Vincy reached for the hilt of the newly forged blade, his fingers closing around the cold, leather-wrapped grip. He expected the light, balanced feel of his old training sword. Instead, the moment he applied upward pressure, a dull crack echoed through the grotto.
The blade didn't move. Instead, the stone cooling rack beneath it pulverized into dust. The sword sank inches into the solid cave floor, anchored by its own unnatural density.
"Piet... I can't even budge it," Vincy strained, his face turning a deep shade of red as he used both hands.
"Of course you can't," Piet's voice rang out, laced with an annoying amount of satisfaction. "You've just bound a fragment of a collapsed star to a piece of soul-iron. At its current rest, it weighs as much as a small hill. To lift it, you must circulate your Qi through the violet vein in the blade. You don't carry the sword, Vincy; you convince the sword to let go of the ground."
Master Olin stood back, his arms crossed over his soot-stained chest. He wasn't looking at the sword; he was staring at Vincy's hands. Specifically, he was watching the faint, ochre shimmer beneath the boy's skin where the Primeval Earth Fire had settled.
How? Olin wondered, his eyes narrowing. That flame is a beast. It's a Grade-5 Earth Fire, tempered by the pressure of the tectonic plates. My own current flame might be more refined in purity, but the raw 'will' of that ochre fire is enough to incinerate the meridians of a Foundation Establishment master. Yet this boy... he didn't just survive it. He tamed it.
Olin knew that taming a fire of that grade usually required decades of "Flame-Suppression" meditation or a specialized ice-attribute treasure. Vincy had done it in minutes. It hinted at a soul-strength that shouldn't belong to a child from a backwater sect.
"Stop pulling at the floor, boy!" Olin barked, snapping out of his thoughts. "You have bigger problems than a heavy sword. Look at your wrists."
Vincy stopped pulling and looked down. The veins in his arms were beginning to glow with a dull, heated orange. A sudden, sharp hunger clawed at his stomach—not for food, but for energy. He felt his Qi reserves, already low from the refining process, being sucked into the "seed" of the fire at his dantian.
"The Living Furnace is hungry," Olin explained, his voice turning grim. "It's an extraordinary flame, graded among the strongest of the 'Sentient Earth' types. But a fire needs fuel. Right now, it's eating your cultivation. If you don't feed it, it will start eating your life essence."
Seraphina, who had been leaning against the wall in a state of bored detachment, stood up straight. "He's burning up. His temperature is rising."
"He needs a Flame-Sating Pill," Olin said, moving toward a shelf of dusty jars. "And since I don't have any made, and my hands are too shaky for the fine-tuning... you're going to have to make it yourself, Vincy. Using your own new fire."
"I don't know the first thing about making a pill!" Vincy cried out, a bead of sweat sizzling as it hit his arm.
"I do," Piet whispered, a predatory hum vibrating in Vincy's skull. "And I've been waiting for a reason to see what this 'Primeval' fire can really do. Olin! Throw us the herbs. We're going to show you how a Prince of the Archive cooks."