Chapter 517: Inevitable
The dust of Thalen’s form lingered in the air, glowing faintly like ash carried by a dead star’s wind. The city lay unrecognizable—half a skeleton of ruins, half a shattered mirror of fractured outcomes. Nothing was stable. Walls rose and fell, towers blinked between collapse and standing, the ground itself shifting as if the world hadn’t decided what to become.
Leon remained on one knee, his chest heaving. The fractures across his skin glowed faintly, light leaking like cracks in glass. Every breath he drew seemed to grind against inevitability itself, as though the Fifth Pulse had carved him into something the world struggled to allow.
His allies rushed to him.
Roselia dropped to his side, hands glowing with golden light—only for the spells to sputter again, refusing to settle. She bit her lip, panic clear. "It’s not working... you’re not... healing the same anymore!"
Leon raised a hand, steady despite the tremors in his arm. "Stop. Don’t waste your strength. It isn’t your magic that’s failing. It’s me."
Naval planted his trident into the broken earth, jaw tight. "Damn it, Leon. You nearly burned yourself alive. We all saw it—you weren’t just fighting Thalen. You were tearing at the law itself."
Roman growled, slamming a fist into the ground. "And yet you won." His eyes flicked to Leon, burning with pride despite the chaos. "Don’t you dare tell me that wasn’t worth it."
Milim dropped from the air, folding her arms with a grin that didn’t quite mask the tension in her gaze. "You fractured inevitability itself. That’s insane. Even I didn’t think you’d pull it off."
But Liliana’s expression stayed cold, calculating. Her staff still hummed faintly with resonance from when she joined Leon’s rhythm. "This isn’t victory without cost. Thalen’s warning wasn’t idle." She turned toward the swirling ash of the Keeper. "Fracturing inevitability changes the stage itself. The Sovereigns will know. And they will answer."
As if in response to her words, the ground beneath them trembled—not with collapse this time, but with something deeper. A pulse, slow and immense, like the beating heart of the world itself.
Roselia’s breath hitched. "...What now?"
The fractured sky above them darkened, stars flickering unnaturally. For a brief moment, silence stretched—then a voice, vast and unbound, rolled through the ruins.
It was neither roar nor whisper. It was command.
"One Keeper has fallen. A Flamebreaker rises."
The air thickened. Resonance itself bent under the weight of a presence far greater than Thalen’s.
"Then the Sovereigns will answer."
The fractured city screamed as reality buckled. The ground split open into countless mirrored corridors, each leading outward into the endless void. From within those corridors, figures stirred—immense silhouettes, Thrones in motion.
Leon’s head lifted, his eyes sharp despite his ragged breath. The Fifth Pulse still burned inside him, unstable but alive.
"They’re coming."
Naval tightened his grip on his trident. Roman cracked his fists together. Milim’s grin sharpened into battle-hunger. Roselia steadied her staff, though her hands trembled. Liliana’s gaze narrowed, already planning.
Leon rose to his feet, fractures glowing brighter with every motion. His voice came steady, defiant.
"Then let them."
The mirrored corridors groaned wider, spilling light that wasn’t light, shadows that weren’t shadows. Each corridor shimmered like a wound in existence, leading into vast dominions that pressed against reality’s thin veil.
From within them, figures stirred. Some colossal, some small as men, all bearing the unmistakable weight of Thrones. Their movements were slow, deliberate, yet each step reverberated like a decree across the battlefield.
Roselia’s knees nearly buckled as she clutched her staff. "So many... Leon, there are too many..."
Naval snarled, trident raised, the sea still trembling faintly in his calloused grip. "Then let them choke on the tide."
Roman planted his fists into the ground, body-force surging. His muscles pulsed with sheer intent, anchoring the shifting earth beneath their feet. "Doesn’t matter how many—they’ll break the same as the rest!"
Milim floated higher, hair wild, her aura flaring bright enough to push back the corridors’ shadows. "Finally. Something fun."
But Liliana didn’t move. Her gaze cut sharply across the corridors, her staff pulsing as she felt the rhythms bleeding through. "...No. These aren’t champions. Not yet. They’re watching. Measuring him."
Her eyes slid to Leon. "They’re testing what fractured inevitability actually means."
Leon’s chest rose and fell with steady breaths. The fractures glowing across his skin pulsed faintly with every heartbeat, the Fifth Pulse still snarling inside him like a beast straining against its cage. He looked at the mirrored corridors, then at his allies, then finally down at his own hand—trembling, cracked, yet burning with rhythm.
"...Then let them measure."
The corridors trembled, and from one of them a figure stepped forward.
Unlike Thalen, this one didn’t wear night. His body was plated in ivory-white armor, flawless and seamless, as if sculpted from a single divine bone. Behind him trailed banners not of cloth, but of written law—pages unfurling into infinity, inscribed with rules no mortal tongue could read. His weapon was not a blade, but a gavel, cracked at its center yet still heavy with judgment.
Roselia’s voice dropped to a whisper, horror lacing her tone. "...Judicator Halreth. Sovereign of the Immutable Law."
The armored figure raised his gavel, its impact echoing though it never touched the ground. Every echo carried command, rewriting the battlefield with presence alone. The fractured ruins around them snapped into rigid form—walls rising straight, towers standing upright, the mirrored shards forced into alignment.
Entropy’s chaos stilled.
Halreth’s voice rang out, every syllable final.
"Leon of the Fractured Pulse. You have broken inevitability. I will weigh you. If your rhythm is found unworthy, your law will be erased."
The corridors behind him quivered, more Sovereigns watching. Silent. Waiting.
Leon stood taller, his allies tightening their formation around him, the Fifth Pulse growling in his chest. His lips curved into a sharp, tired grin.
"...Then start your trial."
The Sovereign’s gavel descended.
The gavel struck.
It never touched the ground, yet the world convulsed as though struck by a hammer forged from creation itself. The shockwave wasn’t sound or force—it was decree. A command that things be as written.
The fractured city snapped into rigid clarity. Crumbled towers reformed into flawless spires, then froze as if carved from unyielding stone. The mirrored shards of possibility that Leon’s Fifth Pulse had birthed locked into place, their shifting outcomes sealed into singular paths. Even the air stilled, refusing to bend or stir against the law now weighing it.