SEREN
She hit the ground so hard the air punched out of her lungs.
Stone. Cold stone. Dust in her mouth and a ringing in her ears.
Light still sizzled across her vision, the afterimage of the void burning itself into her retinas.
Somewhere near her, someone groaned.
Lotor.
Seren tried to push up onto her elbows—and pain ripped through her like someone was peeling her soul out of alignment.
"AH—!" She choked, collapsing again as the bond shrieked in all directions.
Three anchors.
One bond.
No stability.
"Seren!"
Shiro's voice. Far away. Panicked.
Hands grabbed her shoulders—steady, grounding—but touching her felt like touching a live wire.
Her vision finally sharpened—and she wished it hadn't.
Blue Lion stood over her.
Not passive.
Not dormant.
Not waiting.
Glowing. Bristling. Furious. Protective?
Eyes blazing incandescent blue, paws planted like a guardian ready to obliterate anything that threatened its chosen.
The connection from earlier pulsed again—
≪You are broken.≫
≪You were not meant to be bound.≫
≪This is a violation.≫
Seren whimpered. "It was done without my consent!"
Blue's light flared, washing over her like scorching wind.
The Paladins shouted, but she couldn't make out the words.
Every nerve in her body rattled with the backlash—threads snapping, reforming, snapping again.
And beside her—
Lotor lay motionless.
Half-real.
Half-light.
Half something else entirely.
---
KEITH
"What the hell just happened?!"
Keith had his blade drawn before the light even faded, instinct screaming at him to protect the team—
—but this wasn't a fight.
This was a disaster.
Seren was convulsing, glowing unstablly. The Galran was sprawled beside her like something had wrung his soul out through his skin.
And Blue Lion—Blue Lion—looked like it was contemplating smiting both of them on the spot.
He stepped toward Seren—
The Lion snarled.
Keith froze mid-step.
Shiro grabbed his arm. "Don't provoke it!"
"I wasn't—!"
Hunk whimpered behind them. "Her body's glitching like a corrupted save file!"
Keith squinted.
He wasn't wrong.
Seren's outline kept flickering—like she was real one second, translucent the next, then fracturing into overlapping frames like bad animation.
And the other...was flickering in sync with her.
"Oh no," Pidge whispered. "Oh no no no no—those readings—Shiro, this is a soul-link merge attempt! Something triggered a partial connection, but they're missing stabilizing anchors. That kind of feedback can—"
"Kill them?" Hunk offered weakly.
"Or worse," Pidge whispered. "Combine them."
Keith gagged. "What does that even mean—combine?!"
"I don't want to find out!"
---
LOTOR
Pain.
Not physical.
Existential.
Like being forced through the wrong shape of reality.
Lotor's eyes snapped open.
Light blinded him, but he felt her first.
The human.
Seren.
Flickering in and out of phase with him, her soulbond threads tangled hopelessly with his own quintessence field.
He snarled on instinct—not at her, but at the situation, the indignity, the unbearable vulnerability—
And Blue Lion's roar hit him like a wall.
Lotor's body seized, instinct screaming danger as the ancient lion's gaze pinned him to the ground.
≪Stay.≫
≪Do not corrupt her.≫
≪Do not touch what is not yours.≫
Lotor bared his teeth weakly. "She— is not— yours either—"
The Lion's quintessence surged.
He convulsed.
The bond flared.
And he felt Seren's fear spike, sharp and bright and human.
It cut deeper than any blade.
---
SEREN
Her senses snapped back all at once.
Lotor was awake.
Lotor was in pain.
And the bond was funneling it straight into her chest.
"No—stop—stop—!" She gasped, nails digging into the ground. "You're hurting him!"
Blue Lion roared at her.
≪He is a threat.≫
≪He is corruption.≫
≪He must be removed.≫
"No!" Seren screamed, staggering to her knees even as the world tilted sideways. "You don't understand—if you sever us now—you'll kill us both!"
The cavern shook.
Shiro shouted, "Seren, stay back, it's not safe—!"
Too late.
The bond snapped again—hard enough that Seren and Lotor both jerked like puppets pulled by the same string.
Lotor's hand shot out, grabbing her wrist again, not consciously, not deliberately—pure instinct.
Quintessence seared the air around them like lightning.
They both screamed.
Pidge yelled something about "full feedback loops."
Keith swore loudly.
Hunk was almost crying.
Blue Lion crouched, ready to strike—
And then everything went sideways.
Seren felt herself tipping—not physically but cosmically—like reality was tilting underneath her.
Her voice came out as a whisper of terror:
"Shiro… help…"
Then the world folded.
And she and Lotor went down—together—crashing into unconsciousness as the bond snapped taut like a noose around both their souls.
The last things she saw were:
Blue Lion's eyes dimming from fury to worry.
Shiro catching Seren before she hit the ground.
Keith planting himself between Lotor and the others.
Lotor collapsing with a sound halfway between a snarl and a plea—his hand still tangled with Seren's.
The system's cold, emotionless chime echoing through the cavern:
[SOULBOND BACKLASH: CRITICAL]
[PAIR UNSTABLE]
[ANCHORS REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY]
Then—
Silence.