Gabriel's blade scraped against the wyvern's ribs, searching for gaps between bone.

Tess worked beside him in silence, her sword cutting through tissue and membrane. Neither spoke. What was there to say?

The wyvern's body was still warm despite the cold, its blood still flowing sluggishly through dead veins. Steam rose from the opening they'd carved, visible in the fading light.

Gabriel's hands were steady despite the exhaustion pulling at him. Despite knowing what came next.

The voice had returned the moment the wyvern died.

Not screaming anymore. Calm now. Patient.

The heart. Consume the heart. Complete the ritual.

Gabriel's jaw tightened as he worked.

Complete the ritual. The words echoed in his mind, mixing with fragments of memories that weren't his. Ceremony. Preparation. The heart crushed and mixed with sedatives to ease the transformation.

He had none of that.

Just raw desperation and a body that was tearing itself apart from an incomplete awakening.

He pushed deeper into the wyvern's chest cavity.

Tess helped him pry the ribs apart, both of them straining against bone thick as Gabriel's forearm. Something cracked. The opening widened.

There.

The heart sat in the centre of the cavity like a monument. Massive. Dark red that was almost black. Still warm. Vessels branched from it in all directions, thick as rope.

Gabriel reached in with both hands.

The organ was heavy. Dense beyond what seemed possible. His fingers closed around it, feeling the residual warmth, the weight of the thing that had kept a creature of legend alive.

He pulled.

The vessels tore free with wet sounds that echoed in the ravine. Black blood poured from the severed connections, pooling on the frozen ground and steaming.

The heart came free.

Gabriel held it in both hands, arms straining under the weight. It was larger than his entire torso, slick with blood, still radiating heat.

Tess stepped back, her face pale in the dying light. "Gabriel..."

He looked at her. His eyes were still more black than red, the change from the fight not fully faded.

"You don't have to do this," she said quietly. "We can find another way."

"There is no other way." Gabriel's voice was rough. "The incomplete awakening is killing me. I can feel it tearing me apart from the inside."

He looked down at the heart in his hands.

Consume the heart. Complete the ritual.

Flashes of memory that weren't his own flickered through his mind. Dracamerians in ceremonial robes. The heart crushed in a stone basin. Mixed with herbs and sedatives. Drunk slowly while others chanted.

Gabriel had no ceremony. No sedatives. No others.

Just this.

"Gabriel, wait." Tess grabbed his arm. "What happens after? When you do this?"

He met her eyes. "I don't know."

"Then maybe you should—"

Gabriel lifted the heart to his mouth and bit into it before she could finish.

The taste was overwhelming. Copper, salt and something else. Something that burned. He tore a chunk free with his teeth and swallowed.

It felt like swallowing molten metal.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Gabriel took another bite. The blood ran down his chin, steaming in the cold air. He chewed and swallowed, forcing the flesh down despite every instinct screaming at him to stop.

Tess stepped back, her hand over her mouth.

Gabriel took a third bite.

Then pain exploded in his chest.

The heart fell from his hands, hitting the ground with a wet thud. Gabriel dropped to his knees, both hands pressing against his chest where his mana core sat.

Something was changing there.

Not healing. Changing.

The pain intensified. Gabriel's back arched, a scream tearing from his throat that echoed off the peaks and carried for miles.

The world tilted.

Suddenly he wasn't in the ravine anymore.

He stood in a field of ash.

Bodies lay everywhere. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Men, women, children. All dead. All human except for their black hair and red eyes.

Dracamerians.

Gabriel walked among them, his boots leaving prints in the ash. The bodies were fresh. Blood still pooling. Eyes still open in shock and betrayal.

Movement ahead.

Seven figures walked through the carnage.

Human-shaped but radiating light so bright it hurt to look at directly. They moved methodically through the field, checking each body, ensuring none survived.

The Seven Archangels.

One of them raised a hand. Light formed in their palm, coalescing into a blade of pure radiance. They drove it through a wounded Dracamerian trying to crawl away.

The woman's scream cut off abruptly.

Gabriel tried to move, to stop them, but he was frozen. A witness, not a participant.

He felt it then. Felt every death. The terror of people who'd served these gods faithfully, who'd done everything asked of them, being systematically executed without trial or mercy.

An entire race erased not because they were monsters, but because they were human with the wrong allegiance.

The vision shifted.

An eighth figure stood alone on a battlefield.

Drusgard.

Dark armour covered his human form. Long black hair moved in wind that came from nowhere. Red eyes burned with rage and grief.

Before him, a light appeared.

Not a figure. Just pure radiance that hurt to perceive. The Creator.

No form. No body. Just holy light that pulsed with power beyond comprehension.

They fought.

Gabriel watched as Drusgard moved, as his sword cut through divine light itself. The Creator struck back, beams of radiance that carved trenches in the earth.

The battle shook the world.

Mountains crumbled. Oceans boiled. The sky itself cracked.

Drusgard pressed forward. Step by step. Blow by blow. His sword found purchase in the light, carved deeper, pushed through.

The Creator's radiance flickered.

Drusgard drove his blade forward one final time.

The holy light shattered.

Exploded outward in fragments that dissolved before hitting the ground. The Creator, dead. Killed by one of his own.

For a moment, there was only silence.

Then the Seven appeared.

Walking across the broken battlefield, surrounding Drusgard. Not attacking. Just watching as he lowered his bloodied sword.

"You have killed the Creator," one said. Their voice was without emotion. "You are cast out."

"And those who served you," another continued, "will share your fate."

Drusgard's eyes widened. "No. They had nothing to do with this. They're innocent."

"They served the one who killed the Creator. That is guilt enough."

The Seven turned away, walking back toward civilization.

Toward where the Dracamerians lived.

Drusgard tried to follow, to stop them, but something held him. Cast out. Exiled. Unable to intervene.

He fell to his knees, screaming, as his people died in the distance.

The vision shifted again.

Gabriel saw his bloodline through generations. Dracamerians fleeing the genocide. Hiding among normal humans. Breeding with them.

Each generation, the blood thinned. Black hair became brown, became blonde. Red eyes became blue, became green. The power faded, became dormant.

But never disappeared completely.

Waiting.

Waiting for someone to awaken it.

The visions ended.

Gabriel slammed back into his body with enough force to crack the frozen ground beneath him.

The pain in his chest had intensified beyond anything he'd experienced. Beyond the torture. Beyond having bones broken. Beyond everything.

This was something fundamental being rewritten at a level deeper than flesh.

His mana core was changing.

The wyvern's essence was doing something to it. Finishing something that had been left incomplete years ago when Ariya carved those sigils into his skin.

Gabriel's back arched again. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Could only feel as his core twisted, corrupted, and transformed.

The sigils Ariya had carved lit up across his body. Red light traced the scars on his chest, his arms, his back. They glowed brighter and brighter until they were painful to look at.

Then they burned away.

The scars didn't disappear. But something else replaced them. Silver-white markings that spiralled across his skin in patterns that were simultaneously alien and familiar.

True Dracamerian sigils.

Complete ones.

Gabriel screamed again. The sound wasn't entirely human anymore.

His body convulsed as changes rippled through him. His hair, already mostly black, turned fully so. The last traces of silver disappeared, replaced by pure black that seemed to absorb light.

His eyes shifted. The red irises deepened, became more vivid. His pupils elongated into slits that contracted and expanded with each ragged breath.

His frame changed. Grew taller by several inches. His muscles became denser, more defined beneath his skin. Not grotesquely so. Just noticeably stronger than before.

But he still looked human.

No scales. No horns. No claws.

Just a human with black hair and red eyes, slightly taller and stronger than he'd been.

Like the Dracamerians in the visions.

The pain peaked. Gabriel's vision went white.

Then his body temperature spiked.

The red smoke he'd carried for years, the corrupted mana that had leaked from him in moments of stress, transformed.

Became fire.

Golden-red flames pulsed beneath his skin, visible through his flesh like his body was a forge containing an inferno.

The flames built with each pulse. Brighter. Hotter.

About to explode.

Tess saw it happening.

Saw the fire building inside Gabriel's body, saw the way his skin glowed brighter with each pulse, saw the ground around him beginning to smoke from the radiant heat.

"Gabriel!" she shouted.

No response. His eyes were rolled back, showing only white. He was gone, consumed entirely by the transformation.

Tess ran.

She scrambled behind the nearest boulder, pressing herself flat against the stone, making herself as small as possible.

The fire exploded.

A sphere of golden-red flame erupted outward from Gabriel's body, him at the center like a sun going nova.

Everything within twenty meters ignited instantly.

The snow didn't melt. It flash-vaporized, turning to steam in a fraction of a second. The frozen ground cracked from thermal shock. Stone blackened and split.

The wyvern's corpse caught fire, its scales burning despite being nearly impervious to normal flame.

The explosion of heat reached toward where Tess had been standing moments before. Would have caught her if she hadn't run. Would have burned her to ash.

The flames missed her position by meters.

She felt the heat wash over her hiding spot, felt her exposed skin burning from proximity alone. She pressed harder against the stone, eyes squeezed shut, not breathing.

The explosion lasted three seconds.

Then the flames pulled back.

They retreated toward Gabriel's body, drawn inward like they were being inhaled. The golden-red fire spiraled around him once, twice, then disappeared into his skin completely.

Silence.

Tess waited. Counted to ten. Twenty. Thirty.

Finally, she risked looking.

The ravine had been transformed.

A perfect circle of scorched stone spread outward from where Gabriel lay. Everything within it had been burned black. The snow was gone entirely. The ground was cracked and smoking.

Gabriel lay in the centre, motionless.

Tess pushed herself up slowly. Her legs shook as she moved toward him, scanning the area for any sign the fire might return.

Steam rose from Gabriel's body in wisps. His clothing was burned away in places, showing unmarked skin beneath. The wounds from the wyvern fight were gone completely.

She reached him and dropped to her knees beside him.

"Gabriel?"

No response.

His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. Still alive. Still breathing.

But changed.

His hair was fully black now, no trace of the silver remaining. His face looked leaner, more defined. His body was larger, more muscular.

But he looked human.

Completely, undeniably human.

Just with black hair and red eyes.

Tess reached out tentatively and touched his shoulder. His skin was warm but not burning. Normal body temperature, or close to it.

She let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding.

He was alive.

The awakening was complete.

Dawn broke over the Spine mountains, painting the scorched ravine in shades of gold and red.

Tess sat beside Gabriel's unconscious form and waited for him to wake.

Behind them, the wyvern's corpse still burned, sending black smoke into the morning sky.

The voice in Gabriel's head was finally silent.

For the first time in months, there was no pull. No demand. No constant pressure eating at him from within.

Just silence.

And in that silence, something else stirred.

A presence. Vast and ancient and watching from somewhere beyond the world.

Drusgard, the Eighth Divine, had felt the awakening complete.

His last son had finished the trial.

Now came the reckoning.

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