Then her gaze settled on one figure who hadn’t knelt. Who stood despite the pressure, despite the overwhelming certainty that she should prostrate herself before this new sovereign.
Morgana went and hugged her.
And while they embraced, while they celebrated their reunion, Jaenor hung limply in the chains above them.
His skin had cracked like dried clay, revealing darkness beneath that wasn’t blood or muscle, but a simple void. His body was failing, having had its essence torn out, nothing remaining but a shell that was rapidly decaying.
His eyes were open but hazed, vision blurred and unfocused.
He stared at nothing, unable to process what had happened, unable to comprehend that his mother, the woman he’d thought dead, the woman he’d mourned, had been alive all along.
He had planned his entire existence and used him as a tool, and was now discarding the broken pieces.
His mouth moved, trying to form words, but no sound emerged. His throat was too damaged, his voice destroyed by having expelled darkness and gods from it.
He was dying.
Not quickly; the Arkwright constitution kept him lingering despite catastrophic damage, but inevitably. Within hours, maybe minutes, the shell that had been Jaenor Arkwright would collapse completely.
And from the vacant look in his eyes, some part of him welcomed it.
Magdalyna had been watching.
Waiting.
Still pinned by Morgana’s energy spear, still bleeding from the wound that should have killed anyone less resilient, she’d been gathering what little power remained to her.
She’d loved Jaenor from afar. Had protected him when she could, had watched over him from a distance, and had hoped desperately that he might escape the fate his bloodline seemed to promise. Had even offered him escape: come with her to other realms, leave this place of suffering and persecution.
He’d refused.
Had chosen to stay, to fight, to protect those he cared about.
And that choice, that fundamental goodness despite everything, had made her love him more. With the fierce protectiveness of someone who’d seen too much corruption and too much cruelty to let one genuinely good soul be destroyed if she could prevent it.
She couldn’t stop Suyajna.
Couldn’t undo the absorption, couldn’t restore what had been taken.
Jaenor was dying, his essence consumed, his body failing.
But she could save what remained.
Could give him a chance, however slim, to survive this horror.
While Suyajna and Morgana were distracted with their reunion, the Seven Sins remained kneeling in awe of the new sovereign before them, and Jaenor’s companions were paralyzed by despair and overwhelming presence—
Magdalyna moved.
She reached out across space itself, wrapped what remained of her power around Jaenor’s failing form, and pulled him.
For an instant, nothing happened. The chains holding him were strong, reinforced by Sin energy, designed to contain tremendous force.
But they’d been designed to contain someone struggling.
Someone is fighting. They weren’t prepared for external extraction, for someone pulling from outside the binding circle.
The chains shattered.
Jaenor’s body disappeared.
One moment he hung suspended above the ritual circle.
The next, he simply wasn’t there anymore, vanished into thin air.
And the beast of his had also disappeared along with its severed head.
It had linked with him so she was gone with him as he was not in this realm.
The shock was immediate and absolute.
Suyajna broke from Morgana’s embrace, her black eyes blazing with fury as she realized what had occurred.
"NO!" Her voice carried a force that cracked the ground, that made reality itself shudder.
"Where are you taking him?"
The Seven Sins scrambled to their feet, their awe-induced paralysis broken by alarm. They’d been so focused on bearing witness to their god’s ascension that they’d failed to maintain security. Failed to prevent the one thing that could compromise everything.
Pride’s eyes swept the clearing and couldn’t find Magdalyna.
"Find him!"
Suyajna commanded, her voice carrying absolute authority that made even the Sins flinch. "Search every inch, everything, every hidden space. I want my son found and brought back immediately!"
"He’s dying," Morgana said quietly.
"Whatever essence remains in his body won’t sustain him much longer. Even if we find him—"
"I don’t care" Suyajna interrupted.
"Even if he is dead, he’s mine. His body is mine. And I will reclaim what’s—"
She stopped mid-sentence.
Because the sky had torn open.
The dents in reality were different from the ones the ritual had created. Those had been wounds, tears forced through resistance, bleeding darkness and corruption.
These were doorways.
Clean, precise, and edged with light that seemed to originate from beyond normal space. And through them came presences that made even Suyajna’s overwhelming power seem suddenly finite.
The Ascended were manifesting.
Not projections or remote observations. Their actual forms, descending into the mortal realm for the first time in living memory.
They came in numbers, male and female, representing different aspects of reality’s governance.
First through was Aethermor, Sovereign of Space, and his consort, Chronalis, Sovereign of Time. He was tall and broad, with features that seemed carved from starlight, wearing robes that showed galaxies rotating within their folds. She was slender and elegant, with silver hair that moved as if caught in winds that blew from the past and future simultaneously. Her eyes held depths that suggested she saw all moments at once.
Behind them came Pyrraxis and her partner Glacithor—Fire and Ice given divine form. She burned with internal flames that didn’t consume; he radiated cold that didn’t freeze. Together, they represented the extremes of temperature and the balance between them.
More followed. Vorathys, Death, appeared with Vitaeus, Life. The former was skeletal beauty wrapped in shadows; the latter was golden warmth radiating health and growth. Seeing them side by side, the symmetry was obvious—two halves of a necessary cycle.
Nerithys manifested with Obsidius, Knowledge, and Secrets. She was living parchment covered in text; he was solid darkness that seemed to absorb information rather than reveal it.
And finally, descending with casual confidence that suggested absolute authority, came Kailthrys herself.