In the depths of his consciousness, Mordecai had felt the limiter snap. It hadn't been a mechanical click but a psychic rupture. For six months, he had been a man trying to hold back a tidal wave with a dam made of sand.
He had been the "responsible" one, the "structured" one, the one who counted every coin and every drop of mana to ensure the city's stability. He had been a prisoner of his own caution.
But as the eighteen hundreds pulled through the architecture of his soul, the dam didn't just break; it evaporated.
"HRAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
The scream that tore from his lungs was the sound of a man reclaiming his divinity. It was the sound of twenty-two years of being a bystander finally erupting into a protagonist.
It was a primal, soul-shattering roar that carried the weight of every suppressed insult, every swallowed pride, and every moment he had chosen "safe" over "true."
Then, the world broke.
