Chap­ter 5 – The Altar of the Flam­ing God begins with a vio­lent earth­quake cut­ting short Tarzan’s explo­ration, trap­ping him inside a hid­den trea­sure vault deep with­in Opar. Though sur­round­ed by vast rich­es, his con­cern is not for gold but for escape, as sur­vival out­weighs wealth in this moment of dan­ger. When he awak­ens, dis­ori­ent­ed and injured, the ancient chamber’s suf­fo­cat­ing silence only deep­ens the urgency to find a way out. Mean­while, Wer­p­er, who has also sur­vived the quake, is sep­a­rat­ed from Tarzan and faces the dis­ori­ent­ing dark­ness alone. Believ­ing Tarzan to be dead after dis­cov­er­ing his still body, Wer­p­er shifts his focus to secur­ing his own safe­ty, unaware that his com­pan­ion still breathes. The labyrinthine tem­ple becomes a maze of shad­ows and uncer­tain­ty, where fear creeps clos­er with each step and the line between super­sti­tion and real­i­ty begins to blur.

Werper’s path winds through cor­ri­dors carved by time, where echoes and dis­tant cries inten­si­fy the sense of iso­la­tion. His sin­gle can­dle, flick­er­ing weak­ly, becomes both guide and count­down, a frag­ile bar­ri­er against com­plete dark­ness. Every wall seems to whis­per secrets of Opar’s ancient rites, and every step feels watched by unseen eyes. Push­ing through blocked tun­nels and col­laps­ing door­ways, Werper’s courage is test­ed repeat­ed­ly. The oppres­sive atmos­phere of the tem­ple chips away at his com­po­sure, but he press­es for­ward, dri­ven by des­per­a­tion more than brav­ery. Even­tu­al­ly, he stum­bles upon a nar­row shaft above a for­got­ten well, nav­i­gat­ing it with blind faith. His move­ments become instinc­tu­al, sur­vival-dri­ven, with each cham­ber dark­er and more cryp­tic than the last. Though phys­i­cal­ly intact, Werper’s nerves fray as he hears haunt­ing sounds that sug­gest the city’s secrets are not all dead.

Emerg­ing into a sun­lit court­yard offers Wer­p­er a moment of relief—brief, fleet­ing, and cru­el­ly decep­tive. That light reveals not free­dom but dan­ger, as the twist­ed priests of Opar seize him. Their grotesque appear­ance, with deformed fea­tures and wild expres­sions, embod­ies the bar­bar­ic rit­u­als pre­served through cen­turies of iso­la­tion. The priests, guardians of the Flam­ing God’s cult, quick­ly sur­round him, drag­ging him deep­er into the city’s heart, toward the altar. The imagery of fire and sac­ri­fice con­sumes the set­ting, cast­ing Werper’s cap­ture in a light far more ter­ri­fy­ing than his time in the tun­nels. Now a pris­on­er of Opar’s dark­est tra­di­tions, he is placed at the mer­cy of a reli­gion that demands blood and rev­er­ence for ancient pow­ers. In their chants and motions, Wer­p­er rec­og­nizes a doom more severe than the darkness—ritual death by fire beneath the open sky.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Tarzan, still with­in the vault, begins to regain his sens­es as dis­tant nois­es stir him. Though his mem­o­ries remain cloud­ed from the blow to his head, his instinct to move, to sur­vive, returns. Unlike Wer­p­er, Tarzan sees not death in the shad­ows but oppor­tu­ni­ty, using his strength to explore a dif­fer­ent path with­in the tomb-like trea­sure cham­ber. His per­cep­tion of the sur­round­ings lacks fear; instead, he observes the gold and gems with indif­fer­ence, unmoved by their allure. This detach­ment from mate­r­i­al val­ue fur­ther sep­a­rates him from Werper’s self-serv­ing motives. Tarzan’s every motion echoes his pri­mal bond with the jun­gle: mea­sured, silent, alert. The ruins may imprison him phys­i­cal­ly, but men­tal­ly, he remains the jungle’s mas­ter, not Opar’s vic­tim. His jour­ney for­ward is not fueled by greed or super­sti­tion but by the instinct to reclaim free­dom.

This chap­ter expert­ly con­trasts Werper’s pan­ic-dri­ven ordeal with Tarzan’s silent reawak­en­ing. While Wer­p­er is over­whelmed by the temple’s fear­some lega­cy, Tarzan responds with unshak­en deter­mi­na­tion. The tem­ple of the Flam­ing God becomes more than just a setting—it reflects each character’s nature. Wer­p­er is con­sumed by fear of the unknown, a man out of his depth in a world ruled by ancient faith and pri­mal forces. Tarzan, though dis­ori­ent­ed, begins to reassert con­trol, his resilience set­ting the stage for his inevitable con­fronta­tion with both the cult and his own frag­ment­ed iden­ti­ty. As Opar’s walls close in around both men, the altar becomes a sym­bol of pow­er, sac­ri­fice, and the tri­als that lie ahead—trials that will define who sur­vives and who falls prey to the city’s gods.