The demon didn't wait anymore. Its aura grew, and a wave of purple pressure flattened the dust for yards around it. The silence of the crater was replaced by a high-pitched scream of energy that sounded like the air was being torn apart.
Lyanna's hands shook. She tried to find even a spark of gold, but nothing came. She was empty, and the monster in front of her was finally showing its true power. It lowered its head, and its diamond-shaped tendrils glowed with a light that promised death. It was finished playing.
The demon exploded forward. It moved so fast it was like a purple blur.
Lyanna didn't have time to think. She used her last bit of strength to shove Kael out of the way. He rolled across the dirt, away from the path of the monster.
The demon didn't care about the boy. It reached out and slammed its heavy hand around Lyanna's neck again. Before she could gasp, it carried her across the pit at a terrifying speed.
CRASH.
The demon slammed her into the wall of the crater. The impact was so hard that the earth shattered around her, sending cracks up the wall. Rocks and dirt rained down as the demon held her pinned against the stone.
Lyanna hung there, her feet dangling above the ground. She was gasping for air, her face twisted in pain.
The demon's single eye pulsed with hate. It didn't try to drain her magic this time. It wanted to end her. Its other hand pulled back, its obsidian claws glowing with a dark, sharp light. With a brutal roar, the demon drove its hand forward, piercing right through her.
Lyanna's eyes went wide. A small, choked sound escaped her lips as her blood stained the white skin of the demon's arm.
At the bottom of the crater, Kael watched. He had been fighting to stay conscious through the pain the whole time, but seeing his mother broken and bleeding way too much. He completely lost all form of reasoning and stopped fighting the mark's spread.
In that moment, the thing within him surged forward to consume him. The black lines of the mark, which had been spreading slowly, suddenly shot across his body like lightning. They raced from his back, over his chest, down his arms, and up his face, lining his entire body in seconds.
The boy was gone, and something far more dangerous had taking his place.
The demon pulled its arm out of Lyanna's chest, letting her body drop limply to the ground. Her blood coated its white skin as it looked down at her.
Lyanna laid in the dirt, clutching the hole in her chest. Every breath she took felt like fire.
The demon didn't even glance back at her. It walked over to Kael and grabbed him by the hair, pulling his head up. Then finally looked at Lyanna.
"Use your final pitiful moments," the demon's cold voice echoed in her head, "to see what it feels like when one Number devours another."
Lyanna's eyes teared up. She had spent ten years hiding Kael, trying to keep him away from this nightmare. Now, she had to watch him die because she wasn't strong enough to stop it.
The demon stopped for a second, with a confused expression. The weak presence feeling it had sensed from the boy before was gone. And Kael's head just hung there, with his eyes shut.
The creature looked at him for some time, before letting go of his hair and wrapping its hand around his throat. Then it started pulling, trying to suck the boy's life-force out of him.
Lyanna watched as the demon's chest glow purple when it started the draining process. Her heart sank.
She closed her eyes, shaking with sobs, as she waited in despair, for the sound of her son's life-force to be completely ripped away from him.
She didn't notice, in her state, that the black lines on Kael's body were now glowing faintly with a light that shouldn't exist.
The demon pulled at Kael's very life-force, expecting that familiar rush of energy to fill its veins. But nothing happened. Instead of feeling the boy's energy, it felt something else it couldn't comprehend.
It tilted its head, its single eye still pulsing with confusion. The draining wasn't working—in fact, the harder it pulled, the more it felt a strange, cold pressure pushing back against its palm.
The air around Kael's body began to grow heavy—so heavy that the dust on the ground stopped moving entirely.
The demon's four head-tendrils suddenly stood upright, vibrating with fear. It finally realized that the weak presence it was trying to devour was no longer there.
In place of it was something vast and ancient that made the demon's own power, feel like a flickering candle.
Panic flared across its chest. It didn't just let go; it shoved itself away from the boy, leaping backward to create distance, and landing several yards away on all fours, its hands digging into the dirt as it hissed.
When it tried to steady itself, it stumbled. This forced its single gaze down in shock, as it realized its right arm was missing from the shoulder. It dropped to one knee, before letting out a high-pitched shriek of pain.
Lyanna watched from the ground, her breath hitching. She saw the demon—the very monster that had just pierced her chest without effort—cowering in fear and clutching a bleeding stump.
Then, Kael's eyes opened slowly, like someone just waking up after a thousand years. His brown pupil was gone, replaced by a cold, vivid purple that matched the dark lines on his body.
He sat up with a calm, and slow. The entire crater trembled, the earth itself seemingly bowing to his presence.
And there, held loosely in his hand, was the demon's severed arm.
He glanced at the limb as if it were a piece of trash he had just picked up, before tossing it aside.
Then his gaze turned toward the shivering demon.
"Fragment One…" The voice that left his lips was not his own.
It was light and feminine, more like a little girl's voice, but it carried a weight that made the air shake.
"You speak far too loud… for something so weak."
The creature—now labeled "One"—shivered as the words struck it. Its entire body trembled, and its single eye darted around, looking for any possible escape route.
The pressure of the presence with Kael was so overwhelming for it.
The presence spoke again through Kael, her tone calm but edged with a cold displeasure.
"After all these years of being locked away… it had to be you who forced my break through."
The irritation in her voice was clear, yet she remained perfectly composed.
She looked around at the massive crater, the destroyed houses, and the wasteland that Oakhaven had become.
"You certainly ruined this place. Impressive. Hahaha!"
The small, melodic laugh echoing out of Kael's mouth was the most terrifying thing Lyanna had ever heard.
She watched from the ground, her breath skipping beats in her chest.
This wasn't her boy, and it wasn't just any monster. It was something far older.
One's single eye turned blood-red with rage. It didn't understand what was happening, but it knew it had to kill this boy. It forced all its remaining energy into its head.
The four tendrils locked into a diamond shape once more, vibrating so hard they hummed.
With a desperate shriek, it fired a massive beam of violet light towards Kael, thick enough to swallow him whole.
Kael—or whatever was inside him—didn't bother to move. She didn't even raise a hand.
As the beam made contact, the purple light didn't explode. It simply flowed into his body, disappearing into the black lines of the mark.
The crater went silent. The one-eyed stared blankly, its chest heaving, waiting for the boy to turn to ash.
But the boy just tilted his head.
"Hmm," the girly voice said through his lips. He looked at the One's still bleeding shoulder with cold eyes.
"It seems I was wrong. You aren't the one with the regenerative abilities. Your hand hasn't even begun to grow back. How unfortunate."
One took a step back, its remaining claws scraping against the dirt. It finally felt it—the true source of its own power, but a thousand times stronger, staring back at it through a child's eyes.
Kael took a step forward. The earth beneath his feet cracked as his presence expanded, filling the entire crater with a suffocating weight.
"Since you are so fond of showing off," the voice whispered, "watch closely. I will show you what true dominance looks like."