Fate had made its decree. A cold, unfeeling judgment. A sentence written in the bones of the cosmos long before Pyris ever existed.
And yet—he moved.
The moment his foot left the ground, the air itself shattered.
A storm of force erupted around him, a howling vortex that sent shockwaves through the hall.
The gathered leaders, ancient and indomitable in their own right, felt the weight of it—the buried power, the presence that had long slumbered within Pyris, now unfurling like a beast awakening from the depths. This was not borrowed strength, not a fragment stolen from another. This was his—his alone.
And yet… it was never meant to be his.
A power without origin. A force that should not exist within him, but did.
Where had it come from? Had he taken it? Had he earned it? Or was he merely a mistake in the script of reality, an aberration that the cosmos had failed to contain?
The answers did not matter. Not now.
