POV: Kael Riven
The pain wasn't physical.
It was deeper driving through his being, like someone had taken a scalpel to his soul and sliced it open along the edges.
Kael gasped as the current surged through him again, veins glowing crimson, mind fracturing into a thousands of shards of memory that weren't his.
Or maybe they were.
Flashes. Not dreams but memories.
A jungle made of bone. A sky of twisting DNA strands. A throne that was vibrating with excitement. And eyes. So many eyes. Watching him. Judging. Remembering.
"Heir of the Spiral."
The voice echoed through him, not external, not imagined, but natural. Like a forgotten instinct roaring back to life.
Kael tried to scream, but no sound came. His throat was locked. Every muscle frozen. But inside, something moved something that wasn't him. A second pulse. A second rhythm. A second will.
"You are not becoming the Overlord. You were always one."
He wanted it to stop. Needed it to stop. His human mind couldn't hold this much history, this much violence, this much design.
But the chamber wasn't stopping.
Above him, the ceiling opened. Drones descended, mingling into the air with hard light, spirals, fractures, symbols, he couldn't help but recognize. Like old scars returning.
His heartbeat doubled.
The chamber was breaking him down, gene by gene. Not to kill him, but to extract him.
To separate the Overlord from the boy.
Kael gritted his teeth. Somewhere beyond this pain, he could feel them watching. The Director. The woman scientist. The machines. All of them treating him like a lab rat, a walking relic, a dormant weapon they could mold.
But the Spiral didn't mold.
It conquered.
He focused. Not on the pain, but on the pulse. That deeper rhythm. It wasn't invading. It was offering.
Not control.
Domination.
He reached inward.
And the chamber broke first.
The glass cracked. Not shattered, folded. Bent in on itself like reality was rewinding. The energy nullifiers shorted, sparks going in fractured patterns.
Kael opened his eyes and for a moment, they were not human.
Red spirals. Ancient. Endless.
The ceiling lights exploded. The drones dropped like dead birds. Somewhere beyond the walls, an alarm blared the horn ringing not of escape, but of something worse:
Fracture Protocol.
Kael stood slowly. The air bent around him, like gravity was adjusting itself to his actions.
He didn't fully understand what he was. But he understood one thing now :
They thought they could isolate him.
But the Spiral couldn't be contained.
It was waking.
And it was remembering who it ruled.
Amd then he became unconscious due to him being currently not able to control the vast powers.
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End of Chapter 8