Chapter 711: Do you want to die for them or live for yourself?
The fire around him stopped bursting outward for one second, but that stillness was worse somehow, because it looked exactly like the moment before something broke for good.
Isabella felt it immediately.
"He’s not here," she said.
Nobody understood her except Bubu.
{His spirit is slipping! The brand is pulling him inward!}
Inside the broken, burning space of Osiris’s mind, the world changed.
He stood on black stone under a red sky.
No snow.
No palace.
No village.
Only heat, smoke, and the sound of chains.
Before him was an altar.
A huge one.
Ancient.
Dark.
And around it, bound in lines of fire and blood, were figures he somehow knew even though his memory was torn and broken.
His people.
His clan.
Phoenixes.
Some were kneeling.
Some hung limply.
Some still had their heads raised, but the light in their eyes was fading.
The sight hit him so hard that his chest nearly split open from it.
He knew them.
Not by name, not clearly, but in the deep place where blood remembered even when the mind failed.
A voice spoke.
It came from above, below, everywhere at once.
"Come home."
The words pressed into his bones like hooks.
"Complete the sacrifice."
Osiris’s breath turned ragged.
He wanted to move.
He wanted to burn the whole altar down.
He wanted to tear apart whoever was speaking.
But the brand on his back dragged at him, pulling him forward step by step toward the altar as if it owned him.
Again the voice came.
"Your blood was chosen. Your fire belongs to First City. Come home."
Outside, Osiris’s body began shaking again.
His lips moved soundlessly.
More cracks spread across the floor under him.
Inside the illusion, he saw one of the bound figures lift their head toward him. Their eyes were full of pain. Full of command. Full of pleading. Full of something too old and too broken for him to understand fully.
For one brief second, Osiris wanted to surrender to it.
If that was his clan, if those were his people, then what right did he have to turn away?
What right did he have to live when they had suffered like that?
The pull on his back grew stronger.
The altar’s fire rose.
The voice became harsher.
"Come home. Complete what was started."
Then another voice cut through it.
A completely different voice.
A voice from outside the illusion.
A voice warm with anger and life and annoying stubbornness.
"Osiris."
He turned.
And somehow, through that red sky and black stone and burning altar, Isabella’s voice still reached him cleanly.
"Do you want to die for them or live for yourself?"
The question hit him like cold water thrown straight into a fire.
Osiris froze.
Because nobody had asked him that before.
Not the voice.
Not the brand.
Not the dreams.
They only pulled.
They only demanded.
They only tried to own him.
But Isabella asked.
Live for yourself.
The words echoed strangely through him.
For one breath, the grief nearly crushed him.
Because if he lived, then what of them?
If he turned away, then what kind of phoenix was he?
Then the answer rose inside him with shocking clarity.
If he died like this, he would save no one.
If he surrendered, he would only become another offering on that altar.
If he lived, fought, and got stronger, then he could still burn everything that had been done to them.
His eyes changed.
The fire in them stopped being grief alone.
Rage returned.
Choice returned.
"I’ll live," he said hoarsely.
The altar shook.
The voice roared in fury.
The burning pull on his back twisted violently, then something inside the brand split with a sharp cracking sound.
Outside, Osiris’s body jerked so hard that Cyrus’s coils tightened at once.
The flaming mark on his back cracked down the middle.
Only slightly.
A pulse of fire burst outward in one last furious wave, then Zyran’s shadows slammed over it and crushed it back.
Osiris collapsed face-first to the floor.
The flames died instantly.
For one second, nobody moved.
Then Isabella yanked herself free from Kian’s hold and rushed forward.
This time, no one stopped her.
Cyrus loosened his coils enough for her to get through, though he still kept his body around them protectively. Zyran’s shadows pulled back slowly, and the whole room suddenly smelled of burned wood, hot stone, and pain.
Isabella dropped to her knees beside Osiris despite the strain in her body.
"Osiris."
He was breathing.
Roughly.
But breathing.
His whole body was soaked in sweat, and the cracked mark on his back still glowed faintly like something angry and not yet finished. Isabella reached toward him, then hesitated, because she did not know whether touching the brand would trigger it again.
Bubu’s voice came back weaker now, but still urgent.
{The link is damaged, not broken! He fought it off, but it can return!}
Zyran let out a breath and sat back against the nearest intact piece of wall.
"Well," he said hoarsely, "that was annoying."
Even then, his voice sounded bored.
That made Kian glare at him.
Zyran lifted one shoulder lazily. "What? He’s alive."
Cyrus, still half in serpent form, lowered his head near Isabella and Osiris. The scales along his great body were still warm from containing the heat, but his eyes had softened again now that the danger to Isabella had lessened.
Kian crouched on the other side and asked, "Can he hear us?"
Osiris’s fingers twitched.
Then, after a moment, he pushed himself up just enough to breathe more properly.
His face looked wrecked.
Worse than wrecked, actually.
He looked like a man who had been dragged through grief and thrown back still burning.
Isabella stared at him, her own heart still pounding.
Then she said very quietly, "You chose."
Osiris lifted his head enough to look at her.
His eyes were still too bright.
Still too raw.
But he answered.
"Yes."
Then he coughed, spat a little blood to the side, and added in a voice full of cold fury, "And when I get my power back, I’m burning that city until even the stones scream."
For one second, nobody answered.
Then Zyran, still leaning there like a terrible disaster had only mildly interrupted his evening, nodded once.
"That sounds more like you."
And somehow, that stupid sentence made the tension in the room loosen just enough for Isabella to breathe again.