Chapter 78: A Binding From The Old Laws. (His POV)
Peace. Or something close enough that I was willing to draft a treaty with it. Asha was draped half across me, warm breath feathering my chest, fingers tracing lazy circles along my ribs. I flicked cupcakes through little portals one-handed, plink, plink, plink, watching them vanish sideways into nowhere like falling stars. I smiled. Not my usual grin. Not my sharp-edged smirk. A real smile. For once, I wasn't plotting. Wasn't performing. Wasn't hungry for distraction. I was just… being.
Then the realm shivered. Not loud. Not violent. Worse. The kind of wrong you feel in your marrow. Like the rhythm of the universe itself skipped a beat. I stiffened so hard Asha jerked upright, eyes narrowing. "You felt that," she whispered.
I nodded once. Sharp. Brutal. The hum came again. Not just magic. Authority. Ancient. Precedent carved into the bones of creation. Arbor shuddered, the walls rippling like they wanted to scream. Then it hit. The summons. Old Law. Older than gods. Older than choice. It slammed down across the Divine Realm with a force I hadn't felt in thousands of years. My title burned against my skin. Branding through to my soul. An Ancient Binding. A command you didn't disobey because disobedience wasn't an option.
Asha gasped, clutching her chest. I caught her, steadying her, but inside I was terrified. Because this wasn't just power. This was dominion. Aerion was back. He was calling us home.
"I'm coming with you," she said, fierce and furious, gripping me like she could anchor herself to my refusal.
I snapped. "No." Not anger. Fear. I held her shoulders, gentle, but gods, I was shaking. "Listen to me. This isn't theater. This isn't some Pantheon squabble we can mock over champagne. This is Old Law. A binding from the age when gods didn't choose, they obeyed." I swallowed hard. "If you step through that portal, if you answer that call..." The words fractured in my throat. "He would kill you, Asha." Not wound. Not threaten. End.
Her eyes widened, the weight of it slamming into her. I cupped her face, breath ragged, chaos vibrating in my veins so hard the air shimmered around me. "I would burn the world down before I let him risk you like that." I pressed my forehead to hers, desperate. "I have to go. But you stay here. You stay safe."
The portal opened behind me, its hum digging through my bones. The call throbbed, relentless, ancient, merciless. I kissed her. Hard. Desperate. Reverent. I pulled away, the last thing I saw was her hand reaching for me as the portal swallowed me whole.
The Stone Court. The portal dropped me into silence. Not our sleek glass halls. Not the glittering atriums where we played at politics. No, The First Place. Stone carved from mountain bone and skyfire. No decoration. No comfort. This wasn't built for us to gather. It was built to command. Aerion's throne loomed at the far wall. Not symbolic. Not ornamental. Real. Binding. He was already there. Crowned in gold and iron. Armor gleaming like a drawn blade. Not the wild beast Asha fought. This was worse. This was control dressed in regality. The air itself bent around him. One by one, the others arrived. Plain. Silent. No gowns. No indulgence. No swagger. Just the ceremonial garb of the First Age, because the Court demanded it. Even me. Plain black robe. Boots soundless against the stone. Chaos coiled in tight, burning under my skin, begging to flare. I looked… almost human. Almost.
Ravina smirked like she'd been waiting for this. Calavera hovered, ribs hollow, silence her only companion. Leyla stood still, hands loose, daring anyone to notice her absence of shadow. Yara's hair hung limp, ocean drained to stagnant water. Maximus was stripped bare of decadence, brittle and gaunt beneath the skin. Even Navir looked undone, eyes hollow, edges frayed, like a man who had stared too long into infinity and hadn't come back whole.
The doors sealed. The chamber shuddered. Aerion rose. The world tilted. The air pulled toward him, not will, not spell. Force. Order incarnate. One by one, we buckled. Knees slammed stone. Heads bowed. Luxor's light guttered. Tairochi's stone skin cracked along his kneecaps, splintering like marble. Ahyona sobbed, collapsing, so small today, against the floor. Vitaria gasped, clutching her swollen belly, Maximus curling around her like a shield even as his own skull cracked the floor. None of it voluntary. None of it reverent. It was law. I braced myself. Chaos roared through me, claws in my blood. I held. For one heartbeat, one defiant breath, I stayed on my feet.
Aerion saw me. He smiled. Slow. Cruel. Like a king savoring the moment a spine breaks. He pushed. The pressure hit me like a cosmic fist. My soul screamed upward but my body slammed down. My knees cracked stone. Forced down. Not by fear. Not by choice. By the rules seared into the marrow of my being. I snarled, face pressed to the cold floor, every vein in me shaking with fury. This was his Court. His Law. His Order. Here, I wasn't chaos. I wasn't free. I was bound.
Aerion rose from the Stone Throne like he'd never fallen. The hall stilled. Every god knelt under the Old Laws. No one dared speak. Finally, he did. Not loud. Not furious. Worse. Beautiful. "We have lost our way," Aerion said, voice cutting the air like a sharpened hymn. "We were made to stand above, to protect, to guide, to rule. But we allowed the rot of sentiment into our halls."
He stepped forward, slow and sure. Every inch the sovereign reclaiming his stage. "We traded strength for indulgence. Wisdom for chaos. Order for convenience."
His eyes swept across us, stern and deliberate. Like a father disappointed in his children. Gods, how he sold it. "We told ourselves change was good. That compassion was strength. That compromise was wisdom." His voice softened, coaxing. Manipulative. "But you feel it, don't you? The fracture. The breaking."
I wanted to laugh. Wanted to throw glitter in his too-perfect smile. Instead, I knelt. Pressed into the stone by the Old Laws, my chaos snarling but shackled. He paced like a general before a battle. Like a messiah rehearsing salvation. "I do not blame you," he said. "It is hard to see corruption when it wears kindness. Hard to resist rebellion when it whispers freedom."
Grief flashed across his face. False. Painted on like stage paint. "But I have returned to remind you. We are not mortals. We do not bend. We do not break. We are gods. We are Order. And we will reclaim our rightful place, not by bargaining-" he spread his arms, radiant and regal, "-but by remembering power."
The bastard was dazzling. If you didn't know better, you'd want to believe him. Me? I knew better. He was a rapist claiming it as justice under his own pomp and arrogance. His pretty words didn't fool me. They just pissed me off. "Strength. Unity. Justice," he intoned. "We will cleanse what has rotted. Restore what was broken. Rise again, stronger, purer, eternal." The line. The one that sealed it. "We will make the Pantheon great again."
I almost gagged. His voice flowed like gold spun through water. Pretty. Heavy. Poison. "We let chaos slip past the gates and call itself progress," he said. "But no longer. Order will be restored. Those who remember the Old Ways will lead. Those who forgot will kneel, or be corrected."
My jaw ticked. My fists curled. Enough. I shifted, straightened against the weight, and let my mouth open, low, sardonic, ready to slice his sermon in half. "Is there a point to this golden turd you're polishing, or should we start sharpening the guillotine now-"
A sudden silence. Not mine. His. He lifted a single hand. And the Old Laws crushed my voice out of existence. Not spell. Not might. Just decree. I choked on the words. Felt them burn in my throat. Couldn't force them out. The Court didn't flinch. Didn't blink. It was expected. Normal. Of course Malvor would bristle. Of course Aerion would silence him. But inside? I burned.
"You will listen," he said calmly. "Because you have forgotten what it means to obey. What it means to belong."
Vitaria shifted. Barely. But I saw it. The way her eyes sharpened. The way she felt the rot underneath his polished sermon. She was understanding fully what he was. What he had done. Violating the divine feminine.
"We welcomed unworthy blood into our midst," Aerion continued, fervor rising. "Lifted those who should have bowed. Gave them titles. Freedom. Power they did not deserve." My throat rumbled, a low animal growl. But still, bound. "They took our generosity and corrupted it. Seduced. Stole." He looked almost luminous now, like the room itself bent to his sermon. "They lied to us. Flaunted brokenness as a shield. Dared to make us villains of their weakness."
My body leaned forward before I could stop it. Chaos flared like wildfire snapping against stone. Vitaria gasped. Raw. Broken. She doubled over, one hand clutching her belly. The other slamming against the floor like she could brace herself against the tidal wave of his words. Real tears spilled. Not delicate. Not pretty. Ragged sobs, torn from the deepest part of her. Maximus twitched toward her, instinct, desperate, but the Binding held him. He couldn't move. Could only watch. Helpless. As the woman he loved shattered in front of him.
Aerion? He kept speaking. Smooth. Grand. Untouched. "Weakness begets weakness. Mercy only invites corruption." He didn't even glance at her. Didn't see her. Because in his mind, women were vessels. Wombs. Tools. Asha had been nothing but a transaction to him. A bargain. An obligation. Something he was owed. When she'd broken it, he'd called it theft. A sound ripped out of me. Low. Animal. My chaos screamed against the leash of the Laws, begging me to tear him apart. Ahyona sobbed, too. Collapsed small on the stone, tiny fists clutching her robe. Crying not just for Vitaria, but for all of it. For Asha. For every wound power couldn't heal.
And me? I knelt, bound. Seething. While Aerion poisoned the room with pretty words and buried daggers. I wasn't just angry. I was terrified. Because I knew exactly what he was doing. Worse? It was working.
The Stone Court shook. Not from Aerion's voice this time. Not from the Old Laws grinding against our bones. From light. A beam of pure, searing brilliance, like someone had hurled a newborn sun straight across the chamber, slammed into the back of his perfect, golden head. The sound of it cracked reality itself. Like the world biting its own tongue. Aerion staggered. Didn't fall. Turned, slow, furious, dazzling, like a king insulted mid-coronation.
He met him. Luxor! Standing. Burning. Alive with a fury so bright it seared the shadows off the walls. His golden eyes, once full of mischief, vanity, laughter, were molten now. No mercy. No hesitation. Only war. He didn't speak. He ran. Each step thundered into the marble like a war drum. Sparks flared beneath his boots. He wasn't a man anymore. He was a comet.
Taiorchi moved. No roar. No warning. Just raw inevitability. A mountain that decided to strike. His fist slammed into Aerion's face with enough force to shatter suns. The sound wasn't a punch. It was an event. The Court cracked. The walls spiderwebbed. My ribs rattled from the inside out. Aerion reeled. Luxor was already there. Already slamming into him with wings of light erupting off his back, with solar flares lashing from his skin, with fists that burned like dying stars. Stone. Light. Colliding with order.
The pressure in the chamber twisted. The Old Laws groaned, as if the foundations of reality weren't sure who to obey anymore. I lost it. Feral. Chaotic. My body still shackled to the stone by laws older than memory, but inside, I was breaking free. My chaos poured out in sparks, in smoke, in probability shredding itself against invisible chains. My body shook so hard tears poured down my face, ugly, snot-streaked, raw. I mouthed words I couldn't force out. My lips bled with them. I will kill you.
Aerion staggered under the double onslaught. Luxor was a supernova, burning him from the front. Tairochi was inevitability, pounding him from the side. For the first time, he buckled. The gods gasped. Hope. Flickering, fragile, alive.
Luxor roared like a sun collapsing. He hurled himself forward, spear of light aimed for Aerion's heart. But Aerion… adapted.
Air vanished. Stolen from Luxor's lungs, from his blood. His light sputtered. He choked, fell to one knee, still throwing punches even as cracks of golden fire bled through his skin. Aerion squeezed harder. Cruel. Victorious. Tairochi hit him again. Silent. Ruthless. A mountain's fist across his jaw. For the first time, gods above and below, for the first time… Aerion bled.
Silver ichor sprayed across the stones. The Court gasped like the universe itself had flinched. Hope surged. That was when my chains snapped. They didn't loosen. They shattered. The Old Laws tore out of me in burning threads as my chaos detonated. The Court howled. Marble boiled. Space fractured. I rose. Not running. Not sprinting. Detonating.
One heartbeat, I was on the floor. The next, I was rage incarnate, a jagged blade of chaos writhing in my fist. Aerion turned, pulling a shield of compressed air, thick, unyielding, the kind of magic that broke cities. I ripped it apart with my bare hands. He tried to crush my lungs. I laughed. Broken. Ugly. Beautiful. I laughed right in his face. I hit him. Not with power. With grief. With rage. With every wound he carved into her. With every night she bled for him. With every goddamn scream I'd swallowed because I couldn't touch him.
The Court exploded into chaos. Luxor, bleeding light, half-dying but still fighting. Drove solar flares into Aerion's ribs. Taiorchi, splintering apart with every movement, hammered him with mountain-breaking fists. And me, chaos incarnate, slicing through probability, tearing through space, screaming his name like a curse. Three of us. Light. Stone. Chaos. United. The other gods, still kneeling, still bound, lifted their heads. Some with tears, some with awe. All with something I hadn't seen in this Court in centuries. Hope.
Because for the first time… Aerion bled. For the first time… the Stone Throne was empty. For the first time… victory felt possible.
Luxor rose first. Gods, he glowed. Brighter than I'd ever seen him. Burning like he'd remembered what he was made for. Tairochi drove Aerion backward, each step shaking the Court like tectonic plates breaking. Chaos snarling at my fingertips, bleeding out of every crack in me, I shaped it. Pulled it into a lance sharp enough to split reality. I threw it. Luxor crushed the air from Aerion's lungs in a blazing pulse of light. Tairochi roared, mountain-shaking, sky-splitting, and struck. For half a heartbeat, it looked done. It should have been done. But Aerion wasn't a king. He wasn't even a god. He was force. Force doesn't yield.
The air collapsed inward, hardening into a sphere so dense my bones screamed. Luxor gasped, his light sputtered. Tairochi's arm shattered like clay. The Old Laws wrapped around my ribs and wrists, dragging me back to the floor in iron chains of command. I howled. Not like a god. Like an animal. Chaos ripped at the bindings until I thought I'd tear in half.
A shockwave, order detonated from Aerion in a brutal ring that ripped the Stone Court apart. We flew. All three of us. Shattered bodies across shattered stone. Aerion, bleeding, bruised, stood. Straightened. Smiled. Victory on his lips like it had always been his. He moved before I could even spit blood. Fast. Too fast. Luxor was the first he caught. Golden boy by the throat, slammed into stone so hard the marble cratered. Light sputtered from him like sparks off dying firewood. Tairochi tried to rise. Aerion's elbow drove into his cracked ribs, the sound of mountains splitting apart. I lunged. Blade in hand. Chaos screaming. He caught my wrist. Effortless. Then squeezed. Pain ripped through me. I screamed as my own magic burst apart in a spray of dying sparks. Wrist shattered. Blade gone. He flung me across the chamber like garbage. I hit the wall. Slid down it. Could barely breathe through the red mist in my head.
"You think rebellion makes you strong," Aerion said. Calm. Certain. Cruel. "It only makes you weak."
I wanted to laugh. Couldn't. Wanted to spit in his face. Couldn't even lift mine off the floor. Sudden large waves. Salt. Fury. Yara. My Yara-pearl. She hit him like the sea itself had risen to claim a ship, slamming tide after tide into him. Every step she took was a storm. Every strike was the ocean reminding cliffs they break eventually.
The shadows peeled off the walls. Leyla. Gods. She was terrifying. Her darkness crawled alive, birthing nightmare beasts with too many eyes and too many teeth. They swarmed him. Tore at him. Dragged him. Even Aerion faltered. Even Aerion slowed. Luxor staggered back to his feet, burning. Tairochi roared through broken stone. I forced myself upright, blood down my face, chaos whirling ragged and jagged at my hands.
For a breath, a miracle breath, we had him. Maximus, sweet, reckless fool, grabbed Navir's wrist. Electricity lit him like a star on wine. He laughed, mad and brilliant, and threw lightning across the Court. It hit Aerion. Full. In the spine.
For the first time, he screamed. The gods pounced. Luxor punched with dying suns. Tairochi broke shields with mountain fists. Yara drowned him in wrath. Leyla bound him in nightmares. Maximus slammed lightning into his jaw. I ripped away every illusion he carried, carved chaos straight into the gold. We had him. We had him. We had him-
He stood. Bleeding. Burned. Cracked. But still standing. The Stone Court, traitor that it is, listened. The Old Laws hummed under his voice. Aerion raised his hand. The world obeyed. Water boiled to steam in Yara's palms, her scream as it seared her. Shadows ripped apart, Leyla was hurled like a doll. Luxor smashed into the wall, his light dimming to embers. Tairochi cracked in half, bleeding starlight. Maximus hit the floor like a man who'd gambled and lost. My chaos shredded, stripped away into sparking ribbons. Silence. Only him. Breathing hard. Smiling through blood. Standing over us all. We'd given everything. It wasn't enough.
I tried to rise. Gods, I tried. My elbow slipped in my own blood, chaos sputtering like a dying star in my veins. My body shook, my breath came ragged, but I pushed anyway, because I couldn't watch this on my knees. Not again. Not ever again. Aerion, that bastard smiled. Not the smile of a king returned. Not even the glee of a conqueror. Disgust. Like he'd just found us groveling in filth. "Look at you," he said, voice low and vicious. His boots crunched across the shattered marble like the world itself bowed to him. "You were gods once."
I wanted to spit. Wanted to curse. Wanted to shove his words back down his throat with a blade of chaos. But the Binding held me. I couldn't. He crouched down, close, too close, and I saw it in his eyes: the coil of madness, shining bright beneath all that polished order.
"You forgot what it means to kneel," he whispered. His breath was poison. His voice slid under my ribs like a knife. He stood, tall, arrogant, dripping blood and triumph like perfume. He declared it for all of us, for the Realms themselves: "You will remember. Why you exist. Who you serve. What it means to obey."
Every word seared itself into my bones. I ground my teeth until I tasted iron. My chaos shrieked inside me, wild and furious, but I couldn't break the chains. Not here. Not yet.
He raised his hand and ripped the sky open. Not a portal. Not a doorway. A command. Every realm bent to it: mortal, divine, fae, supernatural. Every screen, every sky, every mirror turned into his theater. They all saw us, bruised, bleeding, broken.
"Witness your gods," he said. The worlds did.
Ravina was first. Of course she was. She smiled. The serpent was trembling with ecstasy as she dropped to her knees. "I swear," she breathed. The Fae forests dimmed. I wanted to vomit.
Calavera bowed next, solemn as always. No rebellion. No shame. Death never fights order, it embraces it. "I swear." Her voice rang like funeral bells.
Then Vitaria. One hand clutching her swollen belly, the other braced against the cold stone. She wept as she knelt. "I swear." Across the Mortal Realm, babies cried. I heard them in my head. I felt the loss.
Ahyona stumbled forward, tear-streaked and tiny, looking far too much like a child dragged into war. "I swear," she sobbed, collapsing to the floor. My heart cracked at the sound of it.
Then Navir. Brilliant, broken Navir. He didn't even see Aerion. Didn't see us. Didn't see the Realms watching. He just knelt, like a puppet with its strings tangled, muttering numbers into the silence. "Recursion vector at 15... 21... cross point collapse at 18, 8... pattern fracture at 15, 16, 5... recalibration node 12, 9, 22... error bleed at 5, 19..." His eyes were glazed, hands twitching through invisible equations only he could see. Like a line of corrupted code, he whispered the words that made my stomach drop: "I swear."
Across the Mortal Realm, screens blacked out. Phones. Streetlights. Whole cities went dark. Navir didn't even notice. His voice kept unraveling, code spilling from his lips like prophecy in reverse: "The variable 21, 14, The Axiom, 2, 5, Factor in infinity 14, 20..." He didn't bow to Aerion. He bowed to math. To inevitability. To something none of us could see but him.
Then Aerion pointed. At us. At the rebels.
Luxor, burned and battered, tried, gods, he tried, but his light was sputtering. He bent, golden and broken. "I swear." I saw mortal eyes widen as their sun dimmed.
Tairochi. The mountain. I thought, hoped, he'd resist. But even stone breaks under enough weight. He bowed. "I swear." The earth itself trembled.
Leyla's shadows writhed, but even nightmares falter. She dropped, darkness leaking out of her in waves. "I swear."
Maximus. The fool. The indulgent. He didn't even try to posture this time. He just fell. "I swear." Joy died across the Realms.
Yara. My pearl. My storm. She snarled even as she dropped, spitting the words through salt-bitten teeth. "I swear." The oceans thrashed.
One by one. Gods. My gods. Our Pantheon. And me? Pinned. Shaking. Rage bleeding from every seam in my body. I couldn't move. Couldn't fight. Could only watch as they surrendered their voices, their oaths, their freedom.
"Welcome home, my Pantheon," Aerion said, arms spread wide. "Welcome back to the natural order."
All I could think was, If this is home, then burn it. Burn it all. He looked to me. Chaos incarnate. Flat on the stone, spitting blood and broken magic like a drunk god vomiting starlight. Aerion didn't gloat. He didn't need to. He just waited. Watching. If hate could kill, he'd already be a pile of ash at my feet. But I knew. Gods help me, I knew. The thread of death was there. Woven deep, binding my life to hers. If I fell here, if I chose rebellion over restraint, Asha would die with me. That truth cut deeper than his gravity, deeper than his throne. He tilted his head at me, patient, mocking, cruel. Waiting for me to break. My lips pulled back in a soundless snarl. Rage poured out of me in sputters of chaos, the kind that should've unraveled the floor beneath him. But the Old Laws held me, tight as iron. Gods forgive me, I folded. One knee to the shattered stone. Chaos bleeding out of me like blood. The chamber went silent. The Realms, all of them, watched.
Malvor, Trickster King, Untamable, Uncatchable, bowing. Not by choice. Not by surrender. But because it was the only way to keep her alive. The words scraped my throat like glass. "I swear."
They tasted like ash and iron.
Forgive me, my Forever. I sent it through our bond. Knowing if I fought, she died. If I resisted, she died. At least this way… she lived. A little longer. The chains answered. I felt them twitch across my collarbone, old iron burned into me from a rebellion long past. They moved. Slithering up my throat, link by link. Scraping against soul and spirit. Not ink. Not memory. Alive. Hungry. I gasped, instinctively trying to pull away. But it was useless. The Binding was stronger. It wrapped me. Around my throat. Around my magic. Around my will. Not a symbol. A collar.
Forged not of iron, but of stolen consent. The links hissed molten as they fused, searing into me, soul and skin alike. Aerion didn't just take my strength. He took me. When the light dimmed, the chain wasn't iron anymore. It was gold. Gleaming. Mocking. Heavy with law. With legacy. With ownership. The chaos runes along my arms, the living, laughing, impossible ink of everything I was, shuddered once. Flickered. And died. Gray now. Ash.
For the first time since my first laugh cracked stone, I was silent. But worse than the silence was the violation. I had bowed. I had been forced. The Realms had watched. The Trickster King, chained. Tamed. Hope itself shackled in front of billions. It didn't even feel like noise when it happened. It was silence. The kind that follows a star's death. The kind that makes you realize you'll never laugh the same way again. Because Aerion hadn't just broken me. He'd desecrated something sacred. Choice.
Aerion straightened, looming tall over us all. His hand lifted and the world, every world, shuddered. The command came. Not sound. Not language. A decree older than thought. Bow.
It didn't move through ears or mouths. It pressed itself into marrow. Into blood. Into the root of will itself. It was ownership. The end of choice. The death of freedom. Bow.
My chaos shrieked inside me, clawing at the iron bars of my ribs. My body shook against it, every vein burning like a fuse. Still, I felt it clamp down, around my throat, my soul, the core of me. It wanted me kneeling. Gods help me, it wanted everything kneeling.
In the Mortal Realm skies fractured. Clouds twisted into grotesque knots, sunlight bleeding through them like rust through cotton. Drivers convulsed at their wheels. Cars slammed into medians, into storefronts, into each other. Sirens screamed, cut off mid-howl as ambulances jackknifed into sidewalks. Markets collapsed in heartbeats, screens black, numbers eaten alive by chaos. Currency dissolved faster than human throats could scream. People in churches, offices, playgrounds, airports, everywhere, dropped. Bodies hit linoleum, stone, grass, pavement. News anchors froze mid-sentence, choking on silence before bowing over their desks. Pilots slumped in cockpits. Planes faltered, drifted, and fell. Children screamed. Elders wept. Mortals begged gods who no longer heard them. Because the gods themselves were already forced to their knees. A tremor passed across civilization like an invisible hand sweeping a board clean. Collapse.
The Supernatural Realm was no better. Alpha werewolves howled as their bodies folded, claws gouging trenches into sacred soil. Vampires crashed to the marble floors of their towers, jaws snapping uselessly as if fangs could tear air. Witches tumbled over their altars, cauldrons boiling over, wards collapsing like paper in rain. Even the oldest monsters, those who remembered when gods first learned to breathe dirt into man, buckled. Howling. Burning. Broken. The Supernatural Realm knelt.
The Fae Courts fought the command. Of course they fought. Seelie kings raised emerald banners and swords, glamour shattering as wings beat the sky bloody. Unseelie queens shrieked their defiance, courts of thorn and bone splintering around them. They lasted longer than most. Pride always does. But even they fell. Crowns clattering to stone floors. Wings dragging through dust. Throats choked by a command deeper than magic, deeper than pride. Their pride broke last. But it broke. The Fae bowed.
I shook so hard blood ran from my mouth. My chaos roared, clawed, begged for release. But I was still pressed down, bound by the command. Rage isn't freedom when consent has already been stolen. Aerion's voice rang across every fractured realm, smooth as poison: "You were made to rise at our command… and fall at our whim."
The worlds obeyed. Not because they wanted to.Because choice had been stolen. Aerion lowered his hand slowly. Deliberately. Like a tyrant blessing the ashes of a conquered world.
Somewhere, Beyond even my reach, beyond all known realms, something ancient stirred. It turned its head and smiled. Because this? This was only the beginning.