The temple breathed.
It exhaled heat like lungs forged from ash, its walls whispering prayers no mortal tongue should know. Within, shadows danced—not from torchlight, but from memory and sin.
Talia lay upon obsidian sheets, her skin damp with Qi-rich sweat. She was alone. Lucien had gone to commune with the furnace below. But something pulsed within her.
Something... more.
At first, it was a throb beneath her navel—a rhythm not her own. Then came the heat. Not the heat of desire or battle, but of something forming.
She sat up, hand trembling as it moved to her stomach.
Her fingers brushed skin.
And felt something pulse back.
Panic tried to rise, but it didn't reach her throat. She had no space for fear—only awe. Visions bloomed behind her eyes:
A flame that spoke. A crown of horns placed on a formless head. A cradle floating in a sea of mouths.
"You were chosen," said the voice, both hers and not.
"You carry what even gods dared not birth."
Talia collapsed to her side, gasping.
A new sigil burned into her abdomen—glowing faintly, shifting as if alive.
She cried out—not in pain, but revelation.
When Lucien returned, he found her kneeling in a pool of black petals, surrounded by weeping priestesses.
He stopped, sensing the shift.
"Talia?"
She looked up. Her eyes were deeper now—lit from within by an unfamiliar glow.
She opened her mouth.
"I carry it," she said softly. "The next flame."
Lucien stepped forward. "You mean...?"
She nodded.
"Not a child. Not yet. It's still choosing what it will be. A god. A force. A hunger. It dreams in my womb."
Lucien's face broke into something rare: reverence.
He knelt before her, placing his palm over the sigil.
It pulsed.
And he laughed—not cruelly, but with joy.
"We've done it," he whispered. "We've planted something no heaven can abort."
That night, all across the world, mirrors cracked.
Women of faith awoke screaming. Beasts howled without cause. The sky churned with colors not seen since the first gods were born.
In their sanctum, Lucien held Talia close.
"Do you fear it?" he asked.
She shook her head slowly. "No. But it's hungry."
He smiled. "Then we'll feed it."
Outside, the temple began to grow.
Roots of obsidian pushed deeper into the earth. Spires unfurled like claws. And at its center, Talia's womb burned—not with life, but with possibility.
A god yet unformed.
A destiny untamed.
And the world would never be ready.