The karmic vortex unleashed by Veyra in Emberfall roared towards Jadeheart, a hungry maw of unraveling karma. Elias felt its approach like a physical pressure, a cold dread in his soul. But the immediate, terrifying cost of the vortex fell on Mei Lin.
The ley line disruptions, amplified by the spreading vortex, sent a surge of raw, chaotic Prana through their shared karmic bond. Mei Lin gasped, a choked cry escaping her lips. She collapsed to her knees, her body wracked by violent tremors, her eyes rolling back in her head. Her mind, already strained by the influx of Elias's history, was now flooded with an overwhelming torrent of data.
She was experiencing visions of all his past manipulations, every lie, every cold calculation, every indirect consequence, but this time, amplified by the vortex's chaotic resonance. The sheer volume of karmic debt, the ethical compromises, the innocent lives impacted by his machinations, crashed down on her like an inescapable wave. She writhed on the ground, overwhelmed, her mind on the brink of shattering.
"Mei Lin!" Elias cried, rushing to her side. He could feel her pain, the desperate struggle of her mind. The bond, meant to connect them, was tearing her apart.
Suddenly, Mei Lin's eyes snapped open, blazing with an unnatural, ethereal light. Her voice, though strained, resonated with a chilling power, no longer entirely her own. It was a voice imbued with the cosmic weight of all the karma she was witnessing.
"Stop!" she screamed, her voice echoing in his mind through the bond. "Undo what you've done, Elias! The lies… the manipulations… they are tearing us apart! This bond… it's killing me! You are killing me with your karma!"
She strained against the unseen force, her face contorted. "I will sever the bond!" she declared, her voice rising to a desperate, unearthly pitch. "I will rip it apart! And if I do… your own karma will unravel. Everything you are, everything you have done, every manipulation you've wrought… it will unravel. You will become a void!"
Elias froze. He saw the genuine threat in her eyes, the desperate, raw power building within her. She was capable of it. If she severed the bond in this state, her pain and the vortex's chaos would turn the bond into a weapon, destroying him.
This was the ultimate ultimatum. He had to undo what he had done, to shift the karmic burden back to himself, or face complete annihilation.
"No!" Elias roared, clutching her hands, desperately trying to focus her chaotic energy. "Don't sever it! I will undo it! I will bear it! I will bear all of it!"
With frantic urgency, drawing on every ounce of his understanding of karma and his own desperate will, Elias began to teach her. Not how to sever, but how to invert the bond. How to push the karmic backlash, the burden of his manipulations, back to its source: himself. He guided her, painstakingly, through the intricate mental pathways, showing her how to funnel the chaotic energy from her shattered mind directly into his own spiritual core.
The pain, when it came, was searing, blinding. It was the accumulated weight of decades of karmic manipulation, of countless lives altered, now crashing down on him. Elias screamed, his body arching, his senses overwhelmed. He felt every ripple, every bruise, every stain of his chosen path. Mei Lin, however, slowly regained her composure, the unholy light fading from her eyes. The visions ceased. The bond, though still present, was no longer a conduit for his pain. The burden was his alone.
He had saved her, again. But at an immeasurable cost. He had absorbed his own karmic debt, and it felt like a thousand invisible knives piercing his soul. The bond was intact, but its nature had fundamentally shifted. He was now the sole receptacle of his own dark karma, bearing the full weight of his necessary evil.