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ArabicArknights: Soul Knights of Terra — Chapter 9
Chapter 9: The Flame Demon Attacks
“Flame Demon?!”
The words detonated in Silence’s ears. She shot up from her chair, the violent jerk of her body sending the nearby medical cart skidding across the floor. Steel instruments clattered sharply against the tiles. Behind her round-rimmed glasses, her pupils shrank to terrified pinpricks, the blood draining entirely from her face.
The patient under her care—the Sarkaz girl she treated as her own flesh and blood—was Ifrit. And sealed within that child’s fragile body was an unstable, violently volatile Flame Demon consciousness.
For years, keeping that ancient malice suppressed, preventing it from completely devouring the girl’s sanity, had been Silence’s sole, desperate focus. Hearing that a living, breathing Flame Demon had suddenly manifested inside Rhine Lab triggered a primal, maternal panic.
“Is it… did it come for Ifrit?!”
Silence whipped her head toward the infirmary door, her chest heaving, half-expecting the terrifying monstrosity to tear through the metal and snatch away the child she had sacrificed everything to protect.
Saria watched the researcher lose her composure, a faint flicker of concern breaking through her usual stoicism. She stepped forward, reaching out with her uninjured left hand. Her heavy glove pressed firmly onto Silence’s trembling shoulder, the touch grounding and absolute.
“Silence. Breathe,” Saria commanded, her low voice carrying a steady, reassuring weight. “There is currently no evidence to suggest its target is Ifrit. It manifested far from her ward.”
She paused, her brow furrowing slightly. “… after engaging me in combat and gaining the upper hand, it vanished. Completely.”
“Vanished?” Silence blinked, looking up at the Director in sheer disbelief.
“Yes. Without a single fluctuation of Originium Arts.” Saria’s expression darkened as she recalled the irrational physics of the encounter. “It was as if the entity was simply erased from the fabric of reality. We have already locked down the sector and are analyzing the residual traces. Until we know exactly what we are dealing with, I am reassigning extra personnel to guard Ifrit’s perimeter. You have my word.”
Despite Saria’s ironclad assurance, the cold knot of dread in Silence’s stomach refused to untangle. A mysterious, overwhelmingly powerful entity had breached Rhine Lab. Regardless of its initial trajectory, she could not afford to drop her guard. Silence gripped the hem of her lab coat, her knuckles turning white, the look in her eyes hardening into pure resolve. She would not let anything touch that child.
Saria watched the tension radiating from the smaller woman and opened her mouth to offer another word of comfort.
BOOM!!!!!!
A subterranean roar violently ruptured the conversation. The floorboards heaved upward, throwing the entire room off its axis. The structural steel of the facility shrieked under immense stress, and the overhead fluorescent lights flickered wildly, casting strobe-like shadows across the walls.
Silence gasped, her footing completely lost to the violent tremor, and pitched forward.
Saria moved with blinding speed. Her left arm shot out, catching the researcher by the waist and pulling her flush against her own armored body, shielding her from the shower of dust and falling ceiling debris.
“What happened?!” Silence cried out, her voice cracking with panic as her fingers desperately dug into Saria’s sleeve.
A piercing emergency siren instantly began to wail throughout the entire facility, the urgent, rhythmic shrieks enough to make a heart stop. Simultaneously, a frantic, static-laced voice tore through the communication earpiece resting against Saria’s jaw. The background audio was a chaotic mess of collapsing architecture and roaring flames.
“Director Saria! It’s the monster! The Flame Demon—it’s back! It’s breached Sector B7! It’s—Ahhh!!!”
The transmission died in a wet crunch and a deafening explosion. Saria’s jaw clenched, her eyes turning glacial.
It hadn’t left. And Sector B7 was dangerously close to the core.
“No time to explain.”
Without waiting for permission, Saria swept Silence off her feet, cradling the trembling woman securely against her chest. “I am getting you to the nearest safety isolation zone.”
Before Silence could even process the shift in gravity, Saria was already sprinting out of the infirmary, plunging into the chaotic, flashing red lights of the main corridor.
BOOM—!!!
Another massive kinetic impact rattled the foundations. The reinforced alloy walls twisted and groaned. Saria dug her boots into the floor, her balance flawless despite the shifting ground, shielding Silence tightly in her arms. She ignored the panicked researchers and security personnel fleeing in the opposite direction, her eyes locked on the route to the lower-level bunkers.
They approached a major cross-corridor. Saria prepared to round the corner when her pupils suddenly contracted.
A suffocating, apocalyptic heatwave blasted out from the intersection ahead, rolling over them like a physical tsunami.
Saria let out a sharp bark of exertion, violently arresting her momentum and throwing herself backward with Silence in her arms.
WHOOSH—BOOM!!!!!!
A blinding torrent of liquid magma, meters thick, eradicated the space they had just occupied. The reinforced floor, the titanium walls, and the ceiling vaporized instantly upon contact with the beam of fire, melting away like thin ice under a blowtorch.
The blast left behind a massive, perfectly circular tunnel, its edges glowing white-hot and smooth as mirror glass, as if a leviathan had simply bitten a chunk out of the facility. The scorching backdraft swept down the hall, lifting several trailing security guards off their feet and hurling them through the air.
Saria landed in a heavy crouch, shielding Silence behind her armored frame. Her eyes locked onto the glowing, melted breach.
Through the billowing black smoke and raining embers on the other side of the hole, a colossal digit encased in jagged, molten obsidian armor slowly withdrew.
Just one finger. And yet, it was larger than the entire entity Saria had fought only minutes ago.
Silence clutched the fabric of Saria’s coat, her face ashen, her lungs refusing to draw in the superheated air. “What… what on Terra is that?!”
The ground shuddered rhythmically. Footsteps. The ambient temperature spiked so drastically that the surrounding metal walls began to glow cherry-red and sag. The wailing sirens and the agonizing groans of melting steel intertwined into a deafening requiem.
Saria didn’t waste a second staring at the impossible beast. She spun around, pulling Silence tight against her, and sprinted in the opposite direction.
“That is the Flame Demon!” Saria shouted, her voice cutting through the roar of the inferno chasing them.
“That’s the Flame Demon?!” Silence screamed back in absolute disbelief. She had spent countless sleepless nights studying the consciousness inside Ifrit. She knew exactly what a Flame Demon was supposed to be. But that fleeting glance… a single finger that nearly filled a reinforced transit corridor…
That wasn’t a mere creature. It was a walking natural disaster.
In the suffocating heat, a terrifying realization struck Silence like a physical blow, turning the blood in her veins to ice.
“Ifrit!” she shrieked, her voice warping into raw hysteria. “It’s coming for Ifrit! It senses the Flame Demon Fragment inside her!”
Adrenaline flooded her system, granting her a sudden, frantic burst of strength. She began to thrash wildly against Saria’s chest. “Let me go! Saria, put me down! I have to get to her! I have to go!”
“Stop moving!” Saria’s arm locked around her like a steel vice, unyielding. “I know! I will go and bring her back! But I am securing you first!”
Saria didn’t slow down, her boots slamming against the deck as she handled the twisting corridors, zeroing in on the heavy blast doors of the core safety zone.
“Trust me, Silence.” Saria’s baritone cut cleanly through the researcher’s panic, carrying an obvious, anchoring weight. “I will bring her to you safely.”
The frantic struggling slowly ceased. Silence looked up, staring at Saria’s sharp, focused profile illuminated by the flashing emergency lights. Even in the face of absolute destruction, the Director remained an immovable mountain. The sheer terror clawing at Silence’s heart eased, just a fraction.
She stopped fighting. Instead, her hands reached up, her fingers twisting desperately into the lapels of Saria’s coat, clinging to her like a lifeline.
“You… you will bring her back, right?” Silence whispered, her eyes wide and pleading behind her cracked lenses.
Saria looked down, meeting her gaze. Without a single micro-expression of doubt, she gave her vow.
“I promise.”
The heavy vault doors of the isolation zone hissed open ahead of them. Saria abruptly halted, shoving Silence safely past the threshold.
Through the narrowing gap of the closing blast doors, Saria gave Silence one final, lingering look. Then, she turned her back.
Brilliant white calcified crystals erupted across Saria’s skin, rapidly layering into a jagged, impenetrable suit of Arts-driven armor. Like a lone knight marching toward the apocalypse, she charged straight back into the blinding inferno, racing toward the epicenter of the destruction.
Her promise would be kept.