The Hellbound did not expand.
It ruptured.
Bone-sand split with a scream like ribs pried apart from the inside. The arena floor cracked in widening spirals, entire sections heaving upward as if something beneath had decided it was tired of being contained. Pillars snapped. Fractures raced through the stands. The skull-ring overhead trembled and re-formed in jagged arcs.
Then the earth rose.
Not stone.
Not bone.
A rainforest kingdom erupted from the split floor in a violent surge of green and black. Towering trees shot skyward, trunks thick as siege towers, roots ripping through the old arena like spears. Vines lashed outward. Canopies tangled in seconds, swallowing half the sky in suffocating emerald shadow.
Water roared in from nowhere.
Rivers tore through the newborn forest, carving channels through bone-sand and dragging fragments of the old Hellbound with them. The current was violent, frothing white where it struck exposed ribs of the arena.
The perimeter cracked open next.
Lava trenches split along the edges, molten rock spilling upward in glowing arteries. Heat blasted outward, warping the air. Pits of magma burst intermittently like artillery fire, explosive geysers of red-orange death that splashed across tree trunks and sent steam screaming into the canopy.
In the distance—impossible and immediate—a volcano clawed its way into existence. Rock stacked itself in jagged layers, forming a mountain that had not existed a breath before. Its peak glowed. It rumbled low and hungry.
The arena had tripled in size.
It was no longer a pit.
It was a kingdom waiting to burn.
The crowd did not cheer.
They recoiled.
Fragments fell silent. Ascendants leaned forward without meaning to. Even the bone-sand beneath their feet seemed unsettled, shifting like a thing uncertain of its own foundation.
Ecayrous stood at the edge of the transformed expanse, smiling as if admiring a garden he had just planted.
"Let the final match breathe," he said softly.
His voice carried without effort, threading through trees and lava and steam.
"A treat," he added, eyes glinting. "A fate worse than death."
Behind the entry arch, shackled in gold and silence, Qaritas felt the shift through his bones.
Eon's presence pressed against the inside of his skull.
Are you ready to awaken?
The question did not come with mockery.
It came with weight.
Qaritas did not hesitate.
"Yes."
The word tasted like iron.
Komus stepped forward, jaw set, eyes harder than they had ever been. Nez padded at Qaritas's side, tail low, fur bristling, shadow thickening around her paws.
They walked him to the gate.
Cree and Hydeius were coming the opposite direction.
Cree's fire flickered weakly, ribs cracked open, flame leaking in ragged pulses. Hydeius supported them with one arm, sword still in his other hand, names flickering along its corrupted edge.
Cree's steps faltered.
They collapsed.
Hydeius caught them before they hit the stone.
"I'm fine," Cree rasped.
Hydeius did not answer.
He lifted them as if they weighed nothing.
As they passed Qaritas, Cree's eyes found him through smoke and pain.
"Make them pay," they whispered. "Make them regret letting you awaken here."
Hydeius's gaze locked onto Qaritas next.
"We'll be watching the birth of a king," he said.
That line was not theatrical.
It was expectation.
Then they were gone, climbing toward the stands.
Qaritas watched them until the forest swallowed the view.
He said nothing.
His arms hung useless at his sides, broken bones a dull, distant ache. The skin had turned blue from swelling and cold.
He could not feel his fingers.
Komus stopped in front of him.
"Don't die," he said quietly. "We need you. Both of you."
Both.
Qaritas nodded once.
Then he stepped through the gate.
The moment his foot crossed into the rainforest arena—
The golden shackles vanished.
They did not unlock.
They ceased.
Power rushed back into him like floodwater into a broken dam.
His arms snapped.
Bones grinding into place with wet, nauseating cracks. Ligaments stitched themselves together violently. Muscles spasmed. He dropped to one knee as healing tore through him like an animal clawing upward from inside his flesh.
Then the Awakening hit.
It was not a surge.
It was an eruption.
His skin felt like it was being peeled off in invisible strips. His breath locked in his throat as darkness flooded upward, pouring from his mouth in thick, choking streams. Purple light burned behind his eyelids.
He screamed—but the sound drowned in shadow.
Darkness bled from his eyes.
From his nostrils.
From between his teeth.
Eon laughed.
Not small.
Not restrained.
"Let's show them what it means," Eon purred, voice layered and ancient, "to be the First Evil."
Across the arena, Ecayrous raised a hand.
"The Shadowborn," he announced, tone gleeful, "versus a fate worse than death."
The forest fell silent.
The volcano rumbled.
Then something moved at the far edge of the clearing.
The staff entered first.
It dragged.
Carving a line through mud and bone-sand, wood older than gravity scraping against rock as if pulled by invisible chains.
Then Hrolyn followed.
He did not stoop anymore.
He was pulled straight.
Eight feet of ancient divinity stretched unnaturally upright, spine forced into obedience by threads of black-gold light burrowed through his shoulders and ribs. Where once his back had curved beneath millennia of memory, now it locked rigid, vertebrae outlined sharply beneath skin pulled too tight.
His robe of living light hung in tatters. Constellations flickered erratically across its torn fabric—stars blinking out mid-birth, galaxies collapsing into dull embers along the seams.
The cloth did not carry history anymore.
It bled it.
His six-fingered hands twitched.
Joints cracking.
Black-gold filament pierced each palm, threading through bone, anchoring him upward.
His eyes—
Still black.
Still vast.
But the stars inside them did not move.
They were frozen.
Suspended mid-collapse.
Blood did not pool at his feet.
It ran upward.
Thin streams lifting against gravity along invisible lines, feeding the mechanism that held him in forced obedience.
When his head turned toward Qaritas—
Too smooth.
Too even.
It clicked.
Inside the ruined cage of his chest, something tried to breathe.
It failed.
And for the briefest fraction of a heartbeat—
One star behind his left eye trembled.
Recognition.
It saw Eon inside Qaritas.
The threads tightened.
The tremor died.
Even Eon went silent.
That silence was worse than his laughter.
The Old God stood perfectly still.
Like a throne forced to kneel.
Then the ground split open.
Not gently.
Violently.
The rainforest floor ruptured as massive shapes clawed upward from the mud.
Nine feet.
Ten.
Twelve.
Griefspawn tore free of the earth in towering, malformed silhouettes. Grey-green flesh stretched over brutal muscle. Iron crowns fused to skulls. Blackened antlers spiraled upward from cracked bone.
Their eyes burned red—not with flame, but irritation.
Their mouths reeked of damp earth and old blood.
They did not march.
They gathered.
One howled.
A grinding roar like stone crushing stone.
Others answered.
Within moments, dozens assembled.
Then hundreds.
Then thousands.
The forest collapsed under their weight. Trees splintered as they shoved through trunks like paper. The river turned black with churned mud and spilled blood.
They spread outward, forming a tightening ring around Qaritas.
At their center—
Hrolyn stood motionless.
Qaritas tried to rise.
Pain crushed him back down.
His body felt too small for the power clawing inside it. His vision blurred purple and black. Darkness poured from his mouth in choking streams.
He couldn't breathe.
Inside his skull, Eon roared.
Get up.
Qaritas pushed back.
It's my body.
The Griefspawn advanced.
Nez doubled in size in an instant.
Fur splitting, bones lengthening, shadow pouring from her like smoke. She grew to the size of a war-dragon, fangs elongating, claws carving trenches in the mud.
She planted herself in front of Qaritas.
Growled.
The Griefspawn hit her like a landslide.
Iron-hard claws slashed across her flank. Tusks tore into shadow-fur. She snapped one in half with her jaws, black blood spraying across leaves.
Three more climbed onto her back.
She roared and rolled, crushing two beneath her weight.
Ten more closed in.
Inside Qaritas's mind—
He stood in a black void.
Eon stood opposite him, larger, older, eyes burning.
Stand up, Eon snarled.
Qaritas lunged.
They collided like collapsing stars.
Fists of shadow met.
Void cracked around them.
"You don't get to take me," Qaritas growled.
"I don't need to take you," Eon replied. "You are me."
Outside, Nez screamed as a Griefspawn cleaver hacked into her shoulder.
Inside, Eon's hand plunged into Qaritas's chest.
It tore out his heart.
Qaritas gasped—
There was no blood.
Just absence.
Eon held the pulsing void where it should have been.
"I will awaken," Eon said calmly. "With or without you."
The Griefspawn closed in.
Nez staggered.
She dropped to one knee.
A massive cleaver rose above her skull.
Inside the void of his mind, Qaritas fell to his knees.
Heartless.
Empty.
He felt the moment before extinction.
Then something inside that emptiness—
Shifted.
Not rage.
Not fear.
Choice.
The heart in Eon's hand dissolved into nothing.
For a fraction of a breath, Qaritas wanted it.
No body.
No grief.
No father.
No expectation.
If he erased himself now, the fight would end.
The arena would forget him.
That was tempting.
Not stolen.
Not reclaimed.
Erased.
Outside—
The cleaver fell toward Nez's skull.
It never landed.
The explosion was not fire.
It was absence.
Purple-black annihilation erupted outward from Qaritas in a spherical shockwave. Trees disintegrated into dust mid-sway. Lava pits froze for a fraction of a second as heat was swallowed. The Griefspawn nearest him did not burn.
They vanished.
Not dismembered.
Removed.
Silence devoured sound.
The volcano's rumble died mid-growl.
The river stopped moving.
Nez lifted her head.
The Griefspawn staggered back in confusion.
At the center of the expanding void, Qaritas rose.
His skin no longer bled darkness.
It was darkness.
Veins glowed faintly like trapped galaxies beneath a starless surface. His eyes burned purple—not wild, not pained.
Cold.
Ancient.
Still.
The forest bowed outward around him in a perfect circle of erasure.
Hrolyn's frozen stars flickered once more.
The Griefspawn hesitated.
One of them—crown cracked, antlers jagged—took a step back.
Not in strategy.
Not in confusion.
Instinct.
Its red eyes flickered—not rage.
Recognition.
Then the howl returned, and it forced itself forward with the others.
Even Ecayrous stopped smiling.
Qaritas took a single breath.
The air around him collapsed inward.
Not Shadowborn.
Not King.
Something older.
Something that had never been given permission to exist.
Not Eon reborn.
Not a vessel.
Not a fragment of the First Evil.
This was something Eon had never been.
The god that was never born opened his eyes.