Chapter 1662: Story 1662: The Cradle Beneath the Flame
The light swallowed them whole—no sensation of falling, no motion, just an endless hum that stretched into eternity. Then, with a thunderous crack, they landed.
Zara gasped, her boots striking solid ground that shimmered like molten glass. Above them hung a sky of liquid fire, rippling and alive. The air burned, yet did not scorch. Every breath tasted of ash and memory.
Damien steadied himself, his armor steaming from the sudden heat. “Where the hell...?”
Zara turned slowly. Around them, colossal spires of crystal jutted from the ground like frozen screams. At the center of it all pulsed a massive heart—black and luminous, bound in chains of light and shadow. Each beat sent ripples of crimson energy through the ground.
The newborn pulse hovered close, its glow dim against the infernal radiance. This is the Cradle—the origin chamber of the First Pulse. We are beneath the world’s skin.
Damien frowned. “You mean we just jumped into the planet’s heart.”
Zara nodded faintly, her violet-threaded eyes reflecting the monstrous organ. “This is where the first dream began.”
Before they could move, the chains around the heart shuddered. Voices rose from the cracks in the earth—ancient, echoing, desperate. Release us... complete the memory...
Damien drew his remaining blade, scanning the surroundings. “They sound like the same echoes that followed you in the cavern.”
Zara’s aura flared, her wings spreading as if sensing something greater. “They are the echoes. The First Pulse used them—fragments of old worlds—to weave its cradle.” She took a cautious step forward. “They’re trapped souls of every extinction that came before.”
The pulse’s tone darkened. Their release could unmake this age.
A deep rumble cut through the air. The chains snapped one by one, molten light splashing across the ground. From the ruptured heart rose tendrils of energy—each shaped like a being from another age. Dinosaurs roared from the flames, undead warriors crawled from the molten dust, spectral civilizations shimmered briefly before fading.
All dreams return to their source, said a voice that came from everywhere at once.
The First Pulse’s presence surged around them, unseen yet crushing. Its molten laughter shook the spires. You followed my heartbeat to my throne, child of the Sixth. Now see what the world buried to forget me.
Zara raised her hand, the violet flame around her intensifying. “You call it forgetting. I call it healing.”
Healing? The air warped, the firestorm taking shape—a colossal face emerging from the heart’s surface. You think the cycle of death and rebirth heals? It festers. Only by merging all dreams can the wound close.
Damien stepped in front of her, his aura blazing crimson. “Then you’re no god. You’re a disease pretending to be memory.”
The First Pulse roared, and the ground cracked open. Streams of liquid memory surged upward, forming creatures of every extinct age.
Zara’s wings blazed brighter. “Then let’s remind the First what it means to wake and live—not just remember.”
She pressed her palms to the molten floor, violet light spearing upward into the fiery sky. The chained heart shuddered violently, the two rhythms—hers and the First’s—beginning to clash.
The world screamed.
And far above, in the waking lands, the oceans began to boil.