The chanting rose like a storm, crashing against thought and breath until even the act of living felt like drowning. Glyphs blazed so furiously beneath their feet that the temple itself seemed to lift, straining to tear free from the earth. The walls shuddered, pillars wept dust, yet the sound never broke, it only swelled, a sea without shore.
The figure in chains pulled against his bonds, each movement carving deeper lines into flesh that bled without end. The blood did not fall, it streamed with intent, winding into the glowing veins carved into the floor. His voice ripped through the air like a blade drawn across bone, eclipsing priestly chants, drowning out the mob's terror, searing into Leo's marrow.
"Do you see now? What they feared? What they tried to bury?"
Leo stumbled forward, not with choice but compulsion, dragged as though iron answering a hidden magnet. The shard in his chest hammered against his ribs, syncing beat for beat with the iron chains. Each pulse was a blow, each breath fire. His skin flushed with unbearable heat; his sight blurred to a molten amber haze.
"I'm not you," he croaked, voice ragged, hollow. "I never will be."
The figure's grin split his face, sharp as lightning over storm seas. "Not me? Boy, you already are. My breath swells in your lungs, my hunger curls in your belly. You think you've resisted? No, each step has been practice. Each trial, a lesson. You have been preparing to wear me."
At his words, the shard seared like branding iron, white-hot threads lancing down Leo's veins. He dropped to one knee, clutching at his chest as if to hold himself together before he cracked apart.
Sofia forced her way forward. Every step was like wading through stone, the vision's weight pressing down, but her stubbornness was iron. She raised her blade though it trembled in her grasp, and she shouted through clenched teeth.
"Leo! Do not hear him. He is nothing but chains. They used him then, and he would use you now. You are more than a vessel."
The chained figure's laugh filled the hall, resonant and endless. "A vessel? No. The heir. Let him unclench his fist, and the world will kneel."
The boy's thin voice cracked but did not break as he clung to Leo's sleeve with both hands. "Don't believe him! You saved me. You saved us. That was you, not him. Never him."
The words struck through the haze, thin but piercing. For a breath, Leo's chest steadied.
The shard recoiled with a snarl. Weakness. Sentiment. Let me burn them away.
Around them, the mob and guards writhed beneath visions they could neither refuse nor escape. Some wept, their own deaths unraveling before them in streams of fire. Others screamed, clutching ears against voices that whispered only to them. Evelyn fell to her knees, face white, muttering broken prayers. Owen's hand scrawled across a scrap of parchment with manic desperation, as though to catch fragments of revelation before they scattered to ash.
The ruin groaned. Cracks zigzagged across the glowing floor, light bleeding through. Dust sifted down in pale rivers. The seam between vision and world thinned until both shivered together.
The chained figure leaned forward, amber eyes molten, voice softening until it wrapped like silk around steel.
"They abandoned you, didn't they? Left you nameless in gutters, to starve in alleys. You were nothing. Forgotten. But with me-" his voice deepened, almost tender, "-with me you will be remembered. Eternal."
Leo froze. The words sliced open memory: the cold stone of the orphanage floor, the hollow bellies of forgotten children, the nights where no one spoke his name.
But with those came others, the boy's hand, clutching his. Evelyn's quiet care as she bound torn skin. Owen's crooked smile when discovery lit his eyes. Sofia's unyielding voice, dragging him back when darkness pulled too deep.
His jaw clenched. The visions tugged, but the faces held.
"I don't want eternity," he said, voice breaking, but true.
The figure's smile faltered, teeth baring in sudden anger.
Leo staggered upright, trembling but unbent. "I want to be me. Not your echo."
The shard roared. Pain screamed through his veins, a wildfire without horizon. His cry tore the vision itself apart. Stone cracked. Glyphs exploded into searing light.
The chained figure's bellow shook the temple, shook the air itself. "You cannot deny me forever, boy!"
The temple shattered. Pillars broke like glass; serpents crumbled into fire and dust. The priests' chant ripped into silence. Amber eyes burned last of all, searing Leo's vision before vanishing into the collapse.
Light swallowed everything, guards, raiders, caravan, chain and figure alike.
And then-
Darkness.
The ruin returned, broken and hollow. The mob sprawled across the circle, gasping, stunned into silence. Glyphs still smoldered faintly beneath the dust, as though the stones themselves remembered.
Leo collapsed, body slack, chest still glowing faintly. The boy flung himself across him, arms small but desperate, as though he could shield Leo from what had already passed.
Sofia lowered her sword. Sweat streaked her face; her scar burned angry red in the firelight. She looked at the circle with something close to dread.
"Saints preserve us," she whispered. "What have we stepped into?"
No one answered. The ruin held its silence, as if listening.