Chapter 37. The Smile Beneath the Ash, Its Just Getting Started

The sky had changed, its color drained into a deep, storm-sick gray that soaked the forest in gloom. Shadows crept into every corner, swallowing what little light remained. The sun hadn’t set, but it may as well have vanished. A strange pressure built behind me. Something twitched near Levin’s body.

I turned. Smoke rose from him.

Thin wisps curled off his arms, shoulders, and chest, climbing in slow, spiraling motions. The air around him thickened as the smoke grew denser, drawn upward by something unseen. Beneath his skin, faint streaks began to glow, pulsing with heat. Then the fire broke through. It started in his feet, spread to his ribs, then to his collarbone.

Black flame.

It ate through him from within, stripping flesh as it burned. At the same time, just as quickly, it remade him. The fire consumed and rebuilt in a seamless loop, devouring and restoring, but over time the restoration grew weaker with each cycle, gradually swallowed up by the relentless blaze, as if the flames were determined to erase him completely.

I drifted closer, cautious. “Kevin,” I said. “What’s happening to Levin?”

Kevin slowed as he reached us. His expression stayed unreadable, but something in his voice faltered. “I don’t know for sure... but I’ve got a hunch.”

Kevin stepped closer, his voice dropping to a low murmur. “I can feel it, it’s a bloodline awakening.”

Intrigued, I hovered near his shoulder, watching as Levin’s body, sprawled motionless in the dirt, was overtaken by the blaze. His figure disappeared beneath the hungry flame. Flesh, bone, and every trace of him burned away, swallowed whole until nothing but fire remained.

Even then, the flames didn’t stop. Within that fire, something new began to take shape—the act of true rebuilding had already begun, churning and twisting in the heart of the blaze.

“Wait... bloodline? Does that mean you have something similar?”

Kevin gave a single nod. “Yes, but this... this isn’t exactly like mine. Not anymore, not with those black flames.”

“That flame... It’s eating his flesh and regenerating him at the same time.”

The fire surrounding Levin darkened, deepening in color. Crimson veins threaded through the black. His limbs rebuilt themselves, skin reformed in layers, only to be devoured again, trapped in a cycle of destruction and renewal.

Within the heart of the flames, something began to unfurl.

Shadow wings stretched wide, vast and searing. Fire curled along the edges, sculpting the shape of a beast from fantasy.

“What is that?” I asked.

Kevin’s brow furrowed—rare for him. “It’s a Phoenix, but it’s nothing like mine.”

He crouched beside Lyra, and as he extended his hand, flame flickered from his palm, a fire similar to Levin’s yet gentler, warmer and laced with a golden glow. For a brief moment, the flames took shape, curling into the silhouette of a Phoenix spreading its wings before dissolving into pure light.

The magic spread over her body gently, mending torn flesh and sealing wounds. Color slowly returned to her face. She didn’t wake up yet, but she was no longer in critical danger.

“You could’ve healed this whole time?” I said, a little too loud. “I didn’t know you could do that.” I couldn’t help it. I felt scammed.

“That’s why I wasn’t worried the least about letting them fighting alone,” Kevin replied quietly, though his expression was very troubled...

“I could always step in to rescue them if things went too far.” But the lines around his eyes said otherwise. His calm didn’t come from confidence. It was guilt.

“That fog... Fosagi’s never acted like this. I’ve never heard of sentient mist that could talk not even a rumor about it—let alone imagined something from a rookie-level ground trial could actually hold me down.”

He looked down, voice roughening. “Still… it was my failure. I let this happen.”

I’d blamed him. Screamed at him, but here he was, blaming himself.

I felt it…that disgusting feeling crawling up my spine. Shame. Bitter, ugly. After all the things I’d screamed at him, all the anger I’d thrown his way, I never once considered it. He was already blaming himself more than I ever could.

I opened my mouth to apologize. But Levin moved before I could say a word.

I turned, just in time to catch the subtle tremor in the Mega Tusk’s movement as it saw Levin stir. Its massive body shifted sideways, no longer charging blindly, but watching him with something that felt more like caution than rage.

Levin turned toward us, his gaze swept past Lyra… then landed on me… and Kevin.

It shocked me to the core to see his eyes.

The whites were gone. No iris. No color.
Just endless black.

Obsidian, smooth and lifeless—nothing human left in them.

“Levin!”
“What’s happening?! Are you okay?!”

Kevin’s voice overlapped mine, sharp with urgency, but Levin gave no response. He offered only a single, slow nod.

The Black Phoenix moved with him, its massive form rising from his back, seamlessly fused to his shoulders. Its wings stretched wide, trailing smoke and shadow, casting long silhouettes with every step he took.

In that moment, he didn’t just look like a deathbringer.

He moved like one.

Each step left the ground lifeless, the grass beneath him didn’t even have a chance to catch fire; it simply withered out of existence, vanishing without smoke, only ruined ground.

A trail of blackened earth smoldered behind him. Flames consumed everything he wore, stripping him down to bare skin that ruptured and mended in a constant cycle. But he wasn’t exposed. The fire became his second skin, a living sheath of heat and motion that clung to him in waves. Black swallowed most of the light, the flame threaded with streaks of deep red pulsing through it.

The outer layer of black flame rose in slow surges, sublimating into the air, and with each passing second, more of it peeled upward. The sky above responded in kind, growing darker with every breath of heat released.

Then something stirred on the back of his hand. Just above the wrist, the skin began to char. Firelight gathered beneath it, etching deliberate paths through his flesh with precision.

The shape formed in smoldering red, then blackened, burned into the soul beneath the skin. When it was complete, that single spot became the only part of him untouched by the endless cycle of destruction and renewal.

The shape was clear. Ancient.

【ש】

“…Shin,” I whispered. “The flame…”

Kevin surprised, asked me. “You could read that?”

“I don’t know how I could read it,” I said.

“It just felt familiar. The meaning was already there. I can’t explain it... like remembering something I was never taught.”

As I looked closer at the rune, something else caught my eye. On his pointer finger, the space ring remained—surrounded by living fire, yet perfectly intact. A faint shimmer of black heat clung to its surface, shielding it from the flames.

A cry swept through the forest, thin and piercing. The sound soaked in despair, stretched into something unending. The Mega Tusk responded with a roar. It had seen him. Or perhaps it had seen both of them.

Something had shifted.

The creature's aura no longer carried the presence of a predator. Whatever it had sensed now stood before it had changed the rules of the hunt. I couldn’t explain how I knew but I saw it in the way the Tusk hesitated.

“Scorch Fang.”

Black flame surged from Levin’s hand, rising in jagged arcs. It erupted violently and instinctive, spilling mana like blood. The heat bent the air, shaping something massive and primal out of fire and smoke.

A beast emerged within the blaze.

The wolf had returned, but it was no longer the same.

Its body was forged from blackened flame, deep shadow pulsing with crimson fire. The fire clung unevenly to its frame, flickering in some places and thickening in others, sculpting the form of an Alpha Wolf.

Its limbs stalked forward with heavy weight, each step leaving behind scorched impressions that hissed with residual heat. Its head rose last, fully formed. Fangs stretched longer than before, curved like obsidian blades and glowing from within. Fire dripped from its jaw, slow and deliberate. There was no light in its eyes. Only two endless pits of black that swallowed all reflection. The flames along its back rippled once before the wolf settled beside Levin, silent and still, bound by instinct and ready to strike.

The mark flickered.

【ש】

The wolf launched forward, black flame surging behind it as each step cracked the dirt with heat. The moment it left the ground, the fire trailing behind it warped unnaturally.

Just before the leap could land, the wolf’s form melted and dissolved, its essence unraveling into tendrils of darkness that seeped into the earth and vanished into the shadow cast by a nearby boulder.

Silence followed.

The Mega Tusk shifted uneasily, one massive hoof dragging a groove through the ground. Its shadow stretched across the clearing, thick and distorted beneath the dimmed sky, weighed down by the creature’s size.

Within that shadow, a pair of pitch-black eyes appeared—eyes that did not reflect the light, eyes that watched without blinking. The Mega Tusk remained unaware of their presence.

The shadow rippled once, then convulsed, twisting at an unnatural angle, stretching against the direction of the light that framed it.

And from that warped patch of darkness, the wolf returned.

It surged upward from the Tusk’s own silhouette, reborn in a burst of darkness, flame, and searing black heat—one fluid eruption of teeth and claws.

Its fangs found the softest point beneath the beast’s armored belly, driving in with merciless force. Its front claws raked upward, tearing through exposed muscle and carving deep, glowing trails across the Tusk’s chest.

The Mega Tusk reared back in panic, flailing and staggering, but the wolf had already vanished. Its body dissolved into shadow once more, folding back into the very shape that had birthed it.

At that same moment, directly beneath me, the shadow cast by my cube-shaped body rippled. The same wolf emerged from it without a sound.

“What the actual—?!” I screamed out of reflex.

As the wolf emerged, I saw its expression. It was smiling—not playful, but a predatory, sinister smile. Something darker, something cold and deliberate, a quiet malice written across its flaming jaw.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” I muttered, stunned.

Then the wolf stepped forward and returned to Levin’s side.

“Hey, Kevin,” I said quietly.

“What is it?” he replied, watching the battlefield with narrowed eyes.

“I don’t think what’s standing in front of us is just Levin anymore. You probably couldn’t see it from your angle, but each time the Tusk screamed... he was smiling.”

Kevin eyes remained fixed on Levin, watching the way the black flame pulsed along his son’s body and then his gaze followed the wolf as it returned to Levin’s side, then settled on his son’s flame-wrapped figure. His jaw tightened. Every movement in his face was controlled, but something inside him was clearly restless.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low, almost brittle.

“I know,” he said.
“Even without seeing his face, the moment he turned with those lifeless eyes… I could feel something was wrong.”

I thought the wolf’s attack had ended. But then the wound began to change.

From the point where the bite had landed, black fire emerged. The flesh caught fire, then caved inward. The muscle around the wound shriveled and folded in on itself, devoured from within.

The ground beneath the Mega Tusk was ruined as the beast began to thrash wildly responding to the invasion. Its body reacted to the decay that came from inside, what begun as a single strike bloomed into a force of destruction, the inner tissues swelled and collapsed as the flame spread deeper, consuming without rest.

Each beat of the creature’s heart only hastened the damage, carrying the heat into places even the wolf had not touched.

Not long ago, Lyra had fought it with everything she had—darting, dodging, burning through her mana just to stay alive. Now, a single strike from Levin’s summoned spell had already turned the tide.

Levin had grown far stronger, but something felt off. The fight was already over. The Mega Tusk could barely move, reduced to nothing more than thrashing in place with no hope of retaliation.

And yet, Levin wasn’t done.

There was no reason to continue. No threat left to face. But he stepped forward anyway, fire pulsing at his feet. Just before he moved again, he glanced back at us.

His face twisted into a crazed, sinister smile.

“It’s just getting started,” he said.

No one answered.

Even Kevin stood frozen, his mouth slightly open, the words caught somewhere between his throat and I hovered in place, just as speechless.

Something had changed, and none of us knew how to stop it.