The Void Stirs; The Pyre Reignited, Calamity Reborn[END]

[Jao Shi]

Back in the observation room, the flatline drone abruptly ceased.

A crackle from the heart monitor.

Eridin froze, his hand hovering over a shutdown sequence. He stared at the monitor. A single, jagged green line spiked across the screen. It was followed by a sound that shook the very foundations of the lab.

THUMP.

A single, impossibly slow and powerful heartbeat. The dull crystal above Jao’s body flashed, its black-blue light returning, now synced to the beat. The glowing cracks in the floor pulsed with it.

THUMP.

Jao’s chest rose, a deep, rattling intake of air.

Eridin stumbled back, a gasp catching in his throat. His scientific mind, usually a fortress of logic and process, was crumbling under the assault of the impossible. "Heartbeat… nominal range exceeded by… four hundred percent. Respiration… deep, rhythmic. Cellular regeneration…" His voice trailed off as he stared at another monitor, his eyes wide with horrified awe. "By the Fathers, their reviving him."

THUMP.

The third beat was a shockwave. It rattled the instruments on their trays and sent a visible pulse of black-blue light through the crystal and the floor. The thick leather and steel restraints binding Jao's limbs groaned, and the metal began to glow a dull, angry red as if under immense heat.

Slowly, Jao’s head lifted from the slab. His eyes, which had been glassy and dead, snapped open. But they were not Jao’s. Nor were they the pure, malevolent glow of the crystal. They were twin cobalt abysses, ancient and deceptive, with embers of igneous black fire burning in their depths. A reptilian slit, dark and vertical, bisected each pupil.

They held no confusion, no pain—only an old, terrifying clarity.

"Jao?" Eridin whispered, taking a half-step forward before his survival instinct screamed at him to stop. "Are you...ok?"

A low sound rumbled in Jao’s chest, a sound like grinding stone and distant thunder. When he spoke, the voice that emerged was a terrifying harmony: Jao’s cultured cadence layered with a guttural, primal resonance that vibrated in the very air.

"The moth has burned."

With a deafening shriek of tortured metal, the restraints on his wrists and ankles didn't just break; they vaporized into superheated dust. He sat up, the movement not of a man recovering but of a predator uncoiling. The glowing cracks in the floor pulsed faster and brighter, forming a network of veins connected to its new heart.

"Jao" looked down at his own hands, turning them over. Faint, dark patterns, like the memory of scales, now traced their way up his forearms, pulsing with a faint inner light in time with his heartbeat. The A.I.O.N.S. nanites composed over him intertwined with his very flesh.

"You called it a failure, Eridin." The smoldering eyes lifted, pinning the scientist in place. "An underestimation. You sought to pour an ocean into a cup. The cup broke."

"But… you're alive! Your vital signs are… You are more than alive!" Eridin stammered, gesturing wildly at the monitors that now displayed data he couldn't comprehend. "The synthesis, the fusion—it worked!"

A dry, mirthless chuckle escaped Jao's lips, the sound itself raising the hairs on Eridin’s neck. "Fusion" He swung his legs over the side of the slab, his bare feet touching the cold floor. The glowing lines on the floor converged at his feet, bathing him in an ethereal glow. "This is a covenant. An agreement born in the space where death intersects. To birth something, other."

He rose to his full height, seeming taller and broader than before. The power radiating from him was a palpable force, a pressure that made the air thick and heavy.

"Jao?... You are Jao...right?" Eridin breathed, his composure utterly gone. He was no longer a scientist observing an experiment; he was a mouse before a serpent.

"Are you mad, Eridin? Of course, I am Jao...and yet I am also...so much more."

He spoke, and though his body was repairing itself, his physical form still felt weakened from the ordeal.

"And your goals?" Eridin asked, his fear now warring with a frantic, desperate curiosity.

The abyssal eyes swept over the lab, over the broken machinery and the dulled crystal, which now seemed to serve him, not contain him. They finally settled back on Eridin, not with malice but with an unnerving sense of purpose.

"As they have ever been."Jao's voice was low but carried the weight of an epoch. "Edo will be cleansed of its rot. The cycle of vengeance will be broken. The old world razed." He took a step forward, and Eridin felt the tonnage of something menacing.

"But....this has all taken a lot out of me...I..must rest.."

It was then that he collapsed. Eridan stood over him, his face befallen with a grimace. He knew a personality shift was possible should the merger succeed. But this...this felt wrong. He couldn't quite place it, but this didn't feel like...Jao. For now, he would get him to the medical bay and monitor his recovery. Perhaps it was simply his psyche adjusting to such a rampant change....he could only hope he hadn't unleashed something even worse upon the world...