The Mercy That Devours

Kael fell without falling.

There was no wind. No scream. No sensation of descent.

Just absence.

Then—impact.

He landed on his feet in a place that remembered how to die but forgot how to live. A fractured timeline, stitched with blood-red constellations and lightning made from regret. Around him, the sky flickered like the eyelids of a dreaming god. Cities rose and crumbled in real time—some shaped like thrones, others like open mouths.

Kael gripped his blade, but it pulsed weakly. Here, it didn't hunger. It grieved.

A voice called to him from the horizon. Familiar.

Orion.

But not the Sovereign Seed.

This one was leaner. Sharper. His eyes burned with endless resolve and zero forgiveness. His armor was made of broken vows and obsidian teeth. At his side, he carried no blade. Only a scepter of ash and flame.

"You are not mine," the alternate Orion said.

"And you're not the one I swore to protect," Kael replied.

They circled one another like mirrored storms. Buildings behind them collapsed into white noise.

"This realm," said the alternate Orion, "was born from my choice to erase mercy. Every kindness I allowed turned to betrayal. So I reshaped my world in law. No forgiveness. No chaos. No second chances."

Kael's jaw tightened. "You made yourself a tyrant."

"I made myself pure."

The wind trembled. Not because of magic, but because this place hated imperfection.

Kael stepped forward, slow and deliberate.

"I'm not here to argue fate. I'm here because your counterpart—the real one—is unraveling the multiverse. He calls himself the Sovereign Seed now."

The alternate Orion's eyes narrowed.

"So the seed bloomed. Just as I feared."

Kael lifted his blade. "Then help me stop him."

The Orion of this place looked away, toward the sky where suns collapsed like brittle bones.

"I can't help you," he whispered.

And then he reached into his own chest—and ripped out a shard of his own soul, crystallized in law.

"But I can give you a weapon."

Kael caught the shard as it hovered before him. It burned his hand, but did not wound. It hissed like ice in fire.

"With that, you'll have the power to sever sovereign will," the alternate Orion said. "But if you use it… it might not be just the Seed you kill. It might be every version of him."

Kael stared down at the shard. Then up at the man who had once been his friend in another life.

"I'll decide what gets severed."

And with that, the shard fused to his blade, engraving it with law and finality. The moment it settled, the fractured realm began to collapse.

The alternate Orion smiled, fading with it.

"Go. You only get one cut."

---

Kael vanished in the rupture.

And somewhere, far across timelines, the Sovereign Seed felt a ripple—like someone had just named him a threat.

And worse still…

That the name might stick.