Lord of the realm

He was a frogman. His family had kept this secret for generations, hiding their true nature behind careful ruses and clever illusions.

Before him stood a door unlike any other in the castle. It was made of black iron that seemed to drink in the light from his torch, and it was easily twice as tall as a man. Strange symbols were carved deep into its surface, and seemed to writhe and shift when observed from the corner of the eye.

At the center of the door was a perfect circle, smooth and unmarked by time or weather.

Earl Grimwald pressed his webbed hand against this circle, and immediately it began to glow with a soft blue light. The symbols on the door flared to life, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. There was a sound like thunder rolling across distant mountains, and then the massive door began to swing inward on hinges that hadn't moved in decades.

Beyond the door lay a tunnel that descended even deeper into the ground. The walls here were not made of worked stone but of living rock, as if the passage had been carved by forces far older than human tools. Strange phosphorescent moss grew in patches along the walls, providing just enough light to see by.

Earl Grimwald hurried forward, his frog-like feet making wet slapping sounds against the smooth rock floor. The tunnel seemed to go on forever, winding deeper and deeper into the bones of the ground itself.

Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, he reached another chamber. This one was vast, its ceiling lost in shadows high above.

But it was what he saw in the center of the room that made him stop dead in his tracks.

Jaenor hung suspended in the air like a dark angel, his arms spread wide as if he were being crucified by invisible forces. But there were no chains holding him now, no bonds of iron or energy spirals.

Instead, he floated freely in a whirlwind of crimson energy that spiraled around his body like a living thing.

The red light pulsed and swirled, sometimes forming shapes that looked almost like faces, sometimes dissolving into pure energy before reforming into something else entirely. It was beautiful and terrible to behold, like watching the birth of a star or the death of a world.

"What in the nine hells is this?!" Earl Grimwald croaked, his voice echoing strangely in the vast chamber.

As he was staring at him, Jaenor's eyes snapped open.

They were no longer the warm brown eyes of the man who had been chained in the dungeons. Instead, they glowed like pools of molten lava, bright and terrible and filled with an anger that had been building for far too long. When he looked at the Earl, it was with the gaze of something that was no longer entirely human.

Without warning, Jaenor shot upward like a bolt of lightning given form. His body smashed through the stone ceiling as if it were made of paper, sending chunks of rock cascading down into the chamber below. Up and up he went, tearing through floor after floor, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.

In the great hall above, the battle between Odessa and Cornelia was still raging when the floor suddenly exploded upward in a shower of stone and dust.

Everyone was pushed backwards, causing some of them to stumble and fall. And some of them were blown away by the force of the crash.

There was dust everywhere in the hall, and for a minute or two, nobody moved.

The sounds of coughing and choking were heard as the air filled with debris.

When the dust finally began to settle, they saw something, a figure with something stretched on either side of him.

They soon noticed it was the young man, Jaenor.

Jaenor floated in the center of the ruined hall, and he was magnificent and terrible to behold. The red energy still swirled around him, but now they could see that it had taken on a more defined form. The crimson wings unfurled behind him, vast and terrible, a sight that seized the breath from any who dared look upon them. Each feather shimmered in hues of deep, blood-dyed scarlet, as though they had been soaked in the essence of battlefields long forgotten. A subtle radiance bled from them, an aura of raw, unyielding power that seemed to warp the very air.

At first glance, the feathers appeared almost delicate—soft as velvet, like plumes—but their beauty was deceptive. Beneath that silken allure lay an edge of menace.

His feet did not touch the ground, and his hair moved in winds that touched no one else.

This was the Origin Bearer in his full glory, a being who had transcended the boundaries between mortal and divine.

Cornelia's eyes shot wide, and she gasped, "Origin bearer!!"

Odessa's face-off with Cornelia stopped immediately.

A wide grin spread across her face as she looked up at the young man, her young lover.

"My boy," she whispered, and her voice was full of pride and fierce joy.

Jaenor's burning gaze found her immediately, and for just a moment, something passed between them.

It was a look of recognition, of shared memories and deep affection.

Despite all the power that now flowed through him, despite the rage that burned in his chest like a forge fire, he was still the man she had known and cared for.

But then his attention was drawn elsewhere.

His eyes swept across the assembled witches until they found their targets.

Delia and Ember stood together near the far wall, their faces pale with shock and growing fear. They had tortured him, these two.

They had hurt him in ways that went far beyond mere physical pain.

Moving faster than lightning, faster than thought itself, Jaenor flashed across the hall.

Before Delia could even begin to react, his hand closed around her throat. He lifted her into the air as easily as a child might lift a doll, his fingers glowing with barely contained power.

Delia struggled frantically, her hands clawing at his wrist, her feet kicking uselessly in the air. But his grip was like iron, unbreakable and merciless.

"Remember me?" he asked, his voice carrying the weight of mountains and the heat of forge fires.

That was when Cornelia acted. She was in such shock seeing Jaenor and those wings on his back that she didn't even notice him moving.

Her hands moved in complex patterns, summoning her Origin power over shadow and starlight into a spiral of pure destructive energy. The attack was perfectly aimed, powerful enough to level a building.

Odessa started to move, her own power rising to protect Jaenor, but there was no need.

Jaenor didn't even look at the incoming attack.

He simply raised his free hand and slashed at the air, his fingers trailing lines of red light.

The energy spiral that Cornelia had crafted with such care was torn apart like spider silk in a hurricane, dissolving into harmless sparks that faded before they hit the ground.

Cornelia stared in shock. Her most powerful attack had been brushed aside as if it were nothing more than an annoying insect.

She didn't attack again, staring at the boy who had become something that she had never imagined; there was something stirring deep inside her.

Meanwhile, Siren Queen Saphyra was watching Jaenor with calculating eyes, and there was an expression on her face that suggested she was amused by him.

With casual cruelty, Jaenor slammed Delia down onto the stone floor.

The impact drove the breath from her lungs and sent waves of pain shooting through her body. She groaned and tried to curl into a ball, but his foot came down on her chest, pinning her to the cold stone.

"Are you feeling the pain now?" he asked, his voice soft and terrible.

"Do you remember what you did to me?"

"Do you remember the screams I let out while you enjoyed torturing me?"

His eyes blazed brighter as the memories flooded back.

Days and nights in the dungeon, chained like an animal. Delia and Ember took turns with their tortures, draining his strength bit by bit, feeding on his pain like vampires feed on blood. They had broken his body and tried to break his spirit, all in service to their mistress Cornelia's grand design.

They used him like a lab rat, experimenting on him to satisfy their curiosities. They didn't let him eat or sleep or let him be for an hour or so.

It was like hell; Jaenor wished it would end soon and waited for such a day to come, to stand before them and do the things they did to him.

But they had not broken him.

Instead, they had forged him into something harder, something more dangerous than they could ever have imagined.

Now it was time for them to learn what true pain felt like.