The Council chamber was no longer a room. It was a furnace.Violet fire erupted from the fissure beneath Jason’s body, flooding the space in a storm of living flame. Ancient stone shrieked as cracks spider-webbed through the walls and ceiling, molten light spilling through every fracture.Council members screamed spells into the chaos. Barriers flared, wards spun into existence, but each one shattered against the fire’s hunger. Bookshelves disintegrated into ash. Carved runes melted, dripping like molten wax down the walls.At the center of it, Jason convulsed. His body was wracked, suspended above the floor by tendrils of violet fire that crawled across his skin like chains. His eyes glowed an unholy light, his mouth open in a soundless scream.Elias staggered to his feet, shielding his face with one arm against the heat. Sweat poured from him, but his eyes never left Jason.“Jason! Look at me!” he shouted.Jason’s head jerked, but it wasn’t him staring back. His eyes were bottomless

The blade fell.It sliced through air heavy with smoke and death, humming with a resonance that was more than sound, it was finality. The fire curved downward, violet flames trailing like the tail of a comet, aimed directly at Elias’s bowed head.Time fractured. Elias did not flinch. His burned hand remained pressed against Jason’s leg, the skin sizzling, his own breath a ragged whisper. His eyes locked on Jason’s shadowed face, even as the infernal blade bore down on him.“Jason… you are not this.”The words carried no spell, no shield. They were not incantations or desperate bargains. They were simply truth, spoken by a man who had sworn his life not to crowns or Councils, but to the boy standing above him.And for the barest instant, thinner than a blink, sharper than the edge of the descending blade, Jason heard. The fire wavered. The shard screamed. Strike! End him!Jason’s heart convulsed in his chest. His fingers shook violently around the hilt of fire. His vision doubled, one

The ground did not shake. It convulsed.Jason’s knees slammed into fractured stone as the crater widened beneath him. He clutched Elias tighter, the man’s shallow breaths ghosting against his chest.The thing rising from the abyss was wrong in ways Jason’s eyes could barely process, like trying to stare at a star through shattered glass.Its form shifted endlessly. Smoke and fire braided into a monstrous silhouette, neither solid nor ethereal. Too many limbs clawed against the stone.Eyes blinked open and shut across its surface, glowing violet, burning black, bleeding white. A single word throbbed through Jason’s skull with every pulse of its body. Mine.Jason gasped, doubling over as the shard inside him answered in perfect resonance. His chest burned, his veins sang with fire, his thoughts blurred to static. The line between his body and the creature’s flickered until he could not tell if he was looking at it, or from it.“No” He dug his fingers into the ground, anchoring himself,

The world had no color.Jason stood ankle-deep in ash that stretched to every horizon, a flat plain beneath a sky that did not move. No sun, no stars, only an oppressive gray that pressed down like a weight.His breath came ragged, raw. Each inhale tasted of cinders. Each exhale dissolved into the stillness like smoke vanishing into stone.“Elias!” His voice cracked. It echoed, thin and fragile, swallowed almost instantly by the endless wasteland. No answer.Jason staggered forward, the ash shifting beneath his boots like silt. His body screamed with exhaustion, every step dragging fire through his veins.His hands trembled uncontrollably, the aftershock of unleashing the golden flame gnawing at him. He should not have been able to stand at all. Yet he did, because the alternative was surrender.And he would not.“Elias!” His voice carried further this time, desperation sharpening its edge. But the wasteland remained still. Then, a sound. Soft. Familiar. His heart lurched. He spun, st

The abyss devoured everything.Jason’s scream vanished into the dark as the colossal chain dragged him downward. His fire flared, sputtered, fought, but the links that bound his waist were stronger than any he had faced before.They didn’t just grip his body; they sank into him, threading through flesh and spirit alike. He convulsed as violet light surged up the chain, flooding his veins, choking out the gold.“No!” His roar broke against the void. His arms clawed at the chain, nails tearing as sparks fizzled uselessly. “You won’t”Clink.The sound silenced him, The chain yanked once more, and suddenly the void ended, Jason slammed into solid ground.The shock rattled through his bones. He lay gasping, palms scraping against obsidian stone slick with strange heat. The air burned as he inhaled, thick with smoke and iron. When his eyes lifted, he saw it. The Heart.It was not a place but a throne. A vast seat of jagged crystal, pulsing violet with each slow, monstrous heartbeat. Chains