He knew as soon as the door shut and the ground began to tremble.

With his palms pressed against the peak of the Aphyres's pyre, head tipped as he began to recite the Sealing prayer, Sorein felt the disturbance before the screaming began.

Attack. Ambush. Slaughter.

Sorein hissed to himself, releasing the platform and turning to see through the glassy magic. He could see their lips moving, several guests pointing toward him but there was no evidence of an assault.

A breath escaped him.

Just as he was about to turn back to the pedestal, the ground began to quake again.

"What in Heilos..." he muttered to himself.

Scanning the outer edges, he traced back the steps Iliya had taken to where she now stood with Qudja towards the right wall.

Relief almost poured through him until he noticed her eyes.

Iliya's eyes were imbued with bright silver, sparks searing beneath the surface. As he inspected them further, he watched a tight grimace pulling on Qudja's lips and red drops skittering down the edges of both their gowns.

His friend's nails dug so deeply into the Chieftain's daughter they both shed blood.

Slamming his hand on the barrier between them, Sorein realized quickly he wasn't going anywhere. Not until the Ceremony was over, not until he'd been fully Sealed.

He had to break free from this chamber.

"Alright, concentrate," he grumbled.

Breaking the Aphyre would destroy the protections on the estate, the barriers between realms, and the very peace his parents were desperate to protect. Not to mention how inconvenient it would be for more citizens to fear him.

Sorein wasn't even entirely sure he could shatter the wall.

He took a deep breath and turned back to the pyre, placing his hands carefully on either side and began to rehearse the prayer one more time.

"Aida guide me into the light," Sorein murmured, steadying himself within his thoughts. "May I give myself to her cause and walk through this land to protect that which shields us. Upon this land created, from the land we return, the Aphyre shall bless this journ-"

Just as his Mana began to stir within him, the screaming ricocheted through the crystal.

He gritted his teeth, focusing as much as he could on the lingering flicker in his soul. "-journey."

Sorein repeated himself two more times as the connection between his Mana and the Aphyre tethered, braiding together into a cord.

Infinity washed through him in powerful, gripping waves that had his knees buckling. Stars trickled into his veins, flowing through him with the vastness and the purity of space and time itself. Enveloping. All encompassing. The sensation flooded through him in sensations he had never experienced, even in dreams.

The chamber began to hum with quiet, warm vibrations. He could smell the salt, the crispness of charged rain in the open air mixed with a floral note he didn't recognize.

Sorein blinked, unsure of how long his eyes were shut.

A bright beam of violet poured from the ceiling, the walls around him glowing to life, yet stretching indefinitely in all directions.

He'd hated tight spaces, always.

The suffocating cage they created.

Yet here he didn't feel trapped.

Sorein thought the process would be more visceral, borderline painful even. Sure, his body felt like it had been smothered in molasses and his blood tingled with strange sparks of electricity, but there was no pain.

The Aphyre began to tremble around him, the ground shaking underfoot.

A gentle feminine voice tickled against the back of his mind. "You're distracted."

Sorein sighed through his nose. "People are in danger."

"Then focus," she said, an edge tightening in her voice. "They will need you at your peak."

His jaw clenched, teeth working against one another. As if he hadn't already been trying. Sorein fought the growl in his throat and glanced down at the pyre again.

Just like with the Erietii, Sorein followed his tether into the very source of his mana and felt it.

The Mana, the world, the ethers clicked.

A dark, sweeping infinity was all Sorein felt as his knees slammed into the platform below.

~ 🔮 ~

"Prince of the Void," a female voice purred. "Son of the Darkest Star, you've come at last."

There was no beginning.

There was no end.

Only Space.

Yet there were no stars to shine, yielding a pale, matte world of shadow to swallow all.

Dimensions did not exist, nothing did.

Suddenly it did not matter if it was his first or last breath, there simply wasn't enough air in the whole world to protect him from this wretched emptiness.

Not a single soul floated through the blanket of space, no shadows slipping through pockets of lights.

Absolutely nothing.

"Breathe," she said again. The voice speaking threatened to be no more than his fractured imagination. "Nothing shall harm you here."

Sorein couldn't understand where here was.

He couldn't feel anything.

Out. He needed to get out.

To escape from this dark realm as quickly as possible.

Warm laughter filled the expanse. "Escape? Escape what? We are inside your soul, Prince."

A numbing cold entered, seeping into the area. The first tangible sensation this world offered. Without a form, he had no idea where those feelings began and faded or how they dwelled within him.

"Concentrate," the voice repeated, reminding Sorein of the world they'd left behind. "Fill the Void."

He felt the frustration before fully comprehending the command. With what. How. Why. Hundreds of questions slipped in and out of his mind, all of them nothing more than faint distractions.

Attack. Ambush. Slaughter.

Sorein focused on the memory of Iliya's silver eyes and the blood skimming over her fingers.

"What are you made of?"

He didn't know, not truly.

Sorein couldn't think past the images of her blood and the screams against this chamber.

Trapped.

He was trapped in this awful world while people were crying out, an earthquake threatening the Aphyre's walls. The sound of shattering glass echoed in his ears, his thoughts fading into radio silence.

Panic.

"They are not dying, Prince," she chided. "But they will if you do not concentrate."

Sorein felt himself swallowing even if he couldn't comprehend where his body disappeared to.

"Fill the space and it shall set you free."

So he took the deepest breath he could manage and remembered the feeling of those storms dancing within his veins and the song of every shadow he'd ever heard. Sorein remembered the pooling of light from his hands into the lanterns at the Ceremony of Lights and through every vow he'd ever made.

Channeling it, visualizing it until he felt the freezing static rush through every cell in his body. Violent electricity swirled together with those calming clouds of distilled darkness until he sensed the fullness around him.

The memories he held onto, those moments that continued to push him, every single sensation edging against the very barriers of his soul until the pain returned.

The searing, crippling agony that filled him and burned through every layer of what he once was until the tingling turned soft.

Pleasurable.

A rhapsodic metamorphosis.

The very planet humming beneath his fingers.

Gravity sung to him as the floor underneath him trembled.

As Sorein's eyes opened, the Aphyre's crystal barriers fractured, shattered glass raining from the ceiling.

Blinding violet light pulsed through the ballroom, screams disrupting the power now coiling inside his veins. Reality reeked of fear and sulfur, but when the world came into focus Sorein couldn't believe his eyes.

In all his life he had never anticipated the sight before him.

Corrupt spirits escaping a chasm in the floor attacked the nearest guests with waves of smoke and black.

A wave of shadows parting just enough to reveal Iliya's crumpled body curled against the ballroom floor.