The Chimera Dragon’s body blazed with blinding white light. Cracks across its shell widened, spilling raw energy that distorted the air. The hum became a scream. The ground trembled. In a fraction of a second, everything the monster had left would detonate.Necroth vanished.Not a step. Not a leap. The giant skeleton simply ceased to exist in one place and materialized in another. The displacement cracked the earth where he had stood and sent a shockwave rolling outward. Now the Skull God loomed directly in front of Lucius, a mountain of bleached bone standing between the master and the coming fire.Lucius did not flinch. His black coat rippled from the displaced air. His eyes stayed fixed on the glowing cracks spreading across the monster’s shell. Inside his chest, the Energy Reactor hummed at the edge of its safe threshold. Heat built around his heart. He measured it coldly, like reading a gauge. The output was climbing. A few more seconds at this rate and the reactor would breach i

The purple crystal burned against Lucius’s palm. Cold void winds howled across the dying land. Overhead, the sky had become a shattered mirror, pieces of red cloud and black nothing tumbling into each other. The ground under his boots was no longer solid. Cracks spread outward from every direction, and the dirt itself crumbled into fine dust that floated upward toward the growing vortex.Three minutes. The system timer bled red in the corner of his vision.Lucius forced mana from the Energy Reactor straight into the Mirror Fragment. No finesse. No calculation. Just raw power flooding the crystal’s circuits. The purple light intensified, painting his face in sharp violet shadows. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the fragment vibrated. The vibration became a hum. The hum became a shriek that drilled into his skull.The system did not open a portal. Instead, a holographic projection burst outward from the crystal.A cube. Massive and intricate, spinning slowly in the air before hi

Lucius moved through the fog without a sound. Each footstep fell on moss and damp earth, chosen with precision. The scent of blood and sweet perfume grew stronger. The stifled whimper grew clearer. He did not rush. The forest demanded patience, and he had learned long ago that the hunted who hurried became the dead.He stopped beneath a massive oak tree. Its trunk was wide enough to hide three men. Its branches spread outward like the arms of a giant, heavy with dark leaves that the fog had not yet touched. Perfect. He bent his knees and jumped. Not a leap of power. A silent spring. His fingers caught the lowest branch, and he pulled himself up with the ease of a shadow climbing darkness.Layer by layer, he ascended. The leaves closed around him. His black coat blended into the wet bark. He settled on a thick branch fifteen meters above the ground, his back against the trunk, and looked down.The clearing below was small, hidden between two moss-covered boulders. A campfire had burned

Lucius stripped the uniform from the second guard's corpse with quick, efficient movements. The gray fabric was rough and smelled of cheap oil, but it was clean enough. He pulled the tunic over his own black coat, tightening the belt until the fit was passable. The pants were too short. He let the boots cover the gap. The patrol cloak came last, a length of dark wool that hid the imperfections of the disguise.He pulled the cloth mask from the dead man's face. Standard issue for night patrols. It covered everything from the bridge of the nose down to the collar, leaving only the eyes visible. The fabric still held the warmth of the dead man's breath. Lucius felt nothing as he tied it behind his head.His reflection in a puddle of rain showed a soldier of the Ebladiri Sect. Average height. Gray uniform. Masked. Unremarkable. He bent down and scooped mud over the bloodstains on the tunic. Now he looked like a patrol guard who had simply had a long night.He walked east.The forest opene

Lucius crouched in the darkness behind the supply crates. His eyes tracked the shimmer of the six barriers surrounding Elder Kaelen's pavilion. They overlapped in layers of translucent energy, each one tuned to a different threat. Detection. Kinetic dampening. Thermal. Spiritual. Two ancient formation magics sat at the core, denser and older than the rest. Magic woven with blood and years, not circuits and code.The standard approach was suicide. Brute force would light up the night sky and summon every soldier within five miles. Precision disruption required time he did not have and tools he did not carry. A frontal assault was out. A magical hack was out. The pavilion might as well have been a fortress sealed inside a soap bubble.Lucius did not move. His mind ran through the problem like a blade testing different angles of armor. He had broken into secured facilities before, in a different timeline, under different skies. The principles were the same. Energy followed paths. Paths h