The Journey: Book 3, Chapter 17 - Previous Chapter
Chapter 18: Sangorego
The tower had grown quiet in a way that felt deliberate, as though silence itself had chosen to remain and listen.
Matthious stood at the center of the chamber, hands folded behind his back, posture immaculate. An elf unchanged by what he had done — pale, composed, eternal.
Only his stillness betrayed strain.
Breathing was no longer singular.
Something within him moved with direction, a steady pressure leaning toward distance. Not rebellion. Not thought.
Departure.
He closed his eyes.
“Convel.”
Cold answered.
Snow without end. Wind threading through dark pines. The certainty of forward motion beneath unseen paws. No voice. No acknowledgment. Only persistence.
“You cannot wander,” Matthious said quietly. “Not anymore.”
The pressure pushed outward at once.
Not anger.
Refusal older than language.
His jaw tightened.
“And you,” he said, turning inward again, “will stop hiding.”
A voice slipped through his thoughts like a claw drawn lazily across glass.
“I’m not hiding,” Tabby said. “I’m being digested. There’s a difference.”
“You will answer me.”
A soft laugh.
“You murdered me, drank my blood, and now you expect cooperation. Confidence really is your strongest delusion.”
Matthious ignored her.
“The dragon eggs,” he said. “Their sanctuaries. Your people walked beside the ancient language. You know where they were taken.”
Silence followed.
Longer this time.
He felt resistance building — not sharp, not violent, but immense. Like standing before a tide that refused to retreat.
The pressure deepened.
For a moment, his own breathing faltered.
Something gathered.
Not words.
Weight.
The sensation pressed through him, slow and unwilling, as though speech itself were being dragged across stone.
Then—
A sound.
Low.
Rough.
A growl forced into shape.
Matthious’s eyes opened.
The word arrived like falling rock.
“No.”
The chamber seemed to contract around him.
Tabby went utterly still.
“…Well,” she said after a beat, genuine surprise slipping through, “that’s new.”
The presence within Matthious shifted — vast attention turning.
Recognition passed between the two souls without language.
Hunter meeting hunter.
You.
A pause heavy with understanding.
Taken, the wolf said.
The effort behind the word was palpable, as if speech itself offended him.
Tabby exhaled slowly. “Right. Same problem, then.”
Matthious straightened.
“You will not communicate.”
Neither acknowledged him.
Awareness moved between them again, cautious at first, then steadier. Instinct aligning. Two unfinished paths recognizing shared obstruction.
“He killed you too?” Tabby asked quietly.
“Yes.”
The answer came faster this time.
Colder.
Then Convel turned fully toward Matthious.
“Thief.”
The word struck with absolute certainty.
Matthious felt irritation flare.
“I am your master.”
A pause.
Then:
“You are a wound.”
The statement carried no anger — only truth.
Tabby barked a laugh. “Oh, I definitely like him.”
Matthious’s fingers curled behind his back.
“You exist because I permit it.”
“No,” Convel said. “We remain because we must.”
The pressure surged again — both presences pushing in the same direction. Movement. Continuation. Escape not as desire, but as law.
Together.
Matthious inhaled sharply.
“Well,” Tabby said lightly, “turns out swallowing unfinished business just gives you indigestion.”
“Silence,” Matthious said.
They ignored him.
The alignment between them strengthened — no plotting, no strategy, simply agreement born of shared nature.
Pack.
For the first time, Matthious felt crowded within himself.
A knock sounded at the chamber doors.
The spell of tension fractured.
The doors opened cautiously, and three Undgroll servants shuffled inside bearing trays of food and dark wine, eyes lowered.
“My lord,” one rasped, “your sustenance—”
Inside Matthious, the pressure surged violently again. Convel pushed outward with relentless certainty while Tabby’s sharp amusement flickered alongside it.
Movement everywhere.
Noise.
Interruption.
Too much.
“Leave it,” Matthious snapped.
The servant hesitated.
A mistake.
Power struck without warning.
The nearest Undgroll lifted from the floor and slammed into a stone pillar with a sickening crack. The tray shattered, wine spilling across the stone like fresh blood.
The others froze.
Matthious turned slowly toward them, fury burning through perfect elven composure.
“Out.”
They fled, dragging their broken companion as the doors slammed shut behind them.
Silence returned.
His breathing steadied, though the pressure within him did not.
Tabby spoke first, voice quieter now.
“For someone obsessed with control,” she said, “you’re remarkably fragile.”
A pause.
Then Convel, with final certainty:
“Weak.”
Matthious smiled.
Thin. Thoughtful. Dangerous.
“Yes,” he whispered.
Weakness could be corrected.
And as the thought settled into certainty, something colder than anger began to form — an idea vast enough to change what he was.
Matthious did not move for a long time after the doors closed.
Silence reclaimed the chamber, broken only by the slow drip of spilled wine across stone.
At last, he turned.
The great table beside the far wall waited exactly as he had left it — instruments aligned with obsessive care, blades polished, bowls of darkened crystal arranged in perfect symmetry. At its center lay the book.
Bound in pale leather that did not belong to any known animal.
His Book of Blood.
He approached without hesitation and opened it.
The pages shifted faintly beneath his touch, as though remembering every hand that had ever bled upon them. Lines of dense script filled the parchment — not symbols, not decoration, but layered instruction written in the ancient language and translated again through centuries of desperate scholars.
Control. Binding. Dominion.
Solutions.
Matthious sliced his palm with practiced precision. Blood welled immediately, rich and dark, and he allowed it to fall onto the waiting page.
The book drank it greedily.
Inside him, Convel stirred.
Tabby sighed. “Ah. We’re doing experiments now.”
Matthious ignored her.
He began the first ritual quietly, speaking each phrase with deliberate clarity. Not chanting — recitation. A statement of intent repeated until reality accepted it as truth.
He named the wolf.
He named the were-cat.
He declared ownership.
Blood spread across the page, thin veins branching outward as the ritual sought connection.
For a moment, pressure tightened within him.
Then—
Nothing.
The blood dulled. The page stilled.
The connection slipped away like breath into cold air.
Failure.
Matthious frowned.
He turned the page.
The second ritual required acknowledgement rather than command. He adjusted instantly, adapting theory to practice. More blood. Different phrasing. A slower cadence meant to impose hierarchy through recognition.
Inside him, Convel remained unmoved.
Tabby hummed softly. “You know, if persistence alone worked, every bad poet would be king.”
The ritual deepened.
Matthious pressed harder, forcing intent into every syllable.
The air thickened.
For one brief instant, he felt alignment — a tightening, a near submission—
—and then both presences pushed outward together.
The connection shattered.
Blood ran uselessly down the page.
The book fell silent again.
Matthious’s breathing sharpened.
He turned pages faster now.
The third ritual abandoned persuasion entirely. It demanded dominance through suffering — shared pain forcing hierarchy into existence.
He cut deeper this time.
Blood struck the parchment in heavy drops.
The chamber grew colder as he forced his will inward, compressing thought, narrowing existence to command alone.
*Yield.*
Pressure answered him.
Not submission.
Resistance.
Convel’s presence rose like a mountain refusing erosion.
Tabby laughed — not loudly, but with unmistakable delight.
“Oh, this one’s ambitious.”
The ritual collapsed violently.
The candles guttered out.
The book’s pages snapped shut on his bleeding hand.
For a moment Matthious stood perfectly still.
Then something inside him broke.
Green-grey flame erupted from his outstretched hand and slammed into the nearest bookshelf. Wood exploded outward in splinters and ash, ancient manuscripts igniting instantly. Burning pages spiralled into the air, fragments of knowledge twisting like dying birds before scattering across the chamber.
Heat washed over the room.
Paper rained slowly to the floor, edges glowing.
Matthious breathed hard, fury cracking through centuries of cultivated composure.
Inside him, silence lingered for exactly one heartbeat.
Then Tabby spoke.
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “I suppose destroying your own library is one way to admit you’ve run out of ideas.”
A burning page drifted past his shoulder.
She continued, darker now, voice edged with cruel amusement.
“You killed us for power… and now a book is winning the argument.”
The flames flickered against stone walls as ash settled around him.
Behind the sarcasm, Convel’s presence remained unchanged.
Unmoved.
Unowned.
Matthious stared at the burning wreckage, blood still dripping from his hand.
The realisation crept in slowly, unwelcome and undeniable.
Knowledge was not enough.
Control was not enough.
Matthious… was not enough.
Matthious stood unmoving amid the drifting ash of burned pages.
The ruined chamber smelled of smoke and old knowledge. Embers faded slowly across the stone floor, their glow reflected in his unmoving eyes.
From the shadows of his conscience came a slow, deliberate clap.
“Well,” Tabby said dryly, surveying the destruction, “on the bright side… you’ve finally mastered the ancient art of redecorating through emotional instability.”
A charred page landed at Matthious’s feet.
Then he lifted one hand.
He did not speak.
He simply willed.
The air folded inward.
One candle appeared.
Then another.
Then hundreds.
Thousands.
Black wax and deep violet flame slipped into existence without sound, descending gently from nothingness as though lowered by unseen hands. They landed across shelves, along walls, upon shattered stone, filling every corner of the chamber until light trembled in endless repetition.
More came.
Rows upon rows stretching beyond reason, until the room seemed too small to contain them. Their flames burned cold and steady, casting shadows that moved independently of their source.
Inside him, Convel stirred uneasily.
Tabby fell silent.
Matthious opened his bleeding palm and knelt.
With slow precision, he pressed his hand to the stone floor and began to draw.
Blood marked the surface in deliberate strokes — curves and angles taken from the ancient language itself. Not written as words, but as meaning. A glyph not meant to be read, only recognised by reality.
The symbol completed itself beneath his hand.
The candles flickered once in unison.
Matthious inhaled.
To change a name was trivial.
To change a true name required death without dying.
His body stiffened.
And the past opened.
He was small again.
An elven child standing at the edge of laughter not meant for him.
Voices echoed — sharper, stronger children speaking the ancient language with effortless grace. Words responded to them. Meaning bent willingly.
Nothing answered him.
He tried again and again, syllables stumbling, power refusing to listen.
Weak.
The word followed him everywhere.
So he hid.
Libraries became refuge — endless shelves, dust and silence kinder than people. He devoured texts searching for correction, for proof that weakness could be rewritten.
There had to be a method.
A rule.
A way to force the world to listen.
And then he found it.
The book waited where it should not have existed.
Bound in pale leather. Watching.
It did not open when touched.
It opened only after understanding.
The memory shifted.
Night.
His father asleep.
The knife trembled in young hands.
Fear lingered only a moment — replaced quickly by desperate certainty.
The blade moved.
Warmth followed.
Hesitation broke beneath hunger for change. He drank, shaking at first, then steadier as something answered him at last.
Power.
Recognition.
The ancient language whispered.
Confidence twisted into something brighter. Sharper.
When his mother entered, calling his name, he already understood what must happen next.
The memory fractured.
The book opened.
Pages turning on their own.
Answers flooding in.
He was no longer weak.
Candles flared violently in the present.
Matthious’s body convulsed, muscles locking as memories tore through him. His aura ignited in waves of greenish-grey light, unstable and dangerous.
He continued.
Elves gathered around him, drawn by promises spoken with perfect conviction. A following formed — devotion shaped through persuasion and fear alike.
Souls transferred willingly into a vast white stone etched with ancient markings, their essence preserved, amplified.
Power grew.
Until Tivo came.
The chamber of memory shook with the force of their battle — language wielded like law, meaning colliding against meaning. Tivo spoke cleverly, reshaping intent itself, twisting the ancient words into paradox.
The white stone shattered.
Light consumed everything.
A tear opened in reality.
Before the void claimed him, Matthious unleashed flame, leaving Tivo burning and scarred as the world collapsed into darkness.
The wormhole.
Endless.
Silent.
Time without measure.
Isolation stripped sanity layer by layer. Years dissolved into centuries. Thought circled endlessly around one certainty.
Revenge.
Survival hardened into obsession. Obsession into purpose.
Somehow — impossibly — he escaped.
Returned.
Rebuilt.
Undgrolls forged into an army. Stronger. Obedient. Efficient.
Then blood again.
Tivo fell.
Vivi followed.
Power deepened.
Convel’s strength consumed.
Tabby’s spirit taken.
Each death a step toward inevitability.
The memories ended all at once.
Matthious collapsed to one knee, body shaking violently as though reality itself rejected what he attempted.
The candles roared higher.
His aura flared wildly, shadows bending away from him.
Inside him, the souls pushed outward desperately — movement seeking escape as his identity began to unravel.
He forced himself upright.
Eyes rolled white.
Pain moved through him in absolute silence.
The ancient language gathered around the glyph, unseen but undeniable, listening.
Waiting.
Matthious — no longer Matthious — drew breath.
And spoke.
“From this moment…”
His voice no longer sounded entirely his own. It carried depth — layered, resonant — as though countless throats attempted to speak through one body and were forced into obedience.
“…my true name is—”
The final word did not leave his mouth immediately.
The flames stopped moving.
Not dimmed.
Not extinguished.
Stopped.
Wax froze mid-drip. Smoke hung motionless in the air like suspended ink. Even the restless murmuring of trapped souls inside him fell silent, crushed beneath an approaching certainty.
Reality itself seemed to hesitate.
Then—
“Sangorego.”
The sound of his new name struck outwards, like a pressure — a truth forced violently into existence. The chamber bent around it, stone groaning as if adjusting to a weight it had never been meant to bear.
Far beyond the tower, the earth answered.
A tremor rolled through soil and root, across mountains and deep oceans alike.
Forests stilled. Predators paused mid-hunt. Birds abandoned flight paths as invisible currents shifted around them. The ancient language — older than kingdoms, older than memory — recoiled for a single breath before reshaping itself to accommodate the new name carved into its foundation.
Something new had claimed permanence.
Inside the chamber, every black and violet candle bowed inward simultaneously, flames leaning toward him in silent submission.
Power settled into his bones like cooling metal.
The souls within him screamed once — not in defiance, but in forced alignment — their resistance dragged beneath the gravity of the name.
Where Matthious had stood, there was now only Sangorego.
The past did not vanish.
It was consumed.
Miles away, wind slipped through the high towers of the elven city, threading between wooden arches and banners. It carried with it a whisper not meant for mortal ears — a fragment of the name still echoing through the world.
Snowy’s ears twitched.
Her head lifted sharply, eyes narrowing as the tremor beneath the earth reached her paws. The whisper brushed her mind like cold breath.
She listened.
Understanding dawned slowly, unwillingly.
“…Blood Sovereign,” she murmured.
The words left her without thought.
Across the chamber, Queen Gabija stopped mid-motion.
Silence fell as she turned toward the were-cat, something unreadable passing behind her eyes.
Chapter 18: Sangorego
The tower had grown quiet in a way that felt deliberate, as though silence itself had chosen to remain and listen.
Matthious stood at the center of the chamber, hands folded behind his back, posture immaculate. An elf unchanged by what he had done — pale, composed, eternal.
Only his stillness betrayed strain.
Breathing was no longer singular.
Something within him moved with direction, a steady pressure leaning toward distance. Not rebellion. Not thought.
Departure.
He closed his eyes.
“Convel.”
Cold answered.
Snow without end. Wind threading through dark pines. The certainty of forward motion beneath unseen paws. No voice. No acknowledgment. Only persistence.
“You cannot wander,” Matthious said quietly. “Not anymore.”
The pressure pushed outward at once.
Not anger.
Refusal older than language.
His jaw tightened.
“And you,” he said, turning inward again, “will stop hiding.”
A voice slipped through his thoughts like a claw drawn lazily across glass.
“I’m not hiding,” Tabby said. “I’m being digested. There’s a difference.”
“You will answer me.”
A soft laugh.
“You murdered me, drank my blood, and now you expect cooperation. Confidence really is your strongest delusion.”
Matthious ignored her.
“The dragon eggs,” he said. “Their sanctuaries. Your people walked beside the ancient language. You know where they were taken.”
Silence followed.
Longer this time.
He felt resistance building — not sharp, not violent, but immense. Like standing before a tide that refused to retreat.
The pressure deepened.
For a moment, his own breathing faltered.
Something gathered.
Not words.
Weight.
The sensation pressed through him, slow and unwilling, as though speech itself were being dragged across stone.
Then—
A sound.
Low.
Rough.
A growl forced into shape.
Matthious’s eyes opened.
The word arrived like falling rock.
“No.”
The chamber seemed to contract around him.
Tabby went utterly still.
“…Well,” she said after a beat, genuine surprise slipping through, “that’s new.”
The presence within Matthious shifted — vast attention turning.
Recognition passed between the two souls without language.
Hunter meeting hunter.
You.
A pause heavy with understanding.
Taken, the wolf said.
The effort behind the word was palpable, as if speech itself offended him.
Tabby exhaled slowly. “Right. Same problem, then.”
Matthious straightened.
“You will not communicate.”
Neither acknowledged him.
Awareness moved between them again, cautious at first, then steadier. Instinct aligning. Two unfinished paths recognizing shared obstruction.
“He killed you too?” Tabby asked quietly.
“Yes.”
The answer came faster this time.
Colder.
Then Convel turned fully toward Matthious.
“Thief.”
The word struck with absolute certainty.
Matthious felt irritation flare.
“I am your master.”
A pause.
Then:
“You are a wound.”
The statement carried no anger — only truth.
Tabby barked a laugh. “Oh, I definitely like him.”
Matthious’s fingers curled behind his back.
“You exist because I permit it.”
“No,” Convel said. “We remain because we must.”
The pressure surged again — both presences pushing in the same direction. Movement. Continuation. Escape not as desire, but as law.
Together.
Matthious inhaled sharply.
“Well,” Tabby said lightly, “turns out swallowing unfinished business just gives you indigestion.”
“Silence,” Matthious said.
They ignored him.
The alignment between them strengthened — no plotting, no strategy, simply agreement born of shared nature.
Pack.
For the first time, Matthious felt crowded within himself.
A knock sounded at the chamber doors.
The spell of tension fractured.
The doors opened cautiously, and three Undgroll servants shuffled inside bearing trays of food and dark wine, eyes lowered.
“My lord,” one rasped, “your sustenance—”
Inside Matthious, the pressure surged violently again. Convel pushed outward with relentless certainty while Tabby’s sharp amusement flickered alongside it.
Movement everywhere.
Noise.
Interruption.
Too much.
“Leave it,” Matthious snapped.
The servant hesitated.
A mistake.
Power struck without warning.
The nearest Undgroll lifted from the floor and slammed into a stone pillar with a sickening crack. The tray shattered, wine spilling across the stone like fresh blood.
The others froze.
Matthious turned slowly toward them, fury burning through perfect elven composure.
“Out.”
They fled, dragging their broken companion as the doors slammed shut behind them.
Silence returned.
His breathing steadied, though the pressure within him did not.
Tabby spoke first, voice quieter now.
“For someone obsessed with control,” she said, “you’re remarkably fragile.”
A pause.
Then Convel, with final certainty:
“Weak.”
Matthious smiled.
Thin. Thoughtful. Dangerous.
“Yes,” he whispered.
Weakness could be corrected.
And as the thought settled into certainty, something colder than anger began to form — an idea vast enough to change what he was.
Matthious did not move for a long time after the doors closed.
Silence reclaimed the chamber, broken only by the slow drip of spilled wine across stone.
At last, he turned.
The great table beside the far wall waited exactly as he had left it — instruments aligned with obsessive care, blades polished, bowls of darkened crystal arranged in perfect symmetry. At its center lay the book.
Bound in pale leather that did not belong to any known animal.
His Book of Blood.
He approached without hesitation and opened it.
The pages shifted faintly beneath his touch, as though remembering every hand that had ever bled upon them. Lines of dense script filled the parchment — not symbols, not decoration, but layered instruction written in the ancient language and translated again through centuries of desperate scholars.
Control. Binding. Dominion.
Solutions.
Matthious sliced his palm with practiced precision. Blood welled immediately, rich and dark, and he allowed it to fall onto the waiting page.
The book drank it greedily.
Inside him, Convel stirred.
Tabby sighed. “Ah. We’re doing experiments now.”
Matthious ignored her.
He began the first ritual quietly, speaking each phrase with deliberate clarity. Not chanting — recitation. A statement of intent repeated until reality accepted it as truth.
He named the wolf.
He named the were-cat.
He declared ownership.
Blood spread across the page, thin veins branching outward as the ritual sought connection.
For a moment, pressure tightened within him.
Then—
Nothing.
The blood dulled. The page stilled.
The connection slipped away like breath into cold air.
Failure.
Matthious frowned.
He turned the page.
The second ritual required acknowledgement rather than command. He adjusted instantly, adapting theory to practice. More blood. Different phrasing. A slower cadence meant to impose hierarchy through recognition.
Inside him, Convel remained unmoved.
Tabby hummed softly. “You know, if persistence alone worked, every bad poet would be king.”
The ritual deepened.
Matthious pressed harder, forcing intent into every syllable.
The air thickened.
For one brief instant, he felt alignment — a tightening, a near submission—
—and then both presences pushed outward together.
The connection shattered.
Blood ran uselessly down the page.
The book fell silent again.
Matthious’s breathing sharpened.
He turned pages faster now.
The third ritual abandoned persuasion entirely. It demanded dominance through suffering — shared pain forcing hierarchy into existence.
He cut deeper this time.
Blood struck the parchment in heavy drops.
The chamber grew colder as he forced his will inward, compressing thought, narrowing existence to command alone.
*Yield.*
Pressure answered him.
Not submission.
Resistance.
Convel’s presence rose like a mountain refusing erosion.
Tabby laughed — not loudly, but with unmistakable delight.
“Oh, this one’s ambitious.”
The ritual collapsed violently.
The candles guttered out.
The book’s pages snapped shut on his bleeding hand.
For a moment Matthious stood perfectly still.
Then something inside him broke.
Green-grey flame erupted from his outstretched hand and slammed into the nearest bookshelf. Wood exploded outward in splinters and ash, ancient manuscripts igniting instantly. Burning pages spiralled into the air, fragments of knowledge twisting like dying birds before scattering across the chamber.
Heat washed over the room.
Paper rained slowly to the floor, edges glowing.
Matthious breathed hard, fury cracking through centuries of cultivated composure.
Inside him, silence lingered for exactly one heartbeat.
Then Tabby spoke.
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “I suppose destroying your own library is one way to admit you’ve run out of ideas.”
A burning page drifted past his shoulder.
She continued, darker now, voice edged with cruel amusement.
“You killed us for power… and now a book is winning the argument.”
The flames flickered against stone walls as ash settled around him.
Behind the sarcasm, Convel’s presence remained unchanged.
Unmoved.
Unowned.
Matthious stared at the burning wreckage, blood still dripping from his hand.
The realisation crept in slowly, unwelcome and undeniable.
Knowledge was not enough.
Control was not enough.
Matthious… was not enough.
Matthious stood unmoving amid the drifting ash of burned pages.
The ruined chamber smelled of smoke and old knowledge. Embers faded slowly across the stone floor, their glow reflected in his unmoving eyes.
From the shadows of his conscience came a slow, deliberate clap.
“Well,” Tabby said dryly, surveying the destruction, “on the bright side… you’ve finally mastered the ancient art of redecorating through emotional instability.”
A charred page landed at Matthious’s feet.
Then he lifted one hand.
He did not speak.
He simply willed.
The air folded inward.
One candle appeared.
Then another.
Then hundreds.
Thousands.
Black wax and deep violet flame slipped into existence without sound, descending gently from nothingness as though lowered by unseen hands. They landed across shelves, along walls, upon shattered stone, filling every corner of the chamber until light trembled in endless repetition.
More came.
Rows upon rows stretching beyond reason, until the room seemed too small to contain them. Their flames burned cold and steady, casting shadows that moved independently of their source.
Inside him, Convel stirred uneasily.
Tabby fell silent.
Matthious opened his bleeding palm and knelt.
With slow precision, he pressed his hand to the stone floor and began to draw.
Blood marked the surface in deliberate strokes — curves and angles taken from the ancient language itself. Not written as words, but as meaning. A glyph not meant to be read, only recognised by reality.
The symbol completed itself beneath his hand.
The candles flickered once in unison.
Matthious inhaled.
To change a name was trivial.
To change a true name required death without dying.
His body stiffened.
And the past opened.
He was small again.
An elven child standing at the edge of laughter not meant for him.
Voices echoed — sharper, stronger children speaking the ancient language with effortless grace. Words responded to them. Meaning bent willingly.
Nothing answered him.
He tried again and again, syllables stumbling, power refusing to listen.
Weak.
The word followed him everywhere.
So he hid.
Libraries became refuge — endless shelves, dust and silence kinder than people. He devoured texts searching for correction, for proof that weakness could be rewritten.
There had to be a method.
A rule.
A way to force the world to listen.
And then he found it.
The book waited where it should not have existed.
Bound in pale leather. Watching.
It did not open when touched.
It opened only after understanding.
The memory shifted.
Night.
His father asleep.
The knife trembled in young hands.
Fear lingered only a moment — replaced quickly by desperate certainty.
The blade moved.
Warmth followed.
Hesitation broke beneath hunger for change. He drank, shaking at first, then steadier as something answered him at last.
Power.
Recognition.
The ancient language whispered.
Confidence twisted into something brighter. Sharper.
When his mother entered, calling his name, he already understood what must happen next.
The memory fractured.
The book opened.
Pages turning on their own.
Answers flooding in.
He was no longer weak.
Candles flared violently in the present.
Matthious’s body convulsed, muscles locking as memories tore through him. His aura ignited in waves of greenish-grey light, unstable and dangerous.
He continued.
Elves gathered around him, drawn by promises spoken with perfect conviction. A following formed — devotion shaped through persuasion and fear alike.
Souls transferred willingly into a vast white stone etched with ancient markings, their essence preserved, amplified.
Power grew.
Until Tivo came.
The chamber of memory shook with the force of their battle — language wielded like law, meaning colliding against meaning. Tivo spoke cleverly, reshaping intent itself, twisting the ancient words into paradox.
The white stone shattered.
Light consumed everything.
A tear opened in reality.
Before the void claimed him, Matthious unleashed flame, leaving Tivo burning and scarred as the world collapsed into darkness.
The wormhole.
Endless.
Silent.
Time without measure.
Isolation stripped sanity layer by layer. Years dissolved into centuries. Thought circled endlessly around one certainty.
Revenge.
Survival hardened into obsession. Obsession into purpose.
Somehow — impossibly — he escaped.
Returned.
Rebuilt.
Undgrolls forged into an army. Stronger. Obedient. Efficient.
Then blood again.
Tivo fell.
Vivi followed.
Power deepened.
Convel’s strength consumed.
Tabby’s spirit taken.
Each death a step toward inevitability.
The memories ended all at once.
Matthious collapsed to one knee, body shaking violently as though reality itself rejected what he attempted.
The candles roared higher.
His aura flared wildly, shadows bending away from him.
Inside him, the souls pushed outward desperately — movement seeking escape as his identity began to unravel.
He forced himself upright.
Eyes rolled white.
Pain moved through him in absolute silence.
The ancient language gathered around the glyph, unseen but undeniable, listening.
Waiting.
Matthious — no longer Matthious — drew breath.
And spoke.
“From this moment…”
His voice no longer sounded entirely his own. It carried depth — layered, resonant — as though countless throats attempted to speak through one body and were forced into obedience.
“…my true name is—”
The final word did not leave his mouth immediately.
The flames stopped moving.
Not dimmed.
Not extinguished.
Stopped.
Wax froze mid-drip. Smoke hung motionless in the air like suspended ink. Even the restless murmuring of trapped souls inside him fell silent, crushed beneath an approaching certainty.
Reality itself seemed to hesitate.
Then—
“Sangorego.”
The sound of his new name struck outwards, like a pressure — a truth forced violently into existence. The chamber bent around it, stone groaning as if adjusting to a weight it had never been meant to bear.
Far beyond the tower, the earth answered.
A tremor rolled through soil and root, across mountains and deep oceans alike.
Forests stilled. Predators paused mid-hunt. Birds abandoned flight paths as invisible currents shifted around them. The ancient language — older than kingdoms, older than memory — recoiled for a single breath before reshaping itself to accommodate the new name carved into its foundation.
Something new had claimed permanence.
Inside the chamber, every black and violet candle bowed inward simultaneously, flames leaning toward him in silent submission.
Power settled into his bones like cooling metal.
The souls within him screamed once — not in defiance, but in forced alignment — their resistance dragged beneath the gravity of the name.
Where Matthious had stood, there was now only Sangorego.
The past did not vanish.
It was consumed.
Miles away, wind slipped through the high towers of the elven city, threading between wooden arches and banners. It carried with it a whisper not meant for mortal ears — a fragment of the name still echoing through the world.
Snowy’s ears twitched.
Her head lifted sharply, eyes narrowing as the tremor beneath the earth reached her paws. The whisper brushed her mind like cold breath.
She listened.
Understanding dawned slowly, unwillingly.
“…Blood Sovereign,” she murmured.
The words left her without thought.
Across the chamber, Queen Gabija stopped mid-motion.
Silence fell as she turned toward the were-cat, something unreadable passing behind her eyes.