CHAPTER 1520: STORY 1520: SHATTERED HEART

The silence that followed was not peace but dread. The titan loomed motionless, Kael’s sword buried deep in its blazing heart. The Cradle of Ash groaned around them, its skeletal walls cracking as though unsure whether to collapse or hold.

Kael gasped, his knuckles white on the hilt. His vision blurred, blood dripping from his temple into his eyes. For a fleeting second he thought—hoped—it was over. But the stillness broke with a tremor that rattled his bones.

The Unborn’s body convulsed, its faceless head snapping upward in a grotesque spasm. The molten light within its chest surged brighter, swallowing the sword until only the hilt remained visible. A terrible sound rose from deep within—a cry not of defeat, but of birth still forcing its way into the world.

Elara dragged herself forward, her palms pressed to the ground for balance. Smoke rose from her blistered skin, but her eyes burned with clarity. “Kael,” she rasped, “it’s not dying—it’s consuming the strike. Your blade... it’s feeding the heart.”

Kael tried to wrench the sword free, but the grip of shadow closed around it like a vice. The titan shuddered again, ribs cracking outward as if the very act of impalement had become part of its metamorphosis.

“You strike at beginnings,” the newborn voice boomed, each syllable shaking the marrow of the earth. “But beginnings devour endings. You are swallowed in me.”

The ground buckled as fissures erupted, spewing molten light and black smoke. From those rifts, new creatures clawed upward—taller, leaner, their limbs armored with the fragments of broken bone. Their eyes blazed with the same crimson fire as the titan’s chest.

Kael staggered, blood pouring from his side, but his grip on the sword held firm. “No... I won’t... let you...”

Elara coughed, crimson flecking her lips. Yet she rose, dragging herself beside him. Her voice shook, but the fire that flickered in her hand was no longer desperate—it was steady, sharpened by resolve. “Then let me burn with you.”

Together, they pressed forward. Elara laid her hands against the sword’s hilt, her flames pouring into the steel. The blade blazed, not with Kael’s light alone, but with fire and defiance intertwined.

The titan howled. Its chest cracked wider, shadows writhing in agony as the sword burned hotter, sinking deeper into the heart. The walls of the cradle buckled, raining shards of bone and ash.

The newborn face twisted, its first breath turning to a scream. It raised its clawed hand to strike them both down—only to falter, its arm trembling as though the fire inside it betrayed its own flesh.

Kael and Elara, side by side, forced the blade deeper.

The sky itself split, a storm of fire and shadow tearing upward. The titan’s scream shattered into a thousand voices, carried on the wind like a funeral dirge.

For a heartbeat, it looked as though the Unborn might fall.

But then the heart pulsed once more—stronger, louder.

And the Cradle of Ash began to collapse.