Chapter 98

Chapter 98 Seraphina's POV The power flowing through the sigil was unlike anything I'd felt before—not the controlled burn of Codex magic, but something wild and ancient that threatened to consume me from within. As I reached toward the first possessed villager, a young boy whose eyes had been replaced by flickering flames, I felt the boundary between myself and the First Flame's essence blur. *Let me help,* whispered a voice that wasn't quite my own. *Let me free them.* The boy's head snapped toward me with inhuman speed, his mouth opening to release a sound no human throat should make. Behind him, more of the possessed turned as one, their movements suddenly predatory rather than merely vacant. "They know what you're trying to do," Kaelos called out between sword strokes, his blade finally finding solid flesh as he adapted to the cultists' illusion tactics. "The fragments inside them—they're fighting back." I could feel it too. The splinters of the First Flame that animated these poo