Chapter 341: You Shall Cooperate, Whether You Like It Or Not

The double doors opened into a hall large enough to swallow Noah’s entire cell block twice over.

He was led in, the mages holding his chains, but his steps slowed involuntarily as he took it all in.

The ceiling arched high above, and the floor had been cleared of everything except the work happening at its center. A ritual circle covered most of the stone floor, its lines drawn with the kind of care that spoke of hours of careful work.

It wasn’t a single circle but a series of them, nested and intersecting, dense with runes that Noah didn’t recognise.

Mages moved around its edges, some still drawing, and others checking completed sections with focused expressions, a few feeding mana into anchor points that glowed faintly in response.

It was large. Whatever it was for, it required a significant amount of power to execute.

Edric stood to one side, arms folded, studying the work with the quiet attention of someone checking something important before committing to it. He turned as Noah entered.

“Noah Webb,” he greeted with a nod. “We prepared all of this for you.”

Noah looked at the circle, then back at Edric. “What is it for?”

“You don’t need to know that. All you need to do is cooperate.”

“And if I don’t cooperate?”

Edric held his gaze for a moment, his expression neither threatening nor particularly warm. Just certain, in the way that people are certain about things they have already decided.

“You will cooperate, Noah,” he said. “Whether you’d like to or not.”

Noah’s eyes flicked to the mages who continued their work around the circle without looking up. Then his eyes surreptitiously slipped around the room, calculating and measuring distance.

He had no intention of cooperating. Whatever this ritual was, he was sure it wasn’t exactly designed with his interests in mind.

The moment it was completed, whatever leverage he currently had, which was next to nothing, would be gone entirely. This was his only chance. He couldn’t afford to fail.

He moved without warning.

He yanked the chain to his left hard, pulling the mage holding it off balance and dragging him forward. Before the man could recover, Noah had the chain looped, his hands feeding the links around the mage’s throat and pulling tight.

The man choked, hands flying to his neck.

Noah pulled it tighter, glaring at the other mages in the room. “Remove the chains off me,” he said loudly, “or I crush his throat.”

The hall went quiet as every mage stopped. Then their eyes moved to Edric, waiting for his instructions.

Edric looked at Noah. Then at the choking mage. Then back at Noah, with the expression of someone who had anticipated this and still wasn’t impressed.

He sighed once, quietly.

Then he raised two fingers and signalled.

The lightning came from above, slamming into the chains with a crack that filled the entire hall. It traveled through the metal instantly, into Noah and the mage he was holding.

Both their muscles locked simultaneously.

Noah hit the floor hard, his body refusing every instruction he gave it.

The paralysis was total. He could feel his muscles, could feel the intent to move traveling down from his brain, and feel it arrive at nothing.

His fingers wouldn’t close. His legs wouldn’t push. Even his breathing had narrowed to shallow, involuntary pulls that his chest managed without his input.

The mages moved quickly. Two of them pulled their colleague clear, checking him over before setting him against the wall. Four others took hold of Noah, lifting him without ceremony and carrying him to the position at the center of the ritual circle.

They set him down inside the innermost ring and drove the chain ends into iron links embedded in the floor, locking them in place. Then they stepped back.

Edric crouched down beside him.

He studied Noah’s face for a moment, and something close to approval moved through his expression. “That was a decent effort,” he said. “Genuinely.”

Noah’s jaw tightened, the paralysis already beginning to fade at the edges.

“But as I told you,” Edric continued, his voice unchanged, “you will cooperate with this ritual. Whether you’d like to or not.”

He straightened and walked away, rejoining the mages at the circle’s edge.

Noah pulled against the chains as the feeling returned to his limbs, testing each link, searching for any give at all.

There was none.

A few minutes passed. Around him, the final runes were completed.

Edric stepped to the edge of the circle and placed both palms flat against the air above the outermost ring.

The mana that poured out of him was immense and immediate, the kind of output that made the air pressure in the room change.

Noah felt it against his skin before he saw the effects, a weight pressing inwards from every direction at once.

The breeze came first, moving in a tight spiral around the circle’s perimeter, picking up loose dust and sending it spinning.

The runes brightened in sequence, one ring igniting after another, moving inwards towards the center where Noah lay.

The light shifted as it traveled, passing through gold and white before settling into a deep, pulsing purple that threw strange shadows up the walls.

Then the floor changed.

The stone beneath him darkened, the purple spreading across it like ink dropped into water, and from within that darkness, chains began to rise.

They were unlike the ones on his wrists, thinner and more numerous, curling upwards with a slowness that made them look almost alive.

They wound around his arms and legs and torso, tightening. Then they pushed inwards, and Noah felt them breach his skin without breaking it, sinking into something deeper than flesh.

He knew what it was the moment it touched him.

They were trying to bind his soul to their will.

And then, unexpectedly, a grin spread across his face.

Edric had miscalculated.

It was a reasonable mistake. Against anyone else in that room, this ritual would have worked completely and without resistance. Against anyone else summoned into this world, the compulsion would have found purchase and taken hold.

But Noah Webb was not anyone else.

He felt the chains searching inside him and finding too many things to grip.

He kept the grin off his face.

He would play along and appear bound. Right until the moment he walked free.

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