# Chapter 88: The Unleashing
The roar that tore from Soren's throat was not a sound of a man. It was the shriek of tectonic plates grinding together, the detonation of a volcano held captive for a decade. It was the sound of a dam breaking, unleashing a flood of pure, unadulterated rage. The vision, the ghost of his father's murder, had shattered something inside him, and in its place, a star was being born—a furious, dying star.
He did not aim. He did not focus. He simply *released*.
The world went white.
The kinetic force erupted from his outstretched hand not as a focused blast or a concussive wave, but as a sphere of pure annihilation. It was a silent, expanding nothingness that consumed sound, light, and air itself. For a fraction of a second, the Crystal Labyrinth, the Bloom-spawn, and everything in it ceased to be. The air, superheated and instantly displaced, rushed back into the void with the force of a thunderclap, a physical blow that threw Nyra and Kestrel off their feet.
The Bloom-spawn, caught at the epicenter, had no time to react. Its crystalline form, which had withstood Kestrel's high-caliber rounds, simply disintegrated. The intricate lattice of its body, the fusion of corrupted magic and physical matter, was unmade. It didn't explode into gore or shatter into sharp fragments; it dissolved into a cloud of iridescent, grey dust that was instantly vaporized by the residual energy. The malevolent green light of its head-locus flared one last time, a silent scream of agony, and then winked out of existence. All that was left was the smell of ozone and burnt glass, and a perfect, hemispherical crater in the Labyrinth floor where the creature had stood.
Then came the feedback.
The power, drawn from the deepest, most volatile parts of Soren's soul and amplified by the ambient Bloom energy saturating the Labyrinth, rushed back into its source. It was a tidal wave of cosmic force crashing into a fragile vessel. The white-hot light on his Cinder-Tattoos didn't just fade; it imploded, sucking the light and heat from his arm in a violent, inward cascade. The black ink of the tattoos seemed to boil, the lines writhing like serpents beneath his skin.
Soren's body went rigid as a high-voltage current surged through him. His back arched at an impossible angle, a silent scream frozen on his face. The white light in his eyes vanished, replaced by a terrifying, vacant blackness. He collapsed, his limbs striking the crystal floor with a series of wet, heavy thuds. He was no longer roaring or fighting. He was a puppet with its strings cut, convulsing on the ground as his nervous system tried to process an overload it was never designed to handle. A low, guttural moan escaped his lips, the only sound he could still make.
Nyra, her ears ringing and her vision swimming, scrambled to her knees. The force of the blast had thrown her against a crystal pillar, and a sharp pain radiated from her shoulder. She ignored it, her eyes fixed on the smoking crater and the man convulsing at its edge. The air still crackled, thick with the acrid scent of raw magic. She had seen Gifted fighters push their limits before. She had seen them pay the Cinder Cost in blood, in lost memories, in shortened lives. She had never seen anything like this. This wasn't a cost. This was a total system failure.
"Soren!" she cried, crawling toward him. The crystal floor was slick with a fine, grey dust—the remains of the Bloom-spawn. It felt like ash under her palms.
Kestrel was slower to recover. He had been thrown against the far wall, his head cracking against the unyielding crystal. He shook his head, trying to clear the double vision. The scavenger, the cynic, the man who believed everything had a price and a weakness, stared at the scene with wide, disbelieving eyes. His rifle lay on the floor, forgotten, a useless toy. He had seen the power of the Bloom. He had seen the horrors it could birth. He had just seen a man erase one of those horrors from existence with a gesture. The foundations of his world, built on hard-won pragmatism and survival, had been utterly obliterated. He felt a primal, cold fear, the kind a mouse must feel when it realizes it's not in a field, but in a cage with a dragon.
Nyra reached Soren's side just as another violent convulsion wracked his body. His eyes were open, but they saw nothing of the Labyrinth. They were wide, glassy, and fixed on a horror only he could perceive. His breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. The black lines of his Cinder-Tattoos were now a dull, dead black, but the skin around them was angry and red, as if branded.
"Soren, can you hear me?" she pleaded, placing a hand on his chest. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird, a frantic, desperate rhythm. He was burning up. She could feel the heat radiating through his thin shirt.
He didn't respond. His lips moved, forming a single, silent word. Then another. His body tensed, the muscles in his neck standing out like steel cables. The convulsions subsided, replaced by a terrifying stillness. He was no longer thrashing, but locked in place, a living statue trapped in the throes of a memory.
And in the theater of his mind, the memory played out, not as a hazy, traumatic flashback, but with the perfect, agonizing clarity of a high-resolution recording. The Bloom's energy had not just unlocked the door; it had kicked it off its hinges and thrown it into the sun.
He was a boy again, no older than ten. The air was thick with the smell of dust and fear. He was hiding under a caravan wagon, the rough wood digging into his back. Peeking through a gap in the undercarriage, he could see the scene unfolding in the blinding sun of the ash plains. He saw his father, Elias Vale, a big man with calloused hands and a kind smile, standing between his family and the men in the white-and-gold robes of the Radiant Synod.
His father was not a fighter. He was a trader, a merchant who believed in words and fairness. But he held a heavy iron wrench in his hands, his knuckles white. "This is my family," his father's voice boomed, a sound Soren remembered as the safest thing in the world. "They are not property. The debt was paid."
A man in front of his father stepped forward. He was younger than the High Inquisitor Soren knew from the Ladder broadcasts, but the cold, arrogant certainty in his eyes was identical. His face was sharper, less lined by age and authority, but the cruelty was already there, a hard glint that promised no mercy. This was Valerius. Not the High Inquisitor, but an Inquisitor, already a predator among men.
"The debt was paid with tainted coin, merchant," the younger Valerius said, his voice smooth and condescending. "Your association with Sable League smugglers is an offense against the Concord. Your family is forfeit. Your son… he shows the signs. He will be taken for the Synod's care."
Soren could feel his younger self trembling, a silent, terrified sob shaking his small frame. He had always known he was different, that the strange surges of power that sometimes came from him were a secret to be kept. Now, this man in the white robe knew.
"Over my dead body," his father snarled, raising the wrench.
Valerius didn't even flinch. He simply smiled, a thin, cruel curving of his lips. He raised a hand, not in a gesture of power, but in a simple, dismissive wave. Two Inquisitors flanking him moved, their movements fluid and practiced. They were not just guards; they were Templars, their own Gifts simmering just beneath the surface.
One of them, a woman with a scarred face, moved faster than Soren's eyes could follow. A flicker of motion, a glint of steel, and his father grunted, stumbling back. The wrench clattered to the dusty ground. A dark stain spread across the front of his tunic. He looked down at it, his expression not of pain, but of profound, heartbreaking surprise.
"Papa!" the boy Soren screamed, the sound tearing from his throat.
His father looked toward the wagon, his eyes finding the gap where his son hid. There was no fear in his gaze, only a desperate, aching love. "Run, Soren," he wheezed, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. "Run and don't ever look back."
But Soren couldn't move. He was frozen, a prisoner of his own terror.
Valerius watched the man die with the detached interest of a scholar observing an insect. He stepped forward as Elias Vale fell to his knees, then slumped forward into the dust. He nudged the body with the toe of his immaculate white boot.
"A waste," Valerius said, his voice devoid of emotion. He turned his gaze toward the wagon, his eyes seeming to pierce directly through the wood and into Soren's soul. "Bring the boy. The Synod has use for his kind."
That was the moment the world broke for Soren. The grief, the terror, the helpless rage—it all coalesced into a single, explosive point inside him. His Gift, wild and untamed, erupted for the first time. A raw wave of force, a pathetic echo of the power he had just unleashed, blasted out from under the wagon. It wasn't strong enough to hurt the Inquisitors, but it was enough to send them staggering back, to kick up a blinding cloud of ash and dust.
In the chaos, his mother grabbed him. Her hands were shaking, her face a mask of terror. She pulled him from his hiding spot and ran, not looking back at the body of her husband, not looking back at the men in white robes who had just destroyed their world. Soren's last memory of that day was the sound of his own ragged sobs and the sight of his mother's tear-streaked face as she dragged him into the endless grey wastes.
Back in the Crystal Labyrinth, Soren's body went limp. The tension drained out of him, and he collapsed fully onto the floor, his cheek pressed against the cool, slick crystal. The silent scream on his face was replaced by a look of profound, soul-crushing devastation. A single tear, hot and salty, traced a path through the grime on his temple.
The white-hot memory receded, leaving behind the cold, hard truth. He hadn't just lost his father. He had watched him be murdered. He had seen the face of his killer. And that killer was now the High Inquisitor Valerius, the most powerful man in the Radiant Synod.
The rage was gone, burned away by the inferno of his power. In its place was a void, a cold and empty space where a decade of stoicism had been. He was hollowed out, a ruin of a man laid bare on the floor of a dead god's heart. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that nothing would ever be the same. His fight for his family's freedom had just become a war for his soul.
Nyra watched the transformation, her hand still resting on his chest. She saw the convulsions stop, saw the terrible tension leave his body, and then saw the single tear fall. She didn't know what he had seen, but she knew it had broken him. The stoic survivor she had traveled with, the man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, was gone. In his place was someone she didn't recognize, someone who had stared into an abyss and had the abyss stare back.
Kestrel finally found his feet, his movements slow and unsteady. He approached cautiously, his rifle now held in a loose, non-threatening grip. He looked from the smoking crater to Soren's still form, his expression a mixture of awe and terror.
"What… what in the seven hells was that?" he whispered, his voice trembling slightly.
Nyra didn't answer. She just kept her eyes on Soren, her mind racing. The mission, the Synod, the Bloom-heart Crystal—it all seemed trivial now. They were not just dealing with a powerful Gifted fighter anymore. They were dealing with a force of nature, a man who had just tapped into the very heart of the world's cataclysm and survived. Barely. And she had a sinking feeling that this was only the beginning.