Not every prison has walls.
Some are made of silence.
Some are made of purpose.
But the cruelest prison… is when your power becomes your punishment.
🌘 The Compass Cries
That night, the forest no longer offered us safety.
The stars above were distant, the wind dry and unnatural. Even the trees those ancient redwoods that had stood for centuries seemed to lean away from us, whispering caution in the groaning of their branches.
In my hand, the Pyra Compass pulsed with alarming urgency.
The sixth flame.
It wasn't just calling now.
It was screaming.
Each beat was a warning. Not in words, but in feeling anguish, exhaustion, desperation. The pulse rattled in my bones like a second heartbeat.
Taren, sitting a few feet away by the fire, shivered violently and wrapped his arms around himself.
"I can feel it too," he whispered. "Whoever they are… they're barely holding on."
Eira reached out and steadied him, her voice low. "They've been drained for too long. Their soul is fraying."
I looked to Lyra, who had returned to us not just as a survivor but as a strategist, a warrior, and perhaps the original flameborn.
"Where is it?" I asked. "Where are they holding the sixth?"
Lyra didn't speak at first. She stared into the fire as though it held the answer carved in flames.
Then she said two words.
"The Bleeding Wall."
🏰 The Bleeding Wall
According to Lyra, the Bleeding Wall was not merely a facility. It was a monument to cruelty designed not just for containment, but extraction.
Constructed decades ago on the northern border of Valtherra, it once served as a testing ground for magical energy harvesting. When flameborn were discovered, it evolved into a factory of living torment.
"It's not a prison," she explained. "It's a siphon. They tie flameborn to the core of the structure and drain them over years. Every pylon, every airship, every teleportation array the Empire uses… all of it is powered by living souls."
Taren blanched, his eyes hollow. "They're turned into power plants?"
"No," Lyra corrected coldly. "They're turned into batteries. And when they break, they're discarded burned, erased, forgotten."
Eira's hands tightened around her staff. "How do we get in?"
Lyra drew a map into the dirt with her finger.
"Two paths: one leads along the perimeter walls heavily guarded. But there's a maintenance shaft beneath the eastern ridge. Forgotten. Untouched. That's our way in."
"Then we go at dawn," I said.
Lyra shook her head.
"No. We go tonight. Before they sense our approach."
I nodded.
The fire between us dimmed to embers.
We moved silently into the night, five flameborn, carrying a legacy the Empire had tried to erase.
🏞️ The Wounded Land
As we approached the Bleeding Wall, the land itself began to shift.
The forest gave way to blackened plains, the air humming with static and the scent of scorched earth. Trees stood dead and hollow, stripped of bark, their cores carved with sigils of suppression.
The sky was darker here. Not from clouds, but from the thick plumes of magical exhaust rising from the facility in the distance.
And then, we saw it.
It rose like a fortress carved from bone and metal.
A towering spire at its center pulsed with unnatural red light, feeding lines of glowing conduits that stretched out across the region like veins in a dying beast.
Around it: walls covered in steel thorns, towers with mana-blasters mounted at their peaks, and armored patrols of the Silent Guard elite soldiers enhanced with magic-null implants.
"This is it," Lyra said. "Beyond those walls… is where they're holding the sixth."
🔍 Planning the Infiltration
We camped in a ravine that offered partial cover from the patrol lights.
Rion studied the guard patterns while Lyra mapped out entry routes. Taren sat silently, occasionally pressing a hand to the ground his magic sensing for the faintest flickers of suppressed fire beneath us.
Eira, ever focused, used a shard of purified flame to begin crafting disruption runes onto her staff.
"We split into two groups," Lyra said. "Rion and I will disable the external pylons and draw attention away. Jace, you lead the core infiltration. Your fire your resonance has the strongest connection to the sixth. That's what we need to break the chain."
"Taren and Eira come with me," I said firmly.
Lyra nodded. "We meet back here when it's done."
No one argued.
We didn't need to.
We moved.
🕳️ Into the Spine
The maintenance shaft was narrow, rusted, and carved with old warning glyphs in dead languages.
We slipped through the lower tunnels like shadows. Every step forward tightened something in my chest.
We passed drained containment cells. Some still had names scrawled on the walls in ash.
"I was fire. I was free."
"They took my name, but not my flame."
"Tell my brother I burned for him."
I stopped at one such message.
"This place is a graveyard," I whispered.
"No," Eira said. "It's a warning."
At the end of the tunnel, we found a sealed gate lined with suppression runes. But the Pyra Compass vibrated wildly in my palm.
The sixth was right beyond that wall.
"Help me," I said.
Taren reached out. His hands shook, but he pressed his flame into the sigils.
Eira sang softly in flame-tongue.
And I pushed my fire forward into the rune-lock.
With a loud crack, the wall shattered inward.
⚡ The Core of Pain
The chamber glowed in pulses of red, blue, and orange.
At its center hovered a figure suspended in a field of glowing chains that pulled raw energy from their body into conduits lining the walls.
Each pulse stole a piece of them.
Their skin glowed faintly, translucent in parts, veins visible. Their hair floated upward as if submerged in liquid magic. Their arms and legs were bound outward, crucified in midair by magic alone.
And yet
Their eyes were open.
And when they saw us
They smiled.
"You came."
"We came," I said, stepping forward, voice hoarse. "I'm Jace. We're here to take you home."
"Name… is Kaien," they whispered. "Don't let it take the rest."
"We won't."
Eira moved to the pylons, examining their structure.
"These aren't just chains. They're soul-linked. If we pull wrong Kaien dies."
Taren stepped up beside me.
"Then we break it from the inside."
🔥 Chainbreaker's Flame
I touched Kaien's restraints.
Their fire surged into mine.
I saw flashes visions.
Kaien as a child, hiding their flame to protect their family.
Captured. Bound. Tested. Hooked to the grid.
Years of silence. Years of screaming on the inside.
But through it all, they held on to one belief:
"Someone will come. Someone will hear."
That someone… was us.
I clenched my fists and pushed.
Fire burst from my chest pure, white, and wild.
Eira joined her voice to mine, singing the unlocking song.
Taren poured his heat into the runes.
And with a deafening roar
The chains shattered.
Kaien collapsed forward.
I caught them before they hit the ground.
They were warm. Weak. But alive.
Their flame, once dim, now began to flicker back.
"Can you stand?" I asked.
Kaien grinned weakly.
"I've been lying down for six years. I think I'd like to stretch."
🚨 The Alarm Screams
The moment we turned toward the tunnel sirens wailed across the facility.
Red lights blazed.
The entire Bleeding Wall came alive with fury.
A voice boomed from the upper chambers:
"Containment breach detected. All units to Core Sector. Terminate flameborn on sight."
Rion's voice crackled in my ear.
"You've got twenty incoming. Airships, suppressor squads, drones. You need to MOVE."
Kaien stood straighter now.
Their hair began to float again.
Their eyes blazed with firelight.
"They fed on me," they said, raising a hand, "but they never broke me. Now it's time I returned the favor."