The moment Maingan's fingers sank into the Nephilim's flesh, something changed.
It was not just power. Not just the surge of shadows bending to his will.
It was him.
Something inside him was unraveling.
The battlefield, the voices of Jeruca and Jason, even the Nephilim's resistance—it all blurred at the edges of his consciousness. He felt as though he had stepped beyond himself, detached, like an observer watching through a shattered mirror.
The shadows were no longer just an extension of his power. They were alive. They pulsed through his veins, whispering in a language he didn't recognize yet somehow understood.
For a moment, he saw himself reflected in the Nephilim's third eye—not as he was, but as something else.
A figure wreathed in darkness. Formless. Boundless.
A thing that was no longer entirely Maingan.
His grip on the Nephilim tightened, but in that instant, a flicker of unease rippled through him.
"What am I doing?"
It was an intrusive thought, barely a whisper in the void of his mind.
But it was his.
And the abyss around him—it heard.
The shadows shuddered. The whispers stopped. And then, like a tide reversing, the abyss pressed back against him.
He inhaled sharply. A flood of emotions surged through him.
Memories.
A hand on his shoulder—Rex's voice, laughing.
Mariah's gaze, sharp yet warm, watching over him like a guardian.
Keth standing before him, silent, but the weight of his presence enough to remind Maingan of who he was.
His family.
The abyss twisted.
It didn't like that.
Something deep inside him hissed, as if rejecting those thoughts, as if trying to drown them out. The power in his veins roared, pressing against his mind, urging him to let go—to sink deeper, to become what it wanted him to be.
And for a terrifying second… he almost did.
But then—
Pain.
Not from the Nephilim. Not from an attack.
From within.
Maingan staggered back, his breath sharp, his own body fighting itself. The darkness twisted violently, erratic, no longer in sync with his will. His fingers twitched, his pulse pounded in his skull, and for the first time since this battle began—
He felt fear.
"What is this? What have I awakened?"
The Nephilim gasped, half-dissolved, barely holding itself together. Its eye locked onto him—not with hatred, but understanding.
It smiled.
"You don't control it," it rasped. "It's controlling you."
Maingan's chest rose and fell. His own heartbeat sounded wrong—distorted, fragmented, as if belonging to something else.
The shadows around him pulsed hungrily.
The abyss was waiting.
Watching.
And it wanted him to fall.
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