LUCIUS
She caught it!? How? How in the world—?
My mind reeled, grasping at reason, trying to make sense of the impossible scene in front of me. The Chimaera—the thunderous, terrifying bastard—had caught my sword. Not with a paw. Not even with her fangs. With her tail. That monstrous, viper-headed tail of hers. She caught my weapon mid-air, like it was nothing. Like a ball tossed from a child's hands.
She landed with a thunderous crunch on all four of her grotesque limbs, her front left and rear right legs soaked in blood, torn and ravaged from earlier blows. Yet she didn't even flinch. Not a tremble. Not a stagger. Did the pain we inflicted no longer meant anything to her?
And I—
I had just taken a step back without even realising. I was unarmed now. Both of my weapons—gone.
All I had left was the fear clawing inside my chest and the bitter, powerless ache of being naked in front of an unholy enemy.
The Chimaera brought my sword closer to her grotesque face, the glint of its crimson edge shimmering as it caught the light. She turned it slowly, studying it like an artist would a tool they found beneath centuries of dust.
No, not studying. She was mocking me.
Mocking the effort I'd put into that throw. Mocking the desperation that had taken hold of me when I launched it at her. Mocking the tiny, trembling tactician in front of her who had just failed to matter.
My sword—sword was coiled in her tail's grasp, wrapped securely around the viper-like appendage as if it were nothing more than a trinket. The mouth of that tail hovered above the hilt—my hilt—dripping venom from its slick fangs, inches away from something sacred.
And just like that, the fire inside me died.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The flames that had raged within me moments before—those red, searing embers that burned in my veins, in my lungs, in my heart—just… went cold. Snuffed out the instant I lost contact with the sword. With him...
Because the weapon wasn't just metal.
It wasn't just magic.
It was the only connection I had to the man, the first human who believed in me. The man who died so I could live.
And now… it was in the claws of a monster who didn't even understand what it meant.
The Chimaera moved again, and I tensed, ready to react, even though I was nothing compared to her. But she didn't attack.
She… swung the sword. Like she was testing it. Spinning it in little arcs. Balancing the weight. Feeling it out.
What…? What the actual hell was happening? Was she trying to use it?
No. She couldn't.
The Blood-Pact was bound to me. Ragnar had made it clear—time strengthens the bond. Ten years with that weapon. Ten years of his soul bleeding into that blade. And then he gave it to me.
Entrusted it to me. I was its rightful bearer now. So what was she doing—?
The tail-mouthed viper stopped its movements, suddenly still, then spread its grotesque jaws wide open—too wide—as if preparing to devour the blade.
My knees locked. My heart clenched.
No.
My instincts screamed at me, but my legs refused to move. My voice caught in my throat. I could only watch. Frozen. Helpless. Then the hiss came.
Not a bite. Not a gulp. No…
It released a spray—a thick, sizzling cloud of green mist.
Poison. Highly toxic. Corrosive. Devouring.
The mist clung to the blade like rot, turning its polished crimson to a dull, sickly green in seconds. I could hear the hiss—the sound of decay—as the metal itself began to burn. Warp. Fade.
The weapon tried to resist. I saw it—like something alive, like it knew this wasn't just rust or time eating it away. The flames flickered at its base one final time, like a heartbeat in cardiac arrest.
And then—
It began to melt.
"Stop—!" I choked. "Stop it—please! Don't—!"
I begged. I cursed. I dropped to my knees.
My fists clenched the dirt as I shouted at the creature—words it could never understand. Please, that it would never acknowledge. I screamed again, tears rising from somewhere.
Make it stop. Please, just stop—
But the blade—my blade, his blade—was already halfway gone.
The edge that had split monsters like paper…
The hilt that had rested in Ragnar's dying grip…
The metal that had carved open fate and carried our hopes—
All of it was being eaten alive.
Gone.
I reached forward, a stupid, useless gesture. I wasn't even close, but I reached anyway. Like I could stop it with will alone.
I couldn't. I couldn't do anything.
Not now. Not ever.
And all I could see in my mind—over and over and over—was Ragnar's hand pressing the sword into mine. The warmth of his blood mixing with mine. The trust in his dying eyes when he said, "You will inherit this weapon."
I'd failed him. I had failed him.
That wasn't just a sword. It wasn't just a tool. It was a promise. It was proof that someone—anyone—believed in me. And now it was gone.
Burned away... Ashes in the wind.
I dropped my forehead to the dirt. My nails dug into the soil. My chest heaved with soundless sobs, the kind that don't even reach your throat because they're too deep, too broken.
"…I'm sorry…" I whispered. "I'm so sorry…"
But no one answered. The sword was gone. And so was the last relic... Memory of the man who gave it to me...
... What's the point of all this…? I asked myself, bitterly. Hollowly. What was the point of rising again? Of standing tall? Of not kneeling, not giving in, not staying down? What was the point of fighting back when the world had already decided I didn't matter?
Without my weapons, I was nothing. Just another guy with a barely functioning core and an ability I couldn't even understand or utilise yet, properly... I've called it a technique, or a glitch. Something strange. Something rare. Something dangerous, but never something practical... Absolute Zero.
But so far, it hadn't helped me. Not once when it truly mattered. All the theories, all the whispered conversations behind closed doors about how I might someday be dangerous, someday be important—what good were they now? Here? Against this monster?
They weren't going to save me.
The Chimaera was still staring at me with those gleaming, inhuman eyes. Her lightning was deadly, yes—but her tail… that disgusting, coiled monstrosity with a serpent's mouth, that hadn't even begun to move the way it could. That thing was still her ace. Still waiting.
And me? I was standing here like a joke. A boy who had been playing pretend. A child with big dreams and no way to back them up.
Even Forza—the one who had shaken the beast, who had struck like wrath from above—was nowhere to be found now. Probably still tangled in the skies, duelling that flying asshole. Leaving me to face this… This- this asshole on my own.
A laughless breath escaped me. I'm not a mage. Not a real one, anyway.
Telekinesis?
Sure.
But it's not an element. Not something you grow into. It's not fire or lightning or even shadow. It doesn't bless you with control, it drains you. It strips your mind raw and devours your strength from the inside out. It's not a gift—it's a ticking bomb. A staircase that climbs into Meltdown with every step.
My only lifelines had always been my blades. Crimson Ultima—gone. Melted into nothing. Mocked and broken by poison. Snowhite—sunk deep into that silent pond to my left, still hundreds of meters away, unreachable. Useless.
My palms trembled. My chest felt like it was being crushed by the weight of all the things I couldn't be.
I cursed. Cursed my luck. Cursed my blood. Cursed the silence of the gods who never answered me.
Why give me life if I wasn't even allowed to fight for it? Why give me a name and not a path? Was I some forgotten draft of a hero's tale? A scribbled-out side character who never should've been written-
"…So this is how losers think, huh? Interesting."
My breath caught.
That voice. That damn voice again!? I knew it!
The same one that had spoken earlier, that had commanded me to move, to dodge, to survive—when I was tangled in the storm of Forza's fury, when my senses were slacking off, as if we were not on a mission, but out on a vacation.
My eyes snapped up. But I saw no one. No figure, no shadow, no saviour.
Just the Chimaera, conjuring a dense orb of compressed mana—pulsing, shifting—before hurling it toward me.
Move. I did. I dodged. My body remembered the steps before I even told it to. Dipped low. Pivoted left. Rolled through a gap of scattered rocks.
Survived.
But I'd forgotten the last step—forgotten to counter. Forgotten how to fight. Because for a second… I wasn't in control anymore. The voice had slipped in, hijacked my instincts.
Who the hell are you?
I screamed the question inwardly.
Are you something real, or just my imagination cracking at the seams? Another hallucination like Ninia's echo?
Silence.
No reply this time.
No comforting whisper. No cryptic command. Just the regular, choking blankness of a boy on the edge, outmatched and falling apart.
My knees buckled slightly, but I forced myself to stay upright for some reason.
My gaze, fixed entirely on the Chimaera, caught something strange off. Something I wasn't prepared for. My body… it was shutting down. No, not out of fear. Not because of exhaustion or injury. This was different.
Absolute Zero had activated.
I didn't do it. I didn't trigger it.
Panic exploded in my chest like a flaring core. My mana circulation had halted entirely. The rotation of my core—gone, silenced. My body wasn't listening anymore, as if some external force had severed my connection to the very thing keeping me alive in battle. I tried to reinitiate the flow, reaching for mana with every fibre of my being, but nothing happened. I was locked out. Like I'd been sealed.
Then I noticed it.
The trees were frozen in mid-sway. The wet leaves caught mid-fall, suspended in air like glass sculptures. Raindrops, dozens of them, hovered midair like stars paused mid-descent. Even the thunder, so constant moments ago, was silent, still trapped within the churning storm clouds above.
No wind. No sound. Just… stillness.
A terrifying, impossible stillness.
The Chimaera hadn't moved either. Her stance remained the same—low, predatory—but the lightning that always danced across her body had stopped entirely. The sparks were there, mid-arc, trapped like a sketch frozen halfway through a brushstroke.
She wasn't breathing. She wasn't twitching.
Nothing was.
It was as if the goddess of time herself had drawn a curtain across this scene, halting the play before its next tragic act.
I tried to take a step forward, to test this reality, but my feet refused to obey. My mind screamed at them to move—run, get Snowhite, get out—but my legs stood there like they were carved from stone. My instincts, which had flared wild just seconds ago, had gone quiet, subdued beneath something older, deeper—something… watching.
Everything felt real. That's what made it worse. The scent of ozone still clung to the air. The dull ache of my ruined eye pulsed just beneath the surface, a reminder that this wasn't a dream. My left side ached from where the Chimaera's lightning had grazed me earlier. The burn was still there.
This wasn't an illusion. Not some hallucination conjured by stress or loss. The pain was real. My mind was clear.
And yet— I couldn't act. I couldn't even speak. I was a spectator in my own body, staring into a moment that defied everything I understood.
It wasn't just that the world was paused. It was that I had been left behind... What the hell is going on here?!