The Broken Halo

The mountain began to sink.

Simon steadied himself as the stone beneath his feet tilted. The Bloodline Origin Gate had closed behind them, but the tremor continued long after its last echo faded.

Then the slope stopped halfway through a collapse.

Broken rocks hung in the air.

They turned slowly until their flat surfaces faced the same direction.

Simon looked at his companion.

The Daemon had risen beside him. Its four ivory horns caught the pale light, and the black ring behind its shoulders turned, spreading six translucent wings.

The floating stones turned with it.

Far below, something rose from the abyss.

A broad sheet of silver stone pushed through the darkness. Another followed above it, then a third. They crossed the depth beneath the mountain without touching its walls, forming immense, suspended terraces.

The place where the One-Horned Demon had nearly disappeared was filling with ground.

Above it, the Byakko’s peak lowered.

"What...?"

Simon watched the mountain’s ridges straighten. Rough slopes folded into sheer faces, and narrow towers of pale stone rose where smaller peaks had stood.

Their upper ends bent sharply inward.

They resembled the Daemon’s horns.

The world was taking its shape.

His companion lifted its head, then its mouth opened.

The sound began deep in its chest, then climbed into a scream that drove Simon’s hair back.

SKRRAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEGH!!!

The terraces shuddered. Red lines appeared beneath their silver surfaces, following the same patterns as the filaments inside the detached wings.

In Velmora, Simon’s physical mouth opened.

Then a harsh cry tore across the ruins.

Blood flattened beneath his seated body. Loose stones jumped from the ground, and a damaged wall fell outward without anything striking it.

Tarvak convulsed inside the array. The mouths beneath his stretched skin opened with his own, but their cries disappeared beneath Simon’s voice.

Crimson lightning flashed overhead.

Lilith pressed a hand against the inner inscriptions, preventing the blood from breaking out of its channels.

The scream ended.

Its last vibration remained inside Simon, carrying something he understood before he knew how to pronounce it.

"Uruqath."

He stared at the figure beside him.

"The Uruqath Daemon bloodline."

The name belonged to the dull-silver skin, the four ivory horns, and the six wings suspended behind that motionless back. It settled into his awareness with the same certainty that had named the Path of Origin.

This was what he had brought home.

The third eye remained closed.

Even so, the world continued rearranging itself.

A black expanse opened above the terraces. Pale arches hung within it at different angles, some upright, others resting sideways upon nothing. Through them, Simon could see other parts of the same world.

The Byakko’s peak appeared through one arch.

In another, he saw himself from behind.

The distances were folding around the Daemon’s presence.

Simon slowly turned, taking it in.

The mountain had once made the difference between his bloodlines painfully obvious. One stood at the summit. The other could barely begin climbing.

Now the abyss had become the foundation of something that rose above the summit.

’You were down there all that time.’

His companion looked toward him.

There was no arrogance directed at Simon. It remained the same presence that had taken his hand and followed him through the gate.

But when it looked toward the mountain, the remaining slopes trembled.

In the physical world, Simon’s body responded.

The silver sheen spread evenly across his chest. Black ridges settled along his ribs, becoming more pronounced each time his heart beat.

His hands changed more subtly.

The hooked curves of his claws shortened. The sharp tips of his ears began drawing closer to his head. Features the Sky Tiger had given him were being pressed beneath the form the Uruqath demanded.

The detached wings moved into a precise arrangement behind him.

His body was no longer struggling to adopt that shape.

It was beginning to exclude the other.

Simon felt it, and his amazement faded.

"Wait."

He looked inward, following the presence that had once filled almost everything.

The Sky Tiger was still there.

But its bloodline was being driven into narrower places within him. The power remained, buried beneath something stronger, just as his One-Horned bloodline had once been buried.

Nothing had been erased, but that did not make the change acceptable.

’I didn’t do all this to reverse the same problem.’

He wanted both.

The Uruqath’s constitution, the Byakko’s nature, and a body capable of carrying them together. Allowing one to silence the other would waste everything he had refused to abandon and all he had done.

Simon extended his Will.

"Enough."

His companion’s wings stopped moving.

The transformation of the world slowed, but the pressure did not vanish. The Uruqath did not have to attack the tiger to suppress it.

Simply existing here was enough.

Growl

A growl came from the remaining peak.

Simon turned.

The Byakko stood upon the last rough patch of mountain. Its claws had sunk deep into the stone, while the wind around its body struggled to move beyond the widening silver terraces.

Its muzzle pulled back.

Its sky-blue eyes stared at the Daemon.

The tiger tried to raise its head higher.

Its forelegs shook.

Simon felt the humiliation before he even understood what was going on.

This was its mountain. Its sky. The weak thing now looking down upon it had once struggled to climb even the lowest slope.

It remembered that.

It remembered Simon stopping its claw.

Now it was being forced to brace itself merely to keep standing before the bloodline it had wanted destroyed.

The growl deepened.

Its tail struck the stone hard enough to break a piece away. The fragment rose instead of falling, joining the ordered shapes surrounding the Daemon.

Even that small part of its mountain no longer obeyed the world it knew.

ROAR!

The Byakko roared.

Wind rushed down the slope, reached the nearest terrace, and broke around it.

The terrace did not move.

A sharp pain passed through Simon’s chest in Velmora. Unholy Regeneration repaired a small tear while he kept his demonic energy steady.

"Stop fighting each other," he said.

Neither manifestation advanced.

The tiger’s eyes shifted toward him, and for a moment, Simon expected to see the Byakko acting stubborn and furious.

But that was not what reached him.

Its anger turned inward.

Beneath the form he could see, something pressed against its limitations. The Byakko was trying to reach deeper into itself, toward power its present manifestation had never displayed.

Simon’s expression changed.

’You want to evolve.’

The tiger lowered its shoulders without lowering its gaze.

It did not want him to weaken the Uruqath.

It wanted the strength to stand beside it.

Lilith had told him long ago that his Sky Tiger was not fully awakened. He had gained so much from even that incomplete bloodline that, somewhere along the way, he had stopped thinking about how much remained beyond it.

Now he could feel it waiting.

The change to his horned lineage had rebuilt parts of his body that once could not bear more. Power from the consumed imprint was still passing through the ritual, not yet settled into a final form.

The Byakko wanted access to it.

Simon looked toward his companion.

The Uruqath watched the tiger, its suspended wings held still beneath his Will.

He understood the danger. Another transformation would put more strain on a body that had already endured too much.

But forcing the Byakko back down would make its suppression part of the result.

He had protected the weaker bloodline when the tiger stood above it. He would not abandon the tiger now that their positions had changed.

Simon faced the peak.

"You finally understand how it felt."

The Byakko’s claws tightened.

A faint smile touched his mouth.

"I’m not asking you to accept it."

He loosened the restraint upon that part of his blood, leaving the choice before the waiting beast.

"Take what you need. Evolve."