Chapter 13 – The Devil Body Awakens
Inside the Tower of Furnace, time no longer flowed as it should.
What seemed like three endless days of battle within its blazing halls was, outside, only a single day under the sun.
Flames dripped from the ceiling like liquid gold, the air warped by heat. Yin Jin's breath came ragged; his shirt was long since burned away, his skin marked by ash and firelight. Across from him, the Black Gold Mad Lord Knight towered—its armor cracked but unyielding, a broken crown of molten steel around its head.
> "You have fought for three sunrises and yet still breathe… admirable,"
the Knight growled, dragging its immense blade.
"But your flame has run out, mortal."
Yin Jin smirked through the pain, his cracked sword raised. "Then I'll forge a new one."
They clashed once more, the impact shaking the tower's foundations. Rivers of lava spilled down the steps, and glowing runes on the walls flared as if awakening from centuries of sleep. The Knight's blow hurled Yin Jin through a column; he fell to his knees, coughing blood, his body trembling.
Then—
A pulse.
A rhythm not his own.
Golden light flickered beneath his skin, intertwined with streaks of shadow. The fire within him shifted—no longer crimson but black and gold, swirling together like night and dawn entwined.
The air around him twisted. His heartbeat roared like thunder.
> "Awaken us… bearer of the sealed flames…"
The voice was ancient, resonant, neither male nor female. The sigils on Yin Jin's back flared to life, glowing through his skin. His shirt disintegrated entirely, burned away by the energy now consuming him.
Two luminous tiger emblems erupted across his back—each facing the other, eyes blazing, runes flowing like rivers of light through their forms.
From his shoulders burst wings of black-gold fire, vast and terrible, every feather alive with divine heat. The tower's molten walls bent outward from the force of his awakening.
The Knight froze mid-step. "Impossible… the Devil Body of the Twin Flame Seals…"
Yin Jin rose slowly into the air, wings unfurling wider until their tips brushed the flaming walls. His eyes burned molten gold.
> "Three days in here… and only a day outside," he murmured.
"Let's finish this quickly."
With a single beat of his wings, he vanished—reappearing above the Knight, blade poised.
> "Black-Gold Inferno—Final Descent!"
The strike split the chamber apart, swallowing everything in gold and shadow. When the flames subsided, the Knight was gone—reduced to molten slag.
Yin Jin landed softly amid the drifting embers, wings folding. The twin tigers roared once more across his back before dimming to faint golden lines.
He glanced up toward the tower's ceiling where daylight glimmered faintly through the molten haze.
> "Three days for me… one for the world," he whispered.
"So this is the Devil Body."
With a powerful thrust of his wings, he soared upward, breaking through the furnace's roof in a showe
r of sparks—ascending toward the second phase of his destiny.