Running Away with Alpha's Baby Bump
A presence rose, not a God towering, but something vast that had learned to crouch.
You could rule, it offered, reshaping itself. You could end suffering.
Suffering flickered across my chest, sharp, and personal.
“And if you ask for Kael’s life?” I said quietly.
The pause was infinitesimal.
Calculation.
“I refuse,” I said, and the answer was not mercy but judgment. “And then you die.”
The Devourer felt smaller then.
Not weak.
Finite.
Somewhere, a tether snapped.
The Hollow Crown screamed, not in sound but memory, and collapsed inward, sealing around a judgment it could not renegotiate. Stone folded. The fracture sutured itself shut with a final, shuddering sigh.