Marcus took a slow breath, steadying the rush of thoughts running through his head.

  “Alright… let’s do this properly.”

  From his cloak of shadows, six thin metal rods slid into his hands—each one lined with runes that shimmered faintly in the dark, glowing like coals in the wind. With a quick gesture, he handed one to each of his puppets.

  “Better to be safe than sorry,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

  The puppets didn’t respond, of course. They just moved—silent, obedient, and fast. One after another, they slipped into the streets, darting between buildings and sticking close to the shadows.

  Marcus straightened his back, stepping out from the alley he’d been hiding in. His shadow stretched unnaturally as he walked, trailing behind him like a dark tide. With a soft ripple, creatures began to rise from it—bone-forged summons, all jagged limbs and hollow sockets, crawling free like a nightmare let loose.

  Then everything went to hell.

  In a matter of moments, the peaceful hum of night broke into full-blown chaos. Screams echoed through the narrow streets as civilians bolted in all directions, tripping over each other in a blind panic. Soldiers scrambled to respond, shouting confused orders as they drew weapons—but most of them were too stunned to do anything.

  Monsters weren’t supposed to just appear in the middle of the city.

  Marcus didn’t care for their fear. He gave his summons a simple command: clear out the area around the pace. Make sure no one interferes.

  While the summons pushed the panic outward, the puppets made their way into position. One by one, they reached their points around the pace perimeter. Without hesitation, each puppet drove its rod into the ground. There was a soft pulse as the rune formations started to wake up, lines of mana spreading from each rod and crawling across the ground like a living circuit.

  Marcus felt the pull as the web connected. He closed his eyes for a brief second, guiding his mana through the formation, making sure it was all in sync.

  Good.

  From the shadows cast by the rods, dark tendrils began to rise—snaking up the pace walls like living vines, slipping through cracks and windows, creeping inside bit by bit. A lockdown trap, built to stop even the slipperiest prey.

  ‘So far, so good,’ he thought.

  Marcus looked up, then bent his knees slightly. With a pulse of magic, he unched himself into the sky. Wind howled around him as his form blurred into mist, mana coiling like smoke across his skin. High above the chaos, he hovered—just for a second.

  He raised a hand. Mana surged through his arm, gathering above his palm. A spear began to take shape—long, wide, and deadly. It wasn’t just sharp—it felt heavy, like it was made to punch through the world itself.

  “Let’s make some noise,” he said under his breath, a small smirk tugging at his lips. “First strike to win.”

  With a flick of his arm, the spear unched downward.

  It cut through the sky like a bde, spinning fast as it shrieked toward the pace. The moment it hit the roof, it didn’t stop—just tore right through, floor after floor, drilling into the heart of the building before erupting in a deafening bst.

  The explosion lit up the night, a shockwave ripping outward that shook windows and knocked people off their feet even blocks away. Smoke and fire poured out of the pace’s broken frame, and the once-proud structure groaned under its own weight.

  Marcus hovered in the air above it all, eyes locked on the ruined building, mana still humming in his veins.

  He didn’t smile.

  The thick smoke slowly began to thin out, revealing the shattered remains of the pace beneath. Cracked pilrs jutted from the rubble like broken bones, and sections of the roof were still colpsing in chunks. From high above, Marcus hovered silently, his cloak billowing slightly as he scanned the destruction below.

  His eyes narrowed.

  He could feel it—mana pulsing faintly from beneath the wreckage. Something still alive.

  "Show yourself," Marcus called out, his voice low and even. "I know your kind isn't this weak."

  A faint tremor passed through the ground. Then a loud crack tore through the quiet as a chunk of debris burst upward, flung aside by a sudden surge of power. From within the ruins, a shimmering purple sphere pushed upward—arcane energy swirling around it like a storm.

  “How rude,” a voice echoed from within the sphere. The barrier dropped slowly, revealing the mage standing at its center, robes singed but still clinging to some twisted elegance. He brushed the dust from his shoulder and looked up at Marcus with clear irritation.

  “Do you have any idea how long it took me to set all this up? And now look at it… ruined! All because some self-important shadow-walker thinks he’s a damn hero.”

  His gaze sharpened.

  “And what are you, exactly?”

  Marcus didn’t answer. He just raised his hand, and with a quiet hum, six smaller spears of condensed mana formed around him—shimmering like gss, sharp as death.

  “Not much of a talker, huh?” the mage said with a snort. “No matter. Your silence will make your screams easier to hear.”

  As fire bloomed in his hands, Marcus moved first. The mana spears streaked downward without warning, slicing through the air like thunderbolts. The mage barely managed to raise a barrier of fme in time—an arc of fire sweeping up in front of him.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  Three of the spears shattered the outer yer of the shield. One grazed his shoulder, slicing into the flesh just deep enough to draw blood. He flinched and cursed, stumbling back a step.

  “Damn it!” he spat, gring up at Marcus. “What kind of magic is that?!”

  He hurled two fireballs in retaliation, their glow lighting up the ruins as they screamed skyward. But Marcus didn’t even flinch. With calm, deliberate movements, he drifted aside, letting the attacks fizzle against the night sky.

  Marcus moved again, a sharp breath in as more spears of mana formed and unched from his side. They rained down like a storm of judgment, each one precise, each one forcing the mage below to scramble out of the way. The man hurled fire, arcane bolts, even shards of gss-like light in retaliation—but they all missed, fizzling harmlessly in the air. Up here, Marcus had the advantage, and he used it mercilessly.

  “Damn you, avian bastard! Get down here and fight properly!” the mage barked, shielding his face from another near miss.

  Marcus didn’t flinch. “Not with someone like you.”

  “Oh, that’s it!” the man roared, voice cracking as his anger boiled over. Marcus’s eyes flicked to the neckce hanging from the mage’s neck—its gem glowing with a pulsing, soft purple light.

  The mage smmed his foot into the ruined stone and unched himself upward, a trail of broken masonry following the sudden leap. “If you won’t come down, I’ll come to you!” he screamed, one hand raised, now glowing with a votile mix of purple and red energy.

  But he didn't make it far.

  From the shadows that still lingered around the pace ruins, tendrils surged upward, coiling around his legs like vipers. The man's momentum stalled mid-air.

  “W-what the hell!?”

  Marcus gave a faint smirk from above. He had anticipated this. Once was enough. He learned his lesson the hard way during the fight with the fang boar—and he wasn’t about to let someone else close the distance again.

  The mage was yanked violently downward, smming into the ground with a solid crack. Marcus didn’t hesitate. As soon as the man was grounded, another barrage of spears shot down toward him.

  The mage managed to form a shaky barrier, deflecting most of the assault, but it wasn’t enough. A few found their mark—piercing into his side, shoulder, and thigh with sickening precision. The once-fshy robe he wore now hung in tatters, charred and soaked with blood. His breathing turned ragged as he staggered, his stance unsteady.

  Yet, disturbingly, his wounds didn’t bleed for long.

  Marcus watched closely. The skin around each injury squirmed, like something alive moved beneath the surface. Bit by bit, the damage closed—unnaturally fast. Wormlike threads of muscle and sinew knit the flesh back together in seconds.

  “How... how dare you!” the mage spat, lurching sideways to dodge another incoming spear. One grazed his arm, leaving a clean line of blood across his shoulder. He growled through gritted teeth. “I am the chosen one! I will not be sullied by—”

  BOOM

  A deafening bst cut him off as Marcus detonated several embedded spears around him. The ground erupted, throwing smoke, dust, and broken stone into the air. The tremor ran through the ruined pace, shaking the foundations with a low, angry groan.

  Even as the smoke continued to roll from the bst, Marcus didn’t let up. More spears formed and hurled downward, one after another—relentless, precise. But a voice suddenly cut through the haze, booming and furious, scattering the smoke like a wind had ripped through it.

  “Enough!” the mage roared. “I have tolerated you long enough! Now—behold the power that the gods have bestowed upon me!”

  Marcus narrowed his eyes.

  The man’s body started to glow with an eerie, pulsating light. His flesh rippled unnaturally, bulging and twisting as if something massive stirred just beneath the skin. Bones cracked, muscles expanded grotesquely, and in mere moments, his frame swelled—doubling, tripling—until he towered nearly ten meters high. What stood in the ruins now was no longer a man, but a hulking amalgamation of flesh, tendrils, and madness.

  One massive eye, lidless and unblinking, gred up at Marcus. The creature's mouth tore open into a jagged grin, rows of teeth like sawbdes lining its gaping maw. It spoke again, voice warped and yered with echoes, like more than one being was trying to speak through it.

  “Bear witness—to MY POWER!”

  The ground trembled as the abomination took its first step, and the glowing runes of Marcus’s formation shattered beneath its foot. One of his puppets was crushed instantly under the beast’s bulk, reduced to little more than twisted scrap.

  Then, with terrifying speed for something so rge, the monster shed out. A forest of tentacles shot skyward, snapping and slicing through the air. Marcus barely had time to dodge, flipping mid-air as the tendrils chased him, missing by inches.

  “Hahahaha! Run! Run like the rat you are!” it bellowed, each footfall caving in buildings and turning cobbled streets into dust.

  Marcus flew higher, gncing downward—and what he saw made his blood chill.

  Civilians.

  People still trying to flee the area. They hadn’t escaped in time. One by one, they were crushed under the beast’s feet, bodies twisted beyond recognition. But the horror didn’t stop there. As their corpses y broken on the street, they began to twitch. Then squirm. Then rise.

  Malformed creatures, patchwork horrors stitched from what was once human, began to crawl from the remains. Dozens. Then more.

  They didn’t wait.

  Screams rang out as the smaller monsters scattered into the city, attacking anything they saw, spreading destruction with sick glee.

  ‘If I don’t stop this now... it’s going to spread like a pgue,’ Marcus thought grimly. ‘As long as he has bodies to use, it won’t end.’

  He summoned his bone legion without hesitation. Shadows peeled open across the rooftops and alleys as his skeletal summons poured out—sharp, coordinated, and merciless. They cshed with the rising horde, mowing down smaller abominations where they could. But the spread... the spread was accelerating.

  And the giant was still following him.

  Marcus unched spell after spell from above—explosions, spears, chains—but the monster just roared and shrugged them off, its flesh regenerating or mutating around the wounds.

  “Your power is NOTHING compared to mine!” the creature thundered, tentacles whipping toward Marcus again. One of them opened like a grotesque flower, vomiting out a stream of thick, dark purple liquid—deadly and acidic.

  But as it reached Marcus... his body flickered.

  The liquid passed through as if he were made of mist.

  A phantom.

  Then a voice.

  Low. Cold.

  “Enough.”

  The sky darkened slightly as Marcus’s mana began to gather—dense and swirling. Bck mist flooded around him, circling his body like a storm forming from nothing. His shape expanded, yer after yer of shadow forming solid shapes, like armor made from midnight.

  Then, in seconds, the new form stabilized.

  Towering above the ruined city floated a monstrous, mist-cloaked version of Marcus. Still elegant in design, but enormous—at least fifteen meters tall, draped in bck energy, with piercing white eyes that glowed like stars in the fog.

  He looked down at the abomination below him without a hint of fear.

  Now it was Marcus who cast a shadow over the monster.

  "W-What!?"

  The abomination recoiled, its single massive eye diting in fear as it looked up at Marcus’s newly formed, towering figure. Its grotesque body—pulsing with writhing veins and twitching tendrils—seemed to almost shrink under Marcus's presence. The very ground beneath the creature trembled, unable to withstand the sheer pressure radiating from above.

  "What are you!?" the monster shrieked, its voice yered with multiple distorted echoes, vibrating the broken stones of the ruined city.

  Marcus’s response came, calm and absolute, cutting through the air like a bde.

  "Not for you to know."

  Without hesitation, Marcus moved.

  His massive arm pulled back in a slow, deliberate motion, mana swirling and condensing around his fist like a miniature storm. Then, with a simple but devastating thrust, he punched forward.

  The monster frantically raised its multitude of tentacles, weaving them together into a desperate shield.

  It didn’t matter.

  Marcus’s fist struck with the force of an ancient titan, smashing through the defense like brittle twigs and smming square into the creature’s core. A deafening crack rang out as the monster was bsted backward, tearing a deep trench into the earth as it skidded and crashed through ruined walls and shattered pilrs, kicking up a massive plume of dust and debris.

  Still floating, Marcus's expression tightened. He gnced briefly at his hand—the swirling mist around his fist was unraveling, struggling to hold shape after the impact.

  ‘Looks like this form burns faster than I thought. Need to finish it now,’ he thought grimly.

  Marcus raised his arm again.

  With a flex of his will, hundreds of bck spears materialized midair, hovering in perfect formation around him like a swarm of death. Each one hummed with lethal energy, vibrating softly as the mist curled around their wicked points.

  He snapped his fingers.

  The spears rained down in a relentless barrage.

  The monster bellowed in rage and pain as the spears tore into its flesh, ripping open tendrils, bursting swollen sacs of mana-infused blood, and pinning its grotesque limbs to the ground. The impact shook the very earth, each spear embedding itself like a nail into a coffin.

  Still, it fought back.

  Driven by some twisted will to survive, the abomination let out a primal roar and charged forward, dragging its mangled body along, throwing its bulk toward Marcus in a wild, desperate assault.

  Marcus didn’t flinch.

  Instead, he calmly drew a new weapon into being—a sword, massive and terrible, forming slowly from the bck mist around him. It crackled with dark energy, the very space around it warping under its weight.

  As the monster lunged, Marcus gripped the hilt tightly and swung in a wide, horizontal arc.

  The sword met flesh with a brutal, grinding sound, as if entire mountains were being torn apart. It wasn’t just a cut—it was an execution.

  The monster screamed—a horrible, wet, guttural sound—as the bde carved through its body. Bck-purple blood sprayed into the air like a torrential rain, burning where it hit the ground.

  "I am the god-chosen! I command this nd! I am its rightful ruler! I will not fall to—!"

  Marcus didn’t even acknowledge the rant.

  "You’re nothing but a deluded roach clinging to stolen power," he said coldly.

  With an extra surge of mana, Marcus forced the bde all the way through. The monster’s body split with a final, wrenching sound.

  The swing’s shockwave ripped through the air, bsting apart what remained of the surrounding ruins and fttening anything left standing in a half-kilometer radius behind the monster.

  The upper half of the creature colpsed with a resounding crash, kicking up another wave of dust and rubble.

  For a moment, silence.

  Marcus hovered above, eyes narrowing as he observed the remains.

  Then he saw it.

  From the mangled, twitching halves, purple tendrils were already writhing—desperately trying to stitch the body back together, a sick, mindless instinct driving the process.

  ‘Persistent worm.’

  With a grimace, Marcus raised his hand high.

  Mana gathered above him, thick as a thunderhead, compressing into a single massive spearhead. It shone like a falling star, casting long, deep shadows over the ruined ndscape.

  The battered remnants of the mage stirred. A broken, weak voice cried out from within the lower half of the monster.

  "n-No...! Not yet...!"

  Marcus didn't hesitate.

  The giant bck spear dropped.

  It hit the remains with cataclysmic force, a pilr of light and shadow shooting into the sky.The earth heaved violently at the point of impact, and then—an explosion.

  A massive bst tore upward, forming a gigantic mushroom cloud. The shockwave rolled outward in a brutal wave, pulverizing what little was left of the pace and sending a storm of dust, debris, and shattered stone into the heavens.

  For a moment, the world was nothing but roaring light and thunder.

  Then, silence fell once more.

  Marcus remained hovering above the devastation, his giant form slowly shrinking back as the mist peeled off his body, leaving only his normal figure standing amidst the swirling ash.

  But his eyes stayed sharp, scanning the crater below.

  He knew better than anyone.

  Something like that…

  Didn't just die that easily.

  As Marcus approached the edge of the crater, he gave a light swipe of his wings, sending a gust of wind that blew away the lingering dust and smoke. The air shimmered from the residual heat, revealing the impact site—a massive, still-smoldering crater carved deep into the earth. Cracks of molten stone glowed faintly beneath broken rubble, steam rising from where raw mana had scorched the ground.

  He nded gently on the rim, surveying the devastation below.

  The explosion had been the first of its kind. A calcuted fusion of opposing elements—ice and fire—forced together into violent harmony. The result: a high-density mana fissure held stable within a shell of his bck mana, forming a deyed detonation at the spear’s tip.

  It was experimental. Dangerous. And yet... devastatingly effective.

  ‘Better than I expected,’ Marcus mused as he floated downward, mist trailing from his shoulders like a dissipating cloak.

  At the crater’s center, he found the remains.

  What was left of the man could hardly be called a body. Just a burnt husk—only the upper half remaining—charred bck and frozen mid-twist. His flesh was cracked like brittle coal, hollowed out by heat and pressure. Whatever had once defined him—rage, arrogance, madness—was gone.

  But something remained.

  Embedded in the husk’s chest, a faintly glowing purple gem pulsed softly. The metal casing that once held it was now nothing but molten sg, half-fused with the chest cavity, dripping in slow, syrupy rivulets.

  Marcus narrowed his eyes and produced a long, needle-like tool from his satchel. He slid the tip beneath the gem and pried it loose with surgical care.

  The moment the gem lifted from the corpse, the body colpsed into a mound of ash, scattered immediately by the faint wind.

  Marcus stared at the gem in his hand. A sickly warmth emanated from it, not of heat—but of presence. Something beyond the physical.

  ‘The sensation from before… it’s still here,’ he thought, turning the gem slightly in the light. Faint threads of void energy ced beneath its surface, flickering like veins of darkness trapped in crystal. ‘But weaker now. Still, if this is truly reted to the Void… or the Watcher…’

  His brow furrowed.

  ‘Should I even keep this?’

  He wasn't given the chance to finish the thought.

  A voice called from behind him.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t hold on to that for too long.”

  Marcus immediately stiffened. His wings fred slightly as he turned slowly, his eyes sharp, instincts fring.

  A woman stood there at the edge of the crater, poised as if she'd been watching the entire time. No footsteps, no aura—nothing had warned him of her approach. That alone put him on edge.

  She smiled softly, her posture rexed but unreadable.

  Marcus's eyes narrowed.‘I didn’t sense her at all... and right after that fight, too. Not good timing.’

  His mana reserves were depleted—he’d burned through most of it holding his transformed state. A fight now would be far from ideal.

  And then he saw her clothes.

  Elegant, ceremonial. Familiar.

  Too familiar.

  "And who am I talking to?" he asked, voice low, guarded.

  “Oh, how careless of me,” the woman said, bowing slightly with one hand over her chest. “I am Sysle. A traveler, a protector, and—”

  “A liar,” Marcus cut in coldly.

  She paused, a delicate frown touching her lips. “Sorry?”

  Without hesitation, Marcus summoned his sword. Bck mist coalesced into the bde, the tip pointing squarely at her chest.

  “Speak truthfully. What business does a Targonian have here?”

  For a moment, there was only silence between them.