There was no buildup. No warning. It was an immediate annihilation of his senses.
The beam felt like a star poured into his veins. The true pain of the rite had just started. His blood boiled. His nerves fired every pain signal they possessed simultaneously, a white-hot feedback loop that short-circuited his conscious thought.
He fell to his knees, the impact cracking the marble beneath him. He clawed at his chest, his fingernails scraping against skin that was rapidly turning a bruised, angry violet.
"Time!" Berick shouted, slamming his thumb onto the holographic stopwatch.
The counting began.
"Ten seconds!"
Regius writhed on the floor. He could feel the entity boring into him. It was tearing against the walls of his Soul Palace, forcefully inserting itself.
He visualized his Soul Palace. For years, it had been a smooth, impenetrable dome in his mind, a place he couldn't access. Now, he felt the entity smashing against the exterior.
CRACK.
The sound echoed in his skull like a gunshot. The dome shattered open.
"Twenty seconds!"
"His heart rate is spiking!" Lucine cried out.
"Thirty seconds! Superior grade!"
Regius gritted his teeth so hard a molar shattered.
The pain doubled. The entity flooded the ruins of his Soul Palace. It was too big. It was trying to fit an ocean into a cup. His mind felt like it was splitting open; his memories and personality felt like they were being shoved aside to make room for the entity.
Blood began to trickle from every orifice, dark and boiling.
"Forty seconds!"
Smoke rose from Regius's shoulders. His sweat evaporated instantly upon touching his skin.
"Forty-five! He's done it!" Magnus shouted. "Regius, let go! You can stop!"
Regius couldn't hear him. He was lost in the pain.
"Fifty seconds!"
Regius's body lifted off the floor, suspended by the sheer force of the energy pouring inside of him, akin to a black hole.
SNAP.
The sound was sickening. His bones cracked. The skin on Regius's arm split open. But no blood came out.
Blinding beams of starlight erupted from the wounds, illuminating the Sanctum with a harsh glow. The flesh peeled back, unable to contain the energy.
"Fifty-five," Berick counted, his voice trembling. "Regius! If you can hear me, you can stop!"
Regius convulsed. The light spread to his neck. Veins of glowing gold traced their way up his jaw and ears.
"Fifty-six."
"Berick, end it!" Lucine screamed, rushing forward only to be thrown back by the heat. "He's burning!"
"Fifty-seven."
"Fifty-eight."
The stone pedestal beneath him began to melt, turning into slag under the intense heat.
"Fifty-nine."
"Break the connection!" Magnus roared. "He's going to fracture!"
The Grand Titan awoke. Magnus stomped the ground. The floor shook as he summoned the heavy, crushing pressure of the ground to sever the flow physically. He moved to tackle his son, desperate to save him from the condition that destroyed overly ambitious fools.
"No!" Berick shouted.
The Silent Warden materialized fully, interposing itself between Magnus and the circle. Its spectral chains lashed out, holding back the titan's limbs, creating a barrier.
"Get out of my way!" Magnus snarled. "He is going to break!"
"Look at the readings!" Berick pointed at the console with a shaking hand.
The needles weren't fluctuating wildly. They were pinned to the maximum, perfectly still.
"A Fracture is a chaotic mess," Berick yelled over the blaring warnings of the sensors. "But this... look at the synchronization rate! His body is critical, but his Soul Palace isn't breaking apart. It's expanding."
Berick's face was pale. He had heard rumors of this. Dark whispers in the faculty lounge of the office in the Capital about children who held on too long, whose potential readings went off the charts before armored vehicles arrived to take them away.
One word. Transcendents.
"He's dying!" Lucine screamed.
"If you sever the connection now, the backlash will kill him instantly. The summon is already inside. We have to let it finish.
"Seventy-five seconds!"
They watched in horror as the clock ticked into the forbidden territory.
"Seventy-eight."
Regius didn't move. He hung in the air as a crucifix of ruin and light. He was drinking in the pain. The agony had transmuted into a terrifying ecstasy. The sensation of his human limitations being burned away.
"Eighty."
The air in the Sanctum solidified. Gravity increased. Pebbles on the floor began to float. The shadows stretched toward Regius, drawn into the gravity well of his body.
"Eighty-five."
"Look at his skin," Berick whispered.
The cracks on Regius's arm were sealing. The starlight that was previously destroying him was then knitting him back together, reinforcing bone anew with cosmic energy. His body was rebuilding. His form became denser than his appearance.
"Eighty-six."
"Eighty-seven."
The energy pressure in the room became physical. The glass of the observation deck above shattered, raining shards down onto the floor. Magnus and Lucine were forced to their knees, breathless, crushed by the sheer pressure radiating from their son.
"Eighty-eight."
Regius took a breath. The sound was like a bellows fanning a forge.
"Eighty-nine."
He opened his eyes.
"Ninety."
BOOM.
A shockwave of pure, condensed summon energy exploded from Regius's body.
It shattered the sensors lining the walls. Berick was thrown backward, crashing into his console. The emergency shields died. Smoke billowed from the silver inlays on the floor, the metal having vaporized instantly.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of coughing and the hiss of cooling stone.
A cloud of smoke swirled in the center of the room, obscuring the pedestal.
"Regius!" Magnus coughed, scrambling to his feet, blinking through the haze.
The dark cloud began to dissipate.
Regius stood in the center of the ruined circle. He was upright. His chest was bare and unmarked save for the glowing patterns that had settled into his skin.
Silver lines of the Libra constellation burned on his left hand. They flowed up his arm, weaving into the belt of Orion, twisting around the wolf of Lupus. A river of starlight poured over his shoulder, spreading across his chest and back. It looked as if his skin had become translucent, revealing a living, breathing galaxy beneath the flesh.
Right over his heart, a single, blinding star pulsed with a rhythm that shook the dust from the ceiling.
Regius lifted his head.
He opened his eyes.
The brown hue was gone. Replaced by the deep, violet voids, swirling with the slow, terrifying rotation of a nebula.
The boy who had walked into the circle was not present. The thing that stood there now looked at the world with an ancient, bored arrogance.
It cracked its neck.
"Finally," the boy spoke.
The voice was not Regius's. It was a layered, ancient chord that vibrated in the Soul Palaces of everyone present—a sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.