third reached for her eyes. She tucked her chin and let the fingers rake the crown of her head. Skin crackled. The smell tried to put her on her knees.
She made the move ugly. Letting go with her left hand, she jammed the pommel into the reaching wrist and shoved the arm up and away. The hand tore free, showered embers, and crawled back toward its owner like a spider made of coal.
Fire ate the shape of her.
Her knees hit stone. The world narrowed until the red script was the only thing left.
The Ignis Caro pressed in to finish what the room had started. She saw the line where all her choices ended.
A voice entered without crossing space.
It was cool and exact. It came from a place that never sweated.
Seraphina didn't have a list of dreams left. She had one.
I do not want to die.
She didn't make a speech to herself about honor, and she didn't ask if anyone would understand. She opened her hand.
[Offer: Contract of the Immolated]
[Terms: Life preserved. Body reconstructed. Service bound to Gesta. Ashen Aspect seeded and sealed.]
[Accept] [Refuse]
Her thumb went where it had to go.
[Accepted]
Cold cut the heat into pieces. The Ignis Caro froze mid‑reach like actors missing their cue.
Ash lifted from Seraphina's burned skin. It swirled in a tight circle and drew clean lines where she had been ruined. Ligaments took their old places; skin learned its maps again.
Pain left like someone closing a door from the other side.
She looked down and saw a new version of herself. Not perfect. Not the same. Better at hiding what hurt.
[Body Reconstructed]
[Status: Burn Scars — Masked]
A mark like a thumbprint chilled beneath her sternum and then went still.
[Aspect: Ashen Core (Hidden)]
The room watched.
<Rise.>
Seraphina stood.
Ignis Caro stared and then turned away as if she were a low wall. They flowed back into floor and line and heat. Red script rolled into itself and vanished.
The seam in the wall opened toward the forest.
Seraphina walked out with new skin and old eyes. The forest welcomed her with smoke where there hadn't been fire.
She breathed and tucked the Plot Page deeper into her jacket as if it could warm anything. Then she headed back toward people she had not met yet.
—
Now the corridor breathed again.
Seraphina came back to the present like a blade sliding home. Black stone ate the light and gave it back in faint lines. Sound dulled as if padded. The air smelled faintly of oil and old dust.
Her shadow pooled at her heels and then pulled free. It stood behind her in her shape with none of her restraint. It leaned close enough to whisper and didn't bother.
"Many rankers took the same bold move in search for power."
The voice was plain. It respected nothing but the question.
"They died. You did not. Why are you allowed to be alive and to be saved by Ace Avalanche?"
Seraphina didn't turn. Her hands stayed on the hilts. Her answer had to be better than I did not want to die.
She breathed once, then twice, and kept her eyes on the vanishing line of the obsidian passage. The question waited.