Chapter 515: Shackles VIII
The figure advanced slowly, each step echoing through the ruined streets as if the city itself were his instrument. Dust slid off the broken walls, stones quivered, and even the faint light above seemed to dim with his presence.
The group instinctively tightened formation around Leon. Naval angled his trident toward the approaching shadow, Milim floated just above the ground with energy flickering at her fingertips, Roselia whispered a soft hymn to steady her trembling hands, and Roman clenched his fists, jaw tight.
Only Liliana didn’t ready her weapon. She studied the figure with sharp, focused eyes. "...This isn’t the Shackled Domain. This is something else."
The shadow stepped into clearer view. His robes were not stitched from cloth, but from strands of night itself, woven like a tapestry of falling stars. His staff carried an orb at its crown, faintly glowing with shifting constellations, as though it held a fragment of the sky.
His voice came, calm and deep, not a roar like Kaelith nor a sneer like Kar’veth.
"You have broken chains. You have bent decrees. You now sit where none outside the Sovereigns should sit."
The weight of his words pressed down, not with force, but with inevitability—like listening to the passage of time itself.
Leon’s shoulders stiffened. "...And who are you to pass judgment?"
The figure stopped, the staff’s orb pulsing once.
"I am Thalen, Keeper of the Inevitables. My throne does not command your body, nor bind your will. It simply asks a truth: all things end. All laws collapse. Even Thrones."
A chill rippled through the group. Roselia muttered, her lips barely moving. "End... His law is Entropy."
Thalen lifted his staff slightly. The orb brightened, and around them, the ruins seemed to age. Moss turned to dust. Stone crumbled further. Even the air itself tasted older, as if it had been forgotten by time.
Naval cursed under his breath. "He’s rotting the world around us."
Leon stepped forward, resonance coiling tighter around him, the echoes at his back vibrating like blades on the edge of being drawn. His new throne still pulsed faintly, adapting to him.
"If your law is ending..." Leon’s eyes sharpened, the rings of resonance flaring, "...then mine will be what resists it."
Thalen tilted his head, almost as if amused. "Resistance is only a pause, Flamebreaker. Entropy is not fought. It is accepted."
The orb flared. The city groaned. The ground beneath them began to collapse into dust.
Leon raised his hand. "Then I’ll fracture inevitability itself."
The air split as his resonance surged forward, colliding with the first wave of Thalen’s law.
The clash began with no sound—just absence.
Thalen lifted his staff, and the orb pulsed again. The road beneath Leon didn’t crack or shatter—it simply ceased. Stone became dust, dust became nothing. A straight line of erasure stretched toward him like a quiet tide.
Leon thrust his hand forward. His resonance pulsed, fracturing the air with a sharp rhythm. Each echo layered, reversing, looping—forcing the tide of entropy to stutter, break into smaller outcomes, and scatter into harmless dust clouds before it reached him.
But already, his pulse felt heavier. Entropy didn’t resist like Kaelith’s decree or Kar’veth’s shackles—it didn’t fight. It waited. And waiting was far harder to shatter.
Naval leapt to the side, slamming his trident into the ground to summon a wave of water that carried Roselia and Liliana onto firmer ground before the street beneath them dissolved.
"Move fast! The city itself is collapsing!"
Roselia shouted back, clutching her staff as the golden light around her flared. "I can’t heal what doesn’t exist, Leon—be careful!"
Milim dove downward, blasting apart a collapsing tower before it crushed them, but even as the debris scattered, she hissed in frustration. "It’s not stopping—everything’s aging into ruin!"
Roman roared, slamming his fists together. His body-force burst outward, anchoring the ground around them in sheer brute defiance, holding patches of the street together where Thalen’s law ate through it. "Then we hold until Leon finishes it!"
Leon’s breath came sharp, ragged. He could feel Fracture Requiem itching at the edge of his mind, begging to be unleashed again, to splinter inevitability itself. But he couldn’t afford to burn himself out so recklessly—not here, not yet.
Thalen’s calm voice rolled through the collapsing air.
"You cannot fight what is promised. You cannot fracture what is already certain. Entropy does not rage, Flamebreaker. It whispers."
The orb flared once more. This time, the effect hit Leon directly—his body stiffened as cracks formed across his skin, not from wounds, but from decay. His own flesh trying to give way to nothing.
Leon grit his teeth, forcing his resonance tighter, louder, until his voice roared over the silence.
"Then I’ll give your whispers something to answer to!"
The Fifth Pulse stirred. The battlefield shivered.
For the first time, Thalen’s staff wavered.
The orb of inevitability flared brighter, its light spilling like a tide that stripped the world bare. The city crumbled faster, towers falling into dust before they even struck the ground. The air felt thinner, older, as though every breath carried centuries of weight.
Leon staggered under the pressure. His skin cracked further, flaking into motes of fading light. Every echo he raised to resist Entropy seemed to falter, thinning before it could bloom fully.
"Leon!" Roselia cried, raising her staff. Golden light surged outward, trying to knit the fractures crawling up his arms. But the healing unraveled before her eyes, the magic itself decaying into dust. She gasped, horrified. "It’s eating the spell itself—"
Naval clenched his jaw and slammed his trident into the ground. A geyser of water erupted, forming a spiraling wall that pushed back the wave of entropy for a heartbeat. "Move, Leon! Use the opening!"
Milim didn’t wait. She shot upward, gathering radiant light in her hands until it burned like a second sun. With a fierce cry, she hurled it at Thalen’s staff. The explosion rattled the sky, forcing the Sovereign’s law to bend and redirect the decay.
Roman charged in, body-force blazing. He struck the ground so hard that it split, driving cracks toward Thalen’s throne. "Go, Flamebreaker!" he bellowed. "We’ll tear the path open!"
Liliana planted her staff and sang an incantation, her voice steady despite the chaos. The sound rippled outward, weaving Leon’s own resonance into a shielded channel, amplifying his rhythm and holding it intact against Entropy’s pull.
For the first time, Leon felt space clear. His allies’ strength wasn’t enough to break Thalen’s law—but it was enough to give him breath.
He drew it in sharply. The Fifth Pulse writhed in him, unstable, dangerous. Last time, it had nearly broken him. This time, it clawed at his insides like a beast demanding release.
"...Then I’ll stop holding back."
The echoes within him screamed. Reality around him fractured. But instead of letting the chaos scatter, Leon forced the resonance inward, twisting it tighter, sharper, until it was a single note of defiance.
The Fifth Pulse shifted.
It was no longer just a Requiem of fracture. It was a rhythm that broke inevitability itself.
The cracks across Leon’s skin stopped spreading. The decay around him stuttered, then split apart into threads of possibility that dissolved instead of consuming him. His resonance surged outward, forming a domain where Entropy’s whispers could not take root.
Thalen’s calm expression faltered for the first time. His staff trembled.
"...Impossible. Entropy does not fracture."
Leon’s eyes blazed with the rings of resonance. His voice thundered, layered with countless echoes.
"Then hear me, Keeper—your end is not mine to accept."
The battlefield shook as his new rhythm surged outward, colliding with Thalen’s inevitable law in a clash that made the city scream.