Solflare: The Painter's Secret-Chapter 88: The Flesh That Dared Heaven
Thud. Thud. Thud.
"Ouuuch! Ouuuuuch! Ouuuuuuuch!"
Leon screamed as he rolled, tumbling uncontrollably down a long, hard staircase he couldn’t see. Pain snaked through his shoulder, hip, and knees as he slammed them hard over and over.
His head slammed into something that echoed with a metal clang at the edge, jerking him to a dizzying halt.
The world spun as he lay there, gasping. Slowly, he placed his right palm against the throbbing part of his skull and pushed himself up into a sitting position.
"What place is this?" he groaned, but his voice didn’t echo back.
"I need light." He muttered as he blinked, forcing his eyes to see through the touchable darkness. He lowered himself, brushed his free left arm along the ground beside him, as if wanting to grab something.
A long, cylindrical metallic object touched his fingers as he stretched the arm slightly forward. He wrapped his fingers around it and lifted it to his head level, then stared at the dark shape in his hand.
He brushed his thumb along it while his heart beat frantically in his chest. But when a button got flipped under a push by his thumb, a beam of light blasted and turned into a circular pool of white light around his boots.
He gasped, raised the torch higher, and swept its beam of light forward. "Wow," he breathed when the light revealed a cavernous space.
Endless rows of dark wooden bookshelves stretched away into the distance in every direction. Some looked packed with colorful books of all sizes and thicknesses.
Leon turned, threw the light behind him to find the stairs he’d just fallen. His blood ran cold. ’What?!’ he screamed in his mind as he saw only a seamless stone floor.
"Where are the stairs that I slid on?" he whispered, the beam trembling slightly in his grip. He stood frozen for a moment, his mind reeling the second before he moved his right leg into the back space while Zoe smiled at him.
Crack.
A sharp, dry sound like timber settling echoed from his left and blasted through the vast silence.
Swallowing hard while sweat traced down his brow, Leon forced his legs to move. He walked slowly, the torch’s light revealing more than he expected.
He stopped when the circle of light fell upon a large, complicated symbol carved into the stone floor – a stylized sun, its rays stretching outward like roots.
As soon as his boots touched the center of the carved sun, a blinding, electric blue light erupted from the symbol beneath him.
It was so intense that Leon cried out; his left arm flew up instinctively, shielding his eyes, while a furnace heat washed over him.
"What’s that?!" he gasped, squeezing his eyes shut against the painful glare.
Just as suddenly as it came, the scorching intensity began to fade. Cautiously, he lowered his arm and cracked his eyes open.
Tiny blue particles drifted lazily throughout the room, like lazy fireflies, casting an ethereal glow that mingled with the beam of his torch.
Crack. Crack.
The wood-settling sound continued, erupting from all directions at once.
Leon turned his attention to the nearest bookshelf, which seemed to be one of the few that appeared mostly empty. He shone the light directly on it and examined the empty spaces.
Just as he was about to turn away, a heavy, leather-bound book silently fell from the upper shelf he’d just scanned.
Whump.
It struck his leg just above the knee with a painful thud. "Oooooouch!" he grimaced, squeezed his face, and bent at the waist.
He looked down, found the book splayed open on the floor, its pages facing up. He aimed the torch at it and found the pages to be black.
"What book is that?" he muttered, curiosity overriding the pain. "Let me start with it since it fell from nowhere and slammed my leg."
He bent down, winced at the fresh ache in his side, and picked up the book. The black cover brushed smoothly against the skin of his palm.
"No title?" he flipped open the first page with his thumb. ’Empty.’ "Whoa! Not even a single piece of content?" His eyes widened as he rapidly fanned through the entire book. Page after page.
But as he flipped to the very last sheet, preparing to close it, he felt a subtle, textured pressure against his fingertip. He stopped and turned it back to the front cover.
Where there had been nothing, something started to form. Starting from a single capital letter ’T’, words began to form.
They wove themselves into existence as he watched, holding his breath. After a few seconds, a title resolved before his eyes: The Flesh That Dared Heaven.
A cold thrill shot down Leon’s spine. Though fear still dwelled in him, a faint smile touched his lips.
He opened the book again to the first page. A gust of wind smelling of ancient paper and burnt sheets brushed across his face.
He kept his gaze locked on the blank sheet as words began to form, scripting in the same shimmering silver ink, line by line, as if an invisible pen were writing them just for him.
Chapter 1: The Lie of Human Limits.
Humans are not weak – they are sealed. The body is a prison built by a forgotten covenant to prevent ascension. Pain is not damage – it is the key, the fuel to unlock the seal. First law: The body must be broken before it can be rebuilt.
Leon stared, fully shocked. His mind flashed back to the visceral, tearing agony he experienced in the Shattered Lands: the creature’s claws, the crushing weight, the feeling of his own bones screaming, and the golden light that answered him whenever he was at the brink of death.
’Does that mean I have already undergone the first transformation?’ he said low in his mind. As if in response, another sentence began to form at the bottom of the page.
This one had bolder and darker letters.
Leon Storm. You have reached the breaking point. Yet you lack the courage to welcome the devil in your soul.
