The words "Forbidden Seal" echoed in Nathan's mind like a quiet thunder, ancient and heavy, carrying the kind of authority only the Divine truly possessed.
This seal… it was far more than a simple brand of control.
A Divine-Rank Skill, carved from primordial law itself, capable of intertwining two souls so deeply that boundaries blurred and distinctions faded. Through it, slaver and enslaved could share not only strength, but essence — magic, skills, memories, emotions, sensations, and even the burdens one should never bear alone.
Nathan had already witnessed a fraction of its power when he absorbed Khione's divine life-force the day he bound her. Back then, he thought he understood what it meant to take another's existence into himself.
He was wrong.
What he was attempting now went far beyond that.
There was a gentler method to stabilize Pandora, a path without force or manipulation. Athena and the others had been correct:
