Chapter 15: Disturbance in the Flame Prison

The Flame Prison was never meant to imprison people.

It imprisoned—
Deviations.

Deep within the Flame Prison, there was no Flame.

This was the greatest misunderstanding outsiders had.

The true Flame Prison compressed, folded, and encoded Flame into rules—like an invisible shell.

Here, Flame did not burn.

It observed.

Su Lan was confined at the very bottom.

No light.
No sound.
No sense of Flame.

This was the Flame Domain’s highest specification for “dangerous thoughts.”

They believed that severing all feedback would return a person to a “malleable state.”

But they overlooked one thing—

Su Lan had never relied on Flame to think.

Day Seven.

The first anomaly appeared in the Flame Prison.

Not a riot.
Not overstepping.
Not even a malfunction.

Just—
A record that didn’t match reality.

The patrolling Flame Officer noticed that one prisoner’s “Flame Order existence record” lagged behind the real world by half a breath.

Half a breath.

In the Flame Domain, normally negligible.

Yet the officer’s hand trembled slightly.

Because the Flame Order never delayed.

Day Nine.

The second anomaly appeared.

A Flame perception monitor on one level of the prison registered an unresolvable blank in response to Su Lan’s “mental fluctuations.”

Not violent.
Not abnormal.
But—
Missing.

As if someone had excavated a tiny piece of logic from the rules.

Day Twelve.

The prison warden personally came to inspect.

He stood outside Su Lan’s cell.
Across the Flame Order barrier, he looked at her.

Su Lan sat cross-legged.

Not cultivating.
Not speaking to herself.
Just staring forward.

As if she were listening to something.

“What are you doing?”
The warden asked coldly.

Su Lan raised her head.

“Have you noticed something?”
She said softly.
“The Flame Prison… is very quiet.”

The warden frowned.

A provocation.
And a meaningless statement.

But her next words made his chest tighten.

“Quiet enough that—”
“You think nothing is happening here.”

That night.

For the first time, the deepest rules of the Flame Prison were actively invoked.

Not by a Flame Sovereign.
Not by the Council.
But by—
A prisoner already deemed “unauthorized.”

Su Lan did not call upon Flame.

She invoked—
The interpretation layer of the Flame Order.

The Flame Order was not only execution.

It also explained.

It explained why Flame existed.
It explained how anomalies should be classified.
It explained how the world should be understood.

This was the layer least touched in the Flame Domain.

Because explanation itself meant—
Things could be reunderstood.

Su Lan did not break any rules.

She simply posed a question to the Flame Order.

An extremely simple question:

If an existence does not take Flame as a premise,
then is “Flame failure” still an anomaly?

The Flame Order did not respond immediately.

Because this question was not in the “error list.”

The delay began to expand.

Flame perception on the seventh level of the prison registered synchronous errors.
On the ninth level, array response slowed.

Not collapse.
But—
Hesitation.

For the first time, the Flame Prison showed signs of thinking.

At the Flame Domain center.

The Flame Order arrays trembled again.

The Sovereigns noticed simultaneously.

“It’s not the Flame-less one,” someone murmured.
“It’s inside the prison.”

Their faces darkened.
“What is she doing?”

The answer soon appeared.

On the Flame Order, a segment marked as “cannot be unfolded” began to expand on its own.

It was—
The original logic chain created at the founding of the Flame Domain to answer the question: Does a world exist beyond Flame?

It was supposed to remain sealed forever.

Inside the prison.

Su Lan slowly opened her eyes.

Her sense of Flame remained blocked.
Her body remained confined.

Yet she knew—
She had reached a critical point.

“I see now.”
She whispered softly.
“You aren’t forbidding the Flame-less.
You just—”
“Have never prepared an answer.”

The Flame Prison began to stir.

Not an explosion.
Not a collapse.

But—
Instability at the level of rules.

Some cells’ Flame perception barriers loosened, if only for a fraction of a moment.

Some prisoners previously deemed “Flame deviations” for the first time—
Were not automatically suppressed by the system.

The Flame Prison had begun to show gaps.

Elsewhere, in the Flame Domain.

The man without a name lifted his head.

He did not know why.

Yet he suddenly sensed—
Somewhere, someone was prying open a door for him.