Chapter 74: Breathless (Her POV)
He stepped through. Aerion.
Still massive. Still blazing with fury. Armor cracked, eyes molten, but unbroken. Wild. Unchained. The realm itself recoiled from him. Behind him, quiet as shadow, Navir. His head bowed, face unreadable, but I felt the storm in him. Not around him. Inside.
I didn't move. Didn't flinch. I simply watched.
He hated that. "So this is where you hide now?" he scoffed, his voice thick with contempt. "In the ruins you caused?"
Not grief. Not sorrow. Fury wrapped in self-pity. Justice twisted into ego. "Korban is dead. My realm is ash. And you-" his lip curled, "you stand here like you've done nothing but bleed." He stepped forward. The air trembled with it. "You think Malvor saved you? That smug parasite?" His voice cracked. "He didn't save you. He used you. Like the rest of us did. That's all you've ever been good for."
I didn't answer. My silence only drove him further.
"You think this power makes you divine?" His eyes burned hotter. "You're nothing but the vessel we carved. An empty shell stuffed with power you were never meant to touch." Another step. "You think seducing a god makes you powerful? That lying down for chaos erases what you are? What we made you?"
Still, I didn't move.
He unraveled. "You seduced him," he hissed. "Don't deny it. You let him have you. You let him ruin everything. Now the Pantheon burns because of it!" He laughed then, bitter, broken. "I would have given you everything. Structure. Purpose. A place in something greater. And you threw it away. Traded legacy for a clown with glitter and lies." His hands shook. His voice dropped low, calm in a way that made it worse. "I should have burned you out the second I brought you here. Shattered you past bone. Scattered you into the void."
Behind him, Navir moved. Not with sound. Not with force. Just the slightest shift, the kind that carried weight. His mouth formed words, silent. I caught only a flicker. Not pity. Not shame. Guilt. The heavy, calculated kind. Logic gnawing at what couldn't be undone. Numbers running. Equations failing. He didn't meet my eyes. He didn't need to. I knew he saw it. Knew he understood. And knew he couldn't fix it.
But Aerion, he didn't care. He paced, a judge reciting a sentence he'd written long before I was allowed to speak. "You were a vessel. A tool. Chosen for one reason: service. I was merciful. I gave you the honor of my time." His eyes flicked over the broken walls. "And what did you do? You stole from me. Lied. Trapped me like a criminal. Now my son is dead. My realm is dust. And you stand here pretending you're the one who needs time to process." He spat the word like venom. "There's no godhood in you. Just entitlement. You took what wasn't yours. That isn't power. That's theft." He stepped closer, voice sharp as steel. "You were never divine. You were useful. And now you're not." He let the silence hang. Then shrugged. "You want freedom? Fine. But don't pretend this isn't your fault. You set the fire. And now you want praise for walking away from the smoke." His eyes locked on mine, expecting me to break. Because in his mind, He wasn't the monster. I was.
He didn't wait. No more speech. No proclamation. Just movement. Blinding, fast, sharp as law itself. The air cracked around him as he cut through it. But I didn't panic. I raised my hand. Chaos answered. A blade bloomed in my grip, jagged, shifting, alive. Not humming like a god-forged weapon. Laughing. Violet light and shadow, gleaming like rebellion made solid. His strike came. I met it. Sparks screamed between us. Steel against chaos. Justice against entropy. His face twisted, all fury and certainty, and he swung again. And again. Every blow fast, precise, merciless. I blocked. Every one. Calm. Steady. My blade didn't falter.
"You were meant to serve justice, not twist it," I said evenly, catching his edge and pushing it aside.
"I am justice. I am the law." he snarled. "You are the stain I was forged to cut away."
Strike. Block. Strike. Block. He pressed harder. He wanted me to stumble, to crumble, to bend. I didn't.
"You undo everything," he spat, his voice ragged. "You should have been burned before you took root."
Behind him, Navir. Watching. Silent. Cold. Not ally. Not enemy. Just… witness. I exhaled, slow and steady, sweat stinging my brow. My sword shifted, my rhythm changed. I wasn't just blocking anymore. I twisted. Redirected. Turned his perfect lines into stumbles. One flick of my wrist. A pivot of my hips.
I pushed. My blade snapped across his ribs, sharp enough to bite but not break. His eyes widened. He stumbled. That was the first time I'd seen him look uncertain. "This isn't power," he hissed, spitting the word like poison. "It's corruption. Stolen. Improvised."
I didn't answer. I didn't need to. I moved. Low strike. High strike. Step in. Clean parry, upward slash, his blade flew from his hand and skittered across the stone. He froze. I stood over him. Calm. Breath even. My sword still laughing in my grip. I didn't gloat. Didn't speak. I just… stood.
That's when he snapped. Pure panic. Something shifted, not in the air, but in the rules that governed it. A command sliding into place around my ribs like invisible shackles. My lungs pulled in a breath, and were denied. Not emptiness. Not stolen oxygen. Prohibition. A law written in an instant: Respiration: access revoked.
My chest seized. My ribs locked. My vision sparked.I tried to inhale again, and the universe refused me like I had violated a statute carved into creation. He wasn't choking me. He was declaring that I could not breathe. "You don't get to take my legacy and call it freedom," he rasped, trembling, manic. As if rewriting the rules of my body could restore the rules of his world. I had felt this before. At his hands. In this place. Where law had always been a weapon disguised as structure. Not again.
I didn't fight with strength. Or panic. Or force. I reached, not with muscle, but with will. A single thought: Breath is permitted.
The rule broke. Air flooded my lungs, sharp, glorious, defiant. Life obeyed me instead of him. The backlash hit like a divine reprimand. He jerked, inhaled sharply, and nothing came. Not because I stole his breath.But because the law he imposed, the one he forged in panic and control, now had no rightful target. So it defaulted to its creator. His hands flew to his throat. Clawing, gasping at a verdict turned inward. His eyes went wide with disbelief. Because law was supposed to obey him, not collapse on his own lungs. He dropped to one knee, body folding under the weight of his own decree. I breathed, calm, steady, alive. I could have held it. Watched him crumble under the judgment he meant for me. Let him taste the full consequence of his own doctrine. Instead, I released the rule's hold. Permission restored.
Air slammed into his chest just as his eyes had began to bulge and his face change color. He coughed, gagged, spitting, shaking, humiliated. I didn't look at him. Didn't waste words. I turned. I walked away. Because he wasn't choking on my blade. He was choking on his own story. Men like him always rewrote it. Never broken. Never wrong. Always the martyr.
I didn't need to hear it. He would rot in it without me. Behind me, the stars of the realm flickered, dim and dying. Navir's voice followed, quiet, fractured, like numbers spilling into silence. "…1.002 to 1… recursion vector… 48 outcomes… constant maintained. One fixed point. One axis…"
I didn't slow. I didn't turn. But I felt it, like a thread pulled tight through the universe when he whispered:
"Axiom."
I was already gone.