The Watchers came at midnight.
No warning.
No mercy.
Just silent shapes — black against the blacker sky — falling like arrows toward the Heart of Azarath.
Max was the first to sense them.
The Blade of Fivefold Dawn hummed against his back, waking him from restless sleep.
Without a word, he rose —
and when he unsheathed the blade, the world trembled.
The first Watcher hit the ground hard enough to crack stone.
It was massive — a thing of claw and mist and hunger — wearing a stolen human face stretched too thin.
The second landed behind it.
The third.
The fourth.
A dozen in all.
Each one whispered his name.
"Keybearer."
"Broken one."
"Open the final door."
Max said nothing.
He stepped forward.
And moved.
The Blade of Fivefold Dawn roared as it struck —
a river of fire and stone and wind and tide and forest bursting from its edge.
The first Watcher was obliterated —
burned, frozen, shattered into dust.
The others shrieked — not in fear, but joy.
They wanted his power.
They wanted him.
Max cut them down without mercy.
But with each strike —
something inside him unraveled.
The blade grew heavier in his hands.
The Phantoms whispered louder.
The voices inside the broken Seventh Door screamed.
And in the middle of it all,
a new whisper rose:
Give in.
They cannot understand you.
They will fear you.
Let them fear you.
He felt it then.
The Hidden Potential.
A second form — waiting beneath his skin like a second soul.
Not ice.
Not fire.
Not stone.
Not forest.
Not tide.
Rage.
Pure, burning, endless rage.
The next Watcher struck him across the face.
Not hard.
Barely a scratch.
But it was enough.
Max's body shuddered.
His vision blurred —
red and black.
His heartbeat slowed — and then exploded.
A pulse of darkness radiated from him.
The Blade of Fivefold Dawn twisted in his hand, the veins of elemental light burning crimson.
And Max changed.
[Hidden Potential Unlocked: RAGEFORM]
Max's skin blackened, lines of molten silver crawling up his arms. Horns like shattered ice and stone curled from his temples. His eyes blazed pure white, no pupil, no mercy. His breath came out as frost and fire.
The Watchers recoiled.
Even the warriors behind him — Aria, Luna, Sylas, all the others — gasped in horror.
This wasn't Max anymore.
This was something else.
Something monstrous.
Something inevitable.
The battle ended quickly after that.
Max didn't fight.
He annihilated.
With a scream that shook the foundations of the world, he tore the Watchers apart —
not with the blade alone,
but with raw, wild, furious elemental storms that answered only to his rage.
By the time it was over, the Heart of Azarath was half in ruins again.
The Watchers were dust.
And Max stood alone in the center, trembling, the Blade of Fivefold Dawn embedded in the cracked earth.
The demon still burned inside him.
Talon approached slowly, weapon drawn.
"Max," he said carefully.
"Come back."
Max turned his head, eyes blank, monstrous.
For a long moment, it seemed he wouldn't.
The rage wanted more.
The rage wanted everything.
But then —
Max slammed the blade into the ground.
The rage recoiled —
caged again.
For now.
The demon horns faded.
The black lines withdrew.
Max fell to one knee, gasping.
Aria rushed to his side, but didn't touch him.
None of them could.
He wasn't just their leader anymore.
He was their greatest weapon.
And their greatest threat.
Later, under the broken stars, Talon said it aloud:
"If Max loses control again," he said grimly, "we may have to kill him."
No one answered.
Because deep down, they all knew.
Talon was right.
[End of Chapter 8]