The ruin became chaos once more.
Steel clashed, screams tore the air, torches hissed where they fell against fractured stone. Shadows leapt wildly across walls veined with dying glyph light. The raiders pressed in with the desperation of cornered wolves, seeking to overwhelm before the boy's strange awakening could turn the tide. Caravan guards fought tooth and nail, backs pressed to the ruin's walls, eyes darting toward Leo as though he were both salvation and damnation incarnate.
A raider lunged at him, blade flashing silver. Instinct screamed, raw and unshaped. Leo thrust out a trembling hand.
The shard's pulse answered.
The ground convulsed. Cracks split outward, slabs of broken masonry rising in jagged upheaval like a wave of stone. The raider was hurled off balance, his strike cutting only air before his body slammed into the shifting floor. Leo staggered too, his knees nearly buckling, the tremor rattling his very bones, but his arm remained raised, defiant.
The whispers coiled sharp in his skull, slick as oil.
Strike. End it.
His jaw clenched, teeth grinding. "No… I'm not your puppet."
Instead of finishing, he shoved. The raider crashed against the ruin wall, groaning as his blade clattered uselessly away.
But there was no reprieve. Two more charged, teeth bared, weapons raised. This time he had no breath for thought. The jagged shard blade was already there in his grasp, born of vision and will, forged of stone and flickering light. Sparks flared as steel rang against it, shrieking through the ruin's echo.
Their eyes widened at the impossible weapon. They pressed harder, snarling with effort. But the boy pressed back, every muscle trembling, jaw locked tight. The shard throbbed in time with his chest, and the blade flared, raw light bursting outward. Both attackers cried out, stumbling back, weapons seared with unnatural heat.
Leo's chest heaved. Sweat dripped down his temples, stinging his eyes. His heart pounded far too fast, shard-beat outpacing flesh, racing like a forge bellow on the edge of bursting. Fire filled his veins, intoxicating, burning, terrible in its allure. And behind that fire… fear.
Across the ruin, Sofia cut down another foe in a storm of steel, her movements crisp, merciless. She turned her scarred face toward him, lips pressed tight. Too much. Too soon. His body could not bear what it carried. Yet aloud her voice cracked like iron:
"Hold your ground! Use his opening!"
The guards obeyed, drawn by her command. Their battered line steadied, pushing forward on the wave Leo's impossible surge had bought them.
Evelyn knelt near the boy, her hands half-raised, eyes wide as she watched Leo stand beneath the ruin's glow. Awe and dread tangled on her tongue until only a whisper escaped:
"It's tearing him apart…"
Through the fray the raider captain forced her way forward, blood spattering her leathers, eyes ablaze with a fanatic fire. She shoved her own men aside, blade gleaming in her grip. "Don't just stand there, kill him before he burns us all!"
And then she lunged herself, voice a snarl, steel singing through ruin-dark air.
Leo barely raised his shard-blade in time. Stone and steel collided, the impact ringing like thunder in a hollowed temple. Sparks showered across cracked glyphs, briefly igniting their etchings with scarlet light.
Her face twisted close to his, sweat streaked with grime and blood. Her breath was hot against his cheek.
"You're no boy anymore, you're a curse."
"I'm alive," Leo spat back, every word strained from his burning chest. His arms shook, muscles screaming as her weight bore down. The shard-blade flickered, dimming, cracks spidering through its jagged surface. For a heartbeat it seemed it would break.
Then the ruin itself answered.
A groan like the shifting of mountains rolled through the chamber. Dust rained from the ceiling. Glyphs across the walls blazed once, then sputtered into shadow again. Both fighters staggered, instinct pulling them apart.
The air thickened. Every man, every woman, every child in the ruin felt it, the sense of something watching, stirring, waiting. The ruin was not done. The shard was not silent.
Blades slowed. Shouts faltered. Even raiders glanced upward with unease, their fury unraveling into fear.
And at the center of it all stood Leo. His blade flickered in and out of existence, his chest heaved with ragged breath, and yet his eyes burned steady, embers caught between collapse and storm.
Every gaze fixed on him. Every fate in that chamber bent, for one suspended heartbeat, around the boy who refused to break.