That night, Lucas didn't sleep. He fell.
Through dreams layered like rot and flame.
He stood in a desert of ash, beneath a burning sky. Towers made of bone twisted above him. In the distance, something moved—vast and formless, like the idea of a god dreaming of teeth.
And beside him, bound in shadow and fire, stood Malgros.
"You fed it," the demon hissed, voice quieter now. Almost… afraid.
Lucas turned, fists clenched. "What was that seed?"
"A key. And a cage," Malgros said, circling him. "That witch planted something inside you. Something that will grow. It will strangle me, given time."
"Good."
Malgros snarled, but there was no violence behind it. "And what will you do when it strangles you too? You are not free of me. I am not a parasite. I am your weapon."
"No," Lucas said. "You're my consequence."
Malgros grinned, barbed and bitter. "Then you'd best be ready for what comes next."
The sky cracked.
A shape moved on the horizon. A limb. No—something worse. Like memory peeled from the skull.
Ephraal.
Lucas felt it even in dream—its gaze pressing against the fabric of thought. Time faltered. Possibility rewrote itself. He saw flashes—Eastbridge in ruin, children crying with no faces, the sky raining names no one remembered.
He screamed and woke covered in sweat and ash.
The seed inside him pulsed once.