Somewhere in the darkness of the forest, Lian stood motionless, half-shrouded by the trunk of a splintered pine. Smoke drifted low, weaving between the trees and curling around the jagged edges of upturned roots and scorched earth. The air was thick with the scent of burnt resin and the metallic tang of blood. Beneath Lian’s boots, the ground still radiated a faint, unnatural heat, warmth seeping up through moss and mud like the last pulse of a dying animal.
He watched from the shadowed edge of a wide clearing, his eyes catching the faintest glint of gold as he tracked Chen’s every movement. Chen stood at the center of the clearing, upright and unyielding, his posture rigid despite the blood soaking into the earth at his feet. To Chen’s left, Fenreiga’s king lingered, a silent presence just beyond the ring of fallen branches.
“So strong,” Lian murmured, his voice barely more than a breath, yet it carried across the open space. “The one who killed my predecessor.”
Lian’s pulse quickened. He shifted his weight, just enough to brace himself, but otherwise remained still, savoring the tension. The anticipation in his smile was unmistakable.
Across the clearing, Chen’s golden brow twitched—a subtle, involuntary sign of disgust. For a moment, the two locked eyes, the space between them charged and brittle.
Then, without warning, Chen released everything.
The world didn’t shatter—it imploded. The air folded inward, as if the clearing itself were being crushed by invisible fists. Grass flattened in perfect, concentric rings, the earth groaning under the pressure. Leaves tore from their branches and hung suspended, trembling in the sudden vacuum, before being hurled outward in a spiraling cyclone.
Chris felt it first as a tightening in his chest—a brutal, suffocating weight that seized his ribs and locked his limbs. Before he could draw breath, the force yanked him off his feet, dragging him through the air as if he were nothing but a ragdoll caught in a storm. Branches snapped and splintered as he was flung backward, his shoulder slamming into a moss-slick boulder with bone-jarring violence. The impact drove the air from his lungs in a strangled gasp, but the assault didn’t stop—he was wrenched forward again, slammed into the earth and pinned there, the ground itself seeming to rise up and hold him fast.
For a heartbeat, he was paralyzed—crushed beneath the weight of Chen’s unleashed power, the world reduced to the roar of blood in his ears and the taste of mud in his mouth.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the pressure vanished.
Chris rolled onto one elbow, coughing, mud streaked across his coat and face. All around him, the leaves that had hung frozen in the air now rained down in a soft, chaotic patter, settling over the churned earth. He looked up, vision swimming.
A surge of invisible force collided in the air—Lian’s presence slamming into Chen’s unleashed power with the impact of two storms meeting at their peak. For a heartbeat, the world seemed to hold its breath. Lian’s golden eyes, once radiant, darkened and deepened, the irises bleeding into an abyssal black as if swallowing all the light around them. Shadows rippled across his face, and the clearing trembled with the raw, electric tension of their psychic clash.
Chen stood exactly where he had been, unmoved at the center of the devastation, his eyes burning with a cold, relentless light.
One hand was raised, fingers half-curled, as if he had simply released something. His posture was low, grounded—telekinetic field anchored deep, precise, lethal. His eyes were locked on Lian, dark irises burning with controlled fury.
“You think I drank the things you delivered?” Chen asked.
His voice was cold, each word cleanly segmented, as if spoken through clenched control rather than rage.
Lian exhaled slowly and pushed himself to his feet. The air around him rippled as he rose, psychic resistance flexing outward in a subtle distortion. Ten paces separated them—an open line of sight, nothing between them but warped space and intent.
“You really are different from your predecessor,” Lian replied lightly, brushing dirt from his sleeve. His smile was thin, almost pleased. “That Chen was much more na?ve.”
As he spoke, his presence expanded.
Psychic interference rolled outward in widening waves. The forest responded immediately—tree trunks bending at impossible angles, distance stretching and compressing like a faulty lens. Sound fractured. A branch snapped somewhere too loudly, while the wind’s whisper vanished entirely, leaving an oppressive vacuum of silence.
Chen felt it press against his senses—orientation slipping, peripheral vision blurring, depth flattening into something unreliable. The ground seemed to tilt beneath him, gravity pulling at the wrong angles.
He steadied himself, jaw tightening.
“That na?veté,” Chen said, voice cutting through the distortion, “is exactly why he died on that ruined star.”
His fingers flexed.
The suspended debris in the clearing—stones, broken branches, clumps of earth—shuddered violently as Chen seized them telekinetically. For a split second, the air screamed as opposing forces collided, invisible fields grinding against one another with bone-deep pressure.
“I won’t make the same mistake.”
Chen stepped forward—
And the moment his foot crossed the midpoint of the clearing, everything locked.
His body seized mid-stride, muscles frozen not by flesh, but by an external psychic clamp that crushed inward from all sides. His breath caught sharply as the force wrapped around his spine, his chest, his limbs—pinning him in place with surgical precision.
Not Lian.
Something else.
A solitary bead of gold-black liquid slid along the left side of Chen’s face, pooling briefly at his chin before dropping and splattering onto the churned earth below with a muted, indecent sound.
Then another.
And another.
The metallic, radioactive scent hit him instantly.
“…Oh,” Chen murmured, his voice steady but strained. “…So that’s how it is…”
He turned his head with effort, joints stiff, and saw Yin standing just behind him—so close that Chen could feel the heat radiating from Yin’s body. Yin stood at Chen’s back, half-concealed by the trunk of a nearby tree, his pistol-like weapon raised and aimed at Chen’s spine. The weapon’s chamber glowed with a sickly, pulsing light, casting shadows across Yin’s face.
Yin’s eyes met Chen’s, but he said nothing. The only sound was the faint hum of the weapon and the distant crackle of burning wood.
Chen’s knees buckled. He collapsed where he stood, his body hitting the muddy ground with a heavy, dull thud. His armor scraped against stone as he slid sideways, coming to rest at the edge of the clearing, half-submerged in mud and crushed leaves.
“You killed him?!” Lian’s voice cracked—not with grief, but with sharp disbelief that curdled instantly into rage. He crossed the distance in a blur and struck Yin across the face. The impact snapped Yin’s head sideways, the sound sharp as a gunshot. “That wasn’t my order!”
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Yin staggered, boots sliding in the mud, but he did not fall. He pressed his lips together, tasting blood, then lifted a hand and wiped the gold-dark smear from the corner of his mouth. His fingers trembled only once before stilling.
“Chen represented a significant threat to your plan,” Yin said calmly, voice level despite the ringing in his ears. “Eliminating him was the most logical course of action.”
“If you won’t obey,” Lian said, his voice glacial, eyes glinting like polished ice, “don’t show your face in front of me.”
Yin’s breath came slow and deliberate, the metallic taste of blood lingering on his tongue. He lowered his gaze, one hand pressed to his burning cheek, fingers trembling before he forced them still. The forest pressed in, thick with the scent of moss and smoke, as Yin stood silent—swallowing pain, swallowing pride.
Lian forced down the urge to kill him where he stood. Not yet. He still had a use.
He turned back to Chen.
The body sprawled in the churned earth, half-swallowed by mud and the detritus of shattered leaves. Chen’s chest rose in shallow, uneven intervals; golden blood seeped from his wounds, threading rivulets through the black soil, where it steamed faintly in the chill—a last, stubborn warmth refusing to yield to the cold.
Lian crouched beside him, the predator’s patience now tinged with something like awe. He reached out, fingertips grazing Chen’s cheek, tracing the grime and blood with a touch that mimicked tenderness but held none. “So this is what it takes,” he murmured, voice low, almost reverent. “At last.”
His smile was a thin, precise blade. He lingered, savoring the moment of victory, the hush that followed violence.
A faint rustle—barely more than the sigh of a dying wind—cut through the quiet. Lian’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing, senses sharpening to a razor’s edge. Somewhere beyond the tangled undergrowth, something moved where nothing should.
Chris stiffened, every muscle tensed. Yin’s gaze flicked sideways, alert.
And then, stumbling through the shadows, came Yan Qing.
He was a ghost in the half-light, his outline blurred by exhaustion and pain. Chris’s vision, tuned to heat, caught the flicker of human warmth—fragile, flickering, but moving.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Yin responded. His movements were swift and unyielding, cutting through the tense silence that hung over the forest clearing. A single heartbeat later, the night was shattered by a sharp, broken scream, echoing through the trees and marking the violence of the moment.
Chris stiffened. “Lian—!”
Lian didn’t bother to turn, his voice as smooth and cold as the night air. “Relax. I’m not foolish enough to kill a human fused with the Ultimate Weapon.”
Chris released a tense breath, only to feel a spike of dread the moment the air left his lungs. Yan Qing crashed to the ground, his body flung aside with the careless force of someone discarding rubbish. The impact sent him sliding across the damp earth, the friction of leaves beneath him tearing and scattering as he skidded to a halt.
Yin’s weapon—a slender, rigid anion rifle that gleamed in the filtered forest light—had struck with brutal precision. It drove straight through Yan Qing’s right leg, the point pinning it mercilessly to the soil. Blood welled instantly from the wound, dark and abundant, soaking through the fabric of his trousers and seeping upwards towards his knee.
“Yan Qing!” Chris reacted without thinking, a surge of instinct compelling him forward. He reached out, desperation in his movement— But before Chris could make contact, Yan Qing’s gaze shot up. His eyes burned with raw, unfiltered hatred, the intensity of his expression halting Chris in his tracks.
The silent command in Yan Qing’s look rooted Chris to the spot, freezing him mere inches from the torn cloth. “At this point… isn’t the act getting a little pointless?”
So he hates me now.
A cold dread hollowed out Chris’s chest, as if something vital had been scooped away, leaving only a raw ache and the echo of his own helplessness. He felt the breath catch in his throat, a useless sigh rising and dying before it could escape. Yan Qing’s gaze slid past him, unseeing, already lost to the world behind Chris’s shoulder.
Toward the body on the ground.
Chen.
Still. Unmoving.
Yan Qing’s breath came in ragged gasps as he dragged himself forward, one hand clawing at the earth, the other pressed to his side. His eyes, wide and wild, locked on the broken figure ahead.
The world seemed to contract, the trees leaning in, the darkness thickening. Yan Qing barely felt the pain in his leg, the blood soaking through his trousers. All that mattered was the unmoving shape in the mud, the gold of Chen’s hair dulled by dirt and blood.
He crawled, every inch a battle, every breath a knife. “No,” he whispered, voice raw, the word torn from somewhere deep. “No, no, no—”
A boot crashed into his ribs, white-hot pain exploding through his side. He rolled, gasping, vision swimming. The taste of iron filled his mouth. Still, he reached, desperate, refusing to let the world close over him.
Chris’s hands were on him, hauling him upright, but Yan Qing recoiled, hatred and grief twisting his features. “Don’t touch me,” he rasped, voice barely more than a breath. “Get away.”
Chris froze, the sting of those words cutting deeper than any wound. Disappointment twisted inside him, quickly curdling into anger—a hot, helpless frustration that demanded release.
“Stop being so stubborn!” he snapped, his voice rising.
But Yan Qing was already moving, wrenching his gun free with trembling hands and slamming it into Chris’s chest, forcing distance between them.
“Let go of me!”
“Yan Qing—!”
Lian’s laughter drifted through the trees, low and ember-warm, curling around the chaos like smoke from a dying fire. He strolled forward, every step unhurried, his eyes glinting with a predator’s satisfaction.
“Well, well,” he drawled, his gaze flicking lazily between Chris and Yan Qing. “Looks like your little human doesn’t like you very much, Chris.” There was a cruel pleasure in the way he let his words linger, as if savoring the fracture in their alliance.
He paused beside Yan Qing, looking down with a languid, almost indulgent satisfaction. “And now the Ultimate Weapon has delivered itself right to me. Saves me the trouble of hunting.”
But before he could reach for his prize, a voice—quiet but unyielding—rose from behind him.
“…So… I won’t let you get what you want…”
The words hung in the air, cold and final.
Lian went utterly still.
His pupils dilated, shock rippling across his face.
Lian turned—slowly, as if the air itself had thickened—unable to believe what his senses insisted was true.
“No…” he breathed, voice barely more than a tremor. “Impossible.”
Blood streaked one side of his face, painting his skin a ghastly white. His breath came in ragged bursts, shoulders trembling with the effort of standing. But he was upright—defiant, unbroken—a figure pulled back from the edge of oblivion, refusing to fall.
His right arm was buried deep in Lian’s chest. His fingers closed around a still-beating heart.
“I’m… not the same… ‘Chen’ as before.”
His voice was broken, strained—but resolute.
His grip tightened.
Wet resistance gave way as claws pierced the organ like paper.
“You… should know…” Chen tore his hand free.
Lian dropped instantly, collapsing like a marionette whose strings had been severed. His body hit the earth with a heavy, final thud, limbs splayed at unnatural angles, the forest floor swallowing the sound in its moss and loam.
Not far away, Yin lay sprawled in the dirt, his body wracked with tremors. He could not move—a silent, invisible command locked every muscle, every nerve. Chen’s psychic power had rooted him to the ground, an absolute order that left him helpless, eyes wide with terror and shock.
A command Chen had thrown out before his body hit the mud still held.
“Chen!” Yan Qing’s voice broke, relief so sharp it was almost pain. His vision blurred, tears threatening to spill as he saw Chen—alive, battered, but standing.
Chen met his gaze, offering a fleeting, steadying smile. Then, with the suddenness of a storm breaking, he moved. In a blur, he swept past Chris, seized Yan Qing, and pulled him close, arms iron-tight around him.
Wings—hidden until now—unfurled with a rush of displaced air. The world seemed to shatter as Chen launched skyward, the force of his ascent tearing leaves from branches, sending a shockwave through the darkening forest.
“Yan Qing!” Chris’s shout was lost to the wind, shredded by the rush of air as Chen carried Yan Qing higher and higher, away from the chaos below.
Yan Qing didn’t look back. The only thing that mattered was the man holding him, the desperate strength in Chen’s arms.
“Chen… are you okay?” Yan Qing’s hand trembled as he reached up, brushing Chen’s cheek—cold, deathly pale, slick with sweat and blood.
Chen’s jaw tightened, his eyes clouded with pain. He needed to get Yan Qing out, to safety, but the radioactive fluid was already burning through his nervous system, unraveling his senses one by one. Vision blurred, colors bleeding into one another. Sound faded, replaced by a dull, suffocating silence. Balance slipped away, and then—deeper still—his body began to fail, organs misfiring, life unraveling quietly from the inside out.
No. Not yet. At least get Yan Qing to the ground.
Chen shook his head, fighting to stay conscious. He saw Yan Qing’s mouth moving, lips forming his name, but the world had gone silent. His body tilted, control slipping away. Gravity claimed them.
“CHEN! Wake up! CHEN!!” Yan Qing’s scream tore through the night, raw and desperate, as they plummeted. Wind howled past, gold and black hair tangled together, bodies locked in a final, desperate embrace.
No. I can’t let him get hurt.
At the last instant, Chen twisted, forcing his own body beneath Yan Qing’s. The ground slammed into them, the impact exploding through Chen’s body. Golden blood spilled from his mouth, staining the earth.
Yan Qing, shielded by Chen, lost consciousness from the force of the landing. Though broken and battered, Chen managed a faint, relieved smile.
He’s alive.
With the last of his strength, Chen rolled away, dragging himself across the dirt, desperate to keep Yan Qing from the toxin saturating his own body. He staggered behind a rock, trembling violently, and collapsed, unable to move another inch.
As long as he’s safe, Chen thought, closing his eyes. That was enough.
