It was a cold, patient thing—a hatred that had burned so long and so hot that it had frozen solid inside his chest. It lived in the precise space where his Spirit Marrow had once been, a hollow ache that never healed, never softened, never forgot.Lyra Tyrell had smiled at him while the Imperial Guard dragged him away. She had stood in the rain outside the Imperial Court, her white silk robes untouched by the storm, watching him being shoved into the armored transport that would carry him to the Iron Abyss. And as the heavy steel doors slid shut, her lips had mouthed two words.Thank you.Darius Kincaid had stood right beside her, his arm wrapped possessively around her waist, his arrogant laughter carrying across the courtyard as the transport engines roared to life.Thank you.Eren had carried those two words with him for three years. He had replayed them in his mind during every beating, every gas purge, every solitary night spent shivering on wet obsidian. He had used them as fuel

Eren lay on the damp stone floor, breathing in long, controlled draws. His body trembled under the dying aftershocks of the bloodline transformation, muscles tight as drawn bowstrings.Around his wrists, the heavy obsidian fetters sparked and groaned, fresh fractures spreading across the anti-magic iron as the internal suppression runes burnt out one by one. Across the cell doorway, the amber energy barrier flickered violently, once, twice just before stabilizing with a low, troubled hum.He lifted his hands, staring at his palms in the strobing red glare of the emergency lights.The scars were still there. The grime, the filth, the jagged rope burns, and the deep iron discoloration from three years in the dark hadn't vanished. But beneath the bruised surface, everything had changed. His skin felt dense, his muscles tightly wound, his bones heavy as forged steel.‘’The poison didn't kill me,’’ he thought, pushing himself up into a crouch. ‘’It rebuilt me.’’The stomach cramps were go

Eren’s eyes burned pure, undivided gold in the pitch-black cell.Where the lethal black-site mana gas had been dissolving his internal organs moments before, something fundamental changed in his chest. The Sovereign Core flared. The toxic cloud didn't disperse—it flowed directly into him. Not through his throat, but pulled inward through every pore, rushing into the hollow void where his Spirit Marrow had once been.The core drank it down like a parched throat taking in cold spring water.Eren gasped. His back arched off the floor. The gas was still pouring into the cell, still thick enough to kill a hundred men, but every lungful that entered his body was being pulled into the golden light and consumed. The pain didn't vanish; It transformed. The searing burn in his lungs blossomed into a surging warmth. The sludge in his veins cleared, replaced by a rushing current of golden energy that rewired his broken pathways.“Shit! It's eating the purge,” he realized, pushing himself up onto

They climbed together out of the Omega sector, moving quickly through the lower levels as the facility’s alarms continued to blare.At Level One, they bypassed the frantic inmates and headed directly for the primary command suite. Guard Captain Toller was already slumped against the wall, his shock-baton crumpled on the deck."Stop right there!" a voice barked through the haze.Guard Captain Toller stood twenty paces away, his heavy combat respirator hissing with every draw. He held a high-voltage shock-baton raised, its tip crackling with fifty thousand volts of anti-cultivator current.Toller’s eyes widened as he took in the figure emerging from the toxic mist. The prisoner’s rags hung off him in shreds, his dark hair was matted past his shoulders, but beneath his brow, two eyes burned with a blinding, golden aura."You're supposed to be dead," Toller stammered, his grip slipping on the baton's rubber grip. "Sub-Level Zero was completely flushed!"The words echoed down the corridor,