Korynth’s eyes widened as she watched Kael fall to his knees, clutching his head as he bled tears of blood and screeched with all his might, his previous composure completely gone.

"It’s unfortunate."

Uriel had noticed the oddity while inside the dimensional prison.

It had worked too easily.

No one knew this except for him, but his sparks were still very much dormant. Meaning, he shouldn’t have been able to thrall Kael in any significant way.

During his confrontation with the Regulator, Uriel had a massive breakthrough and finally comprehended the truths of cores.

Not only that, he’d gained four more cores and completed his foundation. It was through this breakthrough that Uriel had been ’thralling’ Kael.

He was simply using his True Core to lightly tug at the fabric of Kael’s Will. And when considering that Uriel had a spiritual spark, it made it easier.

But it wasn’t supposed to be this easy.

Uriel had merely tugged a little bit while in the prison, and yet Kael’s Will instantly collapsed into madness, the man beginning to reveal everything to him.

There was also the fact that, somehow, Kael always noticed Uriel’s influence and even managed to break it, yet always fell to it again without even realizing.

If he could sense the influence on his Will and mind, and even break it, why would he not be able to prevent it?

And that was when Uriel made the link to the horrifying discovery he’d made through the mailman.

What he had discovered was that... no one in Kael was alive. Every single non-guardian and knight was... dead.

They were all flesh puppets.

And within their hearts, Uriel had sensed the shard of a Will controlling them all and feeding upon the emotions of their decaying, dead souls.

Kael city was, very literally, Kael.

He was a single man, spread across the millions upon millions of inhabitants of the city. He was everyone and no one.

He was the mailman. He was the young man they’d talked to while eating Kaim Bowls. He was the Kaim Bowl stand owner. He was every single person in line at the outpost. He was every single prisoner in the dimensional prison and in the omega prison.

He was everyone, and they were all him.

"I’m not sure if you even knew it."

And in turn, they were all his weaknesses.

"See, this formation here bridges the space of this hall to that of the other dimensional prison. I’m not sure who built this hall or drew its formations, but they made it as the foundation of the entire structure."

"All energy nodes of the omega layer reside here, and all terminals for your dimensional prisons are anchored here."

Uriel lightly caressed the surface of the bloody blue heart in his palm, his Will pressing onto it ever so slightly, summoning a blood-curdling scream from Kael.

Kael had said he’d lost a piece of his soul due to his youthful idiocy, due to the price of the phoenix flame. But Uriel doubted it.

The man most likely wasn’t lying. It was probably made so that even he himself didn’t know the truth of his own existence.

If Uriel had to guess, he was a pawn of something much larger—a test subject orchestrated and controlled by a Spiral or someone of such caliber.

Their fates were quite... similar.

"If I use Samael’s anchor to collapse the foundation of space here, it’ll echo across the entire structure. All dimensional prisons will turn into bombs."

"The whole of Kael will be gone. But it’ll also become a void of emptiness forever. A void of the kind which you will never survive."

Uriel approached Kael, then squatted onto the balls of his feet, bringing himself to eye level with the crying and screaming man.

He looked him in the eye.

"I promise you, Kael, that you have more to lose than I do. The agony I can put you through is... beyond words."

Uriel’s killing intent took shape, his cores unfurling to twist the fabrics around him. To Kael, the world turned into nothing but a white void, within which only he and Uriel existed.

And above Uriel, a large and looming Ouroboros of ivory coiled endlessly, indifferent to all things and supreme across all isles of existence and non-existence.

Through it, Uriel’s killing intent exploded outward.

"So, no. There will be no ’negotiations’. I will retrieve the coffin, then I will leave with them. We will ascend the Spire, and then we will be gone."

Uriel lightly tapped Kael’s trembling chest. "And you."

"You will stay here, as the good and obedient boy that you are. Now that I’ve told you the truth of your existence, I’m sure you can guess whoever did this to you probably left an elite team to watch over you."

"And possibly execute you if you go rogue. They’ll come after us. But you’ll attract them here. I don’t know how, but I’m sure you’ll find a way. Alright?"

The sheer weight of Uriel’s seven gigantic cores, and his seemingly immortal, endless Will—tempered by life and death and the divinity of a Regulator—pressed onto Kael and the world like the heaviest of stars.

Korynth was forced to ward both her and Samael’s minds from Uriel’s pressure, her heart hammering in her chest as she realized something horrifying.

Only a single type of existence could have power that exceeded their rank and step to such a degree.

’A... Pioneer.’

The thought made her stomach twist in fear.

How had he managed to hide that from her gaze for so long?

"Alright?" Uriel repeated.

Slowly, Kael nodded, whimpering as he did so, standing as nothing but a broken shell of his former self.

But it was hard to tell if it was due to pain, or something else. It was hard to tell if he cried because of Uriel’s Will tearing into his own—plunging him into a pit of agony that even the profane would fear—or if he cried due to the sheer depth of what he’d just been told, and its implications.

Looking deep into his despairing eyes, full of fear, agony, and sorrow, Uriel paused for a moment. From Kael’s Will, all he could feel was helplessness, and an emotion he could only call... betrayal.

He saw himself in him.

"Listen," Uriel said, grabbing Kael’s shoulder and pulling him just slightly closer. "There’s always an opportunity within every pit of chaos we’re thrown into. There’s always a ladder, an opportunity created to let us ascend."

"It’s as you said, right? We fall to rise. We fall to attain glory."

Kael weakly met his gaze, staring into the horrifying silk figure Uriel had become. As the latter smiled, the fibrous filaments of his face twisting, a shiver crawled down Kael’s spine.

"And I can be that glory for you."