Thalion felt it.

A disturbance in the air, thin as a spider’s thread but unmistakable. It pressed against his skin, crawled into his lungs, coiled around his spine. Something unholy was about to transpire—something that made even the Bleak Marrow’s twisted atmosphere recoil.

It was familiar.

He had felt something like this before. When he tried to invade Jason’s mind. When his magic slid off the creature’s consciousness like water off stone. When something inside Jason had pushed back.

Thalion’s blood ran cold.

"Jason followed me."

Panic seized his chest. His hands trembled. His heart—the elf’s heart, not his own—pounded against his ribs like a caged animal.

No. No, no, no. Jason couldn’t be here. Not now. Not when Thalion was so close to—

He moved, his bare feet carried him through the dark corridors of the keep, past hanging tapestries and crumbling statues. The air grew colder. The shadows deepened. He reached a door—iron-bound, ancient, etched with symbols that predated the Marrow itself.

He pushed it open.

The chamber beyond was small, circular, lit by a single candle that never burned down. In the center, on a stone pedestal, rested the head.

The woman’s head.

Her skin was dried, shrunken, pulled tight over bone. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were sealed. But Thalion could still feel the curse radiating from her—the same curse that had locked him inside this elf’s body for centuries.

"She cursed me. And now I will use her to free myself."

He approached the pedestal. His fingers brushed her forehead—cold, smooth, like polished ivory. He closed his eyes and began to draw.

An insignia that not only looked complex but ancient. A symbol that predated the guilds, predated the kingdoms, predated the very concept of magic as it was now understood.

"The Rite of Severance." Thalion muttered under his breath.

Thalion traced the lines with his fingertip, each stroke deliberate, each angle precise. The insignia glowed faintly—a dull, sickly green—as he completed it.

He stepped back.

His hand went to his belt. His fingers closed around a knife—small, sharp, its blade stained with old blood. He had brought it for this purpose. He had come here to die.

Or rather, to leave this body at the point of death.

"The soul can only escape when the vessel is dying. When the flesh fails. When the heart stops."

Thalion pressed the blade against his stomach.

The skin gave way easily—too easily. The elf’s body was soft, untrained, unhardened by the centuries of torture that had stripped away everything but survival instinct.

He dragged the knife sideways.

Left to right. it was deep but not deep enough.

Blood poured out—hot, slick, unstoppable. It soaked his shirt, his pants, the stone floor. His organs bulged against the wound, pressing outward, eager to escape the prison of his abdomen.

Thalion screamed in utter pain.

The sound echoed off the stone walls—a raw, primal howl of agony that no elf had ever made. His body convulsed. His legs buckled. He caught himself on the pedestal, his blood-slick fingers smearing the woman’s head.

But he did not stop, he began to chant something.

The words were old in a lost language, older than the elves, older than the vampires. They came from a time when language was power and names were weapons. His voice cracked as his throat filled with blood. But he forced the syllables out, one after another, each one dragging him closer to the edge.

Thalion was getting closer to death.

The wound in his stomach gaped. His intestines slithered against his fingers. The blood loss was catastrophic—he could feel his consciousness fading, his vision darkening, his heart stuttering.

"Tauriel’s fragment."

A piece of her soul lived inside him. The mark on his neck. The spell she had used to watch Jason. It was designed to house a single soul—her fragment, anchored to his flesh.

But by that logic, Thalion should be able to exploit the weakness.

"If her soul is in here with me... then the vessel has two occupants."

"Which means the vessel is overcrowded."

"Which means there might be a loophole, I have to try..." Thalion thought to himself.

He didn’t know if it would work. It was a gamble. A desperate, suicidal gamble.

But it was the only chance he had.

Thalion’s eyes rolled back. His body slumped against the pedestal and the knife clattered to the floor.

"... Return... to... my... body..."

-

The watcher pulled himself from the splintered remains of the eighth tree. Grey dust and shattered bark rained from his robes. His empty sockets fixed on Jason, who stood motionless at the far end of the clearing, his fist still raised, his eyes burning with that strange gold light.

"You broke my barrier," the watcher said. His voice was no longer dry and calm. There was something else in it now. Something that sounded almost like respect because this only proved what he felt from Jason, that need to kill him only intensified.

Jason didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The rage was a living thing inside him, coiling around his thoughts, choking out everything except the image of Ylva’s body lying motionless on the black stone.

He charged once again, Mae watched in horror because she didn’t even know something like this existed in Jason.

The distance between them vanished in a heartbeat. Jason’s fist flew toward the watcher’s face—not with technique, but with raw, unfiltered fury.

The watcher caught it because despite Jason bypassing his initial defense, he still lacked the refined skill to cause serious damage when it came to hand-to-hand combat.

His grey fingers wrapped around Jason’s knuckles, squeezing. The bones creaked. Jason felt the pressure, the threat of being crushed, but he didn’t pull back. He swung his other fist.

The watcher caught that one too.

"Your magic does not work on me," Jason snarled. "Your barrier is gone. Your tricks are useless."

The watcher tilted his head. "Magic is not my only weapon."

He twisted.

Jason’s arms rotated at an unnatural angle. Pain shot through his shoulders—sharp, blinding. He bit down on a scream and kicked out instead, his boot connecting with the watcher’s knee.

The creature didn’t flinch, his body was rock hard like it wasn’t made of flesh.

It was like kicking a pillar of stone. Jason’s foot throbbed, the watcher released one of his hands and backhanded him across the face.

Jason flew sideways, tumbling across the black stone, his cheek split open, blood spraying across the ground. He rolled to a stop and pushed himself up.

"He’s strong. Physically strong. Stronger than me." Jason was surprised he felt no fear despite the threat being bigger than he had anticipated.

The watcher advanced, his robes sweeping across the stone. "You absorbed my mana. You broke my barrier. But you are still just flesh. Just bone. Just a fragile, mortal thing."

Jason spat blood. "Fragile enough to put you through eight trees."

"A momentary surprise. It will not happen again."

The watcher lunged taking the initiative this time, trying to see what laid behind Jason’s power.

Jason dodged left. The watcher’s fist smashed into the ground where he had been standing, cracking the stone. Jason countered with a hook to the ribs—felt something give, something crack—but the watcher didn’t stop. He grabbed Jason by the collar and slammed him into a boulder.

[Ding!]

[1 minutes elapsed!]

[Adaption to blunt force trauma: 60%!]

The impact drove the air from Jason’s lungs. His vision swam. The gold light in his eyes flickered but this blow should have knocked him out however, his adaptation system had drastically reduced the impact of the blow.

"You are angry," the watcher hissed, his hollow face inches from Jason’s. "You are angry because she died. But anger does not make you strong. It makes you predictable."

Jason’s hands closed around the watcher’s wrists. He pulled. The watcher didn’t move.

"I will kill you slowly," the watcher continued. "I will make you watch as I destroy the others. The hooves. The insect. And then I will bring you back just enough so you can feel yourself dying."

Jason’s vision cleared. The rage was still there—burning, hungry—but something else was pushing through it. Something colder, sharper.

"He’s right. Anger makes me predictable."

He released the watcher’s wrists and dropped.

The watcher’s grip loosened for a fraction of a second—enough for Jason to slip free and roll backward. He came up in a crouch, his chest heaving, his split cheek dripping blood.

The watcher straightened. "Running? There is nowhere to run."

Jason wasn’t running, he had no idea why he could keep but somehow, he was doing so.

He was thinking about how strong he had become.

"Mana absorption. It didn’t just make me immune. It let me take his power. Use it for myself but what if it is similar to the ant king’s power?"

He remembered the feeling of the barrier shattering—the mana flowing into his fist, amplifying his strike. He hadn’t controlled it. It had happened on its own.

"What else can I do?"

The watcher charged again.

Jason didn’t dodge. He stood his ground, closed his eyes, and reached.

Not outward but inward.

The mana he had absorbed from the watcher—the remnants of the barrier, the echoes of the creature’s magic—still lingered inside him. He could feel it now, a warm current beneath his skin, waiting to be shaped.

"Mana manipulation. Immunity. Absorption."

"But what if I can replicate?" Jason was asking all the right question. He would have joked about this situation on a normal day but it had hit him earlier that he had people he wanted to protect.

The thought surfaced like a bubble rising through water. If he could absorb mana, could he also replicate the abilities of those whose mana he had taken?

The watcher’s fist was inches from his face but this was the killing blow.

Jason’s eyes snapped open because he knew he needed to gamble on this single move, he had somehow forced himself to adapt but Jason’s strength had jumped drastically.

"Barrier." Jason muttered under his breath.

The air shimmered around him right away, he had a mastery of mana that shouldn’t be possible but thanks to his system, he was leagues above the others. A being immune to magical attacks and soon-to-be blunt force trauma.

The watcher’s fist connected with something invisible—thin as glass, hard as diamond. The same barrier the watcher himself had used. Jason had recreated it instinctively.

The watcher’s empty sockets widened. "Impossible."

Jason didn’t answer. He stretched out his arm, palm facing the watcher’s chest. The mana inside him surged toward his hand, hungry, desperate to be released.

"Blast."

He didn’t know how to aim it. Didn’t know how to control it. He just pushed.

A beam of white light erupted from his palm—not clean, not focused, but devastating. It struck the watcher’s right shoulder and kept going, severing his arm clean from his body.

The watcher staggered back. Grey blood sprayed from the stump. His severed hand hit the ground, fingers still twitching.

But Jason’s aim had been off. He had been aiming for the chest. The shoulder was a near miss.

The watcher’s remaining hand clamped over the wound. His hollow face twisted—not in pain, but in disbelief.

"You..." he whispered. "You used my own power against me."

The beam had kicked up a cloud of dust and debris—black stone pulverized into a thick, choking fog that filled the clearing. Jason couldn’t see the watcher anymore. Couldn’t see anything for a brief amount of time.

He heard footsteps. It was retreating and fast.

The dust began to settle because this was quite the powerful attack.

The watcher was gone, he had retreated and who could blame him, Jason had advanced at a tremendous rate at this point.

Jason stood alone in the clearing, his arm still extended, his palm still smoking. The barrier around him flickered and faded. His legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees.

He looked at his hands. They were shaking.

"I did that? I made him run..." Jason muttered in disbelief.

But the victory felt hollow but empty.

He turned his head toward Ylva’s body. Still motionless and bleeding.

The rage was gone now. All that remained was exhaustion and a cold, gnawing fear.

"Ylva," he whispered.

No answer but Mae was doing everything in her power to make sure Ylva wouldn’t die today but Jason had lost hope.

"S-She was right, we should never have come here," Jason muttered under his breath as tears dripped down his cheeks.