Blood dripping and panting heavily he could finally look away from his work. Mahogany's mind had crumbled back when he had started flaying her alive with the nihilation, but he had just kept going.

  Despite the torture, her magic had still fought to keep her alive. Her limbs were no more than stumps and her skin had been all but removed. Where her eyes had been only empty hollow pits remained.

  With his mind back under his control he raised his hand towards her comatose body and channeled what remained of his power into one last spell.

  "Nihilate..."

  She finally breathed her last as the magic tore a hole through her heart and finished her for good. He was covered from head to toe in blood, yet it did little to bother him. All that truly remained was the growing numbness in his extremities.

  His time trapped within Road had done something to him. It had pushed him past the breaking point and stripped him of all reason. While trapped there he had been so concerned with his own survival that he hadn't even noticed how quickly he was slipping into the howling abyss within the recesses of his mind.

  Was he even really human anymore? His recent displays of strength had been far beyond anything he should have been capable of. Being able to dig his fingers through flesh or throwing a grown woman like a ragdoll with one hand was far beyond what should have been possible.

  Garuda had been inhumanly strong as well, and it felt like his body was changing to push him towards that same incomprehensible physical ability as time went on. Were all mages able to reach that degree of natural ability or were people like him and Garuda the odd ones out?

  His growth felt unnatural on all levels, but at the same time he had been pushing himself past his limits so many times as of late. It was the law of the jungle and he had put himself on the path of an apex predator, yet like all predators found in nature he was driven by the extremes of fear. He feared for himself and he feared for his kind, which drove him to destroy everything that would upset his world.

  "Am I even human anymore?" he mumbled as his nails dug into his chest.

  Scratching and tearing until the skin broke. He dug deeper and deeper as warm blood dripped from the wound. Was there anything human inside him anymore? Had his internals been replaced with something foreign and monstrous? Only by digging through his own flesh would he find the answer.

  Thin arms wrapped around him. Someone was embracing him, but he couldn't stop looking for that thing inside that would prove he was still human.

  "You need to stop!" someone cried out, but it sounded so muted almost as if the entire world was under water.

  Ears were ringing and all color was fading from his vision. The world was spinning and it felt like it would never stop. Hands wrapped around his arm, but there was no way they could ever stop him when they were so weak.

  He couldn't hear any words anymore. They were all just incomprehensible sounds anyways. Changing pitches and shrill vocalizations that meant nothing to him.

  "Stop it!" the words struck him like hammer and left him frozen in place.

  Moving was no longer possible. The body wouldn't respond to any commands. His fingers were trapped inside his flesh, but they couldn't go any deeper. Why couldn't he find any humanity inside his own flesh? All he had found inside was foreign tissues masquerading as flesh and blood.

  "You're human, Al, no one has replaced your flesh."

  "Nothing inside of you has been replaced, but your mind is reaching its limit and you need to just stop."

  "I need to find it!" he cried out.

  "You won't find anything because you haven't changed inside."

  "It's not me! It's all wrong! It doesn't belong to me!" he screamed as his fingers began moving once more.

  He pulled his fingers out of the wound and saw the fleshy viscera stuck underneath his nails. Was that his flesh? It didn't look right. There was an indescribable wrongness to it that wasn't visible to the naked eye, but there had to be something wrong with it because not even the pain felt right anymore.

  "Don't get any closer to him! He's not entirely here!" someone shouted, but who were they even yelling at?

  "He was exposed to something completely alien and established unity right after, so make sure she stays far away from him!"

  "What degree of unity?" another voice said.

  "Near perfect! They became completely indistinguishable to the sight!"

  Were they talking about him? He couldn't figure out who was speaking at any given time. All of the voices seemed so distant and unfamiliar. They were threatening. It scared him, but he didn't know why. No they had to be there to kill him. That was the only thing that made sense.

  "His magic is doing something and he's not responding to the bond anymore!"

  "Then step back from him! He's already beyond the event horizon so we have to realm him!"

  "If we trap him he might just end up killing himself!"

  "Then that is something you'll have to live it because I'm realming him right now!"

  Everything went black. There was no sound, no sight, and no sensation of any sort. It was complete absence of everything. He couldn't even differentiate himself from the void around him. There was complete and utter nothingness.

  Pietro breathed out heavily as the spell finally broke down the last of his son's defenses. The kid had resisted it until the very last moment, but now he was trapped within the realm until he either managed to escape it or his mind became stable enough for him to be released from his captivity.

  "Jane, you better get to explaining what just happened because he should not have been able to become one with his soul," he said as he turned to look at her.

  "I was keeping Jennifer hidden when one of the Autumn witches attacked us, and he ended up being trapped within a realm by some kind of spirit."

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  "What did it look like?" he asked her slowly.

  "I don't know because I never saw it, but it created a massive road where there had never been one," she exclaimed.

  "I tried to warn him, but by the time I tried he had already been swallowed up by it!"

  A massive road? That reminded him of one spirit that the Autumn clan had claimed they had bound. It was a nasty thing that overseer had put out an extermination order on, but they had never been able to track its movements. It would appear on lonely roads far away from the cities and anyone caught by it was never found again.

  "He returned almost an hour later, but by then he had already slipped into an unstable unity!"

  He looked over towards the limbless and flayed corpse leaning against a nearby tree. Al must have been completely gone by the time he had finished them off. It looked like they had been tortured over many hours, but the only fatal wound looked recent.

  "Was that the summoner? Because we were led to believe that it was the matriarch that had bound it."

  "Of course they were the summoner! I felt their bond with the spirit break when Al escaped its realm!" she cried out.

  This was a perfect opportunity. Not only had they unleashed one of the most dangerous spirits on record near a populated area, but they had also lost control over it and ended up setting it free. It went against their agreement and broke all rules of engagement. Releasing an entity with a suspended extermination order into the wild was a federal offense and tantamount to high treason against overseer itself.

  He reached for his phone and began dialing the number he kept hidden within the most secure depths of his mind. A few signals passed before someone picked up on the other side.

  "High control speaking. Please state your identity before proceeding," they said.

  "Special lead investigator Pietro Hext of the Avalon branch."

  He could feel a spell peering into his soul for a few moments before the person on the other side continued speaking.

  "Your identity has been confirmed and you do not appear to have been compromised by any form magical compulsion. You may state your business."

  "I would like to report a breach of the great compact as well as an act of high treason against overseer authority," he said slowly as to not display any unnecessary emotions.

  "What is the basis of your accusations?"

  "The fielding and unlawful release of a spirit entity beyond classification with a suspended extermination order. Codename Road."

  The operator didn't respond. They had most likely requested that someone contact a divinator to confirm that Road was no longer within Autumn control. His excitment only kept growing as the minutes passed. If Road had escaped its bond they would have grounds to absorb the Autumn clan into the overseer, which would mean they would no longer be able to act as an independent entity.

  They would assimilate them into the overseer command structure like clan Summer, which would mean two of the Avalonian witch clans would have been succesfully absorbed. No longer would they be able to flaunt overseer authority by calling upon the old agreements.

  "Codename Road has been confirmed to no longer be under Autumn control," the operator said.

  "You may inform the nearest member present that clan Winters is now under overseer protection and that any future Autumn aggression will no longer be covered by the agreement surrounding conflict between clans."

  "We have forwarded our demands for an unconditional surrender to clan Autumn and until they officially agree to our terms they will be considered lawless, which means that any action taken towards them or their members is permissible."

  "Special lead investigator, Pietro Hext, you may now end the call."

  He pressed the end call button and slid the phone back in his pocket. The Autumn clan had sealed their own fate. If they didn't comply with their demands it would mean war. A war that overseer would win decisively due to their far superior numbers.

  "Jane Winters, matriarch of clan Winters," he said slowly.

  Her eyes went wide. Speaking to her officially had made her anxious. He could see her taking up a more defensive posture as he stared her down.

  "You and your clan is now under overseer protection. Any and all past offenses are forgiven, and by the terms of the agreements the war has ended in your favor due to the treasonous acts committed by clan Autumn."

  "What?" she stuttered.

  "Clan Autumn will be absorbed by overseer or be wiped out if they refuse to comply with our demands."

  She fell to her knees with tears in her eyes. Her revenge had come to pass not through their extermination, but instead because of a singular slip up. They had tried to kill Al with an incredibly dangerous spirit, but it had escaped their control in doing so.

  "What about Al? What will become of him now?" she asked him weakly.

  That was the crux of it all. Al had become far too dangerous to be allowed to walk freely. The constant stress of fighting for his life and being exposed to a being that powerful had fundamentally broken him. There was a very real chance that he would never recover from the madness and that he would one day have to be put to death. It almost made Pietro's cold heart ache to think about it.

  "Dad, what's going to happen to Al!" Jennifer cried out.

  "He will have to be kept in containment until he is deemed stable enough to be released or we receive orders to exterminate him."

  By his own estimation Al had already reached a physical threat factor of three, which made him a serious threat to public safety. Even if Al's crimes had been officially forgiven he was still a warlock and an incredibly unstable one at that. All of the damage to Al's mind had finally caught up with him, and there was no way of knowing if he would ever truly recover. The kid had finally well and truly snapped.

  "Jane, I need you take Jennifer back to the house and then you two will stay there until I return," he declared.

  He could sense defiance growing within her, but she relented when he directed his cold gaze at her. She grabbed Jennifer by the shoulder and began taking her back towards the house.

  Once he was alone he could finally inspect the state of the realm he had trapped Al within. While the boundary was imperceptible to the naked eye, an astute magical sense could spot the outline of the seam in reality itself.

  The place had been created with his own magic and would be composed of nothing but darkness. There was very little chance of Al managing to break free, but at the same time it was something he couldn't risk. He would have to call in the experts to analyze Al's condition.

  If Al had fully lost his humanity they would have to exterminate him before he figured out a way to escape. By the time he had gotten there Al was already beginning to lose touch with his own body, which meant there was a good chance he was on the verge of becoming something inhuman.

  Should Al manage to become nothingness incarnate, they would have no way to capture him. Most likely he would just self destruct during the attempt, but if he succeeded he would have become unstoppable. Few mages ever succesfully turned themselves into nonhumans, but those who did often became something far worse than any known breed of monstrosity within creation.

  One way or the other he had to make peace with the fact that there was a good chance his son would be no more. Either he would leave the realm a corpse or he would escape it as something far worse than they had ever seen before.

  He reached for his phone once more and called the office. If he didn't report it and get some experts on the scene there would be no chance of Al ever making it out of the realm with his humanity intact.

  "I have trapped a mage under overseer protection within a realm of my own creation," he forced out weakly as his emotions began to unravel.

  "Pietro, what's going on?"

  It was Lola that had picked up. Normally he wouldn't display such weakness before a subordinate, but under these circumstances he would allow himself one minor display of vulnerability.

  "The mage established an unstable unity with their soul and appear to be trying to perform some form of transfiguration to cope with the destruction of their sense of self."

  "Pietro, what exactly are you implying here?"

  There was concern in her voice, but he didn't have any time to explain. He could sense the magic lashing out somewhere within the realm and if it was left unchecked for much longer there was a good chance that Al would break free.

  "I need a containment team sent to my current location, and I also need you to contact clan Spring and have them send over an expert on transfiguration to see if the process is still reversible."

  "Stay put, I'll get on it right now!" she shouted as he hung up.

  His heart was on the verge of breaking. He could accept the death of his son, but if Al were to completely annihilate his own being it would leave a wound he could never recover from. The very idea of it terrified him.

  If Al transfigured himself there would be no son to bury. There would only be an unbelievably powerful magical entity unleashing its rage upon the world around it. They would have to seal it away for fear of it ever returning should they somehow manage to destroy it.

  Should all else fail there was still one option available to him, but he didn't know if he was ready to call in such a favor. It would mean handing an unbelievably powerful weapon to an already dangerous organization, but if that ended up as his last resort he would take it in a heartbeat.