Location: Volgograd, Russia | Former Soviet Bio-Vault B-21
Two Weeks Later – Russian Border, Deep Winter
The air was pure ice.
Even wrapped in thermal suits, the team felt the sting of winter biting into their bones. Snowstorms howled across the plains, and frost clung to every surface like a second skin. The once-mighty city of Volgograd now stood in eerie silence, its Soviet monuments blanketed in snow and shadow.
The locals called it "The Sleeping Grave."
Few dared approach the ruins of Vault B-21, a classified Soviet site abandoned after a catastrophic energy event in the 1980s. Officially, it had been a nuclear malfunction.
Unofficially?
It was the last place the Ashless Prince had been seen.
Inside the Ruins
Ayaka moved ahead, scanning with a modified thermal scope.
"No life signs. But… something's wrong."
The entrance to the vault had been sealed shut by ice thicker than steel. Tharaka stepped forward, igniting a blade of solar fire with a deep growl.
"Let me do the honors."
One clean strike, and the ice shattered like glass.
They stepped inside.
What greeted them wasn't decay—but preservation.
Walls lined with steel lockers, flickering fluorescent lights still powered by something not of this world. Transparent cylinders, filled with suspended soldiers, floated eerily in the dark.
Miren gasped. "Soviet flame-clones…they tried to replicate the Godfire."
Arjun walked down the corridor, passing frozen soldiers whose eyes twitched—not dead, just dreaming.
The Black Chamber
At the end of the vault lay a massive chamber.
In its center was a sarcophagus of obsidian, sealed by seven iron locks, all of them glowing with crimson runes.
Ayaka read the label etched above in Russian:
"Object-34. Codename: The Flame That Does Not Burn."
Liu scanned the locks. "These aren't seals. They're… bindings."
Before anyone could react, the sarcophagus opened on its own.
A hiss of steam.
A figure slowly rose, clad in black armor etched with bone-white lines. His skin was pale like snow, his eyes silver-blue.
No flame.
No heartbeat.
Yet he breathed.
The Ashless Prince
He looked at Arjun, and for a long moment, said nothing.
Then a smirk curled across his lips.
"So… the child of the Phoenix still walks."
Arjun stepped forward, muscles tense. "You're the Ashless Prince."
The man tilted his head. "No. I was him. Now I am more."
He raised his hand. The oxygen in the chamber crystallized.
Ayaka barely deflected a strike that would've shattered Arjun's lungs. Liu and Tharaka attacked in unison—ice and flame—but the Ashless Prince danced through them with inhuman grace.
"You fight with borrowed powers," he said coldly. "But mine are earned. I do not burn because I conquered the flame."
Miren whispered, "He… devoured his Godfire fragment."
Collapse and Escape
The vault began to rumble.
The Ashless Prince raised a single hand and the entire chamber cracked.
"Let's see if your fire can survive the cold."
He vanished—leaving behind a glowing crystal on the altar where the sarcophagus had stood.
The crystal pulsed with white flame.
Arjun ran to it, gripping it as pain seared his veins. Visions surged—memories of his mother fighting the Ashless Prince in the skies above Tibet, sealing a fragment of his soul inside this very vault.
"I remember now," Arjun gasped. "She couldn't kill him. So she locked his soul where fire couldn't reach."
"Then we made a mistake waking him," Ayaka said, pulling him back.
With the vault beginning to collapse, they sprinted for the exit as the soldiers in stasis began to stir—eyes glowing with dead light.
At the Crawler
Back at their mobile base, Kavi yelled from the monitor.
"I caught him on thermal! He's heading west—towards Poland!"
Arjun clutched the white flame crystal in his hands, watching it dim slowly.
"We're not ready for him," he said. "But I have to be. If he's unlocked his full power, he'll burn everything without ever lighting a match."
Tharaka tightened his gear. "Then we train. We hunt. And we strike before he does."
Liu nodded. "Where's the next fragment?"
Arjun pointed to the next mark on the scroll.
"Kyoto. Japan. Beneath the Forgotten Temple."
Ayaka's expression hardened.
"That's where I was born."