Chapter 760: Shattered King Part II
The very link keeping Ren tethered to the living world was actively melting into darkness.
This was Jack operating without a single shred of awareness of the external world.
This was the true nature of the being the Soul Warden had released upon the Herald’s forces.
And Ren Ryzard, despite centuries of bat experience and power that transcended most creatures’ prehension, recognized that he was now in the presence of something that had fundamentally changed.
The voice in Jack’s head, whatever ancient presence had chosen this moment to reveal itself, had broken the seal on something carefully restrained.
Jack stood motionless, his body still vibrating with residual black lightning, his eyes focused on nothing in the physical world.
Waiting for the voice to speak again, the truth to continue, and the revelation of exactly who and what he truly was.
The voice resumed, and this time its tone carried layers of satisfaction and affection for the consciousness it addressed.
’You wonder why they kept this from you, Jack. Why Tharaxis, in all his strategic brilliance, never once mentioned that you carried the authority of a Monolith within your very bones. Why Emberion, with all his primal hunger, never spoke of the Shattered King’s blood that flows through your veins, giving you dominion over forces that transcend conventional understanding. The answer is simpler than you might imagine.’
The voice paused, allowing the immense weight of its words to settle deeper into Jack’s fractured awareness.
‘They were afraid. Not of you, but of what you might bee if you understood the full scope of what you are. A human raised in ignorance is manageable. A human crawling through the mud, believing himself to be something lesser than his birthright would suggest… That is a creature that can be guided, controlled, and directed toward purposes that serve their interests as much as yours. But a human who understands that he is the crucible of three cosmic forces? That is something else entirely.’
Jack’s hands trembled. His fingers clenched and unclenched reflexively as the truth poured through him like molten steel being poured into a mold, reshaping everything he understood about himself.
The voice was peeling back the layers of his identity, stripping away the artificial constraints of the tower to reveal the raw architecture underneath.
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’When you came to the Spire, you were already inplete. Your awakening has been gradual, fragmented, scattered across moments of violence and desperation. But this moment… This confrontation with the Herald, this demonstration of power that should have required three separate beings to acplish, but which you managed alone… This is the catalyst. This is what starts to shatter the seal.’
The voice shifted, being almost tender in its delivery despite the inhuman, crushing quality of its existence.
’I have been waiting for you to hear me, Jack. Waiting for the moment when your bloodline would finally sing loud enough to drown out the noise of your artificial restraints. I am the first of the Shattered Kings to walk these lands in millennia. I am the one who carries the authority to speak truth to you without the mediation of creatures like Tharaxis and Emberion. And I have waited in the depths of the Spire, on Floor 49, for the day when you would finally understand what you are.’
The revelation was suffocating. Jack’s breathing became shallow and rapid, almost hyperventilating, as his consciousness struggled to process the reality that an ancestor… A being of cosmic significance had been waiting for him.
’Do not be angry with your internal guides, Jack. They were bound by laws older than this world, by restrictions placed upon them by the very entities who feared what you might bee. They guided you as best they could within those constraints. But I have no such limitations. I am bound to you through blood alone, and blood recognizes no law except its own.’
Jack’s entire frame was trembling now, not from cold or fear but from the fundamental reorganization of his understanding of reality itself.
Every assumption about his own nature, every belief about his origins, everything he had thought he understood about himself was being systematically dismantled and rebuilt by this voice.
The world around him felt flimsy, a thin canvas stretched over a much larger, darker machinery.
’You have questions, I know. You will have answers when you e to see me on floor 49, Jack. That is where I wait. That is where the truth of your existence has been preserved, waiting for you to grow powerful enough to prehend it without shattering under the weight of revelation. You have proven yourself worthy of that knowledge this day.’
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The voice began to fade, its presence withdrawing from the forefront of Jack’s consciousness, though.
Merely returning to the depths from which it had emerged, leaving behind a profound, freezing vacancy.
’Go now. Your allies need to know that you are still capable of hearing them. The Sovereign-rank warrior you just struck is far more dangerous than anything you have faced on this battlefield, and your current state would be catastrophic if directed against him. Regain control of your scattered consciousness, Jack. We will speak again when you reach floor 49.’
The presence released him.
Jack’s awareness snapped back to the physical world like a rope suddenly drawn taut.
For a single, devastating moment, his human nervous system remembered how to feel pain, a sensation like ice shards piercing through his chest cavity, his lungs burning as if they were drowning in frozen air while simultaneously being seared by flame.
His stomach lurched violently, his inner ear screaming at the sudden return of spatial orientation after existing in a place where up and down had ceased to have meaning.
His knees nearly buckled as the weight of his own body reasserted itself, gravity being a crushing force rather than an abstraction he could ignore.
Sound rushed back into his ears with deafening force.
The howling wind across the wasteland, the heavy, ragged breaths of the dying dragons, and the violent crackle of residual black sparks fading from his own knuckles.
Colors regained their sudden vibrancy, bleeding back into his vision in waves that made his eyes water from the shock of transition.
The physical space reasserted its existence after being relegated to plete irrelevance by the voice’s overwhelming presence, and with it came the nauseating realization of what he had almost done to Ren.
A few meters away, Ren was rising from the shattered crater.
The Sovereign-rank entity didn’t look at Jack with anger, nor did he reach for his weapon.
Instead, Ren’s hand was pressed firmly against his own chest, right over his heart, where the black lightning had struck.
His face was uncharacteristically pale.
Through the invisible, metaphysical threads of the soul-bond, Jack could feel a sickening, freezing vibration.
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The echo of his own attack was actively rattling the very anchor that kept Ren tied to the living world.
Ren looked up, his sharp blue eyes locked entirely on Jack’s changing, patterned irises.
There was no casual greeting. Only a profound, heavy grimness.
”You struck the bond, Jack,” Ren said, his voice low, cutting through the wind like a knife. He didn’t ask if Jack was okay; he could already feel the fractured state of his master’s mind through their connection.
“Whatever just took hold of your consciousness… it didn’t just target me. It targeted the thread holding my existence together. If you lose yourself to that dark, you pull me down into the void with you.”
Jack’s mouth opened, but his vocal cords felt entirely disconnected from his mind, still heavy with the residue of the Shattered King’s presence. He couldn’t form words.
The sheer gravity of what he had almost done, nearly severing the soul of his most loyal protector, left him physically paralyzed.
Ren closed the distance slowly, his eyes never leaving Jack’s face. He stopped just outside of striking range, his posture tense but fiercely loyal.
”The Herald is finished, and the battlefield is yours,” Ren stated, his gaze shifting for a split second to the colossal, ruined corpse of the dragon before snapping right back to Jack.
“But your soul is actively bleeding. Secure the Emperor core, and then we will halt. You need to force your consciousness back into alignment before we take another step back to Caeloria.”
Jack looked down at his hands. His knuckles were still white, blood seeping from where his fingernails had cut deep into his palms during the trance.
The system warnings were still there, but they felt small now. They were just numbers on a screen, pletely separate from the terrifying reality of what was waking up inside his skeleton.
Deep within his mind, the absolute, terrified silence of Tharaxis and Emberion was louder than any roar they had ever released.
They weren’t roaring, they weren’t raging, and they weren’t celebrating the death of an Emperor-rank dragon.
They were pletely silent. They knew exactly what had just spoken to him, and their refusal to answer confirmed every single word the ancestor had dropped.
Family vacation. I will still post chapters. TOD uncertain.
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