Tarak, for all the pressure in the air and the way the wind churned like it was reacting to bloodshed before it began, honestly didn't know what was going on.

  He had just come out to find Sol.

  That was it.

  She'd been avoiding him lately—or really, avoiding everything. And Tarak, despite having no natural gift for the delicate balancing act that was the social realm, understood one thing very clearly: Sol would definitely bug him later if he didn't check in now.

  That was reason enough.

  He'd followed her scent—faintly earthy, with traces of sweat and the tiniest sting of frustration. Her scent always changed slightly when she trained. Tarak didn't think much of it, just followed it out past the village into the low fields that danced beneath the seven suns.

  And then he saw her.

  Luna.

  Sol's sister.

  Only, what he was seeing didn't match any of the scenes he'd grown used to around the village—the ones where siblings shouted in jest, laughed through play-fights, flung mud or sparred without venom. This wasn't like that. Not even close.

  They weren't arguing in the normal way.

  They were clashing. Flaring. And worst of all, they were about to fight.

  Like really fight.

  He watched as Sol's breath heaved, her stance defensive but ready. And Luna... Luna stood with her hand extended like a blade, her eyes unrecognizable—shadows dancing just beneath the surface, something twisted and cold leaking out from the edges.

  It threw him.

  Hard.

  Because no matter how much he'd grown, no matter how instinctively he'd begun to understand combat and cultivation and even the strange structure of power that weaved its way through the world—he had never, not even once, considered the idea of truly fighting his sister.

  It was nonsensical.

  Unthinkable.

  Sparring? Sure. He and Tanya had done it once or twice. Knocked the breath out of each other. Traded blows until their limbs went sore. But there was never malice. Never intent to harm.

  The idea of inflicting pain on her—real pain—was foreign in the same way that willingly breaking his own bones would be.

  Why would you do that?

  Why would you ever want to?

  That was what confused him most now, watching Luna's expression warp under pressure, watching Sol's fingers tighten around her blade. It wasn't even just logic. On an instinctual level, his body rejected the entire premise of what was unfolding.

  His pupils narrowed faintly, slit crimson eyes trained on Luna.

  Something was wrong.

  Deeply wrong.

  Not just emotionally. Not just tension or old wounds bubbling to the surface.

  No, she didn't smell quite the same.

  Tarak knew that scent from the moment he'd met her—bright, soft, tinged with silver like the moons. But now, there was something else.

  Something off.

  It was subtle. Barely there. But Tarak's senses for the little time he had them seldom failed. He had walked among beasts. And he had walked among the wolves. Smell was unique. No matter what one went through that tended to be distinct. But Luna was different.

  She had changed. More than she should have.

  She wasn't the same Luna from that day in the flames.

  Not fully.

  None of it mattered now.

  None of it changed the fact that she had attacked him.

  That was real.

  That was present.

  That was immediate.

  And now, as they stood in the center of the clearing—the field pulsing beneath their feet, flowers trembling in the wind, birds long since scattered, light fractured into a storm of hues across the grass—he couldn't afford to consider the past anymore. Or rather his body told him he didn't have to.

  She had crossed a line.

  And no matter how confused he was, no matter how much he didn't understand the social storm that had led them here, he could feel the heat coiling in his gut. His tail flicked once—then again—digging a small furrow into the soil behind him. His lips didn't curl, but his stance shifted. Not fully aggressive. Not yet.

  But ready.

  His nostrils flared slightly as he exhaled through his nose, steady and slow, eyes narrowing as he read her posture.

  Tarak stepped forward, sunlight slicing across the planes of his face.

  She'd thrown the first blow.

  Now he would return it.

  Wind howled around the pair like a spirit in mourning, whipping grass flat beneath their feet and scattering petals from nearby wildflowers into the spiraling air. The field, once a quiet pocket of solitude beneath the gaze of the seven suns, had transformed into a maelstrom of motion and pressure. The scent of churned earth, numen, and rising heat filled the air.

  Luna surged forward—faster than before, her form sharper, deadlier. The transformation she had undergone made her footfalls barely graze the soil. Her hair fluttered wildly behind her, the silver strands catching light like blades of moonlight, her wings twitching with kinetic tension. Numen coiled around her fist, a spectral frost curling and cracking along her knuckles, leaving ghostly trails of vapor behind.

  She jabbed at Tarak's face, her fist sharp as a comet, aimed to shatter more than just bone.

  But Tarak met her blow with the callous ease of someone built to stop momentum. His hand snapped up, catching her strike with a meaty smack of palm meeting flesh. Without hesitation, he brought up a second arm beneath hers, hooking her elbow with effortless precision. His body twisted—not violently, but with a kind of monstrous fluidity—and her form was lifted and flipped overhead like a leaf in a hurricane.

  She crashed into the dirt behind him, the impact kicking up a thick, choking dust cloud that whorled and spun between them, obscuring her form completely. Tarak's four eyes narrowed, peering through the haze, trying to track her movements.

  And then, from within the swirling grit—shhk-shhk-shhk—came three sharp bursts.

  Shards of black ice screamed through the cloud, their edges jagged and vibrating with Luna's numen. The first two targeted his abdomen with sniper-like precision. The third, more vicious, came for his throat—seeking the vital pulse that beat in the center of his jugular.

  With three sharp BOOMS, the icicles collided with his body, snapping violently on contact.

  A shimmer of frost spread across his bronze skin, sticking in uneven patches—like shattered crystal clinging to iron. The cold dug into him, prickling nerve endings he didn't even know could feel that way. It was alien. Cold was new. He'd never experienced it—not like this.

  Tarak's breath fogged in front of his face, and for the first time in his life, he understood what chill truly was. His fingers twitched, eyes narrowing with wonder and calculation. This... sensation. This was ice?

  He didn't dislike it.

  But it did make him aware. More alert. More serious.

  He growled low in his throat—a sound not entirely human.

  And then she emerged.

  Luna burst from the mist, her silhouette backlit by a sheen of glowing frost. She now held Sol's wooden sword again, the stolen weapon seemingly wreathed in a pale blue mist. Her swing wasn't a simple slash—it ripped across the air with a slicing resonance. A blade of wind and ice shrieked forth from the arc, tearing a white gash through the air toward him.

  Tarak dropped low. His body bent backward in a crab-like arc and then flowed forward. He lunged, hands slamming to the ground as he sprinted on all fours like a beast unchained. The earth beneath him exploded with every stride, sending chunks of soil and torn roots flying. Cracks webbed outward with each push of his limbs, as if the planet itself couldn't quite handle the pressure of his speed.

  He reached her in a blur of raw force.

  His fist—a cannonball of corded muscle and ancient might—rocketed toward her stomach.

  But it passed through air.

  Not air, exactly.

  Through illusion.

  Her form vanished the moment his knuckles should have connected, breaking apart into a glittering cascade of translucent light, like a trick of the moons dancing across water.

  Tarak froze mid-motion, not from confusion but from analysis. She wasn't teleporting, not exactly. She hadn't just moved—she had rewritten her position. He didn't know how. Not yet. But it wasn't normal movement. It wasn't mere speed. It was something woven into the essence of her being.

  A lie made real.

  It was instinctual, primal, and unnatural all at once.

  The trick wasn't hers alone—it belonged to whatever she was now. A Nahemoth. A creature whose very soul distorted reality to protect itself. She didn't dodge by choice. Her presence refused to be where she was hit. Her world bent to her will, placing echoes of herself where pain would otherwise be.

  Behind him, the air shimmered with quiet power.

  He turned his head—just a fraction—and saw her.

  Luna stood poised in mid-air, a foot above the grass, her silver hair curling upward in the light wind, wings twitching behind her like the tensing shoulders of a predator before the pounce. And behind her, a massive pale moon—illogical, mythic, symbolic—had manifested in her wake, casting her in white light like an angel of cold judgment.

  Her expression was unreadable.

  But her eyes...

  Her eyes held nothing familiar in them.

  They were the eyes of a stranger.

  "The moon is the lord of everything that flows—High tide!" Luna roared, her voice carrying not just across the field but through the very bones of the land.

  The wooden sword in her hand sliced across the sky, and reality itself seemed to react. Behind Tarak, the air convulsed like it had been struck by a god's heartbeat. An unseen tidal force, massive and sudden, surged forward and slammed into his back like an ocean's wrath condensed into a single invisible blow.

  He didn't have time to plant his feet. His body was launched—thrown upward and backward, soaring through the air like a boulder fired from a divine catapult. The wind howled around him as grass and dirt exploded below, the field buckling under the raw release of Luna's numen-infused command.

  The pressure didn't hurt him. Not really. His body was too dense, too strong, too durable to be damaged by that amount of force alone.

  But stopping?

  That was another story.

  He tumbled mid-air, eyes narrowing as his limbs curled inward. The seven suns caught the glint of the edges of his hair as he twisted, tail whipping to reorient himself.

  Then Luna struck again.

  "Low tide!" she called, voice sharp and commanding, like a conductor summoning the crescendo of an orchestra made of oceans and gravity.

  She pointed her sword directly at him—and flicked it downward.

  The world responded.

  Another tidal force surged—not from behind, but from above and within. Like gravity had turned traitor. Like the world itself wanted him back on the ground—now. His descent became catastrophic, his body accelerating like a meteor falling from the edge of existence. The sky screamed around him as he was slammed into the earth with bone-rattling velocity.

  BOOOOM.

  A crater erupted from the impact, a shockwave peeling out in every direction as dirt, grass, and shattered stone were thrown skyward in a plume. The nearby trees bent from the force, their branches cracking, their leaves caught in the backdraft of violence. A flock of birds scattered into the heavens, screaming into the distance.

  For a moment, nothing moved.

  Smoke and dust curled upward in twisting spirals from the fresh wound in the earth.

  Then—*

  Tarak rose.

  Slow. Deliberate.

  Chunks of stone fell from his shoulders as he stood upright, knees straightening, neck cracking as he rolled it to the side. His tail lashed once behind him with a low, dangerous snap. His expression wasn't angry. Not exactly.

  But it was… annoyed.

  "...How annoying," Tarak muttered.

  A thin stream of smoke curled from his nostrils, coiling upward like the breath of some ancient furnace god just beginning to stir. The sound was low, almost like a snort—but laced with something far deeper. Something that didn't belong to a boy. Something that belonged to a force.

  Then he moved.

  This time, he didn't just run.

  He erased the space between them.

  His legs fired like pistons, each step shattering the ground beneath him, dirt kicked up in geysers of force. He broke the sound barrier in the blink of an eye, each movement a violent declaration of refusal. Refusal to yield. Refusal to be toyed with. He blurred forward, a living thunderbolt forged from muscle and fury.

  Luna responded immediately.

  "I am loved," she whispered.

  And then—louder, a proclamation that shook the air—"WORLD, SINK!"

  The effect was immediate.

  The earth beneath Tarak rippled as if it had turned to oil. Grass folded, flowers flattened, and the soil grew soft—not mud, not water, but something far worse. A formless, clinging abyss. A tar pit of numen-charged space that refused to support weight. It didn't simply collapse under him—it betrayed him. Like reality itself wanted him to drown.

  But Tarak?

  Tarak was not one to be fooled.

  His instincts screamed before his senses could even confirm it. And in that fraction—that sliver—of stability before the false terrain gave way completely, his tail snapped to the ground.

  CRACK.

  Like a spring-loaded cannon, he launched upward, soaring out of the trap, bypassing the false softness with raw physical might. His leap shattered the air itself, creating a burst of wind so violent it blew apart the pit trying to form below him. For a moment, he was airborne again—but this time not from Luna's command. This time, by his own will.

  And that was when he felt it.

  A strange ripple.

  That same weird force from before. But this time it didn't just strike his body—it ran through him. Not merely invisible—it was subtle. Intelligent. It didn't just push. It read his momentum, tracked his angle, and moved with him. It was no longer trying to knock him around like a toy. It was trying to co-opt his movement. Guide him. Dominate him.

  And within that force, he saw them.

  Blue lines of numen—thin and elegant—ran across the sky like veins, sketching an ephemeral net of divine will. They wrapped around him, flowing along the lines of his body not infiltrating just around; they traced his motion, his direction—trying to control him without stopping him. Like a world rewriting its gravity just to steer its threat off-course.

  But Tarak grinned now.

  Because now he knew what he was dealing with.

  This wasn't just a fight.

  This was a world trying to hold him back. How unique.

  "I am loved," Luna whispered again—but this time, her voice was lower, reverent, as though she was reciting from a divine scripture not meant for mortal ears. Her silver hair rose gently, caught in a wind that didn't touch the world around her. Then, louder, with the weight of proclamation and myth:

  "Yin Field: All things must freeze."

  The sky darkened.

  Not black—but gray. Slate-gray. A creeping, dull hue that bled over the vibrant tones of the seven suns like wet ash bleeding through parchment. The warmth in the air dissipated instantly. The breeze stopped. The grass flattened. Even the light bent differently—muted, slowed, caught in the weight of something older than heat.

  Above Tarak's head, those same blue lines unfurled across the atmosphere—runic, elegant, whispering down in cascading arcs of intent. Not lightning. Not cracks in the sky. But patterns. Frozen circuitries of divine architecture mapping the heavens like constellations.

  Tarak's body halted mid-motion.

  Not because he chose to.

  But because the air chose for him.

  He felt his limbs slow first—muscles locking in place like the gears of a machine seized by frost. His knees, halfway bent for his next launch, refused to straighten. His tail, mid-snap, became a sculpture of coiled tension. Even the heat in his chest flickered as if caught under glass. It wasn't normal freezing. His internal body was fine but his movements outside were locked.

  This was Yin. And Yin did not obey nature.

  It rewrote it.

  Luna lifted the wooden blade—her stolen training sword—but it no longer looked like mere wood. A layer of black and silver ran along its edge, glimmering like metal forged in lunar eclipse. That same twisting force—the devotion of the world, the strange divine loyalty that only Nahemoths could summon—wrapped around her blade like a serpent, reinforcing it with a will not her own.

  And then came the ice.

  Around her, blades formed—floating midair like summoned guardians. They were beautiful, crystalline constructs of translucent moonlight and blue-black numen. Each one was carved from force, structured like ancient spears drawn from forgotten glaciers.

  She didn't speak again.

  She pointed.

  And the world obeyed.

  The blades flew upward in streaks of silent murder—one after another—homing in on Tarak's suspended form like shooting stars with malice.

  CRACK.

  CRACK.

  CRACK.

  Each impact was sharp, brutal. The first blade struck his left shoulder and shattered against it—but not without consequence. A nick appeared. Tiny. Minuscule. But real. A bead of blood blossomed from the point of contact, stark red against the dull gray light.

  The second and third blades followed in rapid succession. One at his thigh. One at his ribs. Both splintered on contact—but again, they left behind faint cuts. Hairline wounds. Lines that bled a little more than scratches should've.

  Tarak's brows furrowed.

  Not from pain—but from realization.

  He was being hurt.

  For someone like him, that was rare enough.

  The wounds were shallow—yes. The damage negligible. He'd suffered worse from lifting boulders during training. But what chilled him wasn't the severity. It was the nature of the wounds.

  These blades weren't just sharp. They weren't physical in the normal sense.

  They were infused with Yin—with that otherworldly inversion of warmth and force. They were opposite to his flesh. Not in a metaphorical way—in a literal one. They saw his being, his matter, as something to erase. That being said it was limited while she was using yin in a form antithesis to flesh she couldn't cut through anybody. It did enhance her effective attack power beyond her realm however.

  And they tried to.

  That's why they worked. Even his regeneration—which usually sealed such small gashes faster than eyes could blink—was just slightly hindered. The cuts froze as they formed. He could feel it. The edge of his regeneration and adption pushing back against a something it was wholly unfamiliar with.

  And the fact that it was even a contest?

  A miracle.

  Luna shouldn't have been able to hurt him at all. Not at her current cultivation level. She was strong, yes—her transformation had elevated her considerably. But she was still in the infancy of her true path. He had an effective battle prowess of the first schakle of the dao carving realm. Not only that it was through sheer physicality. In terms of durability he exceeded someone at that level.

  And yet here she was.

  The freezing effect, the way the Yin burrowed into his cells even though it didn't do anything, the way her the world enhanced her strength…

  Even now, the thin air in his lungs felt wrong. Too heavy. Too still.

  He clenched his jaw.

  The wounds sealed with a wet hiss. The ice melted instantly as his regeneration kicked in harder, flooding the shallow cuts with heat and primal defiance. Smoke curled from his body as steam rose from his skin, evaporating the remnants of the Yin blades like rain sizzling on a furnace.

  He touched one of the fading marks on his side with two fingers. Blood smeared. Not much—but more than he liked.

  His eyes narrowed.

  Crimson irises shifted, turning sharper. Colder still.

  She had hurt him.

  Only a little.

  But she had hurt him.

  And that made this fight real.

  Tarak snorted.

  The sound was sharp, heavy with disgust, as if even his breath rejected the force that dared try to bind him. Steam curled from his nostrils in twin trails, dancing in the dust-choked air. The Yin Field hung over him like a spectral weight, locking his limbs with oppressive stillness, every joint frozen as though the world itself had grown cold and heavy.

  But Tarak didn't panic.

  He studied it.

  The pressure that gripped his body—it wasn't energy-based, not wholly. It was manipulated force. And force could be broken

  He took in a slow, long breath, his chest expanding subtly.

  Then his arms began to move.

  Not outward. Not against the weight.

  Within.

  He flexed—minutely at first. The smallest twitch of a muscle, then another. Beneath his skin, fibers began to ripple in a carefully coordinated pattern, moving like threads being woven into a new shape. It wasn't visible at first. But inside, he was turning the force, shifting the tension.

  Midea had mentioned it in passing once, during a spar that left most of the training ground in ruin.

  "Force moves better when it's twisted. Spiraled force doesn't just break things—it frees things."

  Tarak had remembered that.

  And now he did it.

  There was no numen here. No divine spark. Just raw physical genius. He rotated his muscle fibers in a controlled pattern, vibrating them in sequence. A spiral wasn't a visual—it was a feeling, an internal whirlpool. And with his perfect understanding of his own body, Tarak shaped his tension like clay. Pressure flowed into his arms, then circled, then turned.

  And then—the world screamed.

  The Yin Field shattered around him with a sharp crack like ice giving way underfoot. The air itself was sliced apart as the spiral that had built up in his arms released in a sudden, controlled burst—not of wind, not of energy, but of sheer martial force.

  The backlash of his liberation created a localized whirlwind, dirt and petals caught in the sudden vacuum as the pressure spun out from his limbs. It wasn't beautiful. It was brutal. Precision violence turned into movement.

  Luna was caught mid-breath. The spiral of force collided with her like a compressed gale, lifting her small frame off the ground and sending her flying back in a tumble of wildflower and torn grass. She crashed into the field, bouncing and skidding, a furrow of earth forming behind her as she tried to reorient.

  Tarak didn't wait.

  He moved.

  No energy. No flourish.

  Just brutal instinct honed into technique.

  His legs slammed into the ground with each stride, shattering the soil, propelling him forward in a zigzag. His weight vanished between steps, his body held perfectly level as he dipped and twisted with the terrain. He wasn't running—he was flowing, the same way a predator weaves through trees before the final pounce.

  Then she vanished again.

  Her body faded into another illusion—a phantom stitched into the fabric of her world. He didn't pause.

  He didn't need to see her.

  His muscles slowed—not out of fear, but to listen.

  The air whispered on his left.

  Just the faintest change. The smallest vacuum. The breathless pause before motion.

  He turned.

  Pivoted sharply with his lead foot grinding into the dirt—and his tail whipped around in a vicious horizontal arc, the motion following a smooth, low crescent. The strike wasn't raw—it was refined, calculated from hard training at the obstacle course, lined up with his center of mass. The wind split open along its edge.

  CRACK.

  It connected with her real form.

  The sound of impact echoed like a tree snapping at its root. Luna flew—no illusions this time—blasted back across the field like a ragdoll caught in a hurricane. Her body tumbled end over end, carving a long trench into the earth as fragments of displaced soil and shattered petals filled the air like confetti.

  A gust followed. Then silence.

  Tarak exhaled through his nose. Calm. Centered. Not proud. Not cruel.

  "Huurk!" Luna's breath escaped her lungs in a sharp gasp as she flew backward, her body tumbling through a plume of dust and wildflower petals torn from the field. Tarak watched with unreadable eyes as she slammed into the ground, bouncing once before stumbling upright. She was dazed but not broken—her body trembling, her jaw tight as numen bled from her wounds like vaporous mist.

  But Tarak didn't care. Not in this moment.

  She stood again, and the silver-black edge of her numen began to condense. Thin, gleaming ice-blades rose all around her like summoned spirits, each pulsing with yin energy, their sharpness whispering of disintegration and decay. They pointed at him like an accusation.

  He wasn't going to let them hit him again.

  His eyes narrowed, his pupils narrowing to knife slits as his stance adjusted with quiet precision. No flash of power. No aura. Just movement. Pure, calculated motion.

  Then—

  Crack!

  His right fist lashed out with ferocious speed. It didn't just move—it ripped through the air. The shockwave that followed struck forward in a tight spiral, compressed and narrow like the ghost of a fist made of nothing but air and will. It screamed across the battlefield and shattered the first blade into sparkling fragments that dissolved before they hit the ground.

  The second fist followed, then the third, each faster than the last.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Every punch caused a rippling crack through the wind, each one striking the ice blades with pinpoint precision, turning the field into a symphony of destruction and compressed thunder. The force of each blow flowed into the next, no wasted motion, no hesitation. Tarak's arms coiled and uncoiled like twin serpents, each strike drawing momentum from the one before it.

  Every recoil he turned into leverage.

  Every muscle shift, every twitch of his foot, was practiced—honed through tireless repetition. His feet moved in subtle, calculated micro-steps, adjusting to control balance and perfect the angle of force transfer. It was artful. Controlled. Beautiful in its savagery.

  Thoom. Thoom. THOOM.

  Each successive strike tore harder through the air as his strikes built up a rhythm—a cascade of violence crafted through raw martial instinct and memory. Midea had shown him the theory: that force, when manipulated in a spiral, transcended linear strength. That a curve bore more weight than a line if shaped with intent. But Tarak had made it his own, sculpted it in the crucible of his own training. What should have torn muscle, shattered bone, and left any normal body limping was nothing more than a flutter to him. His cells adapted. His fibers reinforced. His flesh refused to break.

  Luna's eyes widened as her blades were stripped from the air one after another. Her fists clenched tighter. Ice reformed, and more blades flew toward him—but now, he was faster. The pressure of his strikes made the very air hard to move through. Even her illusions flickered under the intensity.

  She hurled a dozen at once—silver arcs howling like banshees through the sky.

  WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

  Tarak struck them all down, fists a blur. The shockwaves from his punches began to arc outward past the blades and toward her directly. One struck her in the shoulder, sending her skidding backward on her feet. Another cracked the earth beside her, flinging dirt and pebbles into the air. The third clipped her leg, and she staggered.

  Still she fought. Still she raised her hand and formed another jagged, glowing blade. Still she swung.

  But the pace had shifted. The field trembled with the aftermath of his attacks. Clouds of shattered frost and drifting dust coiled into spirals that mirrored his fists. The temperature warped between icy spikes and bursts of heat from the sheer pressure he created. Grasses bent flat, crushed by invisible currents of force.

  His fists did not slow. In fact, they became faster.

  The wind screamed louder.

  The air thickened with violent percussion.

  And then a final fist struck forward with a spiraling blast that howled through the clearing, shattering the last of her blades mid-flight and slamming into Luna's chest with a concussive burst. She cried out and was blasted off her feet, flipping through the air as her body bounced once, twice, before she rolled to a stop at the far edge of the wildflower field—her limbs slack, her breath ragged.

  Even as she struggled to lift her head, more ice tried to coalesce in her palm—but her arm trembled. Her vision wavered. And Tarak, across the clearing, hadn't even broken a sweat.

  She gritted her teeth as she pushed up onto her elbows.

  Tark grunted and was about to continue as she had sent even more ice at him but then–

  "Tarak!!" Sol's scream tore through the air, sharp and desperate as she watched the aftermath of the blow. One of the spiraling air fists cracked violently against Luna's cheek, spinning her body mid-step and drawing blood that splattered across the windblown grass. Her silver hair whipped behind her like a comet's tail as she was flung aside.

  Tarak clicked his tongue—an almost inaudible sound beneath the howl of his fading shockwaves. His eyes narrowed as he pulled back, twisting his fist at the last moment to bleed off force. He had already been holding back. That wasn't even a tenth of his true strength. But still—he'd gone too far. He could feel it. Not just because of Sol's voice, but something internal. Something tight in his chest. A flicker of guilt he didn't quite understand.

  Still, he wasn't prepared for what happened next.

  He didn't see them at first.

  Floating in the air like motes of light—delicate, glistening, harmless.

  The ice fragments.

  They hung scattered from the shattered remnants of Luna's last dozen attacks. Drifting like frozen flower petals, almost too light to sense. But they were waiting. Waiting for him to turn away. Waiting for a moment when the field of battle—despite all its violence—felt momentarily calm.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Then they moved.

  Luna dropped the wooden sword with a dull thud. Her body trembled from exhaustion and blood loss, but her will burned bright—too bright to be snuffed. Her hands fell limp, fingers twitching, and her lips pulled back in a grimace of pain... and something else.

  Purpose.

  The fragments glowed faintly. Purple veins of light twisted inside the ice like cracks in a stained-glass mirror. The floating shards pulsed, then surged into motion with a snap.

  They collided together mid-air in five synchronized bursts—five orbs of frozen energy forming in a perfect circle around Tarak. Each one no larger than a clenched fist, but layered with something unnatural. Something wrong. Inside each orb, purple flames danced, refusing to melt the icy shells they were trapped within. Instead, the flames seemed to burn cold, radiating not heat but suppression—an anti-force.

  Before Tarak could move, they locked him in place.

  It was not a grip on his body but on the very existence surrounding. His limbs still moved, his tail still flicked—but he couldn't push forward. The air around him folded, warped, solidified into a pressure that seemed as if it couldn't be fought with muscles alone.

  The ground beneath his feet cracked as he strained. Dust rose, but he didn't move an inch.

  The five spheres of Yin were connected now by faint silver lines, a pentagram of null-force sealing the air between them. Not only that ice stretched from the spheres and adhered itself to his form once more.

  Tarak's expression didn't change much, but the way his tail shifted—the way his claws flexed subtly—told the truth. He had underestimated her. Not her strength. Not her mind. But her instinct.

  Across the field, Luna stood tall.

  Her dark eyes burned with the ghostlight of her newfound power. Cracks had formed along her arms, faint lines glowing purple from the strain of channeling something far beyond her cultivation. Blood poured from her nose, her mouth, and from cuts along her palms. Her knees trembled, but her will towered.

  She lifted a trembling hand. Her voice rasped at first, then grew louder—resonating with the five glowing orbs as if echoing in a chamber only she could hear.

  "Sin and squalor is the blood that birthed curses…"

  The sky dimmed. A low hum rolled across the field, shaking the tips of the grass, the leaves in the trees beyond, the petals in the wildflowers. Sol's eyes widened, her hand half-raised as if to call out—but she dared not move.

  "Yin embodies the darkness of all things," Luna continued, her voice steadying even as her frame swayed, "It is the opposite, the soft to the hard. The shadow to the sun. The silence between thunderclaps."

  The field dimmed further. Color bled out from the horizon as the light itself warped, shifting everything into monochrome. The seven suns overhead seemed distant now, blurred and pale, their color leached by Luna's declaration.

  "The Dao is separated into Yin and Yang…" she said, breath hitching as purple blood spilled anew from her lips, "But it is Yang—the light—which gets attention. It is the sun which glows with glory. The warmth which wins praise."

  Her fingers clenched. Her nails bit into her palms. The blood that dripped shimmered with the same strange resonance as the first orb.

  "Hatred."

  The word struck like thunder.

  "I speak of the hatred of opposites… the hatred of the Dao itself. The rejection of balance, the curse of duality. From blood and hatred is born a curse."

  She threw both arms wide, and the five Yin orbs flared.

  "Five Curses of Yin Embodiment!" she cried, her voice filled with fury and unspoken sorrow.

  As she screamed the final word, the orbs pulsed, and her blood—her essence—flowed into the first sphere. It flashed and resonated like a bell, striking a tone so low it made Tarak's bones hum.

  And as Sol looked on, her heart seized.

  Tarak didn't move.

  He was bound.

  And Luna… Luna was invoking a true curse.

  Not merely an attack.

  A working.

  The world dimmed. The light fled. And the Yin gathered.

  "First Curse of Formation. All that lives was given the power to reach and move. Yin counteracts. Yin hates!" Luna shouted, her voice rising like a knife drawn against the wind.

  The first orb exploded into jagged sigils of dark frost and inverse flame. Black runes, angular and pulsing with a sickly gleam, traced along the lengths of the ice, weaving through the frozen lattice like venomous snakes. They slithered through the bindings, entering Tarak's skin like spectral worms, seeking the very nerves that commanded motion. The energy that entered his body tried to negate movement itself.

  Externally, the runes curled like serpents around his limbs, rooting him to the earth. Internally, they laced through his veins like liquid stasis, dulling the very instinct to strike, to leap, to break.

  But Luna wasn't finished.

  She doubled over, coughing more blood—purple and thick, tainted with Yin-numen. As it struck the second orb, the liquid clung, quivering like it had found home. The sphere pulsed once.

  "Third Curse of the Moonborn Soul!" she cried, voice strained, eyes burning with fury and pain. "From birth, the soul was the domain of Yin. That privilege is stripped away in light. Balance shall no longer be maintained in the soul. Yin stirs impurities… as desire rots the layers between the soul!"

  From the second orb, a silver moon bloomed like an eclipse in miniature, and from it flew malformed spirits—horned, ragged, whispering horrors—shadows of Yin that bypassed flesh and sank into Tarak's chest, seeking the tri-layered core of soul: the Atman, Spectra, and Vitra.

  But they found no familiar structure. No sanctuary. No radiant palace of spirit.

  What they found was something that could not be named.

  A void. A totality. A empty abyss thaat wasn't shaped like any soul they had ever conceived of.

  And then it happened. As if snuffed by silence itself—the spirits were crushed, without resistance, without struggle. Simply… erased.

  Pulled into a primordial hunger that neither rejected nor consumed in fury—but simply was. There was no defense to overcome. Only omnipotent inevitability.

  Tarak did not flinch. His gaze was still. His chest rose once, then stilled.

  Luna staggered, her sword dipping. Her mouth trembled. Her voice emerged in a rasp.

  "How can that—"

  Tarak snarled.

  It wasn't bestial—it was final. The rumble in his throat was less a threat and more an announcement. A declaration of intent. The constraints wrapping his outer form gnawed at his movement, layers of Yin-sigils burrowing like parasites around his limbs and joints. But inside? The ones that dared invade his body? They hadn't found anything. Well nothing but the end.

  They had found oblivion.

  Like those malformed creatures before them, the energy that attempted to paralyze his inner being did not clash with his defenses—it simply vanished. Absorbed. Devoured. As if it had never existed. The abyss of his body did not reject. It did not react. It ended things.

  And now Tarak had had enough of tolerating this.

  Enough of restraint.

  Enough of indulgence.

  Enough.

  With a growl low and deep, he flexed. Not wildly. Not in rebellion. But with purpose.

  A shift.

  A twist of his arms—slow at first, subtle spirals blooming from the muscle fibers in his forearms, down through his elbows, shoulders, and back. Each rotation summoned wind, but not random. Not chaotic. Controlled spirals. Vortexes born of martial intent. Whispers of tornadoes spun not with magic or numen—but pure technique, refined body control, and force drawn through spiraling recoil.

  Wind coiled around him like a beast ready to pounce.

  With a sudden, explosive snap of motion—he broke free.

  The ice that clung to his limbs shattered, not in cracks, but in an eruption of crystalline shards that scattered into the air like falling stars. The instant the bonds splintered, a halo of jagged frost flashed behind his back, catching the sunlight in a brief and violent display of white-blue brilliance.

  Tarak didn't wait.

  He shoved both palms upward, and the twin tornadoes he had built launched skyward—columnar spirals of air and pressure, streaking toward the two active spheres that hovered with lingering, cursed intent.

  They didn't stand a chance after expending their power which had weakened the formation to begin with.

  The spheres ruptured midair, one after the other, annihilated by the focused currents, their shattered remains swallowed by the roaring wind.

  But that wasn't all.

  Tarak didn't just break free.

  He had learned in the moment—adapted within the clash.

  His mind moved in tandem with his body. His spiral technique twisted again, but this time in reverse—his palms shifted direction, wrists rotating opposite from before. The winds twisted again. Not to ascend. But to oppose.

  Two twisters met.

  And they did not cancel.

  They collided.

  The sky seemed to split as the tornadic forces devoured one another, the violent crash of pressure turning into heat. There was no flame—but scalding winds, hotter than desert breath, surged downward in a wave of invisible fire. The battlefield howled as steam lifted from grass, trees bent, and the remnants of ice and curse burned away into mist and light.

  The earth beneath Luna's feet cracked.

  Cratered.

  Tore.

  Wind and heat rolled outward in every direction—flattening wildflowers, scattering broken stone, ripping up dirt and moss in long trenches that bled steam. The light of the suns seemed to shimmer strangely, distorted by the aftershock of the martial storm.

  And then, from that clearing mist, from the broken ground and shattered curse—

  He walked forward.

  Tarak emerged like a god of discipline and wrath, his torso bare, unmarred, bronzed skin steaming slightly. His pants were tattered from wind and ice, ends flapping loosely at his calves. Each step was deliberate. Measured. His tail waved behind him, not erratic—but with rhythm. Like a banner of war rippling in victory.

  The tips of his horns caught the light of the descending suns, glinting silver and white as if they had been forged by the heavens themselves.

  His eyes didn't glow.

  They cut.

  They didn't burn.

  They stared.

  Unmoved. Unbothered.

  Triumphant.

  Luna stood at the far edge of the broken earth, shoulders shaking. Purple blood traced a jagged line from the corner of her mouth down her chin, and her chest rose and fell rapidly. Her face twisted—not in pain, but in bitter defiance.

  She sneered.

  But Tarak didn't slow.

  The air crackled with malice at her demand.

  "World hatred: Ice!"

  Luna's voice split the silence like a curse etched into the skin of reality. Her outstretched hands trembled with power as a sinister force radiated outward, rippling across the battlefield. Tarak's body seized as a wave of freezing numen—twisted with blackened yin—collapsed in on him. In a heartbeat, he was engulfed.

  A ten-meter glacier rose like a monument to fury, jagged and wrong, ink-black ice spiraling upward in defiance of natural law. The surface shimmered not with light, but with absence—draining color and warmth from the field around them. The grass shriveled. The sun above dimmed.

  And then, the silence cracked.

  With a low, guttural snarl, Tarak flexed. Muscles bulged, his spine arched slightly, and cracks snaked across the glacier from within. One beat. Then another. And with a thunderous BOOM, the black ice burst apart—shattered fragments suspended momentarily in the air before falling like dark snow. Tarak landed on the ground, steam rising from his skin. His slit-pupiled eyes bore into Luna, calm yet wrathful, as if asking her how long she planned to keep pretending.

  "World hatred: Shear!" she shouted again, voice sharp with command.

  The force that answered was different this time—subtle, deadly. The space around Tarak twisted filled with shearing force. His limbs, his torso, even the air around him pulled in opposing directions, as if the world itself were trying to unmake him.

  But Tarak didn't budge.

  He dropped into a wide horse stance, tail lashing the air behind him. Muscles tightened. The ground cracked beneath his feet as he rooted himself deeper. And then, slowly, deliberately, he flexed.

  The force that tried to shear him apart crumpled. It shattered not with sound, but with silence—like tension snapping all at once. The distortion in the air blinked away. Tarak exhaled sharply, the wind from his nostrils curling like smoke.

  "World hatred: Drown!"

  Mist formed in the air. Droplets condensed unnaturally, swelling into waves that swirled with violet-black yin. Water spiraled upward, curling like snakes seeking to coil around him.

  But Tarak had enough.

  He inhaled, his chest expanding massively, and let loose a roar.

  It wasn't just sound—it was a shockwave. A primal declaration. The force blasted outward in all directions, flattening the tall grass and rupturing the formation of water before it could coalesce. The dark waves dispersed into harmless mist, scattered like illusions under sunlight.

  His foot slammed into the earth.

  A single, massive step—driven with focus, directed with intent. The ground responded with a deep crack, veins of force rippling forward like a buried quake. The field split. Soil ruptured. Stone cracked beneath the surface. And directly beneath Luna, the earth broke open into uneven plates, her balance stolen by Tarak's sheer strength.

  He was done.

  The farce had gone on long enough.

  As the battlefield groaned with shifting terrain and flickering heat from the broken elements, Tarak bounded forward. The muscles in his legs coiled and uncoiled like compressed steel. His horns caught the sunlight—twin deep obsidian against a sky still stained with the remnants of conflict.

  His momentum gathered, his steps shaking the battlefield with each stride. Luna stood unbalanced, blood on her lips, but still defiant.

  And just as Tarak reached her—

  She spoke her final words with a grin as if she had caught him.

  "Loved by the world, I draw Heaven's eyes. Gaze upon me and smite those who would hurt a demon of the Thelema, born in Qlipoth."

  Luna's voice echoed through the fractured clearing, its cadence foreign—too refined, too ancient to be hers alone. It rang like the invocation of a forgotten covenant, something older than the world and too heavy for the air to carry.

  "Eye of Heaven: Yin Tribulation."

  The sky cracked.

  Not metaphorically—literally. The heavens tore open above them with a jagged, soundless scream that vibrated through the bones of the earth. It was not a lightning strike, nor a portal—it was a gash, a laceration torn into the fabric of the firmament itself. And from that tear, something looked back.

  A single, massive eye.

  At first, it was closed, its lid like the lid of a god's sarcophagus—heavy, sealed, unknowable. But then it stirred. A sliver of pale sclera shone through the crack, leaking not light but pressure. Gravity shifted. The wind silenced. And then the lid peeled back.

  The eye opened.

  Veins bulged across its surface like rivers of lightning. Its form was grotesque and divine—too organic to be celestial, too orderly to be demonic. The pupil was the Dao, spinning in geometric silence, and the iris was a constellation of all its myriad forms, shifting and writhing like a thousand sects performing a thousand truths all at once. And yet, despite its cosmic symbolism, the eye itself was undeniably made of flesh.

  Living. Aware. Watching.

  The sky turned gray. Not clouded—dead. Everything dimmed beneath that gaze. Even the suns that once painted the land in seven hues grew faint, as though their light had been devoured by the sheer presence of the Eye.

  Tarak, who had never once flinched under any strike, who had torn through monsters and monsters-wearing-human-skin, who laughed at the fires of Hathor—felt fear.

  His body tensed. His breath shortened. His instincts, the primal voice that roared inside him louder than any thought, told him the truth:

  That Eye could kill him.

  Not just wound. Not just scar. Erase. Obliterate. Rend him from existence.

  No move Luna had made until now had held that level of threat. Her projections, her ice blades, her illusions—all had been clever, unexpected, but not fatal. Her Yin properties had stung, yes, and her power structure was strange for someone only in the First Layer. But all of it still operated within a spectrum Tarak could manage. She was not Hathor. She wasn't even close in destructive capacity.

  But this—this was beyond anything. Even Luna herself seemed to strain under the pressure of it. The power was borrowed, yes, but the authority behind it was terrifyingly real.

  And Tarak, for the first time in his life, wanted to run.

  His every muscle screamed to move—to leap away, to tunnel underground, to flee into the stars if that's what it took to escape that gaze.

  But something deeper inside him knew:

  He couldn't.

  Not because he was too slow. Not because he was afraid.

  Because it wouldn't matter.

  That eye saw him. And it was infuriated.

  There was no escape. Only survival.

  Tarak roared—not as a threat, not as a claim of dominance, but to expel the fear. A desperate, furious declaration. His fangs extended past his lips, glistening with saliva and fury. His claws clenched into fists so tight his knuckles cracked like snapping trees.

  He crouched low, tail wrapping protectively around his side, its thickest and most durable segment shielding his hearts. His arms crossed over his face and chest, elbows turned in, body tucked—not in submission, but in readiness.

  He wasn't fleeing.

  If he had to endure divine hatred, he would do so on his feet. Teeth bared. Muscles locked. Like a warrior.

  The Eye above opened wider, a flash of silver and violet dancing across its rotating pupil. Lines of power etched themselves into the clouds surrounding it, forming celestial runes—scripts that bled Yin and oozed with anti-force. Looking down at that which had dared marr it's creation.

  One must know—when invoking external powers, especially heaven sent or invoked phenomena, there were rules. Even when the sky cracked and heaven's gaze turned downward, it rarely granted force beyond what one could normally bear. The power might be devastating, but never endless.They would go above ones battle prowess but never to that great of an extent. Even so-called divine attacks like this—blessings of wrath or curses of sanction—were anchored to the foundation of the one who called them. It was a law carved into the bones of the world. One would not be able to kill someone massively stronger with such a technique. Not to mention such techniques had excessive costs.

  And yet this…

  This broke the law.

  This shattered it.

  Luna stood at the sixth shackle of the First Layer. A rising cultivator, yes. A threat in her own right, yes. A Nahemoth—yes. But not someone who could touch the Second Layer's third shackle. That leap was vast. An ocean of difference. And yet…

  The beam of light that ruptured from the sky did not care. It did not ask permission. It did not whisper its approach. It roared, screamed, cried fury from the firmament.

  The Eye of Heaven had seen Tarak.

  And the Eye hated what it saw. And so it warped the rules.

  The light that descended was no holy beam. It was Yin incarnate. Not passive, not soft, but weaponized, cursed, sharpened into a spear of judgment. A blade of absolute opposition. The power it carried did not flow—it tore. It cracked the very nature of reality and demanded subjugation.

  Tarak reacted on instinct.

  He did not run. He could not. His body had already judged escape as impossible. That was not fear—it was certainty. Instead, he roared again, this time not in defiance, but in primal desperation. His feet spread wide, weight centered. His arms crossed before him even tighter than before. His long tail—tougher than alloyed steel and harder than blessed iron—coiled upward in front of him instead of around his hearts. The armored plating gleaming in the light of the seven suns.

  It wasn't enough.

  The Yin beam collided.

  The sound it made wasn't thunder. It was worse. A howling, shrieking, shriveling scream of cold that froze the light, warped the air, and cracked the field.

  Tarak's tail was the first to go. The unbreakable plating that had endured the blades of elders and the wilds of the storm was flash-frozen in an instant—turned into brittle obsidian and shattered into bloodied meat chunks. Bone fragments sprayed in arcs. He howled through clenched teeth.

  The blast licked up his crossed arms—each muscle a tapestry of force and perfection. They did not fail as his tail had weakened the beam. But they cracked. Skin turned pale, then blue, then gray. Ice crawled up the surface like a devouring parasite before shattering, ripping the flesh from his arms in streaks, revealing veins and the pale, translucent shimmer of crystalline bone beneath. His regeneration kicked in. His durability fought back. But the damage had already been done.

  He turned his head just in time. The beam caught the edge of his trapezius, and the entire muscle froze and shattered. Gone in a blink. A thin line of blood cut across his cheek as the force passed, narrowly missing his eye. It was not a glancing blow. It was a reminder. A scar carved by the Eye's hatred.

  When it ended, the light faded.

  But the feeling did not.

  The Eye lingered for a heartbeat more. It stared, veins pulsing across its grotesque form as if it were trying to scream—trying to force another judgment onto a being the world could not comprehend.

  But it couldn't.

  It blinked once.

  And then the heavens closed.

  The rift sealed like a wound—reluctantly, shaking, as if wounded by its own effort.

  The pressure vanished.

  But something worse took its place.

  A shiver ran down Tarak's spine. But it was not fear—not anymore.

  It was rage.

  The blood that trickled down his form was steaming now. His arms still burned. His tail was ruined. But none of it mattered. Not anymore.

  His pupils thinned into lines.

  His sclera turned deeper.

  His already-scarlet irises seemed to glow—no, burn, catching the fractured light of the broken sky like embers that refused to die.

  His breathing slowed.

  Each one was heavier, fuller, more dangerous.

  His body shifted—not outwardly, not with transformation, but inwardly. His mind dimmed. His awareness narrowed.

  It was not a descent into madness.

  It was clarity through instinct.

  The part of him that was Tyrannius awakened.

  But not any sort of noble heritage. Not any new unique power. Not the hunting soul that thirsted for growth.

  No—this was more primal.

  More ancient.

  More universal.

  It was not a power unique to his people. It was older. Simpler. Shared by all living things that crawled or flew or screamed.

  A truth born from countless generations pressed beneath the weight of bloodshed and survival.

  Kill them before they kill you.

  Tarak wasn't holding back anymore.

  The air collapsed where he stood—imploded, more than moved—before the earth erupted beneath him. Cracks spiderwebbed outward as the ground cratered in a concussive blast. Dust and broken shards of stone lifted into the air like the breath of a stunned god. He vanished.

  Wind screamed in his wake.

  The pressure condensed around his form was no longer abstract—it had weight. Density. A presence so real it might as well have been carved from bedrock. The very air bowed to his momentum, forming around him like armor wrought of gale and gravity.

  He reappeared above Luna.

  His leg came down in a wide arc, heel-first, aimed directly for her midsection. It was not a kick meant to wound. It was a death sentence. If it landed, it would split her clean in two, reduce her to pieces, scatter her like ash across the ruined field.

  But Luna flickered.

  Again.

  That cursed, slippery motion.

  Her form shimmered—fading out of phase, replaced by a hollow image—and she reappeared dozens of meters away. The mirage vanished a heartbeat later as reality reasserted itself.

  BOOOOOMM

  The kick struck the earth anyway.

  And the earth paid the price.

  The shockwave leveled everything within its radius. Trees bent backwards as if in a windstorm, then snapped like brittle sticks. Massive boulders shot into the air, as if hurled by a divine hand. The entire field—no, the entire terrain—jumped. Dirt and grass lifted like sheets of water. Echoes of the impact rolled across the distance like thunder heralding the end of the world.

  Tarak saw her. Instantly.

  He didn't even stop to inhale.

  His body twisted—pivoting on the ball of his left foot, right leg extending behind him—and his tail swept around with impossible precision. Spikes burst along its length at least the length that was left, erupting in symmetrical ridges of jagged, gleaming bone. They caught the sunlight—reflected fire—and his tail moved like a guillotine imbued with purpose as blood flew from the ravaged limb.

  He slashed.

  The wind didn't just follow—it obeyed.

  The resulting blade of air screamed toward her, slicing the space between them like a god's verdict.

  Luna dove.

  Barely.

  She tucked her body at the last second, her limbs folding in an awkward, desperate motion. The wind blade passed over her by the width of a breath.

  Behind her, the field was obliterated.

  The shockwave extended outward, and trees that marked the distant border of the training grounds fell in rows. Hundreds of meters of foliage simply ceased to exist. The cut was so clean that trunks smoked with heat despite there being no fire.

  Before she could rise—before her muscles even remembered how to stand—he was already there.

  Tarak appeared in front of her like a vision summoned from rage and blood.

  His mangled right arm—still healing, still raw, still glistening with partially crystallized veins and shredded skin—coiled back. The flesh already mending slowly the divine beam's punishment, the muscles twitching with renewed fury.

  His fist clenched.

  The knuckles popped.

  And then he drove it forward. Straight for her skull.

  It was a punch without hesitation. Without question. There was no warning in his face—only pure, unwavering intent. His jaw was tight. His fangs fully bared. His hair whipped around his temples like threads of molten steel. Veins bulged along his neck and forehead, pulsing with numen and primal wrath.

  His eyes—

  Those eyes.

  No longer simply narrowed.

  Now they were offended.

  They asked only one thing, and they asked it without words:

  How dare you not die.

  The fist never landed.

  A whittling, shrill whistle split the air.

  And then, from above—silver and gold blurred across the sky in a single radiant arc.

  CRACK

  The kick struck Tarak's arm with a sound like a mountain crumbling.

  Two Tyrannius collided.

  Not in rage. Not in survival.

  But in raw, unmitigated momentum.

  The shockwave that followed was devastating.

  The field howled. Debris whipped in every direction. Luna's exhausted form was tossed aside like a puppet in a storm, flung through the air, skidding across the fractured terrain like a leaf caught in a cyclone. She disappeared behind a rise of dust and earth.

  The impact zone where the kick met fist was scorched into the ground. A shallow crater formed at their feet. Wind circled them like a ring of blades. Even the heavens above seemed to wince at the clash.

  And Tarak—Tarak recoiled.

  Not from injury.

  But from recognition.

  His body stiffened.

  His head snapped around. His pupils, still blade-thin, adjusted as instinct took a step back and cognition returned. His breath hitched in his throat. His vision cleared just enough to register the blur of gold-silver hair, the unmistakable build, the scent—

  It was her.

  His sister.

  Surya.

  And with that, the haze lifted—if only slightly.

  Surya floated downward, four wings wings extended—vast, luminous things that that went from and ombre of gery to silver at the tips of each feather, trailing trails of ember-glow that danced like falling petals of fire. Each beat of those wings stirred the dust into spirals, settling the broken landscape beneath her like a mother smoothing a child's tangled hair.

  She descended slowly, her silhouette backlit by the fragmented rays of the seven suns still bleeding through the torn sky. The field below was no longer a field. It was a scar. Craters, fractured stone, gouges in the earth that ran like veins—like the land itself had been forced to bleed.

  Her foot touched down with a slight thud, and the other followed. She shook her leg slightly, adjusting balance—like she had kicked a boulder and didn't enjoy the texture. Her wings tucked partway behind her, just enough to not block her view.

  She didn't speak right away.

  She just… looked.

  First, at Luna—her body twisted awkwardly near the far ridge, limbs trembling, purple blood smeared along her jaw. The remnants of her strange force still buzzed faintly in the air around her, but it was like a dying breath. The aftermath of a tantrum gone too far. Her body shook with fatigue, her numen flickering like a failing candle.

  Then Surya's eyes turned.

  To Tarak.

  And her brow twitched.

  He stood there, panting slightly. Steam rose from his body. His tail dragged behind him like a banner soaked in blood and fury. Both arms were still half-exposed bone though one looked better, the tail was chunked and mangled near the base, and his upper back looked like it had been peeled—gray crystalline patches showing where muscle had been frozen and shattered.

  And still, he stood tall. Breathing. Alive. Eyes wild.

  Surya's face didn't shift for a long moment.

  Then—flatly, bluntly, her tone as dry as a dead riverbed—she said it.

  "The fuck."