Heat blurred the world into a wavering haze.
Adrian stared at the remaining regulators until the symbols crawled against his vision.
"Your math is terrible," he told Bloodstar.
"My honesty is impeccable," Bloodstar replied. "You asked for odds, not comfort. Choose, Adrian. He will not hold that state forever. Nor will the Essence tolerate your fingers on its pulse for long."
Wyatt’s breathing had gone ragged. Each inhale dragged Essence-laden air into his lungs; each exhale steamed in a plume of shimmering gold. The aura around him had tightened into a whirling cocoon, threads of flame weaving in an intricate spiral around his core, never quite touching it.
Never quite.
His lips were peeled back from his teeth in a silent snarl.
"More," Wyatt grated. "I can take more."
Adrian’s fingers dug into the stone.
Forty percent stronger. Forty percent crippled. Twenty percent dead.
Those were Bloodstar’s numbers.
The numbers that mattered were different.
One Adrian.
One Wyatt.
One True Flame Essence.
And somewhere beyond the veil of space, a watcher with golden eyes and a sense of humor.
"We didn’t come here so he could crawl back to Stonehold barely improved," Bloodstar murmured. "You want leverage. You want a Cole you can point at certain doors and have them open. This is the price."
"You’re very free with our life," Adrian thought.
"Correction: I am very free with your decisions. I am not the one kneeling inside an active True Flame array."
Another crack split Wyatt’s cuirass with a sharp ping. A flake of warped metal dropped to the stone and hissed, glowing cherry-red before cooling.
Wyatt swayed, then forced his stance wider, feet digging grooves into the etched sigils.
"Adrian," he growled. "If this is all you can give me, I’ll—"
The rest dissolved into a choked gasp as the Essence’s breath surged, testing the boundaries of his control.
Adrian exhaled slowly.
"Fine," he said.
He pushed his awareness toward the second regulator.
Bloodstar did not exult. It only went very still.
The node waited, a hair-thin glyph folded between two cycling rings of light. Unlike the first, which had felt like a valve, this one sat deeper in the pattern, braided through with reinforcing strokes—a stabilizer, not merely a regulator.
If I touch you wrong, the whole loop snaps, Adrian realized. Then we go from ’skim a breath’ to ’release a scream.’
The Essence pulsed, a slow, amused thump against his spiritual sense.
"He’s going to die," another part of him whispered. "You’re going to help."
"Wyatt," Adrian said aloud, voice low. "Listen carefully. I’m opening the next gate. When it hits, you do not pull harder. You match the pattern I’m feeding you. If you try to swallow it like a starving dog, it’ll tear your core apart."
Wyatt’s eyes snapped to him. For a moment, Adrian saw nothing but pain and greed in that molten gold.
Then, slowly, the man’s jaw clenched.
"Pattern," Wyatt rasped. "Give it."
Adrian sent the sequence with his spiritual sense: a tighter helix, with three tiny eddies to divert the fiercest currents, a rotation that would force the Essence to scrape along the outer walls of Wyatt’s channels instead of slamming through them.
Wyatt shuddered as he adjusted. Blood beaded at the corner of his mouth and sizzled to steam before it could fall.
"Now," Bloodstar said.
Adrian slid his thread into the second regulator.
The world burned white.
He didn’t so much feel the rune as become it. Lines of power unfolded around his awareness, revealing layers upon layers of interlocking cycles, each tracing a different path through the Essence’s will. The node he touched did not simply redirect flow—it translated it, smoothing jagged surges into a controllable hum.
He didn’t dare break it.
He nudged.
Just a fraction.
For an agonizing instant, nothing happened.
Then the hum rose in pitch. The stabilizing loop flexed, bowed... and a sliver of its work bled sideways, joining the outward leak he’d already opened.
The Essence exhaled.
Heat hit Adrian like a tidal wave. His skin blistered; the protective talismans on his robe flared to life and died in the same breath, burned through by a purity of flame they had never been meant to endure.
Wyatt screamed.
Golden fire roared up around him in a column, erasing his outline. The air between him and the Essence went glass-clear, then warped, the very space rippling as if reality itself were a mirage.
"Spiral!" Adrian bellowed. His voice came out hoarse, ragged.
He couldn’t see Wyatt’s face anymore—only the silhouette of a man inside a sun, limbs straining, spine bowed.
"Third beat on the exhale!" Adrian shouted. "Don’t choke it—ride it!"
For a heartbeat, the column expanded, on the verge of blowing outward.
Then it twisted.
The wild fountain of Qi tightened, folding inward in a furious cyclone. The flames no longer blasted away from Wyatt; they coiled, slamming again and again along the spiral path Adrian had given him.
Stone screamed. The etched lines of the array around Wyatt’s feet blackened, then brightened, then flowed like molten gold as Essence surged through them.
"Too much," Bloodstar said softly. "His meridians are at their limit."
Adrian’s teeth ground together.
We stop, he thought.
He reached for the second regulator—
—and something caught his thread.
Not a trap glyph. Not a backlash.
Attention.
Cold, vast, unbearably bright.
It was like being pinned by a spear of sunlight. The vague sense of amusement he’d felt before crystallized into something focused and sharp.
"Little bug," a voice murmured.
It didn’t come from the Essence. It came through it, vibrating along every filament of power Adrian had touched.
His heart stopped.
In that instant, he saw the golden eyes again—not as a hazy impression, but clear, cold, their pupils thin vertical slits. Not just above the realm now, but looking down the line of the array, gaze traveling from the distant sky to the tiny kneeling figure at its heart.
To him.
"You are not of my flock," the voice mused. "Yet you wear my fire like a mask. Interesting."
Bloodstar snarled, the sound raw and ancient.
"Back away," it hissed. "Now. Close the channel."
Adrian tried.
His spiritual thread refused to move.
The presence’s interest sharpened.
"There you are," it said.
The Essence’s core twisted, the orderly spiral of flames contorting into a pattern Adrian couldn’t parse. Symbols formed within it—not runes, not characters, but shapes that made his head throb just to look at them.
His spiritual defenses buckled.
"Adrian!" Bloodstar roared.
Something slammed into him—a crimson wall, a tidal wave of murderous intent. It wasn’t aimed at the watcher; it was aimed at him, smashing into his sense so brutally that everything else tore free.
His link to the regulator snapped.
Pain like molten iron shot through his skull. He tasted copper and ash.
Reality lurched back.
He was on his hands now, not just one knee. The stone under his palms glowed dull red. The air smelled of burned hair and charred cloth.
The second regulator shuddered in his perception, settling into a new alignment—the leak still open, but no longer under his precise control. The change had been made. He couldn’t unmake it, not quickly, not without rethreading the entire node.
There was no time.
Wyatt’s screams had gone silent.
Adrian’s head snapped up.
The column of golden flame had shrunk to a tight pillar, only a few paces across. Inside it, Wyatt stood with his arms flung wide, back arched, mouth open in a silent howl. His skin—what Adrian could see of it—was no longer flesh-colored. It glowed like banked coals, cracks of brighter gold running along his veins.
His aura was wrong.
Not just denser. Not just hotter.
Aligned.
The wild, lashing fury of before had settled into a brutal, grinding rotation, every thread marching in lockstep with the rhythm of the Essence’s breath.
"He’s synchronizing," Bloodstar said, voice tight. "Fool child. If he locks too deeply, he won’t leave this place. He’ll be an extension of the array."
"Wyatt!" Adrian shouted. His throat tore on the name.
No response.
The pillar brightened, edges sharpening. Tiny tendrils of flame licked outward, brushing the inner ring—and the ring responded, hungry, greedily drawing those tendrils back into the formation.
It’s using him as a secondary regulator, Adrian realized, sick.
"Options," he said.
"Three," Bloodstar snapped. It rarely sounded hurried. Now, it did.
"One: sever his connection forcibly. You may shatter half his meridians. He lives, likely crippled, with a maimed foundation. The Essence will be displeased." A pause. "So will he."
"Two: let him complete the alignment. He will emerge profoundly changed. Not quite a human, not quite a vessel. A... branded flame-bearer. Useful. Unstable. You will owe a debt to whatever peers through that sun."
"Three: break the array segment and run. This chamber collapses; the Essence recoils. Wyatt’s survival becomes..." Bloodstar hesitated. "Uncertain."
Adrian’s stomach twisted.
None of those were the odds he’d hoped for.
The watcher chuckled.
"Do not stop him," the distant voice murmured. "He crawled to my altar on his belly. He screamed for power. Let him pay the tithe."
Adrian’s spine went cold.
"You are not a god," he whispered.
"Of course not," the presence replied, amused. "Gods require worship. I require fuel."