Chapter 514: Shackles VII
Roselia reached him first, golden runes sparking desperately as she pressed both hands against Leon’s chest. "Don’t you dare give out now—hold on!" Her barrier-light flickered, barely stitching together the cracks spreading across his body.
Roman stumbled beside her, coughing blood, but his hands were steady as he grabbed Leon’s shoulder. "He’s still here. He’s still fighting. Don’t waste breath talking about anything else."
Liliana knelt, her staff pulsing with faint echoes, amplifying Roselia’s healing into a fragile harmony. Naval stood a few steps away, trident braced in the fractured ground, eyes on the throne that still burned with lingering authority. His jaw tightened. "...If Leon takes that seat now, it’ll consume him."
Milim hovered above, wings spread wide, pink and white fire chasing away the last of the void storm. Her expression for once lacked her usual playfulness. "...And if he doesn’t, the other Sovereigns will descend."
The ground groaned beneath them as Kar’veth’s chains fully dissolved, leaving nothing but silence and the towering throne—glowing with raw, unclaimed dominion.
Leon’s eyes cracked open. His voice was hoarse, every word dragging blood from his lips. "...I can’t stop here. If I don’t claim it, someone else will. The war... won’t wait."
Roselia shook her head violently, tears stinging her eyes. "You’ll die if you try! Look at you—you’re already breaking apart!"
Leon’s gauntlet twitched, glowing faintly as if answering the throne itself. The Fifth Pulse still whispered in his bones, unstable, hungry. He clenched his fist.
"I... wasn’t chosen to survive." His gaze rose, burning, fixed on the throne. "I was chosen to resonate. To carry this war forward."
The throne pulsed—once. The world itself seemed to lean toward him.
Naval swore under his breath, trident trembling. "...Damn it, Leon."
The team could only watch as he forced himself onto unsteady feet, blood dripping freely, fractures across his body glowing like molten glass. Each step toward the throne echoed through the void louder than thunder.
With the last of his strength, Leon reached the throne’s base. His gauntlet blazed, Shell fragments spiraling around his hand. He placed it upon the cold surface.
The throne roared.
Light exploded outward, swallowing the battlefield, wrapping Leon in the resonance of a Sovereign unbound.
The roar stretched on, shaking every bone in their bodies.
The throne wasn’t just light—it was a storm of law, a flood of resonance so deep it threatened to erase everything else. Chains of silence snapped in the air, reality itself pulling taut as if resisting what was happening.
Leon stood at the center of it, his body breaking apart under the weight of the throne’s will. His veins glowed like rivers of molten glass, cracks spreading through his flesh, yet he didn’t falter. Each fracture carried sound—a low, rhythmic pulse, the Shell layers weaving into the throne’s authority.
Milim shielded the others with her wings, but even then her voice shook. "...He’s not just taking it. He’s rewriting it."
Roselia sobbed quietly as her healing magic fizzled, useless against the tide. Naval grit his teeth, trident grounded like an anchor, refusing to kneel even as the force pressed them into the earth. Roman forced himself to stay upright, eyes blazing with pride despite the blood on his lips.
Liliana’s staff hummed, trembling as it caught fragments of Leon’s resonance. She whispered under her breath, almost prayer-like. "...Resonance beyond the Fifth..."
The light reached its peak. For a heartbeat, the world was nothing but sound—an unearthly chorus of shattered chains, echoing laws, and a rhythm that did not belong to gods or mortals, but to something in between.
Then it stopped.
Silence.
The throne was no longer empty.
Leon sat upon it, but not as before. His body no longer bore fractures; instead, every line of him glowed faintly with embedded echoes, as though he had become the instrument of the Shell Pulse itself. His eyes opened—twin rings of resonance swirling endlessly, reflecting not just light but rhythm.
Kar’veth’s authority was gone. What remained was something heavier, sharper, alive.
Leon spoke, and his voice wasn’t just sound—it was command, layered and resonant.
"...The Shackles are broken. This throne now sings with me."
The world itself seemed to respond, the air vibrating with his words.
The team stood frozen, staring at him. Because the Leon they knew was still there—but the throne had changed him.
And somewhere deep in the void, other thrones stirred.
The group stood there, caught between awe and fear.
Milim was the first to move. She lowered her wings slowly, her usual grin replaced by something quieter, sharper. "...You did it," she whispered. Then her eyes narrowed. "No—you became it."
Naval straightened, though his arms still trembled from holding his trident against Kar’veth’s chains. His voice was steady, but heavy. "Leon... are you still... you?"
Leon looked at him, and for a moment, there was silence. His new eyes—those endless rings of resonance—made it impossible to tell if he was friend or sovereign. But then he exhaled, and the rhythm around him softened, easing its grip on the world.
"I’m still me," he said. "But the throne doesn’t vanish when it’s broken. It becomes part of the one who claims it. And now..." He looked at his hands, flexing them as the faint pulse shimmered through his skin. "...I carry it."
Roselia’s hands trembled, her healer’s instincts flaring as she stepped closer. "You’re glowing with wounds that aren’t wounds. I can’t... I can’t tell what’s breaking or what’s whole anymore."
Leon gave her the smallest smile. "Neither can I. But I’ll hold it together—for us."
Roman, bruised and bloodied, let out a low chuckle. "Heh. You look like hell, Leon. But... you sit on a throne now. Guess that makes you king of something."
Liliana’s staff hummed faintly, still resonating with the aftershocks of Leon’s ascension. She raised her gaze to the fractured sky where the throne’s light had torn reality apart. Her voice was low, almost reverent. "...The Tower won’t ignore this. Other Thrones will feel it. They’ll come."
Leon’s expression hardened. "Good. Then let them come." He rose from the throne, its shape dissolving into motes of resonance that followed him like faint banners. "We’ll answer every law they bring."
The ground shook suddenly, faint but unmistakable. Not chains this time, not a storm—something deeper, like a heartbeat pulsing through the ruined city itself.
Naval’s grip on his trident tightened. "...And it seems we won’t have to wait long."
From the distance, beyond the shattered walls, a shadow rose. Tall. Towering. Draped in robes of dusk and carrying a staff that seemed to hold constellations within its length. The air grew cold—not with chains or decrees, but with the suffocating weight of inevitability.
Roselia whispered, pale. "...Another Throne."
Leon stood at the front, the echoes swirling at his back, and for the first time since Kaelith, his eyes narrowed—not in resistance, but in anticipation.
"Then let’s see whose law sings louder."