~Morgan’s Point Of View~

The stone of the dungeon floor is biting and cold, but Morgan doesn’t feel it. He is beyond the reach of simple temperature, feeling nothing except the oily, rhythmic pulse of the Demon Core thrumming behind his ribs. It hums a lullaby of extinction, a low vibration whispering for more—always more. It wants his brothers. It wants the God-Wolf. It wants to stand atop a mountain of Bellamy skulls and howl at a moon that no longer recognizes him as its child.

He leans his head back against the damp stone wall and closes his eyes, savoring the memory of the dungeon floor from two nights ago.

In his mind’s eye, he sees the guards protecting his father again. They didn’t even have time to scream before his violet fire turned their lungs to ash. He remembers the heavy groan of the iron door as he melted the lock, stepping into the darkness as if he were finally coming home.

Tobias had been standing there, his face flickering in the torchlight. He hadn’t looked like a prisoner; he looked like a King waiting for his carriage. He had smiled at Morgan—that same arrogant, paternal tilt of the head that used to command empires.

"I knew you’d come, Morgan," Tobias had said. "Open the gate. We’ll leave this place and rebuild. You and I—the only ones with the stomach for what must be done."

Morgan had opened the gate. He had even broken the silver cuffs. He stepped aside to let the man walk free, but as Tobias passed him, the Demon Core roared in Morgan’s blood. He didn’t use a blade; he used a whip of pure, sentient shadow.

The sound of his father’s legs being severed at the knees was the most beautiful music Morgan had ever heard.

The Great Alpha, the King of the Duskwind, hit the floor like a sack of wet grain. He cried out—a shrill, pathetic sound that didn’t belong to a wolf. Morgan spent hours in that cell. He made sure the man stayed awake for every agonizing second of it. Tobias had killed Morgan’s true mother. He had built Morgan’s life on a foundation of her blood and called it love. Morgan didn’t stop until there was nothing left of the King but a stain and a memory of agony.

A surge of pride flickers through him. Grayson is in the ground. Tobias is a pile of scorched flesh and bone. Rayne... poor, shattered Rayne. He remembers the days he spent hiding in her room, watching her weep through the wardrobe slats, knowing it was the one place his self-absorbed brothers—Amias and Darien—would never think to look.

When Rayne finally found him, he hadn’t run. He had sat on her bed and told her exactly how Grayson had looked when the rogues tore into him. He told her he’d kill Darien and Amias while she watched, and then he’d take her as his wife—a final, sick crown for the woman who stole a life. She had been too terrified to even breathe his name.

But Heidi ruined it. She found him. She looked at him with those God-Wolf eyes and saw only emptiness.

He tries to stand now, planning how he’ll melt through his silver shackles and hunt them down. He decides he’ll start with Amias. He’ll make it slow.

But as he shifts, his hand slips. He looks down at the floor, expecting to see water or common grime.

Instead, he sees himself.

A thick, greyish sludge is dripping from his fingertips. It looks like melting wax, but it smells like a rotting carcass. He stares at his arm, and a jolt of pure horror strikes him as he realizes his skin is sloughing off, dissolving into a dark, viscous puddle.

"What is this?" he snarls into the void of his own mind. "What are you doing to me?"

The Demon Core’s voice answers like a thousand jagged needles piercing his brain. "The vessel is finite, Morgan. A werewolf’s heart was never meant to house a demon’s sun. You wanted the power to destroy. This is the price. The host is consumed so the core may remain."

Lady Mirenia’s face flashes in his mind—the warning she gave when she first called to him. It will kill the host.He had thought he was different. He had thought he was the master.

The door to the cell creaks open. Morgan looks up, his vision blurring as his very eyelids begin to liquefy.

It’s Heidi.

She stands there, the light from the hallway framing her like a saint. She looks at the floor—at the heap of melting flesh that used to be a man—and the horror on her face is so profound she collapses to her knees. She doesn’t scream. She just sobs, the sound echoing in the small, suffocating space.

"Why?" she gasps, her voice breaking. "Morgan... why?"

Why what? he thinks bitterly. Why was he melting? Why did he kill Tobias? Grayson? Why did he kill Lira or make her a pawn? Why did he fight his own mate?

He wants to tell her to leave. He wants to snarl at her, to show her the monster one last time. He opens his mouth to shout, but only a thick, black bile spills out.

Then, the Core does something truly cruel.

As his heart begins to dissolve, the Core withdraws its numbing shadow. The emotional void it had maintained for weeks vanishes in a heartbeat, and every suppressed emotion comes rushing back like a tidal wave.

He feels Grayson’s hand on his shoulder. He feels the warmth of the twin bond—the one he severed with a smile. He feels the crushing weight of his mother’s ghost. He feels the look on Lira’s face as he threw her against the stone. He feels every ounce of the love Heidi once gave him, and the jagged, bloody way he tore it apart.

The guilt isn’t just a weight; it’s a fire. It’s a thousand white-hot knives plunging into his soul at once. He tries to scream, but his vocal cords are melting away into nothingness.

He is a murderer. He is a monster. He has killed the only people who ever truly knew him.

Morgan reaches out a dissolving hand toward Heidi—a silent, pathetic plea for a mercy he knows he doesn’t deserve—but his fingers turn to ash before they can even touch her clothes.

His mind fractures. The guilt drives him into the abyss before the darkness even claims his eyes. His last thought isn’t of power or crowns. It’s the phantom sound of Grayson’s laugh in the summer sun—and the sudden, terrifying realization that he is dying in the dark, and he is dying utterly alone.