Free Web NovelChapter 108: Jason’s Power! [FIXED!][12/06!]
The creature lunged while Jason’s back was turned.
Its twisted grey body shot forward, faster than something so emaciated should have been able to move. Its clawed hand extended, aimed at the back of Jason’s skull, its yellowed teeth bared in a vicious snarl.
"JASON, WATCH OUT!" Ylva screamed.
The claw struck Jason’s barrier.
The impact sent a ripple of light across the invisible shield—thin as glass, hard as diamond. The creature’s hand stopped inches from Jason’s head. The bones in its fingers cracked. Black ichor sprayed from its knuckles.
Ylva stared.
She had seen this before. The watcher had used a barrier just like this—impenetrable, shimmering, born from mana manipulation. Jason had absorbed that power. He had made it his own.
"This ability," she thought. "It’s just like that of the enemy."
Jason turned. His eyes were cold and his jaw was tight.
He looked at Ylva. Saw the confusion on her face. The unspoken question.
He kissed his teeth in irritation.
"I didn’t want you to find out this way," he said.
The creature did not wait for their conversation to finish. It scrambled backward, its broken fingers already healing, its white eyes darting between Jason and Ylva. It had expected an easy kill. It had been wrong.
Its mouth opened. Not to scream—to release.
A cloud of golden pollen erupted from its throat.
The particles hung in the air like a shimmering fog, spreading rapidly across the chamber, coating the flowers, the roots, the moss. They were not made of mana. Jason could feel it—his nullification ability did not react. There was nothing to absorb. Nothing to shatter.
"This is not magic," he realized. "It is something else."
The pollen reached his barrier, it did not bounce off. It did not dissolve. It clung to the surface, spreading across the shield like a living thing, searching for cracks, for weaknesses, for any way inside.
Ylva screamed.
The sound tore from her throat—the same shockwave she had used to destroy the roots, to punch through the vines. The force rippled outward, slamming into the cloud of pollen, pushing it back, scattering the particles.
But she couldn’t use it again as it was damaging her vocals as she had already used it in quick successions.
The plants that had been coated in the golden dust withered instantly. Their petals turned black. Their stems crumbled to ash. The moss beneath them died, turning grey and brittle.
The creature shrieked and retreated further, pressing itself against the wall of roots. Its white eyes were wide now—not with aggression, but with fear.
Jason stepped forward. His barrier reformed around him, stronger now, denser.
"You want to fight?" he asked. "Then fight."
He lunged.
The creature met him halfway. Its claws raked across his barrier, leaving trails of light but no damage. Jason countered with a punch to its gut—the barrier extended around his fist, turning his strike into a hammer blow. The creature doubled over, black ichor spilling from its mouth.
It swung wildly, catching Jason’s shoulder. The barrier absorbed the impact. Jason grabbed its arm and twisted.
Bones snapped, Jason was brutal and there was no visible distress in seeing the violence he was capable of.
The creature howled in pain.
Ylva watched from the edge of the chamber, her chest heaving, her ears flat. She had seen Jason fight before. She had seen him dodge, seen him struggle, seen him survive through luck and desperation.
This was different.
He moved like he belonged here. Like he had been fighting monsters his entire life.
His strikes were precise abd his blocks were instinctive. The barrier around his body made him untouchable, and he used it offensively—slamming into the creature, crushing it against the roots, driving it to its knees.
"How strong has he become and has he been pretending to be weak?" she wondered.
The creature released another burst of pollen. Ylva screamed again, dispersing it, but this time some of the golden dust reached the roots behind her. They withered, cracked, and fell away, revealing a narrow passage.
An exit.
Jason glanced at it. Then back at the creature.
"Run," he said.
The creature did not need to be told twice. It scrambled through the gap in the roots, disappearing into the darkness beyond.
Jason’s barrier flickered and faded. His shoulders sagged.
Ylva approached him slowly. Her green eyes searched his face.
"Jason," she said. "What have you become?"
He didn’t answer but simply flashed a goofy smile.
"Who knows but I think I’m becoming more suited to protect you,"
-
Thalion drifted in darkness.
Not the darkness of a room or a cave—the darkness of a soul.
His essence floated through the void of his father’s consciousness, formless and weightless, a ghost adrift in an ocean of stolen memories.
He was frightened.
He had managed to cast the spell in time for his soul to leave his body—the Rite of Severance, the ancient magic he had carved into the woman’s forehead, the desperate gamble that had cost him his elf vessel’s life. But unfortunately for him, the spell had only come into effect the moment his father consumed him.
Now he was trapped.
Maldred’s body was the only vessel he could possibly inhabit in this moment. There was no other corpse nearby, no other soul willing to make room, no other option. And taking over his father’s body was a tall task—like an ant trying to steer a mountain.
"I need all the help I can get," Thalion thought.
He drifted deeper into the void, searching for weaknesses, for cracks, for anything he could exploit. Maldred’s consciousness was vast—centuries of memories, dozens of consumed children, layers upon layers of rage and hunger and ancient power.
But Thalion noticed something.
The process was slow.
His father consumed souls at a much faster pace. Thalion had witnessed it before—watched his father devour siblings in seconds, their essences absorbed, their identities erased. It should not be taking this long. The fragment of Tauriel’s soul was still flickering in the distance, not yet dissolved. Thalion’s own essence was still intact, not yet assimilated.
"Why is it so slow?"
He drifted closer to the edge of Maldred’s consciousness, where the boundaries between his father’s mind and the outside world grew thin. And there, he felt it.
A disturbance.
Maldred had completely stopped devouring souls at one point. The great engine of consumption had ground to a halt, frozen mid-chew. It was not like his father to hesitate. Maldred did not hesitate. Maldred devoured.
But now, he was fighting.
Not against Thalion—Thalion’s influence was barely a whisper, a gnat buzzing at the edge of a giant’s ear. This was different. This was like his father’s body was fighting itself, like something was forcing Maldred to slow down, to stop, to sleep.
Thalion’s mind raced.
"One of the other lords must be awake."
He had heard stories about this in his past life—whispers in the dark corners of the Bleak Marrow, rumors passed between criminals too dangerous to be named. The four lords could not all be awake at once. Their collective power, if fully roused, would tear the Marrow apart. But if one of the other lords was waking, it would destabilize the other.
Maldred had been awake for centuries, cheating the natural cycle by consuming his own children. He had grown strong—stronger than any single lord should be. But strength did not matter against the fundamental laws of the Marrow.
"If one lord wakes, another must sleep."
Maldred is being forced into slumber.
And that had to have something to do with Jason. The timing couldn’t be a coincidence.
Thalion did not know how nor did he know why. But Jason had entered the Marrow. Jason must have also defeated the watcher. Jason had absorbed mana that should have been impossible to absorb. And now, one of the other lords was stirring. Of course, Thalion was unaware of these sequence of events.
Jason was the catalyst to what was happening right now.
Thalion drifted back into the darkness of his father’s consciousness. The fragment of Tauriel’s soul flickered weakly, almost gone. Maldred’s hunger was still there, still present, but it was sluggish and dulled.
"I just need to hang in there for a while."
If Maldred was forced into slumber, his consciousness would retreat. His defenses would lower. And Thalion—small, patient, invisible—might be able to slip through the cracks.
"I might not be able to take over," he realized. Not yet but I can survive, even if it is for a little while longer."
He settled into the darkness, making himself small, making himself quiet.
The Lord of Ruin was being pulled toward sleep.
And Thalion would be waiting when he closed his eyes.
-
Thalion felt the presence before he saw it.
A fragment of consciousness, buried deep within Maldred’s void, reaching out through the darkness. Not his own, it belonged to someone else, someone who had been consumed long ago.
"Brother," a voice whispered.
Thalion’s essence trembled. He had siblings he never knew. Children Maldred had devoured before Thalion was even born, their souls trapped here for centuries, their identities eroded by time and hunger.
"There is a way," the voice said.
Thalion strained toward the sound. A shape emerged from the void—formless, featureless, but somehow familiar. A soul that had been waiting.
"Father killed me because I found a way. A way to put him into an eternal slumber."
Thalion’s consciousness pulsed. How?
The shape drifted closer. Its voice dropped to a whisper. freewēbnoveℓ.com
The spell requires three things. A vessel of pure blood. A sacrifice of equal power. And a catalyst from outside the Marrow.
"Jason," Thalion realized.
"Father senses him. The other lord sense him. He is the key."
The shape began to fade or rather, pulled back into the void it has escaped for a second.
"Wait—" Thalion reached for it.
"Find the vessel," the sibling whispered. "Find the sacrifice. And when father sleeps..."
The void swallowed the voice.
Thalion drifted alone in the darkness.
There was one thing that was clear, the vessel in this case was no doubt Jason and it meant Thalion had to kill the very person who was coming to save him.
