My eyes snap open.
And I scream. From pure, unadulterated agony.
The Regenerator mark burns at my sternum like a brand pressed into living flesh. Like molten metal poured directly into my chest cavity. The golden light that erupts from it isn't gentle and it Isn't merciful in its gift.
It's violent.
I can feel it tearing through my body. Not healing so much as reconstructing and replacing. Ripping apart damaged tissue and replacing it with brand new tissue even if it doesn't want to. Every cell screaming in protest as divine power rewrites the fundamental structure of my broken form.
The blade in my stomach I feel every millimeter of its journey outward. The metal scraping against muscle that's simultaneously trying to heal around it and push it away. Tissue regenerating so fast it creates friction. Heat. The smell of burning meat rising from my own body as flesh chars from the speed of reconstruction.
My shoulders are worse. The blades there punched through bone straight through my scapula. And now that bone is growing back. I can feel it. I can feel calcium deposits forming at impossible speeds. Feel marrow being created from nothing. Feel the lattice structure of my skeleton rebuilding itself while nerves scream warnings that something is fundamentally wrong with what's happening.
My legs, fuck the gods, my legs, the blades there severed tendons. Cut through ligaments. And now they're being rewoven. Like someone's threading a needle through my flesh except the needle is made of fire and the thread is agony itself.
I throw my head back and howl.
The sound that comes out isn't human. Isn't anything close to human. It's the cry of something being unmade and remade simultaneously. Of consciousness trapped in a body that's rebuilding itself at speeds that should be impossible.
And then something worse happens.
The crack.
The fracture in my soul sea the damage I've carried since... since when? I can't even remember when it happened.
fissure running through the very foundation of my being. A wound in the fabric of my soul that never healed because it couldn't heal.
Until now.
The Regenerator doesn't just fix flesh. Doesn't just knit bone and seal blood vessels.
It fixes everything.
The golden light floods inward. Not just through my body but through my soul. Diving into that internal landscape of void and black ocean and burning constellations.
And it finds the crack.
The pain that follows can't be described. There are no words in any language for what it feels like to have your soul forcibly reconstructed. No metaphors that capture the sensation of having the fundamental essence of your being torn apart and sewn back together.
Pain that exists on a level deeper than neurons and synapses. Pain that transcends the body entirely. The agony of existence itself being unmade and remade.
I feel the crack closing. Feel the edges of my fractured soul being forced together. Feel whatever divine power the entity used being applied directly to the core of what I am.
And it's harrowing beyond comprehension.
My consciousness fractures under the weight of it. Splits into a thousand screaming pieces that all experience the same impossible suffering simultaneously. The entity the thing I'm starting to believe might actually be a god forcibly triggered this mark. Reached into my soul and flipped a switch that was never meant to be activated this way. The Regenerator was dormant for a reason. Was waiting for something. Some specific condition or circumstance that would allow it to wake naturally. Those are the rules after all. Everyone must find the trigger to their mark of power. But I did not and for whatever reason this creature deemed it okay to cheat and bring me back.
And I'm paying the price in pain that transcends anything I've ever experienced.
The blades clatter to the platform around me, expelled from healing flesh. Each one leaving a wet, sucking sound as regenerated tissue fills the void they occupied.
I can feel my organs knitting back together. My stomach wall resealing. My intestines punctured and leaking being made whole again. Blood vessels that were severed somehow are no longer severed and are whole again. Muscle fibers that were shredded have weaved themselves back into functional tissue.
And through it all, the voices howl, they scream, they rage in righteous anger.
They erupt inside my head like a dam breaking. Like a flood of pure malice and hatred.
The whispers from the wolf constellation in my soul sea.
But they're not whispers anymore. They're screaming.
A never-ending choir of violence and rage and retribution. Hundreds of voices thousands all howling at once. Overlapping. Harmonizing in discord. Creating a symphony of madness that threatens to drown out rational thought.
KILL
DESTROY
RIP
TEAR
MAKE THEM SUFFER
PAINT THE WORLD IN THEIR BLOOD
FEAST ON THEIR FEAR
BREAK THEM
SHATTER THEM
The words slam into my consciousness like physical blows. Not suggestions. Commands. Imperatives driven by something primal and terrible that lives at the core of my mark.
I've heard the voices before. Controlled them. Subdued the wolf in my soul sea and made the whispers manageable.
But this is different.
This is the voices at full strength. Uninhibited. Unleashed. More vicious and stronger than they've ever been stronger even than when I first Awakened and the mark was raw and new and wild.
Because something changed when I died and when I was brought back the walls I built to contain them are gone. Shattered. Obliterated by whatever process resurrected me at least for now while I am half mad by pain and confusion.
The sentences start to fracture, crashing into one another as the tempo accelerates. The distinct voices begin to melt together, their demands tripping over each other in a frantic rush to the surface. I grit my teeth, tasting copper, my hands shaking. The volume is blinding. It stops being language. The grammar of their hatred dissolves into a singular, vibrating roar of abstract malice. Verbs and nouns collide in a pileup of pure auditory violence.
The choir loses all semblance of harmony. It devolves into feral noise. Snarls. The wet, tearing sound of meat separating from bone echoing directly against my cerebral cortex.
KILLTHEMKILLTHEMKILLTHEM!
My vision swims. Doubles. The golden light from my body casting everything in harsh, brilliant contrast. Shadows deep as pits. Highlights bright as burning magnesium.
And there hovering directly above me is Teleb.
The Midnight Rose figure. The one who killed me. Who pinned me to this platform and watched me bleed out like an animal in a slaughterhouse.
He's still wearing that obsidian mask. Still wrapped in that black armor and pink robe.
And he's staring down at me as golden light erupts from my body in waves that make the air shimmer and distort.
I see him jerk backward his shock evident even through the featureless mask. The sudden explosion of luminescence catching him off-guard.
But he recovers almost immediately. His posture shifts from surprised to defensive. Hands coming up. The swords that make up his floating platform beginning to orbit faster, preparing for—
Not enough.
The voices in my head reach a fever pitch. A crescendo of violence that drowns out everything else. Every rational thought. Every tactical consideration. Every ounce of restraint I might have possessed.
All that remains is rage.
Pure absolute all-consuming rage driven by pain and confusion and the never-ending torrent of voices demanding blood.
My body finishes its reconstruction. The last of the golden light being absorbed back into the Regenerator mark. Leaving me healed and whole.
My legs now freshly healed, filled with vitality that feels like liquid lightning in my veins coil beneath me. Muscles bunching with power that feels different than before. Stronger. Like the resurrection didn't just heal me but enhanced me. Made me more.
I launch myself upward with enough force to crack the wooden platform beneath my feet.
The world becomes a blur. Air screaming past my face
Teleb is raising his hands. Bringing his swords to bear. Preparing some defense or counter-attack.
Too slow.
Too fucking slow.
I close the distance in a fraction of a second. My fist already coming around. Pulled back. Every muscle in my arm, my shoulder, my core tensing in perfect coordination.
And I understand something in that moment. Something the entity hinted at and now I can slightly understand when it forced the Regenerator to activate.
My marks aren't separate. Aren't independent systems operating in isolation.
They're connected. Part of a unified whole. And when I tap into that understanding when I let them work together instead of fighting each other the potential is devastating.
The Fearmonger floods my system. Not suppressing emotions anymore but channeling them. Taking the rage and pain and hate and turning them into fuel. Into raw enhancement that pushes my physical capabilities beyond normal awakened limits. The Veilshaper even without active illusions sharpens my perception and combined with my greyscale vision I feel unstoppable I can see the exact point on that obsidian mask where impact will transfer maximum force.
And the Regenerator—newly awakened, burning with divine power—fills my body with vitality that makes my muscles feel like they're made of compressed lightning.
All three marks working in harmony.
All three marks focused on a single purpose.
Destruction.
My fist connects with Teleb's mask.
The sound is catastrophic.
Not a simple impact not flesh hitting metal. This is the sound of reality itself protesting the amount of force being transferred through a single point of contact.
A thunderclap that makes the air vibrate. That sends shockwaves rippling outward in visible waves. And that fucking mask cracks.
I feel it through my knuckles. Feel the mask fracturing. Feel the force transferring through it into the flesh and bone beneath. Feel Teleb's head snap backward with velocity that should break his neck.
And I snarl in triumph.
Like he's been hit by a siege weapon. Like he's been caught in an explosion. His body becomes a projectile moving at speeds that leaves a sonic boom behind him.
He slams backward through the platform he was standing on. The swords that were orbiting him scattering like leaves in a hurricane. Through the wooden planks that make up Baelin's infrastructure.
Through the next platform below that one.
And the next.
And the next.
Each impact producing a massive BOOM that echoes through the canyon city. Wood exploding into splinters. Stone cracking. Metal shrieking as it's torn and bent.
I watch him carve a path of destruction through three levels of the city before he finally slams into a cliff face with enough force to crater the rock.
Dust and debris billow outward. The entire section of canyon wall shuddering from the impact.
And I laugh.
The sound that comes out is wrong. Broken. The laugh of someone who's gone completely mad.
Because I have. The pain. The confusion. The resurrection. The forced activation of a power I don't understand. The voices screaming in my head for more blood, more violence, more suffering.
It's shattered whatever remained of my sanity.
I stand on the platform bloodstained, surrounded by the scattered blades that killed me and sneer in pure contempt.
My bloodlust is fully unleashed. Unchained. A living thing that demands satisfaction.
And the voices inside my mind rage in approval.
I take a step toward the edge of the platform. Toward where Teleb's body created that crater in the canyon wall. And i watch as he stands up his pink robe torn and battered.
He looks up and I see that half of his mask is gone. And one bright blue eye is staring directly at me.