In the heart of the clan's headquarters, the reunion chamber felt suffocating.
"What were you thinking, Elder Xiawen?! Don't play the fool! We know you're behind this flame!" one elder with bloody bandages shouted, his face flushed with rage. "It appeared in your mansion—how could you not know something?"
"Hiding a high-ranked material like that?" another elder snarled, his voice trembling with fury. "Do you realize how many lives you've endangered?"
"Your greed has brought us to ruin!" another elder with a missing arm added, his voice trembling with fury. "You've doomed the entire clan! How can you live with yourself?!"
The elders closed in around Liandor, their hands flailing as they threw accusations at him. One elder, his voice roaring like thunder, jabbed a trembling finger in Liandor's direction. "Because of your avarice, you've gotten countless people killed!"
His eyes narrowed as he took in their furious faces. The air felt heavy with their outrage, each word hitting him like a slap. Yet Liandor stood silent as if not even trying to justify himself. He seemed resigned and even a bit tired.
"You've betrayed the Xia name! You've brought every beast from miles around to our doorstep!" another elder spat, his voice sharp with accusation.
Liandor stood still, his face hard as stone, his eyes narrowed as the elders closed in around him. Their words hit like blows, but he remained silent, his expression resigned.
"Enough!" A cold, commanding voice sliced through the chaos. The room fell into an immediate hush as every eye turned toward the patriarch. "Elder Xiawen," the patriarch said, his tone icy, "you have some explaining to do."
Liandor looked up slowly. "Patriarch..."
"No excuses. We will talk about what you have done later. For now we have more urgent matters." The patriarch's gaze was unforgiving. "What is that flame, and can it be stopped?"
Liandor hesitated. "... I don't think it can be stopped," he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper.
The patriarch's eyes darkened. "Then tell us what you do know."
Liandor hesitated before speaking. "The flame… It's a high-ranked material, ranking 4 or maybe even rank 5. I'm not sure. From the record of my family... This flame can suppress the surrounding aether and can feed on the souls of those who died nearby. That's why it's grown so large. With the attack waves and all the death around us, it's been growing to the point where the seal couldn't handle it anymore."
One elder, his voice tight with disbelief, interjected, "Wait. Does that mean your family has known about this flame for years?"
Liandor nodded slowly. "Yes. We found it generations ago and kept it sealed."
Another elder rose to his feet, his face pale with shock. "This is treason! You kept that information from the clan?"
Before he could continue, the patriarch cut him off with a sharp glare. "Enough interruptions. Elder Xiaren, if you can't keep your composure, you may dispose."
The elder bit his tongue, sinking back into his chair, but the tension in the room thickened. The patriarch turned back to Liandor, his voice steady but cold. "How did this flame escape your control?"
Liandor exhaled slowly, his shoulders slumping as if the words themselves were too heavy to carry. "My grandson..."
The patriarch's eyes narrowed slightly. "Your grandson?" He tilted his head, searching Liandor's face. "If I remember correctly, his name was Elias, right?"
Liandor shook his head. "No... not him. My true grandson... the one cursed by heaven."
The room seemed to tense at those words, but everyone seemed too focused on the second part of the sentence to care about what he meant by "true grandson."
The patriarch raised an eyebrow. "Cursed by heaven…You indeed had a grandson with unranked potential. But wouldn't he have died a few months after his awakening like all other unranked? The last awakening ceremony was long ago, so why bring him up now?"
Liandor's jaw tightened, his eyes turning grim. His voice wavered as he spoke. "He should've died... His fate was sealed... but I couldn't let that happen. The unranked potential is a death sentence... A crime punished by Heaven. The aether that gives us life was slowly killing him. It was poison to him."
The patriarch stared, his expression unreadable but focused.
"Then I remembered that our family had a very unique treasure..." Liandor continued, his hands trembling slightly. "A flame that suppresses the aether around it. I thought... I thought it might give my grandson more time to slow down the poison."
The elders exchanged uneasy glances. Liandor's voice became more fragile with each word. "So despite the warnings of my ancestors... I put him near the flame... I thought I was saving him. And for a while, it worked. The aether poisoning slowed, and I thought maybe I'd found the answer. But it wasn't enough."
He paused, his hands clenching into fists as the memory overwhelmed him. "I left him there... I spent all my time searching for a cure, anything that could help him. Every time I returned, I could see he was weaker, but I told myself the flame kept him alive, giving me time."
Liandor's voice cracked, and his face contorted with grief. "But one day... I came back, and he was gone. My grandson... Raymond... he was dead."
Liandor's gaze dropped to the floor. "When I found him... the flame had absorbed his soul. It broke free from its restraints, growing stronger from his death. I tried... I tried everything to put it out, to destroy it so that at least his soul could rest. But I couldn't... nothing worked. So I could only seal it... But it was too late. The beasts all around the region had somehow sensed it."
The patriarch remained silent for a moment, his gaze hardening as he turned to the flames flickering outside the window. "Your grandson's death released this curse upon us all."
Liandor nodded, his face grim. "Now, with all the deaths around us... the flame is growing stronger. It was a miracle the seal could hold this long."
The patriarch took a deep breath, his composure cold and calculating. "That was also why you seemed so distracted in our meetings...We will deal with your punishment later, Xiawen. For now, we need to stop this before it consumes everything. How do we contain it?"
Liandor swallowed hard. "I... I don't know. The flame is far beyond my control now."
Silence fell over the room as the gravity of the situation settled over them like a thick fog. The patriarch's expression darkened further.
Finally, he spoke. "Then we have no choice. We will abandon White River. Prepare the clan for evacuation."
The elders, worn and bloodied, exchanged looks but did not protest. Morale was too low, the losses too great to argue. The beasts were relentless, and they had no more strength left to defend the city.
Just as the patriarch opened his mouth to give the final order, the door to the chamber burst open with a loud crash.
A man, panting heavily, staggered into the room, his face as pale as death. "P-Patriarch!" he gasped. "The flame that we couldn't extinguish no matter how hard we tried… it's moving!"
The room stilled, every head turning toward him. "What do you mean?" one elder demanded.
"The flame!" the man stammered, pointing frantically toward the window. "It's no longer in the Xiawen mansion! It's coming toward here!"
Every elder turned to the window, their eyes widening in horror. The blue flame was no longer distant—it was crawling its way toward the heart of the compound, brighter and larger than before.
Gasps echoed through the room as the realization sank in. The flame, seemingly drawn by something, was coming for them.
The patriarch's face hardened. "It's coming here…"