Jason did the craziest thing possible in that moment.
He walked straight into the open portal.
The underworld creatures still pouring through the tear reacted instantly. Several lunged at him from both sides, jaws unhinging, void-mist trailing from their ash-bone limbs. The instant any part of them made contact with his body, they simply crumbled. Flesh that was not flesh blackened and peeled away. Bone-like structures collapsed into gray dust. The process was not explosive or dramatic—it was quiet, absolute, and final. They rotted out of existence mid-motion, their forms disintegrating before they could even finish their attacks.
Within seconds a clear path of drifting ash marked Jason’s route to the tear.
Ylva’s eyes widened in recognition and fear. She knew that power. It was not adaptation. It was not the Marrow Lords. It was pure life-taking magic—the kind that existed only to end existence itself. Anything that touched him while that authority was active died without resistance or exception. The fact that Jason had opened that door so casually told her exactly how far past restraint he had gone.
Jason stopped at the threshold of the portal and turned his head slightly. The Ember Lord and Shade Lord still tore through the remaining invaders on the settlement side, fire and darkness consuming everything that moved. His voice cut across the battlefield with absolute command.
"Remain here. Watch over my family. Eliminate every threat that approaches. Do whatever it takes—including killing yourselves if necessary."
Both Lords paused for a fraction of a second, acknowledging the order, then resumed their slaughter with renewed ferocity. They would hold the line. They would not fail.
Ylva, Mae, and Tauriel stared at him. The radiant dome around the house still held, the infant floating inside it, cooing softly as if the entire war outside were nothing more than distant noise. Jason’s gaze lingered on the baby for a long moment. The child was already so strong. It had blocked blasts that should have leveled the entire structure, and it had done so without any conscious awareness of its own power. That fact settled something cold and protective in Jason’s chest.
He looked back at his partners one last time.
"I will be right back."
Then he stepped through the tear.
The change was immediate and violent.
Scorching heat slammed into his lungs like a physical blow.
The air itself burned. Breathing became a deliberate act of will; each inhale dragged fire down his throat and into his chest.
The ground beneath his feet was not soil or stone—it was cracked volcanic rock veined with rivers of molten lava that pulsed like living arteries. Geysers of fire erupted without warning in every direction, painting the sky in shades of furious orange and deep crimson. The horizon was a jagged line of active volcanoes, their peaks continuously vomiting ash and flame into a sky that had never known clouds or stars.
Jason stood still for three full seconds, letting the hostile environment wash over him. The life-taking authority still radiated from his skin in invisible waves. Any lesser creature that might have lingered near the entrance simply ceased to exist the moment it drifted too close.
He rolled his shoulders once, then cracked his neck from side to side with deliberate calm.
There would be no half-measures here.
He had come to kill everything that called this realm home and then collapse the entire place under the weight of his full power. The creatures that had dared reach for his family would learn—too late—that some thresholds should never be crossed.
Jason took his first step deeper into the volcanic hellscape, eyes cold, power already beginning to rise around him in earnest.
-
The radiant dome flickered once, then slowly dissolved. Tauriel’s staff now with Mae, as she was shaking aggressively in utter fear.
The word, coward, was beginning to make a lot more sense with her characteristics.
Light peeled away in soft layers until nothing remained but ordinary air. The infant, no longer suspended, settled gently into Ylva’s arms as if the entire defensive working had been nothing more than a temporary cradle. The child cooed, tiny fingers curling and uncurling, completely unaware of the destruction still raging beyond the ruined walls of the house.
Ylva and Mae stared at the baby in shared, speechless shock.
The scale of the magic had been enormous. The dome had withstood the initial explosion that tore half the house apart. It had held against the pressure of the underworld creatures and the raw presence of the first apparition. And it had done all of it without a single conscious command from the infant. That fact alone told them everything they needed to know.
This child was truly Jason’s daughter.
Mae exhaled shakily, still gripping the staff. "She didn’t even know she was doing it. There was no focus, no casting. It just... happened."
Ylva adjusted her hold on the baby, eyes never leaving the small face. "Subconscious. Pure instinct. The power answered the threat on its own." Her voice carried a mixture of awe and something deeper—recognition. "Only his bloodline could produce something like this so early."
Tauriel remained near the doorway, watching the ongoing battle between the Marrow Lords and the remaining invaders. Ash and blackened bone still littered the courtyard. She turned back when Ylva spoke her name.
"Tauriel. How is she able to do that?" Ylva asked. "A barrier of that strength... most trained mages couldn’t raise it under pressure."
Tauriel hesitated. For a moment she looked almost embarrassed. "I only found out the baby could use magic at all when we reunited with Jason. Before that, there were small things—lights, minor shifts in the air—but nothing like this. I didn’t know she was capable of anything on this scale."
Ylva studied her for a second longer, then simply nodded. She did not push. The situation was already strained enough without turning the moment into an interrogation.
Outside, the Ember Lord’s chains of fire still lashed through clusters of underworld creatures while the Shade Lord’s tendrils dragged others into unraveling darkness. The immediate threat had lessened, but the portal remained open and the air still carried the residue of dread.
Mae stepped closer, concern etched across her features. "We need to move her somewhere safer until Jason returns. The house won’t hold if another wave comes through."
Ylva opened her mouth to answer.
Then she felt it.
A sudden, warm rush of fluid ran down the inside of her leg, soaking through the fabric of her clothing in an unmistakable cascade. The sensation was so abrupt that she froze mid-breath. Mae’s eyes dropped, widened, and snapped back up to Ylva’s face.
In that single shared glance, all three women understood.
Ylva was going into labor.
Tauriel’s composure cracked for the first time. "Now? In the middle of this?"
Mae moved instantly, one hand supporting Ylva’s elbow while the other kept her staff ready.
"We don’t get to choose the timing. The barrier is down. The Lords are still fighting. Jason is on the other side of that tear."
Her voice stayed controlled, but urgency bled through every word. "We need to get her inside the remaining structure and prepare. Now."
Ylva’s free hand tightened around the infant. A low, involuntary breath escaped her as the first true contraction began to build. The baby, still oblivious, let out a soft, happy sound and reached toward Ylva’s face.
Outside, another underworld creature screeched as the Ember Lord incinerated it. The portal pulsed. The air remained heavy with the promise of more violence.
And inside the ruined house, three women faced a battle of an entirely different kind.
-
The moment Jason stepped fully into the tear, the flood of underworld creatures ceased. No new shapes forced their way through the pulsing wound in reality. The portal still hung open, radiating heat and the distant roar of volcanic fury, but nothing else emerged. That single change was all the Ember Lord and Shade Lord required.
They turned their full attention to the enemies that remained.
The Ember Lord raised both arms and clasped its molten hands together. A technique it had never displayed before activated—Solar Collapse. All the ambient heat across the battlefield was violently drawn inward toward a single point between its palms, forming a miniature sun of pure white-gold fire no larger than a fist. The Lord then thrust both hands forward. The compressed star shot across the courtyard and detonated at the center of the largest cluster of creatures. The explosion did not expand outward in a normal blast. Instead it inverted, crushing everything within a twenty-meter radius under catastrophic gravitational heat. Ash-bone bodies folded in on themselves, liquefied, and were reduced to drifting motes of white ash before they could even scream.
Three remaining amalgamations tried to flee toward the house. The Shade Lord answered with a new technique of its own—Event Horizon Mantle. Its entire form dissolved into a spreading field of absolute darkness that crawled across the ground like living ink. Any creature the darkness touched was instantly locked in place, their movements, mana, and even the decay of their own forms suspended.
The Shade Lord then clenched an invisible fist. The captured entities collapsed into singular points of ultra-dense shadow and vanished with soft, final implosions, erased from existence without leaving residue.
One particularly resilient horror—taller than the others, armored in layered plates of fused void-bone—charged the Ember Lord in a last desperate attack. The Lord did not meet it with chains or fists. It opened its chest cavity, revealing a core of roaring stellar flame, and released Corona Lance.
A spear of pure solar energy erupted forward, punching straight through the creature’s center mass and continuing onward until it buried itself in the distant treeline. The horror stood frozen for a fraction of a second, a clean hole burned through its torso, before its entire body disintegrated into glowing cinders.
Silence returned to the settlement.
The Ember Lord and Shade Lord stood motionless near the open tear. Faint residual heat still shimmered around the Ember Lord’s form. Thin threads of darkness drifted around the Shade Lord like lazy smoke.
Neither entity displayed triumph, relief, or any recognizable emotion. They simply waited, exactly as commanded—guardians without sentiment, executioners without hesitation.
Their past affiliation with the Marrow had stripped such things away long ago. Jason’s order had been extreme and specific.
They had carried it out without deviation. Now they watched the tear, ready to destroy anything else that might try to cross, including themselves if the situation demanded it.
Behind them, the ruined house remained quiet. The immediate threat on this side of the portal was over.