Minutes passed as the light in Henry’s eyes darkened before at last the feeling of panic running through his skull reached a climax. A feeling of weight had settled into a body which trembled and felt as though floating despite being coldly pressed into the earth. The feeling of gravity imposed itself at last, tethering him to a reality he did not belong in and never even wished to be a part of. The feeling was easily understood as security and the conceptual weight of belonging to this world, of not just being in but owning every particle of terror floating in the air. These statuesque bodies and the smell of flesh were not separate from him. Henry’s past was not something that needed to be put away. Panic was not something which could take effect in his mind without a conscious will to allow it. All these things were his, not the body’s or world’s or laws of reality’s to control.

Sweat continued to pour into the dirt as cold gripped tightly from the soil. Panic did not subside, and yet there was a sense of focus taking hold. Through the midst of the racing thoughts of all the things he did wrong— unable even to die, unable even to end this torment of existence— a single tether had emerged to bring him back to confront the real before him, should only he allow it to. It was a means to face the situation that Henry could not resist accepting. Without it he would be unable so much as to open his eyelids, and yet as soon as his focus shifted fully to it all the physical manifestations of anxiety and the absolute domination a panic attack can have on the body began at once to fade.

Something with authority beyond the world began to take hold as though Henry had let go of the self allowed to fester in this rotting corpse of a body he had once tried to escape. It was akin to passing out without loss of consciousness, as though falling asleep while fully awake. Something cold, oppressive, and incalculably ancient was there, somewhere, within him. He had allowed it to take hold before, he had made a pact with it before, and yet it was fundamentally different to everything felt before. It had all been… he wasn’t even sure.

There was a connection formed in that moment with Elder Sion, there had been something placed there when he died the first time awakened then. He had felt it pulse with power as he rose from a muddy grave and had allowed it to rid him of anxieties, but it had always been shallow, a cord attached to nothing floating in the cosmic wind. The words Henry had heard with the archon were intelligible and carried clear meaning, and yet carried little power in the physical world he had returned to as though unable to bridge the gap between dimensions. Now something had taken hold on the other side.

With the archon he had heard a single clear voice, but now there was an absolute cacophony on the other side of the connection as if the wire were experiencing enough interference to transmit only static. His ears had been opened to the sound of absolute chaos, but despite nothing being heard from the wire, he could feel pieces of himself dissolving into it. The things that made him human were being replaced with a fuzzy snow as the cold weight at the center of what had once been a void just below the center of his chest was again expanding. Would he allow this?

Yes, of course he would. The things he continued to lose were fear, anxiety, dread, and panic. The memories lost were things he did not wish to remember. The pact he had formed was not something done hastily, nor something he would come to regret. If he would lose himself it would be nothing less than a joy. The self once contained in this shell of a man was worth no more than the empty space it once occupied.

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Henry expressionlessly stood from the earth in a single mechanical motion. As the light of a thousand rays of fire graced his eyes it did not sting as they adjusted. What he saw meant nothing to the brain behind once-dead windows into the world.

Rays and balls of fire shot at random from the sky, slowly wafting down like rays of light from the sun itself. One after another the Scourgeborne continued to fall, crystalline armor now melting without so much as a hint of smoke. They did not so much die as fall like their strings had been burned away under the full might of the concentrated power of the sun. Holes in the earth formed beneath the feet of those once standing. Henry had no way to know how deep they went, nor did he particularly care. The statues of charred flesh once present had now been burned away. Two or three Scourgeborne remained and though Amanda had summoned two great red tornadoes in an attempt to clear the sky, it was futile against this incalculably ancient and yet infantile god of fire.

These attacks could have no effect on Henry when he gained the power rightful to this new connection, they were children's playthings, mere imitations of what it meant to hold power in this world. As he watched the soldiers melt or turn to ash scattering in the wind, Henry felt nothing. These men were weak, animated by duty lacking even a semblance of substance behind it. He felt not even contempt for their weakness, merely acknowledging the failures for what they were.

Meanwhile, Regulus continued to protect Amanda with everything he had. His sword had melted to the hilt, armor missing great chunks and some had been melted into the flesh beneath, and yet he remained standing, hands together above her head. It did not matter in the end as the tide of fire continued to pour from the sky. Even as a ray of fire pierced him from the heavens his hands remained stationary, only falling when he did to the earth. Though Henry had once hated the man, in that moment his death was meaningless. There was no purpose in feeling for the death of a worm, however imposing it had once been to the ant of his old self.

Amanda’s tornadoes continued to rage, but they had no effect. Not even the edges of black smoke cleared at the point of contact with them in the sky, and the space remained dark save for the light of fire raining down. She had begun to move the two red pillars of whirling death together to augment their power, but just before they were able to make contact she cursed and released them.

“I’m sorry, but he’s too much,” she spoke softly, looking away from Henry’s direction.

He did not dignify this showcase of cowardice with a response, and she had no time to clarify. Instead she merely reached into her blue satin robe, pulled out a red vial, and threw it to the circle of runes she had traced into the earth at her feet.

The runes pulsed softly and as their red light grew brighter Amanda turned to him and said a few final words in a voice pleading for forgiveness and just a tiny bit of trust,

“I promise I’ll come back for you.”

With a flash of red she vanished, and Henry was left alone beneath the blackened sky.