The sea swallowed him whole.
Johnathan sank slowly, arms drifting like broken branches, his hair floating around him in a dark halo. The moonlight vanished above him, replaced by a heavy darkness that pulled him deeper and deeper into the cold abyss.
His body should've been still.
Dead.
But beneath his skin, something faint stirred, like a quiet heartbeat answering a distant call. A thin shimmer crept across his chest, radiating under pale skin. Not a glow of life, but of something ancient, something buried inside him long before he could speak.
The darkness turned blue around him.
Cold water iced his veins.
Then… the Destral Core Seal awakened.
A metallic pulse throbbed inside his chest, flooding his lifeless organs with burning heat. The glow sharpened, revealing something shaped like a rune-crusted charm, spiral lines, metallic veins, tiny symbols etched into it, as if forged with a language older than speech.
It wasn't implanted.
It was embedded into him, a part of his flesh, as though he was born with it.
Suddenly. A CRACK!
A blast of force erupted from within him, ripping through dead nerves, shocking his rigid muscles. The ocean around him vibrated, waves jolting above him like something massive had just stirred in the depths.
His spine jerked. His neck twisted with a violent snap, bones realigning. His lungs convulsed, expanding against the crushing water pressure. Every joint tore and reformed. His chest split open from the inside with heat, scalding flesh and blood, yet… stitching itself back together in the same moment.
Johnathan wasn't breathing water.
Something else was breathing for him.
The world dimmed to a narrow tunnel of sensations as a vision forced itself into his mind, pulling him out of death and into memory.
********
He saw himself as a baby.
Small, red-faced, wrapped in a white blanket. A pair of trembling hands held him. A woman's voice, tender yet burdened with fear, whispered his name.
His mother.
"Jack… Collin ," she murmured, choked with emotion. "You must survive. Even if the world turns against you."
She held something to his tiny chest. A cold, metallic emblem. Runes burned faintly on it. She pressed it against his skin until it sank into him like melting silver.
Another presence entered the memory, a man with silver eyes, cloaked in a long coat embroidered with swirling symbols. He watched the baby as if memorizing him.
"Someday," the man whispered, voice layered like many voices speaking at once, "you will return to us. The Heir does not vanish. The Core remembers."
Johnathan tried to cry out, even inside the vision, but the scene dissolved like water breaking apart.
************
Pain ripped him back into reality.
The Destral Core pulsed and discharged a shockwave through his heart
THUMP!
His chest jerked violently.
THUMP! THUMP!
His heart roared back to life, pumping heat through his veins like molten metal. His lungs seized, forcing air, not breath, but energy into him. It felt like a furnace igniting inside his ribcage.
A scream ripped from his throat, but no sound escaped into the water, only bubbles bursting from his mouth with furious force.
The Core's rune scars rotated like gears in a machine, glowing brighter, forming new patterns. Something was changing, building, preparing.
Then his eyes snapped open.
Not blurry. Not dazed.
Sharper, so sharp he could see shadows moving above the waves in the distance.
With a sudden surge of strength, Johnathan kicked his legs. The water tore around him, spiraling as though repelled by his movement. His body sliced upward like a torpedo, punching through the deep with unnatural force.
*************
The ocean surface shattered as he burst through it, gasping into the cold night air. Wind whipped against his soaked clothes, salt burned his throat, and every breath felt like it fused fire into his blood.
He crawled onto the jagged shoreline, body shaking from shock and rebirth. His fingers dug into a boulder for support, without thinking, clenching it with the desperation of a man who shouldn't be alive.
CRRRAAACK!
The rock fractured beneath his grip, splitting a chunk clean off.
Johnathan flinched backward, staring at his hand as if it belonged to someone else. The remains of the boulder tumbled down into the sea, crashing loudly against other rocks below.
"I… I broke that?" His voice rasped, disbelieving.
His lungs wheezed, panic rising in his throat. He slumped against the rocks, trembling uncontrollably. He could still feel their hands on him. Lex choking him, Marie holding him down. He could still taste blood and betrayal. He should've died. He did die.
Yet here he was. Alive.
"Why…?" he whispered. The guilt, pain, heartbreak, all of it crashed back into him at once. His chest clenched, and he doubled over, sobbing against the cold stone. His tears mingled with seawater as the wind howled like a grieving witness.
He was breathing.
He was shaking.
He was alive because of something hidden inside him.
And that something wanted him to survive.
He bit his lip until it bled. "Thank you," he whispered to himself or to the thing in his chest. "Thank you for not letting me stay dead."
The Core responded with a faint glow, pulsing once like a heartbeat inside his skin.
But Johnathan wasn't alone on the cliffs.
From the shadows above the rocks, silhouettes emerged, men in black suits, their coats whipping in the stormy wind. Their eyes glinted coldly, not with surprise or fear…
…but recognition.
One of them lowered binoculars, voice reverent, almost trembling.
"The lost heir… has awakened."
Johnathan looked up, heart freezing in his chest again, not really from death this time, but destiny.
The storm raged behind them.
His rebirth had been witnessed