Tiras watched Lucius walk toward him with both hands still tucked into his pockets. The casual stride. The relaxed shoulders. The eyes that looked at him not as a monster, not as a Heaven's Envoy, but as something barely worth noticing. It was the same look Lucius had given him back then. In the military courtroom. In the detention cell. The look that said he was nothing.His claws curled hard enough to crack his own obsidian skin. The golden light in his eyes flickered with old, buried rage now surging back to the surface."You always looked at me like that," Tiras hissed. His layered voice trembled with fury. "When I was a corporal. When I had no power. You sneered at me like I was an insect. But I am not an insect anymore."Lucius stopped walking ten paces from him. He did not remove his hands from his pockets. He did not assume a fighting stance.Tiras vanished.Not a burst of speed. True disappearance, a tear in space that swallowed his black form and spat him out directly behind

Tiras lay in the mud, his one remaining wing twitching weakly. The black blood pumping from the hole where his left wing had been was slowing now, turning from a gush to a thick, sluggish ooze. His obsidian skin was cracked all over. His golden eyes had dimmed to a sickly yellow. He tried to push himself up again, but his arms gave out and his face splashed back into the wet dirt.The arrogance of the Heaven's Envoy was gone. Every trace of it had evaporated the moment Lucius tore his wing off. What remained was the true Tiras. The cowardly corporal. The sniveling rat who had always hidden behind stronger men and louder titles.Lucius tossed the severed wing aside. It landed in the mud with a wet slap. He walked slowly around Tiras's broken body, his boots sinking slightly into the blood-softened ground. The few surviving sect soldiers who had not fled watched from the shadows of overturned wagons. None moved to help their envoy.Tiras whimpered. "I told you everything I know. Please.

The night settled over the Ebladiri camp like a shroud. The alarm horns had fallen silent. The fires were dying. The watchtowers that still stood cast long shadows across the field of corpses and ash. The few remaining sect soldiers had been disarmed and herded into a supply pen under the watchful eyes of those prisoners bold enough to hold a spear. For the first time in two decades, the mountain fortress was not under the control of the Science Sect.From the barracks, from the underground holding cells, from the officer tents where the Cultivation Furnace had operated, the women began to emerge.They came slowly. Barefoot. Wrapped in whatever scraps of cloth they could find. Many wore nothing more than torn shifts that barely reached their thighs. Some clutched dirty blankets to their chests. Their bodies bore the marks of what the sect had done to them. Bruises on wrists and ankles from chains. Welts from electric whips across backs and shoulders. Hollow eyes that had been forced t

Lucius entered the capital through the veins beneath its polished skin. The underground supply tunnels were wide enough for automated cargo carts, their walls lined with pipes carrying water, power, and data. Genetic scanners rotated at every junction, their blue beams sweeping for unauthorized biological signatures. He walked through them like a ghost. The Cold Core kept his body temperature indistinguishable from the surrounding concrete. The idle reactor emitted no mana signature. The scanners registered nothing but empty air.When he emerged, he was already inside the wall. No checkpoint. No identification badge. No record of his existence.He pulled himself up through a maintenance hatch and stepped into the lower district. The streets here were narrow and stacked high with apartment blocks so dense that sunlight rarely touched the ground. People filled every available space. Workers in gray overalls. Street vendors selling synthetic meat on sticks. Children chasing each other th

Secretary Nefion spun around. Her naked body dropped into a defensive crouch, muscles tensed, fingers curled into claws. The afterglow of her self-pleasure vanished, replaced by the cold electricity of survival instinct. Her eyes locked onto the man sitting on the sofa.He had not been there when she entered the room. He had not made a sound. The door was still closed. The window was still sealed. Yet there he sat, legs crossed, hands resting on the armrests, looking at her as if she were a mildly interesting insect.She attacked first. Not with her body. With her system. Her face rippled like water struck by a stone. The beautiful escort's features melted away, replaced by a nightmare. A skull with hollow eye sockets. A maw of needle teeth dripping black ichor. Horns sprouted from her temples. Her skin turned the color of rotting meat. The Thousand Face System could produce any appearance, any illusion, any terror designed to break an opponent's will.Lucius did not blink. The Cold C