Lord of the realm

Chapter 224: Heartbeat of Jaenor

Flames that weren’t just hot but fundamental, burning with colors that preceded the spectrum, with intensities that transcended temperature.

The fire engulfed him completely.

Wrapped around his reformed body like a living thing, like a cocoon of pure energy. It burned through him, into him, remaking what had already been remade.

But there was no pain.

That was the strangest part. Fire that should have been agonizing, that looked like it was consuming him atom by atom, felt like... comfort. Like bathing in warm water after days of cold. Like being held by something infinitely gentle despite its overwhelming power.

He was bathing in the flames of eternity itself.

Being purified and transformed beyond even what Magdalyna’s sacrifice and the Chaos Origin absorption had achieved.

The process accelerated.

His heartbeat became a continuous roar—THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP—no longer individual beats but a sustained note of power building beyond control.

And as it built, as the flames intensified, the void around him began to react.

The floating landmasses, those chunks of destroyed realities that had existed in this space for potentially millions of years, started to crack.

Then shatter.

Then simply cease to exist, obliterated by the pressure of what was happening.

The strange objects that defied categorization, those impossible shapes and living things that swam through the void, fled. Scattered in all directions, driven by a survival instinct to get as far from this epicenter as possible.

Even the darkness itself was being consumed.

Not by light, but by something more fundamental.

The void was being rewritten, reality restructuring itself to accommodate what Jaenor was becoming.

And the sound—oh, the sound.

The Interplanar Void was supposed to be silent. It existed outside normal space, beyond the physics that created sound waves. Nothing should have been able to make noise here.

But Jaenor’s transformation was so catastrophic, so reality-breaking, that it created sound anyway. Not through conventional means, but through sheer force warping the fundamental laws that governed existence.

The reverberations echoed across realms. Through realms that had never been touched by mortal influence. Into spaces where gods and ascended beings dwelled, making them all turn their attention toward this impossible disruption.

Something was being born.

Or reborn.

Or created.

Or all three simultaneously.

Something that reality itself had to acknowledge and accommodate.

The flames grew brighter.

The heartbeat grew louder.

The pressure built until it felt like existence itself would crack from strain.

And then, suddenly, it stopped.

The flames didn’t fade; they condensed. Contracted back into Jaenor’s body, pulling all that accumulated power into a form that could contain it. The heartbeat settled into a rhythm that was faster than human, slower than divine, existing at some perfect frequency that bridged mortal and eternal.

The void began to reassert its normal properties. Darkness returning. Stars reigniting. The floating debris that hadn’t been completely obliterated resumed its endless drift.

But it was changed.

The entire space was changed.

Marked by what had occurred here, altered at fundamental levels that would persist for eons.

And at the center of it all, Jaenor slowly opened his eyes.

The irises had transformed completely.

They still held hints of blue, the color he’d been born with, but now that blue was shot through with every other color simultaneously. Gold and crimson and purple and silver and shades that existed outside normal perception. They swirled and shifted, never quite settling, suggesting that looking into them meant seeing into infinite possibilities.

But more than the color, it was what they held. Depth beyond comprehension. Power beyond measurement. Knowledge beyond mortal understanding.

These were the eyes of something that had transcended conventional existence. That had absorbed primordial chaos, integrated divine sacrifice, and been reforged through flames that predated creation.

As his eyes fully opened, as his consciousness reasserted complete awareness, a wave exploded outward from him.

Not an attack, just presence.

The simple fact of his existence manifested as force that had to be acknowledged.

The wave was chaos given form.

It moved like a storm surge, like a tsunami of pure power.

But instead of water, it was made from the fundamental forces of reality being temporarily overwhelmed by something they couldn’t fully process.

It expanded in all directions simultaneously, a sphere of absolute transformation that rewrote everything it touched. The floating landmasses in its path weren’t destroyed; they were improved. Made more stable, more real, as if his power was accidentally creating order from chaos even as it radiated primal force.

The strange creatures that swam through the void and had fled his transformation now found themselves caught in the wave.

The wave expanded for miles.

Then hundreds of miles.

Then thousands. It crossed the boundaries, bleeding through into adjacent realms, touching realities that had never experienced such direct influence from the Interplanar Void.

And in all those places, beings of tremendous power felt it and froze in shock.

In the mortal realm, in Evanisckar, reality itself trembled.

The ground shook with earthquakes that registered across all continents.

The sky flickered between day and night in impossible cycles.

Power of all types—aura, origin energy, divine blessings, everything—surged and fluctuated wildly as the fundamental forces they derived from were momentarily overwhelmed.

*

In the forest clearing where the ritual had occurred, where Jaenor had been consumed and Suyajna had manifested, the aftermath had devolved into catastrophic violence.

The Seven Sins had withdrawn after completing their purpose and were on standby. They’d achieved their goal; the daemon god had returned.

The battle had raged for what might have been minutes or hours.

The forest was gone, replaced by devastation so complete that even the soil had been scorched away, leaving only bare bedrock scarred by forces that shouldn’t exist.

And three of the Ascendants were dead.

Glacithor had fallen first. Suyajna had caught him with a technique that consumed his nature. His body lay scattered across the battlefield in pieces that still sparked with residual energy.

Nerithys had died trying to save him. His life-giving abilities couldn’t resurrect a Sovereign—death at that level was more permanent than a mortal ending. But he’d tried anyway, and Suyajna had struck while he was distracted. Nerithys’s form had withered into nothing; all the life he commanded drained away and was consumed.

Vitaeus had been third.

And while he was channeling everything he had into that assault, she’d killed him with contemptuous ease.

Three Ascendants died.

In minutes.

Against a being who’d only just fully manifested.

The remaining four were injured.

Pyrraxis had a wound across her torso that bled not blood but temporal distortion, reality itself trying to escape the damage. Chronalis’s left arm was gone, ended by her own power being redirected. Vorathys’s face showed burns where Suyajna’s darkness had touched her.

Kailthys, she was still unharmed. She was watching while she fought with the other ascendants.

Only Aethormor remained relatively intact, and that was purely because his spatial manipulation made him almost impossible to hit. He’d been dodging, supporting the others with positioning advantages, but never engaging directly enough to give Suyajna a clean opening.

And through it all, Suyajna laughed.

Pure evil radiated from her laughter, not the casual cruelty of demons or the cold calculation of villains, but genuine, absolute malevolence. She was enjoying this. Reveling in the slaughter. Experiencing joy at finally, after millennia of persecution and death, being powerful enough to kill those who’d oppressed her.

Morgana too; she was giving her support to Suyajna, which made it possible to kill those Ascendants.

Years of accumulated power—Morgana was unleashing it now. She was more powerful than a transcendent.

"Is this it?" Suyajna called out, her voice carrying across the devastated battlefield.

"Is this the best the Ascended can offer? Seven of you couldn’t even scratch me! How many more need to die before you accept that I’ve surpassed you?"

She gestured, and dark energy lashed out toward Chronalis. The time controller tried to dodge through temporal displacement, but Suyajna’s attack existed in multiple moments simultaneously. It caught her across the legs, severing them cleanly.

The Sovereign screamed, a sound that echoed across and she collapsed. She wasn’t dead, but she was critically wounded. Time itself was trying to heal her, creating temporal loops where the injury hadn’t occurred yet, but Suyajna’s power was interfering with that process.

"You’ve killed my partner," Vorathys said, her voice carrying the weight of absolute endings. "Three Sovereigns. Three beings who’ve existed since before your imprisonment. That offense cannot stand."

"Then don’t let it stand," Suyajna taunted.

"End me. Use your death power. Terminate my existence completely. Oh wait—" she grinned viciously, "—you can’t. Because I’ve integrated Origin aura through my son’s consumption. I exist partially outside the framework your power can affect. Death might claim me eventually, but not through you. Not through any sovereign."

She was right, and they all knew it. Her consumption of Jaenor, her absorption of his merged power, and everything he’d become had elevated her beyond the conventional Sovereign level. She wasn’t just powerful; she was categorically different. Operating on principles that the current cosmic order couldn’t fully account for.