Subway Musea
Old Rind District
New Boston, North Atlantic Federation arc zone
Western Hemisphere,
United Earth Federation
2435 A.D.
Appearing within the decaying tunnels of the former subway, the assassin who had killed Kestrel stepped through the shimmering fold of his transit veil. The distortion rippled shut behind him, leaving only the whisper of displaced air. He reached up, peeling off the glamour mask that had obscured his features, and pulled back his hood. A youthful face came into focus—sharp-boned, almost delicate in contrast to the brutality of his act. His hair was jet black, falling in uneven strands across a narrow brow, and his eyes glinted a dark, cold blue beneath the dim flicker of the overhead lamps. A faint scar ran down the right side of his forehead, catching the light as he exhaled slowly, letting the adrenaline fade.
The old subway around him was silent except for the occasional drip of water striking the cracked tiles. Once a thriving artery of pre-UEF New Boston, the place had long since fallen into ruin—its tracks rusted, its walls layered in decades of soot and forgotten graffiti. Now it served as a ghost of the old world, a remnant deliberately preserved by the city council as part of the Old Rind district—a district that had refused modernization, standing as a living museum of a bygone era.
Aboveground, the Old Rind was all hollowed brickwork and faded steel, its streets lined with boarded-up shops and memorial statues to the world that had ended when the UEF rose. Few citizens lived here now; only the hum of security drones and the rare echo of tourists disturbed its perpetual dusk. The GSA kept an eye on it, of course—sensor grids, periodic patrols—but rarely with any real consistency. It was, by all measures, forgotten ground.
And that made it perfect.
In the shadows of that preserved ruin, where the past clung stubbornly to every wall, the assassin returned to his refuge—a safehouse for the group that had orchestrated the Hall of Radiance bombing. The subway tunnels stretched like veins beneath the district, leading to sealed chambers, old service rooms, and repurposed platforms where flickering terminals still pulsed with forbidden sigils. Here, hidden beneath the weight of history, he was beyond the reach of prying eyes.
He moved through the old tunnel, his boots crunching over glass and gravel. The stale air reeked faintly of rust and mold, the scent of a place long sealed from sunlight. Every few steps, the faint hum of forgotten power conduits vibrated through the walls—a ghost current still lingering in the infrastructure of the past.
Kestrel's face haunted him in flashes—the widening eyes, the sudden disbelief as his attack pierced her chest. The woman hadn't even screamed. One precise strike, the way he'd been trained. Clean. Efficient. But as the memory replayed, something in it grated at him—not guilt, not pity, but irritation.
He thought of the GSA agent whom he had fought against after he had killed the bombmaker. He was of the same tier as him, though the quantity of his Lumenis was below his, and yet, he, Nine had sensed his death from that agent's attack.
He'd underestimated him. The memory of his attack still stung—his glamour field had nearly collapsed when his strike grazed his throat. Another second, and he might not have made it out at all.
He reached the end of the corridor where the tunnel opened into a large maintenance platform. Ahead, a pair of massive steel doors stood embedded in the wall—rusted, ancient, but still functional. Faint light pulsed from the cracks between them. As he approached, the embedded sensors scanned his biometric signature, recognizing the disguised frequency of his gem imprint. The doors shuddered and slid open, releasing a gust of cool, filtered air.
He stepped inside. The heavy steel doors groaned shut behind him, sealing off the tunnel's cold air. The dim light of the underground chamber flared briefly as the sensors registered his entry.
Waiting for him near the threshold, leaning against a stack of equipment crates, was Archie.
"You're late, Nine," she called out, her voice cutting through the hum of machinery.
She was short—barely reaching his shoulder—but her presence filled the space. Strands of red hair escaped the knot at the back of her head, and the glow from a nearby terminal caught the faint freckles on her cheeks. Her green eyes, bright and unflinching, regarded him like she was measuring how much trouble he'd caused this time.
"Xer's been looking for you," she added, crossing her arms.
"I was finishing a mission," Nine replied, brushing past her with a weary flick of his hand. His boots echoed down the grated staircase that led into the deeper level of the hideout.
The main chamber unfolded below them like the heart of a mechanical beast. Banks of terminals and modular workstations formed a rough semicircle around the central command hub. Sparks leapt from a welding rig as one of the engineers worked on drone frames. The smell of ozone and lubricant filled the air. Conversations, clattering tools, and the rhythmic hiss of pneumatic doors created a restless hum—organized chaos that pulsed with the lifeblood of their operation.
Archie followed him, her arms still folded, eyes narrowing as he passed a group of techs. "You know, one day Xer's not going to cover for you. You keep showing up late like this, we might just let you burn."
Nine ignored her jab. He was exhausted, his mind still replaying the confrontation topside. His muscles ached, his throat still throbbed faintly from the cut he had recieved. All he wanted was silence—but that was a rare luxury down here.
They reached the command room, a large, circular space with darkened walls and a single elevated platform in the center. The holo-map of New Boston floated above it in a pale blue projection, shifting with real-time surveillance data. Lanes of light traced troop movements, GSA patrol routes, and security grids.
Standing before it was their team leader—Xer.
Even in stillness, Xer radiated control. Clad in black tactical armor beneath a long coat of the same shade, the figure was more shadow than human. The helmet's smooth visor reflected the glow of the holo-map, concealing everything—no eyes, no expression, no hint of the person beneath.
When Nine entered, Xer turned slightly toward him. The visor's reflection caught his face for an instant.
"I see you're back," Xer said, voice distorted slightly through the modulator—flat, calm, unreadable.
"Yeah," Nine replied, dropping into one of the nearby chairs. He leaned back and kicked his feet up onto the console. "Still breathing, so I'd call it a success."
"You should mind your manners," Archie said, shooting him a look as the door hissed shut behind her.
Nine smirked faintly, half amused, half too tired to care. "Manners are for people with time to waste."
"Good thing I don't," Xer interjected, the tone sharp enough to slice the air. The room fell quiet for a moment, save for the low hum of the holo-map and the distant thrum of machinery.
Xer turned back toward the glowing projection. "Report, Nine. Tell me how was the mission up top."
Nine's smirk faded. He straightened slowly, the faint light catching the scar on his forehead. "Kestrel's dead. I killed her before she could say anything meanigful to the GSA."
Archie's expression hardened. Xer didn't move. The silence that followed felt heavy, like the air before a storm.
"But she did talk before you killed her, didn't she?" Xer's voice came from behind the visor, modulated and calm, yet carrying an edge that made the room's hum seem to dim.
"Well, we knew she was gonna reveal my name," Nine said with a shrug, as if that excused everything.
"You mean that stupid name you use," Archie cut in, a smirk tugging at her lips.
"Hey! It isn't stupid," Nine grumbled, straightening in his chair. "The Chorumsmen was a great organization. They could've brought true peace to this world."
Archie snorted. "I doubt a religious faction that barely got its feet off the ground could amount to much."
"Watch your mouth," Nine warned, summoning his wand with a flick of his wrist. The slender shaft of black alloy unfolded, humming faintly with Lumenic current.
Archie raised an eyebrow and summoned her staff in response. "Or what? You'll preach me into submission?"
"Enough," Xer said.
The command was soft but absolute.
Both their auras flared instinctively—then immediately recoiled. The air thickened with silent pressure. Even though all three shared the same evolutionary tier, the gulf between Xer's presence and theirs was immeasurable. It was the difference between weight and gravity.
Nine lowered his wand, exhaling through his nose. Archie dismissed her staff with a tap of her fingers.
"This GSA agent you encountered," Xer began, visor turning toward Nine.
"What of him?" Nine asked carefully.
"Is he still alive?"
"I didn't get the chance to kill him," Nine admitted. "The bastard had a Relic Gem—and he was good. Skilled. Like he'd been trained by someone who knew how to kill things that shouldn't exist."
Archie blinked, surprise cutting through her irritation. "A Relic Gem? How the hell does a GSA agent have one of those?"
"Because," Xer said, voice flat, "he's of the corporate houses."
Nine and Archie exchanged a look.
"What?" they said in unison.
"Elias Vasselheim," Xer continued. "He's chased us all the way from Europe to here. Of all places."
Archie's brows shot up. "You mean the Infernal Swordsman? I heard half our European cells were wiped out because of him."
"They were," Xer confirmed.
Nine leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Then I should've finished him off when I had the chance."
"Yeah, instead of running off with your tail between your legs," Archie muttered. "With your Facet, you should've been able to finish him."
Nine's jaw tightened. "You know I don't use my Facet unless it's necessary. You know the price I pay for it."
Archie opened her mouth to snap back, but the words froze on her tongue as Xer's aura pulsed—a heavy, suffocating wave that filled every corner of the room.
"It matters not if you stare into the future or not," Xer said, voice reverberating like a quiet thunder. "I already foresaw the consequence of bombing the Hall."
The light from the holo-map cast pale reflections across the visor as Xer turned back to the glowing city projection. The silent grid of New Boston shimmered, lines of light tracing patrol routes, secure sectors, and red-marked zones of recent conflict.
Archie and Nine glared at each other behind Xer's back, the tension between them taut and simmering, but neither dared speak again.
Xer's thoughts, meanwhile, drifted far beyond them—past the confines of the hideout, past the hum of the underground base, toward the image of a lone swordsman bathed in infernal light.
Soon, Xer thought, the voice behind the visor was cold and deliberate. Our paths will meet again, Elias Vasselheim.
* * *
Ryn led them into the Old Rind district. Their hoverbike glided through the narrow, timeworn streets between relics of an era long gone. Monuments of oxidized steel and weathered marble passed in silent rows, each one a ghost of pre-UEF civilization.
Elias barely looked at them. The past, to him, was dead weight—ornamented failure cast in stone. He'd never been one to linger on what was gone or indulge the ache of regret.
Once Elias made a choice, he lived with it. No looking back. No second thoughts. The world could mourn its ruins—he would keep moving forward.
They descended the cracked stairwell into the subway tunnels, the air thick with the scent of rust, dust, and oil. The faint hum of long-dead power lines vibrated somewhere beneath the concrete. Ryn moved ahead, his reptilian pupils narrowing as his tongue flicked in and out, tasting the air. The deeper they went, the quieter it became—until Ryn stopped abruptly.
"What is it?" Elias asked, hand brushing the hilt of his saber.
Ryn tilted his head slightly, eyes half-closed. "There's a barrier ahead."
Elias frowned. "A barrier? What kind?"
"The deceptive kind," Ryn said. His voice was low, analytical. "It's not strong—simple, really. The barrier bends the perception of anyone who looks at it. When a person stares at that corner up ahead, their brain can't process what's there. It just… skips over it. The mind fills the gap with nothing."
Elias followed Ryn's gaze. At first glance, it was just another patch of wall—grimy concrete, half-collapsed piping, a spill of shadow. But now that Ryn had pointed it out, there was something off about that space—like a smudge on reality itself.
Ryn gestured toward it. "Of course, my senses don't rely on sight alone. I can smell and taste the energy pattern. The weave is clumsy. Whoever built this didn't expect anything non-human to come poking around."
Elias nodded. "I see. So they went for subtlety over strength. A powerful barrier would have lit up every GSA scanner within a mile. But a simple one…"—he traced a finger across the tunnel wall—"…would slip under the radar. The downside, of course, is that anyone with heightened perception can see right through it."
Ryn gave a faint grin. "If you're a human, you're blind. If you're me, you're lucky."
Elias took out his Lumenpad, activating a holographic projection of the Lumenet schematics. Blue lines of data expanded across the space, reconstructing the tunnel network in three dimensions. He zoomed in on the sector they were in.
"There," he said, pointing. "Hidden compartment. Enough room for a base of operations. There are a few access points, but this one—" he tapped the glowing mark on the map "—connects directly to the core chamber."
Ryn nodded. "Then we're already standing on their doorstep."
They moved toward the illusion. Ryn reached out and pushed through the distortion—it wavered like a heat mirage before collapsing in a ripple of light. A heavy metal door lay behind it, half-buried in grime.
"Looks like this is the one," Ryn said. He gripped the handle and tore it off with a twist of his arm, forcing the door open. Darkness yawned beyond—deep and silent.
Elias stared into it for a long moment, then made up his mind. "Wait here, Ryn."
Ryn blinked. "You want me to stay behind while you walk into enemy territory?"
"Yes." Elias's tone left no room for debate. "If something happens, you call it in. Reinforcements will move faster if one of us stays above ground."
Ryn hesitated, then sighed. "All right. Your funeral, not mine."
Elias smirked faintly, stepping through the doorway and vanishing into the dark.
Deep below, the hum of servers filled the silence as Xer, Nine, and Archie stood before the holo-map of New Boston. Their discussion halted when a shrill alarm cut through the room. Red warning sigils flared across the walls.
Archie's eyes darted to the nearest console. "What the hell—?"
The central screen shifted, showing live surveillance footage. The image resolved into a figure walking down their access corridor—calm, deliberate, his eyes glinting faintly in the low light.
Elias Vasselheim.
"What the…?" Archie hissed. She turned to Nine. "You couldn't warn us?"
Nine stared at the screen, eyes narrowing as disbelief gave way to irritation. "How the hell did he—"
He pushed back from his chair, jaw tightening. Xer, meanwhile, remained silent, visor fixed on the monitor. Their gauntleted fingers danced across a control pad, flipping through the outer surveillance feeds.
"Xer, leave this to me," Nine said, standing fully now. His hand brushed the hilt of his weapon.
"Fine," Xer replied, their voice calm but clipped. "Deal with it quickly. In the meantime, we're evacuating this site. Once a GSA operative breaches the perimeter, reinforcements won't be far behind."
Archie scowled. "And what about him?" she asked, jerking her chin toward the screen.
Xer's visor reflected Elias's advancing figure, his expression unreadable. "He's already signed his own death warrant," Xer said quietly. "We just have to deliver it."
Meanwhile, as Elias walked through the dim corridor, his footsteps echoing against the cold concrete walls, his thoughts returned to the enemy he was about to face.
At first, he had been certain the killer was Luminian—the weaving patterns he'd witnessed during their first encounter bore the same fluid, light-based logic as Flux-style combat. But Ryn's analysis had torn that suspicion apart, proving the signature belonged not to a Luminia, but to a human.
That changed everything.
The terrorist group Elias had been hunting for months—the same network responsible for the Hall of Radiance bombing—had always been labeled as a radical Luminian sect. Most of his work as a GSA field operative involved countering Luminian extremists or containing rogue Resonant lifeforms. While the Luminia were pacifists by nature, a few among them took their ideology to extremes—seeing violence as a means to preserve peace.
But this? A human weaving like a Luminia? That was something else entirely.
He thought back to Kestrel, the bombmaker he'd tracked across Europe. She had been the final thread that led him back to New Boston. Her death should have ended the trail. Instead, it opened a deeper riddle—one that pointed to something buried inside the city's heart.
He hadn't expected the bombing—no, the assassination—of Malcolm Hynes to happen while he was here. The timing had been too perfect, too deliberate. He had assumed it was the Luminia again. But now… maybe he was barking up the wrong tree altogether.
Elias stopped.
A pulse of foreign energy brushed against his senses. The corridor trembled slightly—the resonance of another's Lumenis pressure filling the air like a rising tide. The walls seemed to breathe under the weight of it.
Then he heard the voice.
"We meet again, boy."
Elias turned, his gaze narrowing. The figure approached from the shadows—Nine, stepping into the dim light with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"You," Elias said calmly. "I don't like your tone much."
Nine chuckled, tilting his head. "I see you didn't bring your sword this time. Hmm… no, wait—you store it in that drone of yours, don't you? Well, we're deep underground now. I don't think you'll be calling for help."
Elias ignored the jab. His tone sharpened. "How does a human like you know how to weave?"
Nine blinked, feigning confusion. "Huh? Not long ago, you called me a Luminia."
"I thought you were," Elias said, his eyes glinting in the low light. "But not anymore."
"I see. Pretty sharp, Elias Vasselheim," Nine said, a sly grin spreading across his face.
Elias's posture stiffened slightly. "You know my name."
"Oh, I know everything about you, Infernal Swordsman."
That name made Elias's brow twitch. Infernal Swordsman—a moniker he hated, born from old campaigns and battlefield gossip. A relic of his past.
"Is that so?" he muttered. "Then who am I dealing with?"
Nine spread his arms slightly, as if performing on a stage. "Ah, so you want to know my name. As this is our second meeting, it's only fair." He gave a mocking bow. "I am Chorumsman Nine."
Elias's expression darkened. Chorumsman Nine. The same name Kestrel had whispered before she died.
"That name…" Elias said slowly. "It sounds familiar."
Nine smirked. "Good. I'm glad it does. Maybe after I kill you, it'll sound legendary. The man who slew one of the Corporation Houses' finest."
"You've got a thing against the Corporations?" Elias asked.
"Doesn't everybody?" Nine's tone hardened, the faint echo of bitterness in it. "You corporate dogs care only for power and profit—treating the rest of us as cogs in your golden machine. Your Houses have ruled for centuries while the world rots below your towers."
His resonant pressure spiked suddenly, cracking the tiles beneath his feet. Elias could feel the anger burning inside him—genuine, raw, unrestrained.
"So that's why you killed Malcolm Hynes," Elias said. "Because he worked for Celestex?"
Nine's grin faded into something colder. "What's the point of you knowing?" He raised his wand, the air rippling with light as his aura flared. "You're going to die here."
Elias exhaled slowly. "You're welcome to try."
He flicked his wrist—and the air around him shimmered with heat. Blades of plasma erupted into existence, circling him in a slow, radiant orbit. Veins of molten gold pulsed beneath his skin, his body thrumming with controlled fury. He moved.
One step—just one—and the floor beneath his boot liquefied into magma before hardening again mid-stride, propelling him forward in a blur. His plasma-forged sword descended in an arc of light and flame.
Nine's wand traced a sigil mid-air—his hands weaving with precise, unnatural speed. A translucent shield flared into being just in time to catch the strike.
The impact sent ripples of energy down the corridor. Sparks scattered, heat blooming against the walls.
Elias's eyes narrowed. He blocked it?
Nine smirked through the haze, his wand still glowing. "What's wrong, Infernal Swordsman? Surprised, I can keep up?"
Elias didn't answer. But deep inside, his instincts sharpened. The way Nine had moved—anticipating his attack with perfect timing—wasn't luck.
It was knowledge. But how?
Elias's thoughts flashed as he stepped back, the corridor trembling beneath their duel. Before he could recover his stance, Nine had already completed a new weave—three sigils flaring in the air around him like burning seals.
In the next instant, beams of concentrated light tore forward, cutting through the corridor with surgical precision.
Elias sprang backward, his body twisting midair as the first beam sliced past his shoulder, searing the wall behind him. He flipped onto a lower platform, just barely dodging the second, while the third split the air where his head had been a moment before. Each beam was fast enough to punch through reinforced steel; a single hit would have ended him.
Planting his feet, Elias summoned another plasma-forged sword, molten edges forming with a hiss of radiant energy. Retreating isn't an option, he told himself. He surged forward, both blades igniting like twin suns in his hands.
His movements blurred—a torrent of incandescent arcs that traced burning filaments through the air. Each strike shredded through the incoming beams, scattering their light into shards. Sparks burst around him as his dual blades carved forward, a seamless fusion of technique and raw power.
But Nine was already in motion.
He stepped onto nothing—the air beneath his feet flickering with green light, a support weave manifesting into invisible footholds. He leapt upward in a spiraling path, each step rippling with luminous distortion.
Elias's eyes narrowed. He's anticipating me.
Nine's movements were too precise, too timed—as if he were reacting not to what Elias was doing, but to what Elias was going to do. Every dodge, every counter, flowed with premeditated rhythm, like a man dancing to music he already knew by heart.
The realization hit Elias as he swung his blades through another barrage of sigils blazing to life around his foe—
It's like he's reading me before I even move. Elias activated Radiant Vein. Golden filaments spread beneath his skin, tracing along his temples and blooming into radiant veins around his eyes. His vision shifted instantly—colors fading, replaced by the raw, pulsating lattice of energy that made up all living things.
Through this sight, he could see Nine's energetic structure—not just the flow of Lumenis, but the intricate web of sockets embedded throughout his body. And there, pulsing at the center of his chest, Elias saw it.
A Gem.
He narrowed his eyes. He's a Gemcrafter.
Within Nine's torso, a single gem burned like a miniature sun, its energy field extending through his body in precise, threadlike currents. Elias recognized the configuration immediately—the main gem socketed in the heart cavity, the anchor of one's Base Facet.
He had seen many kinds of Gems before. There were Primal Gems, born of the earth's own resonance, divided into elemental and conceptual hues. Bloodline Gems, inherited like living heirlooms, such as the Emberstone he himself carried. Synthetic Gems, grown in the bio-foundries of the Corporation Houses. And the rare Relic Gems, ancient stones forged long before modern Gemcraft.
Nine's core gem was Primal but not elemental—its energy carried the crystalline signature of a Conceptual Hue. Thin, golden threads radiated outward from it, weaving into the air around him like the strands of a spider's web.
Elias's vision traced their flow. Each thread flickered, branching off into faint afterimages of motion—possibilities, decisions, outcomes. Then the truth clicked.
A Probability Gem.
The core of Nine's power wasn't elemental or destructive—it was predictive. The gem housed the Base Facet known as Thread of Causality.
It allowed him to map the causal lines of his target's actions—calculating every decision, every strike, every breath, and projecting the branching futures that could result. It was why he could anticipate Elias's movements before they happened.
But Elias also saw the flaw. The threads were pulsing erratically, their ends fraying from strain. The Facet demanded continuous focus—it wasn't an automatic effect. Nine had to maintain active thought on his target for the calculations to work, and each prediction devoured vast amounts of Lumenis.
A powerful ability—but one that bled its user dry the longer it was used. The problem was, Nine had plenty of Lumenis to burn through. Elias could see it clearly now through the fading glow of his Radiant Vein—pathways of living light coursing beneath the assassin's skin, carrying power from a core buried deep within him. It wasn't just sockets; it was a full Lumenis circulatory system, complete with an internal core to feed it.
He has both sockets and a Lumenis core, Elias realized. That's his secret.
He deactivated Radiant Vein, letting the golden glow fade from his eyes. No point wasting energy now that he understood what he was dealing with.
Nine, however, had already seen what came next. His base facet allowed him to perceive the branching futures of a target's decisions—but his first cut facet took it further. It let him peer three to five seconds into the immediate future itself. Enough time to predict, react, and counter. It was why he had danced so effortlessly around Elias's attacks before.
Elias felt the weight of that knowledge settle in. There were a dozen questions he wanted to ask this human—how he'd learned Flux Weaving, who had taught him, why he was working with Luminian radicals—but now wasn't the time. The longer this fight dragged, the more Nine would exploit his foresight.
End it fast.
Nine made three sharp gestures with his wand, his lips moving in perfect rhythm with the flow of his Lumenis.
"Auric Rodus," he hissed, the words spilling in Luminis Cantus, the sacred language of the Luminia.
Light gathered around him, coalescing into solid photonic rods that gleamed with a metallic sheen. In an instant, the air filled with their blinding flight—a storm of radiant projectiles screaming toward Elias.
Elias didn't hesitate. He dismissed his off-hand blade, channeling his energy into the main plasma sword. The weapon pulsed once, its edges melting into a single focused form—a longsword forged of golden-white heat.
He exhaled. The world slowed. Then he drew. The blade flashed like a solar flare, its motion too fast for the human eye. Every rod that entered his reach was cleaved in half, exploding into sparks and molten shards before they could strike.
Nine took advantage of the afterimage, appearing behind him with another weave already forming in the air. The corridor erupted with radiant fractals—geometric constructs of pure light that spiraled and converged like blades.
They moved as one, slicing toward Elias from every direction. Elias twisted through them, his movements fluid, almost dancing. The fractals burned against his plasma armor, cutting close but never landing true. Their structure was unmistakable. He knew this weave.
He's fully trained in the art of the Luminis Weave, Elias thought grimly. Someone must have taught him.
Several fractals detonated mid-air, their collapse turning into concussive bursts that shattered the tunnel walls. The shockwave hit him before he could retreat. He quickly activated his fourth Resonant Facet.
A translucent dome flared into being around him, a shell of plasma-infused crystal refracting both light and energy. It held—just long enough for the explosions to subside—before the force finally overwhelmed him.
The barrier cracked, and the blast hurled Elias through several walls, tearing the corridor apart. Debris rained around him as he hit the ground hard, sliding through rubble into what used to be a maintenance platform.
The battlefield had transformed completely—what had once been a narrow corridor was now a wide, shattered chamber of steel and stone. Broken conduits hissed with escaping steam, the air thick with glowing dust.
Elias didn't hesitate. He rose from the debris, shoulders straight, his plasma-forged sword humming at his side. His eyes burned with molten gold as he advanced through the haze, each step deliberate and steady.
From the drifting smoke ahead, Nine emerged. His cloak was torn, but his grin had returned—sharp and confident. He raised his wand, the air around him vibrating with coiled Lumenis. In an instant, glowing spheres materialized in an orbit around him, each one pulsing like a miniature sun.
Then they fired.
Beams of radiant energy burst outward, spiraling and twisting in complex arcs, splitting into dozens more as they curved through the air—an orbiting storm of light.
Elias didn't flinch. He walked straight into the barrage.
Nine froze for a moment, disbelief flickering across his face. He had already predicted this—the probability lines told him exactly what Elias would do and how the weave would end it. The pattern had been flawless.
Yet the swordsman wasn't being torn apart.
Elias's blade blazed brighter, cutting through the storm in arcs of gold and white. Each motion flowed with impossible precision—blocking, deflecting, slicing apart every beam before it reached him. Sparks cascaded like rain, his movements both surgical and effortless, as though he already knew where each strike would land.
Nine's composure cracked. What's going on?
His eyes widened as Elias pressed forward, every swing dismantling the luminous assault he had so carefully woven. The agent moved without hesitation, his aura burning like a contained supernova—his body glowing from within, golden veins alive with radiant power.
Nine realized, with a flicker of dread, that Elias wasn't merely reacting. He was reading him back.
The GSA swordsman barely relied on any Facet beyond the resonant one still active—yet even that was enough. His energy flared, pure and controlled, like a living star striding through the storm.
"How? How is this possible?" Nine shouted, his voice cracking through the roar of their clashing energies.
He could see ahead—the next few seconds, the very moves Elias would make. Every shift, every swing, every pivot was laid bare before him in the threads of causality his gem revealed. Yet even as he adjusted, recalibrating the trajectory of his attacks to match the predicted outcome, Elias moved again—fluidly, instinctively—altering his course in perfect counter to Nine's corrections.
It was like fighting someone who could read his own future.
Nine gritted his teeth, frustration boiling into disbelief. His predictions were flawless, but Elias's martial instincts were sharper—his body adapting faster than Nine's mind could calculate.
"You have a probability gem that grants you an immense advantage," Elias said evenly as he advanced, his voice calm amid the chaos. "If only you'd put such power to better use."
"Shut up, you corporate dog!" Nine snarled, his wand trembling with anger.
"I've heard insults like that most of my life," Elias replied, stepping through the swirling haze of energy. His golden eyes burned brighter. "Is that all you have?"
"You think you're so clever," Nine spat. "Let's see you handle this!"
He thrust his wand forward, the tip glowing with intense light as he pulled Lumenis from his core. The air shimmered, then burst outward as a mass of water materialized, flooding the space between them. The weave converted pure Lumenis into matter—a rare and taxing technique.
Nine grinned through clenched teeth. I see it now. He'll burn through it—use his plasma to evaporate the water. That's his instinct. I'll force him to waste his reserves.
He analyzed in rapid thought, watching Elias through flickering threads of probability. His carat output might be high, but it's not as high as mine. His Lumenis reserves are limited. A war of attrition will bleed him dry. Yes… in a few seconds, he'll—
A single gesture cut through his thought.
Elias moved once.
A clean, simple slash. The plasma blade carved a line of molten light through the wall of water. For a brief, perfect moment, everything split in two—the torrent parted cleanly, steam hissing where the blade had passed.
And then Elias kept walking.
Nine stared, wide-eyed. His predictions had failed. The future he'd seen didn't exist.
Impossible.