W.A.S. Surveillance Headquarters.

  Murmurs drifted among the workers.

  “Wh-what did he just say?” a woman whispered, staring at her screen as though a horror film were playing out before her.

  “He just called himself by the name of the eighth general. Has he run mad?!” another person said.

  Arthur held his chin. ‘Glock Harbinger, G.H. Thorne, Gideon Horloge,’ he recited internally. ‘There has always been a G.H. symmetry.’ His eyes widened in realization.

  ‘How come no one found out he shared the same name symmetry as the pioneer of the Horologism church?’ He shook his head. ‘A church established in Eldrid after the Great War, before Aethralism arrived. Its tenets taught the supremacy of man over all things, stating that man shouldn’t be limited by time, demons, or death. Its members were called Hourbearers, and they carried a golden grandfather clock wherever they went.

  ‘Horologism had so much impact on the political landscape of Eldrid that the first Sorcerer-General, Sir Reginald Welles, signed it into law as Eldrid’s established religion.

  ‘However, soon after the death of the first Sorcerer-General and during the rule of Sir Heinrich Ackerman, it was said that Gideon Horloge attempted to take over Eldrid as her Sorcerer-General, which heavily contradicted the aristocratic monarchy system of government at the time. He staged a coup d’état alongside his followers, which led to the assassination of Sir Heinrich Ackerman and several other sorcerers.’

  Arthur glared at the screen. “Is Glock Harbinger saying that he was that same man?”

  [For reference, see Chapter 18.9: Midsummer Festival]

  …

  The downpour persisted without rest, soaking the hushed cities in mists of doom.

  “Woah,” Van exhaled, breath hitching.

  Glock smirked. “Quite shocking, huh?” he said quietly. “I’ve had this plan running for centuries: starting with the creation of the Horologism church, the coup d’état, the assassination of Heinrich Ackerman,” he revealed.

  “Heinrich was quite a smart man. Before his death, he made sure to atomize his core so I wouldn’t take it. But that didn’t stop me, nor was it enough to.”

  ‘He might be right,’ Arthur nodded silently. ‘Sir Heinrich Ackerman’s coffin is actually empty; his body was never found.’

  The collective heartbeats of the watchers grew louder with every second.

  “I thought you were going to deny the fact that you killed your followers?” Van probed.

  “Oh?” Glock mouthed, face taking on an impressed expression. “I’m surprised you know the truth when history says otherwise: that all the Hourbearers, including me, committed mass suicide in accordance with the tenet that demanded self-induced death before man could become a supreme being.”

  He stuck out his tongue in a parody. “Well, that’s what I made the story look like. Tee-hee.”

  He grinned. “In truth, I was the one who wrote the tenets, and of course there’s no way I’d actually trick myself when I know the truth.”

  Van’s eyes narrowed, rage burning as his fist clenched.

  Glock shrugged. “It’s not my fault—they simply were too delusional. That’s all.”

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  “What a monster.” “He is the devil.” “So he’s been pulling the strings for generations?” “He killed ten thousand people and can still smile?”

  “Thorne… He was our hero! He died to protect us all,” an old man cried.

  The scent of rain mixed with the reek of sweat as dreadful whispers spread.

  Glock stood proudly, shoulders raised. “I’m quite the menace, ain’t I?” he asked.

  “I don’t see how that’s something to be proud of,” Van whispered, voice chilly and dripping with fury.

  “It is, if you ask me,” Glock replied. “There are two ways to never be forgotten by history. One: be the hero, or two…” His eyes narrowed.

  “…be the one who brings down the hero, and I promise you that you’ll always be remembered for it."

  “I’ve achieved so much in my long life, but I’m still not satisfied, because I haven’t reached my goal yet.

  My goal is the good of humanity! After the Great War between humans and demons and the descendance of Kraith Malachar, man hasn’t returned to his era of peace. Every day, lives are constantly lost, casualties are recorded, death has become routine."

  "That’s why I decided. I took it upon myself to bring an end to it all. To put a stop to the tyranny of demonkind. And how do I plan to carry that out?” Glock said and stretched as Sir Zoldrak’s body floated toward him.

  “I’ll do that by transforming every human in Eldrid into a biological weapon,” he declared.

  “Hah?!” The people gasped in unison.

  “What do you mean?” Van demanded.

  “Do not fret,” Glock continued. “I’ve perfected the art. The experiment started with the Hourbearers, and now it’s invincible. By breaching the Vesta Barrier and releasing every demon that’s been sealed within it into Eldrid, I’ll perform a soul-binding ritual using the sealing power of Aurelia Welles to create the ultimate blemish.”

  “ZEROS.”

  His gaze gradually lowered to Van’s. “And I won’t let anything or anyone stop me,” he muttered.

  “Point of correction: I’m not anyone or anything,” Van corrected. His eyes glowed darkly; the ground beneath him cracked and crushed inward from the aura escaping his body.

  A rain droplet descended from the clouds, spinning through the air as the helicopter’s light shone through it, dispersing into a faint rainbow. The drop entered the forest and landed directly in the middle between Gideon and Van.

  It touched the ground and convulsed, exploding in a loud splash.

  The battle was thrust into motion.

  Van vanished from where he stood and appeared at the same instant he disappeared—this time before Gideon, fist hurtling toward his face.

  “Terror!” Gideon called milliseconds before Van’s punch could connect. A burst of cold air blew out of Terror’s lungs as he raised both palms toward Van.

  “Oblivion Bla—” he started, but mid-sentence, Van’s left pupil rolled toward him, and Terror froze.

  Causality ceased to exist.

  Shivers of fear ran down Terror’s spine. ‘What’s this presence? I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be alive,’ his thoughts spiraled.

  ‘This man… what is he?’

  Time snapped back into motion.

  “You’re in the way,” Van said coldly and flicked his index finger forward.

  For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

  Then the world bent. A razor-thin line of compressed air exploded from his fingertip like an invisible blade. The burst screeched forward in a shimmering distortion, the surrounding oxygen igniting into fleeting blue sparks along its edge.

  The gale struck Terror dead center, and his upper half simply… deleted.

  Head, shoulders, and half his chest vanished in a silent flash of negative space. No blood sprayed. No gore exploded. His lower half—legs and hips—stood frozen for one grotesque second before toppling forward with a heavy thud that shook the ground.

  But the attack was far from finished. The burst of annihilating wind kept roaring onward, carving a perfect straight corridor of nothingness through the forest. Ancient oaks the width of houses flickered and dissolved mid-sway, their trunks turning to dust then nothing. Vines withered into smoke; bushes, ferns, and centuries-old undergrowth were scrubbed from existence in a widening cone of erasure.

  Trees hundreds of meters deep in the woods toppled sideways as their bases were deleted, crashing into one another with distant, echoing booms. A flock of ravens exploded upward in panic, only for the trailing edge of the gale to catch them and turn them into fading silhouettes against the sky.

  The entire forest known as Blackthorn had been reduced to a plain.

  Glock’s heart stopped. He didn’t need to look back. He already knew what lay behind him.

  Van exhaled and locked eyes with him. “We’re just getting started.”

  …

  “Holy Aethrauzon, did Van Ackerman just do that?” a boy gasped and dropped his skateboard.

  “Blackthorn Forest, the fourth widest in the world, has a radius of about six hundred and seventy-eight kilometers,” the broadcaster on AZURA TV muttered, tone drenched in shock as she stared at the screen.

  Glock’s hands shivered, reverberations coursing through his body as he stepped back. “Well damn,” he murmured. ‘Even with everything, the difference in power is still too much,’ he realized.

  “You know, that night,” he faced Van. “The night I wiped out the Ackermans, I couldn’t kill you even though you were harmless. Because for the first time in my life…”

  A soft wind blew past Van’s hair.

  “…I felt fear.”