# Chapter 783: A Power Unleashed
The Withering King recoiled, a vortex of blackened chaos and shattered pride. The form of High Inquisitor Valerius, its chosen shell, hung in tatters around it, a broken puppet with strings cut. For the first time in an age, it felt a sensation it had almost forgotten: fear. This thing before it, this man-shaped vessel of light, was an impossibility. It was a perversion of its own nature, a spark of creation in a world it had dedicated to unmaking. It had to be extinguished. Now.
A sound like grinding glass and tearing metal ripped through the tomb as the King gathered its power. The very air grew cold, thin, and brittle. The stones beneath Soren's feet frosted over with a layer of black ice that crackled with negative energy. The shadows in the room deepened, stretching and writhing like living things, drawn to their master's call. From the core of the swirling mass, a sphere of absolute nothingness began to form, a singularity of corrosive magic that promised not destruction, but erasure. It was a blast meant to scour Soren from existence, to atomize his body, his soul, and the very concept of him from the timeline. It was the Withering King's ultimate expression of power, a final, desperate scream of denial.
The sphere launched forward, not with a roar, but with a terrifying, silent speed. It consumed the light, the sound, and the hope in its path, leaving a wake of perfect, silent void. It was the end of all things, aimed directly at the heart of the reborn Soren.
Soren did not flinch. He did not brace himself. He did not even seem to register the impending annihilation. He simply raised his left hand, his palm open, his fingers relaxed. A shield of pure, solid light erupted into existence. It was not a frantic, desperate barrier. It was a calm, absolute declaration. The light was not merely bright; it was *solid*. It had the density of a mountain and the clarity of a flawless diamond. intricate, geometric patterns, like the frost on a winter window or the spiral of a galaxy, flowed across its surface, etching laws of physics and reality into its form.
The sphere of erasure struck the shield.
There was no explosion. No sound. No shockwave. There was only a profound and utter stillness. The corrosive magic, the force that could unravel the fabric of the world, washed against the light and simply… ceased to be. It was like a wave of dark water crashing against a shore of incandescent glass and vanishing into steam. The shield did not crack. It did not flicker. It did not even tremble. It absorbed the totality of the Withering King's wrath and rendered it null, converting its destructive intent into a soft, internal hum. The light of the shield intensified for a moment, drinking deep of the void, before dimming back to its steady, resolute glow.
The Withering King's formless body shuddered, a psychic tremor of pure disbelief. Its attack, its ultimate weapon, had been swatted aside like an annoying insect. The power Soren now wielded was not just greater; it was on a different order of reality. It was the power of the source, the antithesis of everything the King was. It was a fusion of Soren's indomitable will, the life-giving essence of the World-Seed, and the burning, selfless love that had been Nyra Sableki's final act. It was a power that could not be fought, only endured.
Soren lowered his hand, the shield of light dissolving back into the air around him, leaving motes of gold dancing in the gloom. He looked past the cowering mass of chaos to the broken body of Valerius it wore. His gaze was not that of a man looking at an enemy. It was the gaze of a physician examining a disease, a craftsman studying a flaw.
"You took everything from me," Soren said. His voice was not his own. It was deeper, layered with the resonance of the earth and the chime of stars. It was a low growl that vibrated in the bones of the tomb. "My father. My future. My name."
He took a step forward. The movement was impossible. He did not cover the distance between them; he simply *was* there, closing ten feet in the space between one heartbeat and the next. The air did not have time to move out of his way. He simply displaced it.
"Now," he whispered, raising the blade of pure light he had forged from the King's own power. "I will take everything from you."
He lunged.
The battle that followed was not a battle. It was an unmaking.
The Withering King, driven by primal terror, lashed out. Tendrils of pure chaos, sharp as obsidian and dripping with decay, shot from its core, aiming to pierce and corrupt. Soren moved through them. He did not dodge or parry. He flowed, his body a blur of golden light. The blade in his hand was an extension of his will, a scalpel of creation. It did not block the tendrils; it erased them. Where the light-edge passed, the chaotic energy simply unraveled, its malevolent intent unwritten, leaving behind harmless, shimmering motes that faded into nothing.
Soren was inside the King's guard in an instant. He struck the Valerius-thing's chest. The light-blade sank into the corrupted flesh without resistance, passing through armor, bone, and corrupted tissue as if they were mist. There was no blood. There was only a brilliant, clean light that erupted from the wound, purging the corruption. A scream echoed in the chamber, but it was not a sound. It was a psychic shriek of agony that blasted against Soren's mind, a wave of pure despair and hatred.
He felt it, acknowledged it, and let it wash over him. It was like a storm breaking against a mountain. The grief, the rage, the loneliness—it was all there. But at his core, where the storm of the King's emotions struck, there was a single, unshakeable point of light: the memory of Nyra's smile. Her sacrifice was not a wound. It was a shield. Her love was not a memory. It was armor. The King's psychic assault broke and scattered against the unbreakable foundation of her final gift.
Soren twisted the blade. The light flared brighter. The Withering King's form convulsed, the swirling chaos of its true body losing cohesion. It was trying to retreat, to abandon its broken vessel and flee back into the wastes, but Soren's will held it fast. He was not just fighting its body; he was fighting its essence.
"You think this is about power?" Soren's voice boomed, his words striking like physical blows. "You think this is about ruling? You are a parasite. A flaw in the design. An echo of pain that forgot it was supposed to fade."
He ripped the blade free. A torrent of pure, white light poured from the gaping wound in Valerius's chest, scouring the corruption from the Inquisitor's body. The black veins receded. The twisted limbs straightened. For a fleeting, horrifying moment, the face of High Inquisitor Valerius was clear, his eyes wide with a mixture of agony and a desperate, final plea for release. Then the light consumed him, and the body dissolved into a shower of golden ash.
The Withering King was left exposed, a raw, pulsating nucleus of black and violet energy, its heart laid bare. It was no longer a king. It was a cornered, wounded animal.
Seeing its physical form destroyed, its last hope of control gone, the entity changed tactics. It could not win with force. It would try to break him from within.
The air in the tomb grew heavy, thick with a cloying scent of regret and loss. The light from Soren's body dimmed, not because he was weakening, but because the world around him was being saturated with despair. Images began to flicker at the edge of his vision, not from the King, but from his own mind, drawn forth and amplified by its power.
He saw his father's face, not as the strong man he remembered, but as he was in his final moments, coughing up black ash, his eyes filled with fear. *You failed me, Soren.* The voice was a perfect, cruel mimicry.
He saw his mother and brother, not in a hopeful future, but being dragged away in chains by Crownlands Wardens, their faces tear-streaked and accusing. *You left us to this.*
He saw Nyra, not as she was in her sacrifice, but as she was when they first met, wary and sharp, and then as she was in the Ladder, fighting for her life. He saw her fall again, and again, and again, each death more brutal than the last. *This is your fault. Your anger, your pride. You led me to my death.*
The assault was relentless, a symphony of his greatest failures, his deepest fears, his most painful losses. The Withering King was forcing him to relive every moment of suffering, amplifying the guilt, the grief, the helplessness, until it became a crushing weight, a tidal wave of despair designed to drown his soul.
Soren faltered. His advance stopped. The blade of light in his hand wavered, its song of order momentarily discordant. The images were too real, too painful. They were his truth. The King was not lying; it was simply holding up a mirror to the darkest parts of his soul.
*Give in,* the King's voice whispered, no longer a roar but a seductive, poisonous hiss in his mind. *Join the silence. Join the peace. It is so much easier to let go. To end the pain. You can be with them. All of them. In the quiet. In the ash.*
The golden light around Soren flickered violently, threatening to gutter out. The darkness pressed in, a physical presence. The tomb grew cold as the grave.
But then, through the storm of his own despair, another memory surfaced. It was not one of pain, but of quiet strength. It was Nyra, in a rare moment of vulnerability, her head on his shoulder after a brutal Trial. *The world breaks us, Soren,* she had whispered, her voice soft but clear. *That's its nature. But it doesn't get to choose how we put the pieces back together. We choose that. Together.*
Her presence within him, the soul-anchor she had become, stirred. It was not just a memory; it was an active force. Her love was not a shield that blocked the pain, but a lens that focused it. It transformed the grief from a weapon used against him into fuel for his will.
The images of his father's death flickered, but now they were overlaid with the memory of his father's hand on his shoulder, teaching him how to hold a sword. *Be strong, but not hard.*
The images of his family in chains were replaced by the memory of his brother's laughter as he told a story by the fire, his mother's quiet pride as she mended his clothes. *We are your strength, not your weakness.*
The endless loop of Nyra's death was broken by the memory of her kiss, the feel of her hand in his, the fire in her eyes as she stood beside him. *I am with you. Always.*
Soren's head snapped up. The golden light around him roared back to life, brighter and fiercer than before. It was no longer the cold, hard light of vengeance. It was the warm, radiant light of conviction. The Withering King's psychic assault broke against the renewed shore of his spirit, not just failing, but being repelled, being consumed.
"You are right," Soren said, his voice now calm, clear, and more terrifying than any roar. "It is my fault. My father's death. My family's pain. Nyra's sacrifice. It is all my burden to carry."
He raised the blade of light, pointing it directly at the exposed, pulsating core of the Withering King.
"But you made one mistake," he continued, taking another impossible step forward. "You think my pain is a weakness. You think my grief makes me small. It doesn't. It makes me big enough to hold all of this. And it makes me strong enough to do what must be done."
He was not going to strike the King's body. He was going to strike its soul.
"You showed me what I lost. Now, I will show you what you have never had. I will show you the one thing you can never corrupt. I will show you love."
He thrust the blade forward, not at the mass of energy, but into the space between them. The blade did not travel through the air. It dissolved, becoming a wave of pure, unadulterated creation. It was not an attack. It was a song. It was the memory of a father's love, the security of a mother's embrace, the loyalty of a brother, the fire of a lover's sacrifice. It was every good thing, every pure moment, every selfless act the Withering King had spent an eternity trying to extinguish.
The wave of light and memory struck the King's core.
The psychic scream that followed was a thousand times more potent than the first. It was a scream of absolute agony, not of the body, but of the spirit. The Withering King was a creature of decay, of entropy, of selfishness and despair. It could no more withstand this pure, selfless force than a shadow could withstand the sun. Its very nature was being unwritten.
The swirling mass of black and violet energy convulsed violently. It began to shrink in on itself, trying to escape the unbearable light, trying to retreat into the absolute nothingness from which it was born. But Soren's will held it, pinning it in place, forcing it to endure the cleansing fire.
The core of the Withering King, the last vestige of its consciousness, began to crack. A sound like a mountain of glass shattering echoed not in the tomb, but in the soul of the world. The entity was being broken, not by a weapon of destruction, but by an act of creation.
With a final, desperate roar that was more a concept than a sound, the Withering King abandoned its last shred of cohesion. It could not fight. It could not flee. It could only do one last thing. It could try to survive.
The shattered core of its being, a swirling, desperate mass of black energy, abandoned the fight. It shot upward, not toward the entrance of the tomb, but toward the very source of the power that had defeated it. It fled toward the pulsing, radiant heart of the World-Seed still fused within Soren's chest. It would not escape. It would attempt the ultimate act of parasitism. It would try to merge with the source, to corrupt creation itself from the inside out, to become a cancer at the heart of the new world being born. It was a final, cataclysmic act of self-preservation that would either grant it a new, terrible form, or annihilate everything in the process.
The black energy, a tear in the fabric of reality, streaked toward Soren's heart.