CHAPTER 509: SHACKLES II

The Herald’s avatar braced as Leon surged forward, molten chains lashing in a desperate storm. But every link that should have pierced, wrapped, or crushed him dissolved on contact—unmade by the stillness of the Null Vow.

Leon’s steps echoed like a drumbeat against the world itself. Each strike of his heel sent ripples outward, silencing the Herald’s firestorm a little more, snuffing out the raging decree that iron and ash would rule.

The titan roared, flames bursting from its helm in an eruption that turned the crucible into a miniature sun. "No silence can bind flame! No vow can undo shackles forged from eternity!"

It drove its fist downward, a blow meant to collapse the entire battlefield into molten ruin.

Leon didn’t step aside. He raised his own fist, small against the world-splitting hammer of iron and fire. His voice cut through the roar, calm and absolute:

"Your vow ends here. Mine begins."

The clash landed.

The Herald’s strike should have crushed mountains, but the Sixth Pulse inverted it—the law of endurance fractured, the decree of destruction muted. The titan’s gauntlet cracked down the middle, the fire bleeding out in silence.

Leon drove his fist upward, Karmic Loop multiplying its weight, Tripart Echo splitting it across three simultaneous points, Absolute Return folding inevitability into the blow. All wrapped in the Null Vow’s absolute denial.

The Herald’s chest caved inward. The titan staggered back, chains unraveling mid-air like threads cut loose.

Leon didn’t stop. He stepped into the final strike, voice ringing like the toll of a bell:

"Shell Pulse: Null Vow—Final Echo."

His fist tore through the avatar’s helm.

The explosion wasn’t fire. It wasn’t chains. It was silence. A collapse of law itself, leaving the crucible ringing in emptiness.

The Herald’s avatar shattered into fragments of molten iron and faded flame. The chains dissolved into black dust, and the walls of fire guttered out, leaving only cracked stone and the stench of ash.

Leon stood in the quiet, his chest heaving, body trembling with fractures threatening to rip him apart. His gauntlet smoked, bleeding fissures glowing faintly. But he remained standing.

From the throne’s ruins, only the echo of the Herald’s voice lingered—less fury, more reverence:

"...Then you are Flamebreaker, indeed."

The crucible collapsed around them, dissolving into motes of gray light.

And in the silence that followed, his team rushed toward him. Milim caught his arm, Roselia pressed a healing hand to his back, Naval and Liliana guarded the perimeter while Roman hauled rubble aside like it weighed nothing.

But Leon’s eyes weren’t on them.

They were on the shard in his chest, glowing faintly.

The Sixth Pulse had awakened.

And the Throne War was only just beginning.

The crucible’s collapse left the group standing in a wasteland of broken stone. The flames had died, the chains had dissolved, and the oppressive law was gone—replaced by an eerie, open silence.

Leon staggered once, catching himself on Milim’s shoulder. The glow of the Sixth Pulse still flickered faintly in his chest, though it burned more like a wound than a triumph. Every heartbeat rattled his body as though the resonance could tear him apart from the inside.

Roselia pressed her hand firmly to his back, golden healing light flowing into him. "You shouldn’t even be standing... Leon, what did you just do?"

Leon’s voice was hoarse. "...I didn’t destroy his law. I... refused it. Null Vow silences what should be absolute."

Naval frowned, trident resting across his shoulders. "Then it’s not just power. It’s rebellion itself."

Liliana’s eyes narrowed, scanning the sky where the distortion had been. "And that makes it dangerous. The Thrones won’t ignore this. You didn’t just fight one... you broke his decree."

Roman’s gauntlets were still smoking from the fight. He exhaled slowly, looking at Leon not with pity but with something like grim respect. "Which means they’ll come for you harder. One doesn’t spit in the face of Sovereigns without consequence."

Milim, still steadying Leon with surprising seriousness, tilted her head. "But you won. And you found something new. That means the shard trusts you more than before, right?"

Leon didn’t answer immediately. He looked down at his hands—shaking, cracked with faint lines of glowing resonance. The Sixth Pulse hummed quietly beneath his skin, as if daring him to call on it again.

"...It’s not about trust," he murmured. "It’s about burden. Every pulse is heavier than the last. If I falter, it’ll crush me before the Thrones ever get the chance."

Silence settled over the group. The city around them remained broken, the faint shimmer in the sky gone, as though the battlefield itself had been erased by the Null Vow’s silence.

And far above, in places no mortal eyes could reach—

The Thrones stirred.

Obsidian banners rippled. Dreamscapes shattered. Chains groaned. Across the heights of the Tower, Sovereigns paused in their eternal decrees to turn their gaze downward.

For the first time in ages, something new had entered their war.

A law that silenced law.

A Pulse that vowed no decree would be absolute.

And at its center stood Leon—the Flamebreaker who had dared fracture commands and now, dared to deny them altogether.

The Throne War had noticed.

High above the ruins, where mortal sight could not follow, the Thrones gathered.

Not in one place, not bound by walls or distance—but through resonance. Each Throne’s domain stirred, their laws overlapping until the Tower itself hummed with their presence.

Kaelith’s banners unfurled in unseen skies, the Warlord’s decree sharp as steel. His voice was the first to cut through the silence Leon had left behind.

"He broke the Herald’s command."

From a gulf of endless chains, the Shackled Sovereign’s laugh rumbled. Kar’veth’s voice dripped with iron and ash.

"Not broke. Silenced. The boy carries a rebellion no Throne has ever endured. I felt it when his pulse struck... my law shivered."

A veil of dreamlight rippled, and Vaer’Zhul’s presence bled through, the Dreambane’s tone half-mirth, half-contempt.

"Shivered, you say? You, who think yourself eternal? Hah. Do you not see? The shard has chosen well. Null Vow is not just silence—it is denial. It dares to say we were never sovereign to begin with."

Another voice, softer yet heavy enough to bend thought, slipped into the gathering. The Obsidian Elder, whose patience was older than the Tower itself.

"...This will spread. If a mortal can fracture laws and silence decrees, then what is a Throne? What is sovereignty?"

Kaelith’s banners cracked like thunder, silencing the question.

"A Throne does not yield. This... Flamebreaker will be tested again. He has not climbed high enough to claim war with us."

Kar’veth chuckled darkly. "And yet he has already declared it. Every step he takes with that Pulse is a wound to our law. Let him climb. Let him bring his rebellion higher. The war will welcome him."

The Thrones fell into silence again—but the Tower did not. Across its countless boundaries, faint ripples spread. Decrees quivered. Laws faltered, only for a heartbeat. All because a mortal’s vow had refused them.

Back in the ruins, Leon and his team had found a brief respite. They sat among the tilted stones, tending wounds and catching breath. The silence of Null Vow still lingered in the air, as though the world itself was reluctant to speak again.

Roselia pressed a cloth to Leon’s temple, her voice soft but firm. "You changed something today. Not just for us. For everything."

Leon leaned against the broken wall, his eyes half-shut. The weight of her words sat heavy, but his answer was simple.

"...Then we keep moving. If the Thrones felt it, they’ll be waiting. And if they’re waiting—" He exhaled slowly, fists tightening despite the tremor in his hands. "—then I’ll show them what echoes remain."

His team exchanged looks—fear, faith, and fire mingling in their eyes.

Because they all knew it now.

The Throne War had shifted.

And Leon was no longer just climbing. He was rewriting the climb itself.