Chapter Fourteen

  ---

  And suddenly—

  A shadow.

  No—not a shadow. Something in the sky.

  Karsu raised his head. His eyes widened for a brief moment.

  A rock. No—larger. A massive chunk of molten stone, glowing with red heat, descending from the sky like a meteor straight toward him.

  The Lord of Gravity.

  From afar he raised his hands, his fingers pressing against the air, multiplying the gravity around the stone, increasing its speed, guiding it toward a single target.

  Karsu jumped.

  But he was not fast enough. The edge of the rock grazed him, throwing him to the ground—then it exploded.

  —

  An explosion.

  The enormous rock shattered into thousands of glowing fragments. The earth trembled. Dust rose like a black wall swallowing everything.

  The Qaz Lords stepped back, raising their arms to shield their faces.

  The dust was thick. Nothing could be seen.

  —

  Through it, she launched herself.

  The Lady of the Whip.

  Her arms transformed into two whips—one shorter than the other by the length of a wrist. Her crimson whip glowed like a beam of embodied rage. Her eyes were red from tears and fury; the tears had not yet dried, but they had turned into fire.

  “I will kill you!”

  Her voice broke, nearly choking on the scream.

  “I will kill you, you bastard!”

  Karsu saw her emerge from the dust. Saw her rushing toward him. Saw her while his right arm was dead, his left shoulder wounded, poison in his veins, and the ground beneath his feet unstable.

  He understood.

  No time to maneuver. No strength left to evade.

  I will endure it.

  He raised his arm—no, his right one. The dead hand. The hand he could not feel. A human shield that would absorb the strike.

  The Lady of the Whip drew closer. Her glowing arms rose—

  —

  Then—

  A pillar of mist.

  Gray. Dense. Solid as an iron wall. It surged from the side, not only toward Karsu, but toward the Lady of the Whip as well.

  It struck her before she could reach him.

  She recoiled quickly, barely avoiding it, retaliating by attacking the mist with an endless chain of slashing strikes from her whip-transformed arms.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  At the same moment, Karsu coated his arms with what remained of his Mother Aura. The mist slammed against him, dispersing around his arms like a wave breaking against stone.

  He remained where he stood, watching.

  “Did the attack miss?”

  ---

  The Lady of the Whip turned with wild fury. Her eyes searched for the source of the mist, then settled on the Lord of Mist standing a few steps away, his fog-shrouded face revealing nothing but two silver eyes.

  “What is this?!” she screamed, her voice raw enough to tear the throat. “You stopped me! I was going to kill him! I was going to—”

  “I thought it was the most suitable moment to attack.”

  The Lord of Mist’s voice was calm. Cold. As if he were reading from a book.

  —

  Rashid was there. Suddenly. Beside the Lord of Mist. The vines around him trembled with anger.

  He looked at the Lord of Mist for a long moment, then said in a low voice, cold enough to kill:

  “Since the beginning of this battle, you have not attacked. You move. You observe. But you have not struck seriously.”

  Silence.

  “And now… at this exact moment… you decide to attack?!”

  The Lord of Mist did not turn toward him. His silver eyes remained fixed on Karsu.

  “I saw it as the best moment.”

  “And your ally?!” Rashid gestured angrily toward the Lady of the Whip, who was still panting at a distance. “She would have hit him! She almost—”

  “She would have died.”

  The Lord of Mist said it simply.

  Rashid slowly turned toward him. His eyes widened.

  “What?”

  “She would have died,” the Lord of Mist repeated in the same cold tone. “That man… was ready to endure the strike. If she had finished her attack, she would have struck him—and he would have killed her a second later. I saw it in his eyes before he raised his arm.”

  Silence.

  Then he added:

  “The goal is to defeat the enemy. Correct? I did not stop her from killing him. I stopped her from dying.”

  —

  At the center of the battlefield, Karsu stood watching them.

  The dust began to thin. The shattered rock fragments were scattered everywhere. Blood still flowed from his wounds. The poison still crept through his veins.

  But he saw what had happened.

  He saw the disagreement. He saw the fracture.

  And a cold smile formed on his lips.

  Even your ranks are beginning to crack.

  He looked at the Lord of Mist.

  Those silver eyes. That mist-veiled face. That coldness unlike the other Qaz Lords.

  This man… is different.

  And that meant only one thing:

  He is dangerous. He must be removed.

  ---

  On the other side, a man without a distinctive appearance stared in surprise.

  “Nonsense!”

  His gaze was different. Analytical. Cold.

  “That man… protecting his allies?”

  He slowly shook his head.

  “I have been observing him since the beginning. His nature has always been sacrifice to weaken the enemy. A wounded and reckless woman—he should have exploited her attack, let her die and benefit from the damage she dealt to the enemy, even if it cost her life.”

  He fell silent for a moment, then added in a voice barely audible:

  “And even if we assume he suddenly changed his mind… I do not believe that Lord of Threads would truly have retaliated with a killing blow. He was ready for the strike, but it would not have killed him. Something… is suspicious.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “The Lord of Mist… either he is lying, or he sees something we do not. In both cases, that means only one thing:”

  “He must be watched closely.”

  ---

  The confrontation did not last long.

  The Lord of Sand moved first. The ground beneath his feet surged like a wave, carrying him toward Karsu with a speed that did not match his heavy frame. His hands extended, and the earth around Karsu began to ripple, disturbing his balance.

  Karsu stepped back. Then another. His right hand was dead, the wound still bleeding, the poison advancing. Yet his eyes continued to follow.

  The Lord of Sand drew closer. The ground beneath Karsu became like quicksand, swallowing his feet.

  A swift spin scattered the sand—

  But the sand had already arrived.

  A massive surge of sand erupted beneath him, lifting him into the air and hurling him violently toward a nearby wall. Karsu slammed into the stone and fell to his knees, blood bursting from a new wound in his shoulder.

  Everyone was attacking.

  All at once.

  ---

  Karsu closed his eyes.

  He crossed his arms before his chest.

  His fingers—five on each hand—touched, intertwined, as if merging together.

  Silence.

  Then—

  He slowly opened his arms.

  As if opening a flower.

  —

  Threads.

  From every finger, every joint, every pore of his body—threads burst forth. Not five. Not ten. Hundreds. Thousands. Thin silver threads as fine as hair, sharp as blades, erupting in every direction at once.

  They scattered through the air like a wave of frozen light.

  Then—they began to intertwine.

  The first wrapped around the second, the second around the third, the third around the fourth—at unbelievable speed the threads wove themselves into a massive structure, as though an invisible hand were weaving a fabric of pure silver.

  Petals formed.

  Five gigantic petals, each the size of a warehouse door, made from thousands of interwoven threads, blooming around Karsu like a flower born from the heart of hell.

  —

  They opened.

  The five petals slowly spread outward, toward the surrounding Lords.

  And with every centimeter they unfolded, destruction preceded them.

  The ground beneath the petals cracked and shattered, its stones flying like dust. The air before them tore apart with a deafening whistle. Even the light itself seemed swallowed, disappearing into that advancing silver whiteness.

  —

  The Lord of Sand was the first to feel it.

  The first petal surged toward him. He raised his hands to protect himself, sending the last of his sand to meet it. But the sand scattered as though it were nothing. The petal passed through it, slammed the Lord of Sand to the ground, and hurled him dozens of meters away from the battlefield.

  The Lady of the Whip saw the second petal rushing toward her. She lashed out, cutting part of it—but the threads regenerated instantly, growing anew, striking her with a force that drove the air from her lungs and threw her far away.

  The Lord of Gravity tried to multiply the weight around the third petal. But the threads were too light for gravity to grasp. The petal reached him, wrapped him, and flung him like a torn doll out of the battle.

  The Lord of Transparency was creeping within the shadows. The fourth petal did not distinguish between shadow and ground. It struck where he was, forcing him out of the darkness and throwing him onto the ruins of a distant building.

  The Lord of Mist—the fifth petal reached him. He turned himself into pure mist, attempting to evade it. Part of him scattered, but another part remained. The petal passed through him, yet he reformed, retreating quickly backward.

  And the vines—every vine Rashid had spread—were shattered beneath the petals’ advance. Thousands of plants were torn, cut apart, scattered through the air as if they had never existed.

  —

  The flower fully bloomed.

  For a single moment.

  Then—it unraveled.

  The threads scattered, turning into silver dust drifting through the air like snowflakes in a desert.

  Karsu stood in the center. Blood flowed from his nose, his ears, his eyes. His body trembled. The Mother Aura in his eyes dimmed, nearly vanishing.

  But he remained standing.

  And the battlefield around him—was empty.

  All his enemies were far away, sprawled on the ground, groaning, gasping.

  Then—

  The Lord of Mist clapped.

  A single clap. Quick. Sharp.

  —

  Just one moment.

  It took only a single moment.

  —

  The mist.

  It was no longer ordinary mist. It was a being. A flood. A wall of dense whiteness advancing from every direction, swallowing everything in its path.

  The warehouses—tens of thousands of square meters—filled within seconds.

  The ground disappeared. The sky disappeared. The walls disappeared. Even the sounds disappeared.

  Nothing remained—

  Except white.