Kael walked through the empty corridor, and his footsteps sounded foreign.
It wasn't the usual sound.
But something... hollow.
Like the steps of someone no longer inside their own body.
The Shadow of the Subjugated followed him in silence.
No breath. No sound. Just a presence like a snuffed-out candle that refused to vanish.
Kael stopped.
He drew in a breath.
And he felt it... cold.
Not like normal cold. Not like winter.
But like walking into a room where someone had just died.
— "I'm changing you."
Seraphine's voice no longer came from the shadows.
It came from his skin.
From his bones.
Kael looked at his hands.
His veins were darker.
His fingers longer, with nails that seemed to taper at the ends.
Not enough for a regular person to notice. But he felt it.
He felt every molecule betraying him.
"With every invocation, you step closer to what you truly are."
— "And what am I?"
His voice was dry.
As if he were speaking to someone who lived inside his throat, not outside him.
"A bridge. An altar of flesh. A faceless king who will give birth to the supreme shadow."
Kael leaned against the wall. He was breathing heavily.
Then he heard something he didn't want to hear:
His heart beating... out of sync.
One beat was his. The next... belonged to someone else.
— "Get out of me."
But he knew it was too late.
His thoughts were no longer just his.
His memories were blending. He was seeing things he had never lived.
An altar. A chain of blood.
A boy burned alive beneath a black star, and a woman grinning in his flames.
Kael dropped to his knees.
— "I love you, Kael. And I'll love you even when you're no longer human."
Seraphine's voice had turned warm. It wasn't seductive. It was maternal.
And that terrified him most of all.
"Let me take over, just for a moment. Let me breathe through you. Feel the world. Taste the blood."
Kael stood up.
His face was red.
But not from shame.
From pure, unfiltered rage.
— "If you want to use me, then learn to tremble with me. If you crawl inside me… you feel EVERYTHING."
And suddenly, he opened the gate.
All the pain. All the fury.
The image of the little girl. Her scream before death.
The soldier's laughter. The humiliations. The slow death of every day spent in this world.
And Seraphine... screamed.
A shriek that cracked the shadows on the walls. The Subjugated's shadow recoiled into a corner, trembling.
Kael was no longer the victim.
He was the catalyst.
Seraphine went silent.
For the first time.