Chapter 212: Stolen Souls, Shattered Will

The red shimmer surged into my forehead like a wave of heatless flame.

I didn’t even have time to stagger.

The world vanished.

And another took its place.

******

Wind. Endless sky. Mountains that pierced the clouds like ancient spears.

I soared.

But it wasn’t me—not really.

It was him.

The Silversteel Hawk.

He was proud and powerful. His wings cut through the sky with ease. His feathers looked like silver in the sunlight. The wind wasn’t just around him—it moved with him, like a friend. He didn’t just fly through the air. He controlled it.

Below, his hunting grounds stretched for miles. Herds of beasts moved like rivers, unaware they were being watched. But he didn’t kill. Not yet. There was no hunger in his flight, just freedom. Joy. Awareness.

I felt it all. All the emotions that the hawk was feeling.

The thrill of motion. The pulse of magic through muscle. The peace of solitude in high air.

He was intelligent. Not human but aware. Alive. Proud.

And then something happened.

A ripple, like the soundless crack of a bell and then a blur tore through the clouds. A streak of red, trailing fire and memory.

The hawk screeched, spinning midair. I could feel the shift in his instincts—what had been serenity became terror.

The blur hit.

Pain bloomed.

A collision of Essence, will, and thought.

It wasn’t just physical.

Something entered him.

Another mind. Another soul.

****

The world changed again.

Darkness. Screaming.

I was the hawk now—no longer watching. Trapped.

I felt a second consciousness press against mine, twisting, clawing, demanding dominance. A voice that didn’t speak with words—but with force. Cold. Commanding. Desperate.

I fought.

The hawk fought.

I don’t know how long it lasted. Maybe seconds. Maybe centuries.

Wings flailed. The mind shattered and reformed. I felt thoughts fray like feathers in a storm.

And then—break.

The Silversteel Hawk cried out one final time. A howl of defiance, echoed in silence.

He lost.

I felt his consciousness collapse like a star folding in on itself. What remained was chained, pulled down, beaten into shape.

But even as the hawk’s soul was bound, I saw the intruder’s memory emerge, rising through the cracks of that violent union.

****

A different sky.

Not blue.

Yellow.

And below—a city made of tunnels. Great carved stone. Burrowed columns. Lights dim and bio-luminescent. Creatures moved around, bipedal, but insectoid.

And he was among them.

The soul that had forced itself into the hawk.

He was young. Thin. His skin grey and segmented, with faint armor over his limbs and chest. Antennae twitched gently over his head, reading the air like fingers.

He wasn’t a monster.

Just a person.

A boy in a structured world.

He walked the tunnels with others like him—some larger, some older, all purposeful. They lived by a rigid order, like ants. He didn’t speak, but thoughts passed between them through subtle antennae shifts and faint psychic pulses.

He laughed—though it was silent. I felt his joy as he shared food with a small clutch of siblings. I saw the way he looked at a mentor, a massive soldier-type with glistening black carapace and silent pride.

He wanted to rise.

To prove himself.

And when his opportunity came, when the war above reached their tunnels, he volunteered.

The memory blurred.

He was running.

Then… darkness. Pain. A sharp blow.

He didn’t even see what killed him.

One moment, he was alive—his feet pounding the tunnel floor of his colony, heart racing, lungs burning. The next, everything was cold. Empty. Silent.

Then came the pull.

****

Back to the sky.

The hawk’s body, still twitching in pain. Its form larger now. Warped. Feathers dimmer. Eyes wrong.

The soul of the insect boy forced itself in.

And screamed.

Not in victory.

In agony.

The merge was not clean. Not total. Their souls didn’t bond, they fought as they merged.

The boy’s soul was corrupted the only thoughts in his mind were hunger and destroy.

And what came out was something broken. Torn. Mutated.

I felt the boy’s horror as his body warped. As wings stretched in ways that didn’t feel right. As beak and talon responded not as tools—but as weapons of pain. He tried to fly, to regain the joy he once felt.

He couldn’t.

The sky rejected him.

The hawk’s instincts lashed out whenever the boy’s thoughts surfaced. And the boy, in turn, twisted those instincts with his Essence, until the hawk was little more than a puppet, and he a prisoner behind its eyes.

The corruption wasn’t born, it was forged.

Both souls, smashed together, reduced to ruin.

****

I felt it all.

The grief of the Silversteel Hawk, whose last memory was the sky.

The desperation of the insect boy, who only wanted to survive.

And the pain they both shared as they became something neither recognized.

The memory flickered.

And ended.

****

I gasped and stumbled, collapsing to one knee in the forest.

The last shimmer of red faded from my vision.

Above me, the branches swayed. The Silversteel Hawk was gone. So was the ice.

Only the faint crackle of fading Essence lingered.

But in my chest, I felt the core—red, orbiting the white Null Heart. The ethereal chain glowed faintly, pulsing with a weight I now understood.

The memory came from both—the hawk and the soul that took over its body. I clenched my fists, jaw tight. It was one thing to know the Eternals were corrupting souls and forcing them into beasts… but living it? Feeling it? That was something else entirely.

I lifted my head toward the sky and let out a roar, raw and shaking.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH.”

The hawk’s panic. The insectoid boy’s confusion. Their pain as their souls collided and unraveled. I felt all of it.

I could still sense the hawk’s mind breaking apart, its instincts overwhelmed, its spirit crushed. I could feel the boy’s soul twisting, the last pieces of his identity dissolving into something monstrous.

My nails dug into my palms as I tried to steady my breath. The memory looped again in my mind, and I forced myself to endure it. To understand it.

Not just corruption. Not just control.

This was erasure.

And what terrified me most… was the thought that my parents might’ve gone through the same torment. That their souls could’ve been torn apart and fused into beasts like this—stripped of identity, drowned in agony.

I took a deep breath and forced my pulse to slow. My hands still trembled, but I wouldn’t let them control me.

Rage simmered in my chest, hot and steady. My hatred for the Eternals deepened, carving a new layer into my resolve.

I placed a hand over my heart.

“Come,” I whispered.

Creation is hard, cheer me up!