In the center of the devastation, the boy stood motionless.
Violet light swirled in his eyes with the slow, terrifying rotation of a nebula. He lifted his hands, flexing the fingers one by one. He watched the tendons move beneath the skin with clinical detachment, operating the fifteen-year-old limbs like a puppeteer testing a new marionette.
He tilted his head. A sharp crack echoed like a gunshot in the quiet.
Slow, the entity noted. The body's nervous system struggled to keep up with the command signals. The biological response time is sluggish. The muscle fibers are unrefined. A fragile vessel.
Lord Magnus, Lady Lucine, and High-Assessor Berick knelt frozen near the ruined console. They were pinned in place by the pressure radiating from the boy—a gravitational pressure that triggered the primal instinct to freeze.
"Regius?" Magnus choked out.
He fought to lift his head against the invisible weight. He looked at his son, but the boy gazed through him.
"What... what is this?" Magnus's voice cracking.
"A possession," Berick hissed.
The High-Assessor stared at the boy's chest, his eyes wide with a mixture of scientific fascination and abject horror. He tracked the glowing constellations burning beneath the skin—the river of light flowing from the hand, the nebula swirling on the back, the blinding star pulsing over the heart.
"What is it?" Lucine whispered. She clutched her arm, her nails digging into her skin. "Is my son gone?"
"No," Berick said, though the word lacked conviction. He tapped frantically on the shattered face of an energy reader. "It happens... very rarely. Never seen it myself but, there are records with Elite-Tier summons. The summon is so powerful, so sentient, that upon first entry into the Soul Palace, it momentarily seizes control of the vessel."
Berick looked at the glowing star pulsing over the boy's heart. He tried to rationalize the nightmare standing before them with the logic of his knowledge.
"It's not attacking us."
"Is that a good thing?" Magnus asked.
"Usually during a possession, the summon is confused and frantic. Feral. Violent. The summon doesn't know where they are. But this... this is different."
The boy ignored their whispers. To him, they were background noise, a static in the wind.
He took a deep breath. The boy's ribs expanded to their limit. He inhaled the energyof the Sanctum, tasting the air of Volca for the first time.
He held his breath. Tasted it. Then, he recoiled.
A look of profound disgust twisted the boy's face. He exhaled sharply, spitting out the taste of the atmosphere.
"Crude," the boy spat.
The voice emerging from the boy's throat was an acoustic anomaly. It layered over itself, a deep resonant chord of distinct tones. It vibrated in the teeth of everyone present.
"Dry," the boy said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Stagnant."
Berick gripped the edge of his ruined console. The insult to his craft, to the very air he breathed, sparked a flicker of defiance that cut through his terror.
"This Sanctum is one of the highest density energy zones of the region," Berick argued. He tried to straighten his spine to meet the ancient gaze. "The concentration here is in the ninety-ninth percentile. It is one of the richest environments in the Concordat."
The boy laughed.
It was a dry, humorless sound. The floorboards shook. Dust rained from the cracked ceiling.
"Richest?" The bright violet eyes locked onto Berick. The boy looked at the man with pity, as one might look at a beggar proud of a single copper coin. "It is nothing but a desert."
"Contain him!" Berick roared.
He slammed his hand onto the emergency rune plate.
Behind the console, the energy spiked. Reinforced metal plates flew to the pedestal. The remaining silver inlays reversed, absorbing the energy around the pedestal itself.
The Silent Warden grew from the shadows, larger and more corporeal than before.
The High-Tier Construct, a nightmare of spectral chains and suppression cuffs, surged forward. Its multiple arms lashed out, aiming to bind the boy's limbs and seal his summon energy flow with force.
Magnus moved on instinct. A massive avatar of magma and obsidian formed around the Grand Titan. Heat radiated in waves, blistering the paint on the walls. Magnus charged, his eyes glowing with the fury of the earth, intending to physically grapple the entity and pin it to the ground before it could harm his son.
Beside him, Lucine's Radiant Valkyrie acted.
A blinding beam of Divine Authority shot from her eyes. It was a commandment of absolute order, a high-level Divine spell designed to force spirits to submit to the laws of the living.
The golden light flooded the room, judging the boy and demanding his compliance.
Magma, divine light, and spectral chains converged on the center of the pedestal.
The boy watched the converging attacks with mild curiosity, like a man watching ants swarm a boot.
He looked at the warden. At the metal plates closing in one by one. Its chains gripping around his wrists and ankles. Then, he looked at the man controlling it.
"You... measure souls for a living," the boy said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper that carried across the room. "Tell me, Judge... have you ever measured a star?"
The entity analyzed the threats. Threat Level: Negligible.
He considered crushing them. A simple expansion of his aura would liquefy their organs. But then he felt the pull—a desperate spike of affection radiating from the dormant soul of the boy. These ants were the boy's pack.
Harm to vessel if subjects are terminated is critical. Psychological damage would render the vessel unstable.
"Begone."
He spoke.
The spectral chains shattered. They evaporated, turning into harmless motes of light before they could tighten on the boy. The Silent Warden recoiled, its logic core screaming as it encountered a command hierarchy it could not process.
Connection between the summoners and their entities shattered, ceasing to exist.
The Grand Titan evaporated into steam, leaving Magnus stumbling forward, grasping at empty air. The Radiant Valkyrie winked out like a candle in a hurricane, the golden light vanishing instantly.
The severance was absolute.
Magnus, Lucine, and Berick collapsed. They hit the floor hard, gasping for air as the mental feedback from the forced dismissal slammed into their minds. It felt as if their Soul Palaces had been ripped out from their chests. Their Soul Palaces seized, choked off by a higher order of command.
The boy stood untouched. He looked up through the shattered ceiling, staring past the stone and the earth toward the sky beyond. His expression tightened.
"Noisy," he murmured.
He could feel the beacon of Transcendent light screaming into the sky. To the sensors of this world, it would look like an anomaly.
"This signal will draw scavengers. The vessel is too fragile to fight them. The infrastructure of this 'Aethel House' is insufficient to protect him."
He snapped his fingers.
The crushing atmospheric pressure vanished. The blinding violet light sucked back into his skin, burying itself deep beneath the flesh.
Berick watched from the floor, wheezing, his eyes wide. He saw the boy actively compress its own aura. It folded the infinite weight of its soul back to the palace, layer by layer, until it mimicked the footprint of a standard mortal.
The violence hadn't terrified Berick as much as this. Sure, a feral monster destroyed everything in its path. A beast raged. But a mastermind? They hid.
The entity possessed a tactical mind. It understood the politics of power.
The boy turned his gaze back to the prone adults. Walking toward them, the glowing constellations on his skin fading to faint silver scars. His movements were fluid, liquid, devoid of the hesitation of a human teenager.
He stopped in front of Magnus.
The High Lord looked up, sweat stinging his eyes. He saw his son's face, but the eyes were completely foregin. They were ancient voids.
"Titan," the boy judged. "You are strong. But you are stiff. You rely on weight, not on will. Stone will always erode. Your will must be harder than the tides."
He turned to Lucine. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with a mother's terror and a warrior's courage. She saw the intelligence in him, the ancient and cold gaze.
"Valkyrie. You have eyes that see the path and the perception to understand it, but you lack the conviction to walk it. Your light is dim. You hesitate to burn what must be burned."
Finally, he looked at Berick.
The Assessor shrank back against the console.
"And you, Judge. Do not try to bind what you cannot hold. Your chains are made of glass. Your 'safety protocols' are an insult to the concept of containment."
The boy reached up and touched the Star Mark burning over the boy's heart.
"The Void is coming," he said. The words rang with the authority of a final verdict, a prophecy delivered by a king to his subjects. "Do not coddle this vessel. Prepare him. Harden him. Teach him the blade and the importance of life. He is the only one who can overcome it."
He paused, looking down at his own hands—the hands of the fifteen-year-old boy he now inhabited.
"We are symbiotic," the boy stated, his voice losing some of its cosmic reverb, grounding itself in the room. "I do not seek to rule this vessel. I will watch. Wait. If he proves worthy, he shall lead. If he falters... I will take his place."
He flared his aura one last time, imprinting his name on their souls so they would never forget who truly sat on the throne of the boy's heart.
"For I am Regulus, Overlord of the Universe."
The bright light faded from his eyes. The ancient, upright posture collapsed. The entity receded, diving back into the depths of the Soul Palace, sealing the gates behind him.
The boy's body went limp.
"Regius!"
Lucine dashed forward, ignoring the tremors in her limbs. She caught her son inches above the floor, pulling him into her lap.
He was unconscious. His breathing was shallow, his skin scalding hot to the touch. His eyes swirled to dark violet. The otherworldly presence was gone, leaving only a fifteen-year-old boy who had been used as a doorway for an ancient being.
The room fell silent, save for the hiss of cooling stone and the ragged breathing of the three adults.
Magnus dragged himself upright. He looked at his hands, still trembling from the severance. He looked at the ruined containment unit. The destruction of the ritual sanctum. At his son.
They were alive. But the relief didn't come.
They stared at one another over the boy's sleeping form, the truth settling over them like a shroud. The "Sovereign Grade" they had hoped for was a joke.
"Berick," Magnus whispered, his voice hollow as he stared at the boy. "This is an Elite Tier summon, right?... There are legends of him in the books, right?... Is this… normal?"
Berick wiped blood from his nose. He turned toward the boy who had dismissed three High-Tier summons with a glance. Looking at Rank 6 summoners akin to ants.
"This is something else entirely," Berick said. "We're in deep shit."