The mental realm wasn't empty. Jagged obsidian cliffs erupted from swirling grey mist, reflecting no light. Zeke stood on a narrow ledge, the abyss yawning below him. His frail vessel was gone; here, only his soul existed—a dim, flickering ember compared to the immense, oppressive darkness pressing in from all sides. The air tasted like cold iron and burnt ozone, a physical weight pressing against his consciousness. This was no illusion. Failure meant oblivion.
A resonant chime echoed through the mist. A shimmering glyph materialized before him—a circle bisected by a jagged, lightning-strike fracture. Instinct screamed: *Devour it*. Zeke reached out, not with a hand, but with raw willpower. As his soul touched the glyph, agony exploded through him—a thousand needles piercing his essence. The glyph pulsed violently, resisting, trying to tear his will apart strand by strand. He could feel its structure—a lattice of chaotic divine energy designed to reject lesser beings. Memories surfaced: Luke's cold betrayal, Kael's mocking laugh slicing through the vessel's pain. These weren't distractions; they were fuel. With a roar echoing only in his soul-space, he forced his will deeper into the glyph's fracturing heart.
The instant his will gripped the glyph's core, the landscape inverted. He wasn't devouring the power—he was being devoured by it. The obsidian cliffs dissolved into the maw of a colossal serpent forged from swirling starlight and shadow. Reality compressed around him, the serpent's jaws closing like collapsing galaxies. Pure, primal terror surged—the instinct to flee, to preserve his fractured existence. This wasn't battle; it was consumption. The serpent didn't hunger for flesh; it craved identity. He felt his memories—the Warrior's pride, the vessel's despair—being ripped away, dissolving into raw power for the entity. His soul flickered wildly, a candle guttering in a hurricane. Oblivion wasn't just failure; it was surrender to the void within the Authority itself.
Desperation forged resolve. He stopped resisting the pull and focused every shred of his consciousness on a single, searing point: the Chronos Eye. Its golden light, faint but inextinguishable within his soul, became his anchor. He didn't fight the Devouring current; he plunged into it, using the Eye's divine trace vision to perceive the chaotic energy's flow not as annihilation, but as structure—wild, terrifying, but patterned. He saw the serpent's form ripple with instability, threads of its own power fraying at the edges. "This power devours itself," he realized. His gamble: become the catalyst, let it consume his fragmented essence, but use the Eye to guide the chaos inward, toward the serpent's core. He poured the vessel's agony, the Warrior's betrayal, Kael's mocking sneer—all his raw, jagged hatred—directly into the unstable heart of the Authority.
The serpent screamed, a soundless vibration that shattered the mental landscape. Its starlight-and-shadow form convulsed violently, its jaws snapping shut not on Zeke, but on the volatile cocktail of foreign agony he'd injected. The consuming force recoiled, recoiling inward like a collapsing star. Zeke felt the backlash—a wave of pure, destructive divinity tearing through him. It ripped at his soul-fabric, threatening to dissolve him entirely. Yet, the Eye flared. Precognition flashed—not the future, but the present, amplified to impossible clarity. He saw the backlash wave's fractal edge, its points of weakness, its chaotic harmonics. Acting purely on instinct amplified by the Eye, he reached into the recoiling energy, not to resist, but to pull. He focused his entire being on one command: Devour this.
Chaos erupted. The serpent's form imploded, not into nothingness, but into Zeke. Raw, unfiltered power—a torrent of divine entropy—surged into the core of his soul. It felt like swallowing shattered glass dipped in lightning. Every memory fragment, every ounce of agony, burned brighter than the sun. His soul couldn't contain it; it began to unravel. Golden threads from the Chronos Eye lashed outward, frantic, knitting him back together even as he disintegrated. The Authority wasn't submitting; it was testing its vessel. Could this broken soul hold the power meant to consume gods? Cold sweat formed on his metaphysical brow, the taste of ozone sharpened to unbearable agony. He was the crucible now—and he was cracking.
Instinct screamed to unleash the power outward, to blast away the crushing pressure. But Zeke remembered the tomb's inscription: "Devour All Chains". He clenched his will inward, forcing the chaotic energy deeper into his soul's core. The backlash intensified. Phantom ribs fractured in his non-existent chest. His illusory eye burned. He saw flashes: Luke's spear aimed at his heart, Kael's knife plunging toward his eye. This wasn't memory; it was the Authority weaponizing his deepest shames. Each vision weakened him, feeding the divine fire threatening to consume him from within. The Devourer's price was relentless—fail to master your own darkness, and it masters you. His soul pulsed erratically, light dimming. Oblivion wasn't a threat; it was a heartbeat away.
Surrender wasn't an option. Revenge—against Kael, against the Penta-Saints—was the only anchor left. Zeke used the Chronos Eye's Precognition not on the attack, but on *himself*. He glimpsed the backlash waves fracturing his soul an instant before they struck. A fraction earlier, he directed the torrenting energy away from those fracture lines, forcing it through channels forged by sheer hatred. The agony remained unbearable, but his soul stopped unraveling. He felt the chaotic power begin to circulate—violently, rebelliously—but "circulate". The Authority wasn't submitting; it was acknowledging a temporary vessel. A resonant *thrum* pulsed through the mental realm, shaking the mist-shrouded cliffs. The serpent's shattered remnants coalesced into a swirling vortex centered on Zeke—a storm held by will alone.
The vortex condensed, shrinking violently until it hovered as a single, obsidian orb etched with the jagged fracture-glyph before him. A voice, ancient and layered with the echoes of countless devoured powers, vibrated through his mind: "Claim it, Mortal. Become the Vessel of Unbound Will. Or become its Fuel." The orb pulsed once—a warning and a test. Failure here meant oblivion; hesitation meant weakness. Zeke didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, not with limbs, but with the entirety of his fractured soul, wrapping it around the obsidian core. Cold fire seared his essence. Memories surged: the vessel's helplessness beneath Kael's boot, the Warrior's comrades turning blades against him. The orb amplified these shames, trying to shatter his resolve. He fought back with the Chronos Eye's golden threads, weaving his hatred into a shield. "Devour," he commanded, not the orb, but the doubts it weaponized. He consumed his own fear.