POV: The Rogue Overlord
The night sky over Virellis Prime was a patchwork of clouds and ash, lit faintly by the glow of orbital debris rings. To the common eye, nothing stirred across the Wastes. But from the broken cliffs outside the city perimeter, the Rogue Overlord stood motionless, watching.
Tracking.
Kael had escaped.
And he was changing.
The Spiral no longer pulsed like a flicker inside the boy. It had rooted. Grown. Each step Kael took left a mark in the fabric of reality that only those attuned to the ancient Spiral could see.
The Rogue could see it clearly.
A red trail, pulsing faintly beneath the dirt.
He followed it in silence.
Kael's Spiral was unstable, damaged, perhaps. The boy wasn't glowing with dominion anymore. Not like during the awakening. But the pattern still moved inside him, fighting to heal. Adapting.
The Rogue's boots made no sound as he crossed a ridge. Far ahead, Kael stumbled across rough terrain, breathing hard, barely keeping his balance.
He was weak.
Mortal.
And yet… not broken.
> "He doesn't even realize what he is," the Rogue thought.
Not yet.
But he would.
The Spiral chose rarely and never without reason.
The Rogue had once believed he was the last. The final voice in a song lost to time. But now, Kael had joined the chorus.
And the Spiral… was singing louder.
He stopped beside a rusted marker, a grave from the old bio-wars. His hand brushed the stone, crumbling it effortlessly.
"Will you become like me, boy?" he muttered. "Or worse… will you become something new?"
He saw flickers in his mind, Kael's hands glowing red, not with violence, but with hesitation. Mercy. It disgusted him. Power should not question itself.
But the Spiral had chosen him anyway.
> "Not power. Dominion," he whispered the old words.
Kael did not yet understand them.
But he would.
And when the time came, when the boy crossed into the true battlefield, beyond this dying Inner World, the Rogue would be waiting.
Not as a hunter.
Not even as a guide.
As a witness.
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End of chapter 15