The mana seals fractured like ice beneath a hammer.
Jack's hand fell away from the throne room doors, and the barriers he'd woven dissolved into wisps of dark energy.
The air pressure in the Spire shifted.
It was subtle enough that mortals would have missed it entirely. The temperature didn't drop or rise.
Instead, the atmosphere itself seemed to compress, as if the very space around Jack had become denser, weighted by his presence.
The darkness that had swallowed the throne room for thirty days exhaled outward, dispersing into the castle corridors like smoke settling back into its shadow.
Jack stepped through the open doors.
Thirty days of subjective isolation had left no visible mark on him. His golden-orange eyes remained steady, but everything else had changed.
His aura was silent now.
Where once there had been the faint crackling of demon transformation, the barely restrained power was bleeding smoke and shadow. Now there was nothing.
