Chapter 265: Kill Kane

Elias’s mutations had receded, leaving only faint crystalline veins beneath his skin.

Above him, twelve Raven Prototype IX constructs circled in perfect synchronization, their golden eyes pulsing with each rotation.

Cyrus studied their movements.

The network served two purposes.

First, it stabilized Elias’s fractured spirit core, drawing away excess divine energy and redistributing it among the synthetic vessels.

Second, it preserved his consciousness.

Each raven carried a portion of Elias’s spiritual identity. Memory, instinct, and awareness existed across the network, held together by a continuous resonance.

Destroying his physical body would accomplish nothing.

The ravens could preserve enough of him to begin again.

Cyrus’s claws flexed.

He considered directing his dragonfire toward the nearest construct.

The Royal Command Seal tightened immediately.

Pain pierced his chest, forcing him against the laboratory floor. Crimson flames sputtered around his fingers before the counterfeit authority smothered them.

The ravens contained Elias’s spirit.

To the Seal, attacking one was apparently no different from attacking Elias himself.

You’re thinking too loudly.

Kane’s familiar voice brushed against his consciousness.

Cyrus exhaled.

I’m trying to find a way to kill him.

Again?

Permanently this time.

A pause.

Well, that’s an improvement.

Despite everything, Cyrus almost smiled.

Kane’s consciousness remained connected to his through their karmic bond, although his physical body lay motionless within the stasis pod.

His shattered spirit core was still incapable of sustaining life without the Crystal’s restorative power.

What about the connections? Kane asked. The ravens have to communicate somehow.

Cyrus examined the resonance lattice.

Destroy the network instead of the vessels?

Exactly.

It was a possibility.

But as Cyrus considered disrupting the spiritual connections, the blood contract around his wrist grew warm.

A warning.

The contract prohibited direct violence against Elias. Whether destroying the network counted as an attack remained uncertain, but testing that interpretation could incinerate what remained of Cyrus’s core.

He had already lost too much of its integrity.

The contract might punish me, he admitted.

Kane fell silent.

And the Seal?

It can stop me before I begin.

Two restraints.

One bound his actions through divine authority. The other threatened his existence if he violated his oath.

Cyrus needed to break both. He had no idea how.

Across the chamber, Elias raised one hand.

Shattered machinery stirred.

Broken processors reassembled themselves. Severed conduits fused together, and a collapsed monitoring station straightened as though an invisible craftsman were repairing it.

Elias closed his fist.

A reinforced wall folded inward.

Metal screamed as several tons of steel compressed into a mass no larger than a human skull.

Cyrus watched without speaking.

Elias turned toward the chamber’s dimensional barriers.

He extended his fingers.

The air split.

Beyond the opening stretched the ruined Spirit Realm.

Floating mountains hung beneath an amber sky. Marble palaces lay broken across impossible landscapes. Fragments of ancient temples drifted between shattered islands, their once-sacred courtyards empty.

Cyrus’s breath caught.

He remembered those places.

He remembered walking beside Kane beneath their flowering trees, long before the world had fallen.

Elias stared into the opening.

For a moment, the calculating scientist disappeared beneath something resembling grief.

"Look at it," he murmured. "Everything they allowed to perish."

He reached farther into the dimensional tear.

"All of this can be restored."

The opening widened.

Then Elias’s core fractured.

White-gold light burst through the crystalline veins along his neck. His body convulsed, and the ravens descended immediately, extracting the unstable energy before it could consume him.

One construct shrieked.

A crack spread across its left wing.

Another raven’s chest plating dimmed, its synthetic core struggling beneath the sudden burden.

The dimensional opening collapsed.

Elias staggered backward.

The Spirit Realm vanished.

Cyrus watched the damaged raven struggle to regain its position.

There it was.

A limitation.

Every major use of divine authority strained the network maintaining Elias’s existence. The ravens could distribute the burden, but they couldn’t eliminate it.

And unlike Elias’s body, they weren’t repairing themselves.

Elias noticed the fractured wing.

His expression darkened.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then his gaze shifted toward Kane’s stasis pod.

And the obsidian egg.

Cyrus’s stomach tightened.

He recognized that expression.

Elias had discovered another problem he intended to solve through experimentation.

"The Crystal responded perfectly to your combined resonance," Elias said thoughtfully. "Even after your fox’s core was destroyed."

Cyrus remained silent.

"Your bond achieved naturally what my augmentations cannot sustain artificially."

Elias approached the stasis pod.

Inside, Kane’s body lay pale and motionless, nine silver tails arranged beneath the containment field.

A faint ribbon of foxfire curled around his wrist.

"Don’t touch him," Cyrus warned.

Elias placed his palm against the glass.

"Tell me, Cyrus. Is a dragon’s mating bond truly absolute?"

Cyrus’s crimson eyes narrowed.

"What are you planning?"

"An experiment."

Elias turned, his amber eyes bright with curiosity.

"The Crystal requires harmony between independent spiritual wills. Yet the Royal Command Seal can compel obedience without consent."

He smiled faintly.

"I wonder which principle takes precedence."

Cyrus tried to stand.

The Seal slammed him back onto his knees.

Something’s wrong, Kane whispered.

Stay connected to me.

Cyrus—

Whatever happens, don’t let go.

Elias stepped away from the pod.

"Cyrus Veyr Drakhal."

The counterfeit Seal ignited.

"Stand."

Cyrus rose.

Not willingly.

His legs straightened while every instinct demanded that he remain where he was.

"Approach the stasis chamber."

His feet moved.

One step.

Another.

Cyrus fought against the command, his claws scraping furrows through the steel floor.

He couldn’t stop.

Cyrus?

Kane’s voice trembled.

Elias watched with clinical fascination.

"Remarkable. Your resistance increases when the command conflicts with your mating instincts."

Cyrus forced his jaw open.

"Elias. Don’t."

Elias regarded him for another moment.

Then his expression emptied.

"Kill Kane."

Divine authority crashed through the Seal.

Cyrus’s claws extended.

Crimson dragonfire erupted around his fingers, gathering into the destructive flame he had once used to shield Kane from the world.

Now that same power turned toward him.

Father?

The hatchling’s frightened voice flickered through their bond.

Cyrus tried to answer.

His jaw wouldn’t move.

His arm rose.

Every memory of Kane surged through him.

Their first kiss.

Their promises.

The silver foxfire that had reached for him across centuries of separation.

He fought with everything he possessed.

Nothing changed.

Cyrus? Kane whispered.

Dragonfire gathered in his palm, enough to reduce the stasis chamber to molten glass.

The Black Dragon raised his hand toward the man he loved.

And began to strike