Chapter 535: Inevitable XX
Milim’s wings twitched, every instinct in her body screaming to tear the kneeling host apart, to shatter the suffocating reverence before it could swallow Leon whole. But when she stepped forward, her fire met not resistance, but stillness—an unshakable silence, older than rage.
Roman’s bloodied fists tightened. "Gatekeepers, huh? Then what’s behind that gate that needs him more than it needs us?"
Roselia’s ember blade hissed in her grip, light bending across its edge. "Doesn’t matter. If they’re bowing, it means he’s already inside their script. The question is... does he get to write back?"
Liliana’s threads wove frantic patterns around Leon, trying to keep his body upright even as his veins glowed like molten cracks in stone. Her whisper barely carried. "It’s burning him alive... but it won’t let him fall. The Listener wants him alive at any cost."
Naval’s trident thrummed low, as though echoing the Tower’s endless pulse. His eyes narrowed. "No. Not alive. Chosen."
Leon lifted his head, his breath ragged but his gaze unwavering. He looked at the kneeling host—not as conqueror, not as savior, but as one who had torn the veil and seen the fracture beneath. His voice cracked like thunder dragged through fire:
"Not pawn. Not crown. Flame."
The warriors of script lowered their blades further, a sound like a thousand doors locking shut echoing through the abyss. The stair pulsed brighter in answer, beckoning him downward.
But before his next step, the Tower shifted again.
From the air above the stair, a shape coalesced—neither kneeling nor watching. A sentinel. Its body was a shifting prism of fractured runes, its edges sharp enough to split light, its eyes twin voids that devoured echoes before they could return. It raised a hand, palm outward, and the abyss itself froze.
Milim snarled, stepping in front of Leon, wings blazing. "Another test? Fine. I’ll—"
Leon raised his hand, stopping her with nothing more than a glance. His own broken fingers trembled as he met the sentinel’s hollow gaze. "No. This one’s mine."
The sentinel moved, its first step making the entire stair tremble. Not an attack. A demand.
Roselia’s eyes widened. "It’s not here to kill you... it’s here to weigh you. To see if you’re what it waited for."
Roman spat blood into his palm, grinning with feral fire. "Then let’s make sure it sees the truth."
Above, the constellations of Thrones flared violently, trying to pierce the abyss with their authority. But the conduits of black-gold light snapped upward to meet them, bending the heavens like iron under too much weight. For the first time, the Thrones’ radiance faltered.
Between heaven’s fury and the abyss’s call, Leon took his next step down the stair.
The sentinel lowered its arm.
The test had begun.
The stair groaned as if alive, every rune on its surface flaring in chaotic rhythm. The sentinel’s form fractured and reformed with each breath—its body a puzzle that refused to settle, its shadow stretching in directions that didn’t exist.
Leon’s foot touched the next step, and the Fifth Pulse stirred inside him. It was not a clean resonance. It cracked. Echoed. Broke upon itself and reformed like glass under fire. His bones ached, his veins seared with light, but the sentinel’s gaze held him steady, forbidding retreat.
Liliana gasped, threads sparking in her hands. "It’s not just measuring him—it’s amplifying every flaw. Every fracture in his rhythm."
Naval braced his trident against the stair, anchoring their group as the entire abyss tilted toward Leon. "Then he doesn’t fight it. He survives it. A pulse that can’t be broken."
The sentinel extended its hand again. This time, a sphere of silent light bloomed from its palm—neither fire nor void, but the raw absence of echo. When it pulsed, every heartbeat, every breath, every flame around Leon’s team staggered and skipped.
Milim cursed, her aura snarling against the silence. "It’s erasing tempo itself—trying to strip him of rhythm!"
Leon bent forward, nearly falling, but his fingers clawed into the stair. His voice rasped through the collapse:
"Then I’ll make a rhythm it can’t erase."
The Fifth Pulse roared to life—unstable, jagged, but undeniable. It fractured outward in triplets, shards of resonance spiraling around him like broken bells ringing at once. The stair shook as if it recognized the defiance.
The sentinel’s void-eyes flickered. For the first time, it moved in earnest—its prism-arm swinging down, not in strike but in decree. The blow cracked the abyss into mirrored shards, and Leon’s fractured resonance scattered against them, each echo tearing him apart from within.
Roselia shouted, flames bursting upward, intercepting a fragment before it could pierce Leon’s chest. "He won’t last if it keeps splitting his Pulse like that!"
Roman slammed his fist into the stair, veins burning like molten iron. "Then we hold the fractures together until he bends it back!"
They moved—Roselia’s fire weaving through broken echoes, Milim’s aura slamming against collapsing silence, Naval’s trident locking shards into place, Liliana’s threads stitching cracks where they could. All to buy Leon one breath longer.
Leon rose through the agony, blood dripping in lines that hissed into steam before reaching the stone. His pulse wavered... then steadied. Not clean, not whole—but alive.
The sentinel stilled, tilting its fractured head.
And then, in the abyss’s hush, it spoke—its voice not words, but a question etched directly into every soul present:
"Will you fracture... or will you return?"
The next step waited.
The sentinel raised its arm again, light splitting into a thousand reflections.
The reflections did not scatter outward this time. They bent inward, a cage of mirrored light closing around Leon. Each pane held a different image of him—not the man he was, but fragments of who he might have been.
One bled out on the stair, his body collapsing under the weight of the Fifth Pulse.
Another stood crowned, his team gone, his throne carved from their ashes.
Another vanished altogether, nothing more than a whisper erased by silence.
Each mirror showed not failure, but choice.
Liliana’s breath caught as her threads tangled. "It’s not breaking him anymore... it’s dividing him. Testing which Leon survives the collapse."
Naval’s grip on his trident whitened, his scales cracking under strain. "Then he’d better pick the right one. Or there won’t be anything left to follow."
Milim slammed her fists against the cage, destruction flaring in violet arcs. The mirrors only absorbed it, reflecting her rage back as twisted copies of herself. She growled low, wings shaking. "I’ll smash it all if I have to!"
Leon’s hand lifted weakly, stopping her before she struck again. His eyes burned—not with certainty, but with raw, stubborn fire. "No... if I break the cage, I stay a fracture. If I choose wrong, I become theirs. The only way out—" He coughed blood that steamed on the rune-lit stair. "—is to return."
The sentinel lowered its arm. The mirrors folded closer, their edges razor-thin, pressing against Leon’s pulse until the Fifth roared and faltered all at once. The choice was no longer distant—it was tearing him apart now.
Roselia’s flames swirled protectively at his back. Her voice was sharp, desperate. "Then burn the wrong paths away. Leave only the one you want!"
Leon’s head tilted, his gaze flicking to each reflection. The dying self. The crowned tyrant. The erased whisper. All possible, all within reach.
But when his eyes settled on his team—Roselia braced in fire, Naval holding the stair with iron will, Milim snarling at the mirrors, Roman bleeding but unyielding, Liliana shaking as her threads bled silver—his voice came low, steady, unbroken by doubt:
"My return isn’t mine alone."
The Fifth Pulse flared, not as a single rhythm, but as a chord carried by every bond around him. Roselia’s fire threaded into it, Naval’s trident hammered its beat, Milim’s destruction sharpened its edge, Roman’s fists hardened its core, Liliana’s threads bound it whole.
The fractured rhythm fused—jagged but alive.
The mirrors screamed, shattering one by one, each collapse echoing like a bell struck too hard. The cage fell, shards dissolving into black-gold sparks that rejoined the stair.
The sentinel did not attack. It bowed its fractured head once, then stepped aside.
The stair before Leon pulsed brighter, lines of runes rearranging into a single word none could miss:
Return.
And for the first time, the abyss did not resist. It invited.
The stair breathed—yes, breathed—as though the abyss itself had exhaled. The runes that once burned jagged and hostile now rippled in waves, forming a path not of demand, but of promise.
Leon swayed, nearly collapsing, but the Fifth Pulse steadied him—no longer cracking his veins open, but mending them with a rhythm that felt heavier, older. He was no longer just carrying the Pulse; it was carrying him.
Naval’s trident hummed, deep as thunder trapped in iron. His eyes locked on the glowing stair. "It accepted him... no, it recognized him. The gate has opened."
Liliana’s threads loosened with a trembling sigh, silver fading into dim sparks. "Then the sentinel wasn’t a wall. It was the key. And Leon..." She looked at him, her voice breaking. "...you turned it."
Milim stepped closer, her fists clenched, wings twitching like a beast about to leap. "Fine. Then let’s finish this climb. Whatever’s waiting below—" she smirked sharply, fire in her eyes, "—it’s not ready for me."
But Roman, blood dripping freely down his arms, shook his head. His tone was gravel, low and absolute. "This isn’t for all of us. Not yet."
Roselia’s ember cloak flared. "You think I’m letting him walk alone into that?"
Roman’s grin was crooked, iron-hard despite his exhaustion. "It’s not about letting. Look."