CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: The Feast of Pride
Jason froze the moment Leylin's gaze found him.
It wasn't a look that measured strength.
It was the look of a predator deciding whether he was worth swallowing whole.
The air thickened ..not with essence, but with something heavier, older, deeper. It pressed down like the weight of the ocean before jaws closed around prey. Jason's instincts screamed at him to run, to burn every ounce of energy and flee, but his body betrayed him. His feet stayed rooted in the stone, his chest heaving against the invisible pressure that bore down on him.
He reached inward desperately, clawing for the Pride Core. He could feel its threads, that regal heat that once made him stand tall against all others. He willed it to flare, to blaze defiantly against the oppression bearing down on him .. but the strands of power slipped through his grasp like water leaking through clenched fists. His mouth worked soundlessly before the words finally scraped out:
"What… are you?"
The sound of his own voice startled him. Thin. Cracked. Unworthy.
Leylin stepped forward.
Not with haste. Not with violence. Every movement was deliberate, precise, too controlled to belong to anything human. The crimson glow threading through his veins pulsed with quiet hunger, his presence filling the air until Jason felt dwarfed by it.
When Leylin reached him, his hand rose. No strike came. Instead, his palm pressed lightly, almost gently, against Jason's chest.
The Pride Core recoiled.
Jason felt it as if it were a heart not his own — a sharp, burning pulse of defiance, proud and unyielding even beneath the weight pressing against it. But then, from within Leylin's chest, another rhythm answered. A darker beat. Hungrier. It wasn't simply life — it was consumption.
The two pulses collided.
There was no sound, no spark of light, only pressure. The air itself trembled. Jason staggered back, but the pull followed him. Not Leylin's hand — the pull of his Core, being leaned on, its throne challenged, its sovereignty undermined.
Jason gasped as warmth drained from his body, replaced by a creeping cold that slid like oil through his veins. It wasn't pain that unsettled him — it was loss. A hollow ache, slow and deliberate, as though something sacred was being claimed piece by piece.
"You…" Leylin murmured, his voice low, almost contemplative. "…carry a crown that does not belong to you."
Jason's knees buckled. He collapsed, palms striking stone. The Pride Core flared once more in desperate defiance, shoving a surge of regal power into his limbs, enough to lift his head, to draw one ragged breath, to bare his teeth against the encroaching void.
But it faltered.
Leylin inhaled deeply, eyes half-lidded, his chest rising as though savoring a feast no one else could taste. Jason felt his strength bleed into the stillness around them, swallowed into that endless hunger that lay beneath the other man's skin.
Jason collapsed further, his arms trembling. His breaths came ragged, his vision tunneling. Somewhere far away, something clicked ..the sharp, clear chime of a bell. The sound was alien, almost unreal, cutting through the silence like a thread of glass.
For an instant, the world around Leylin wavered. Jason's dimming eyes caught a glimpse of something impossible: symbols rippling across the air near him, fractured glyphs straining to define what they saw. The sight lasted only a heartbeat before the effort collapsed, the markings vanishing like smoke in wind.
Leylin straightened slowly, crimson veins glowing faintly beneath his skin. Flecks of gold shimmered across their edges, bending light as if the world itself acknowledged him. His presence loomed not with violence, but with inevitability.
Silence fell.
Utter. Suffocating. Absolute.
Jason's chest hitched once more before settling into shallow breaths. His Pride Core, once unassailable, now shivered in the shadow of something far greater.
The Feast of Pride was over.
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