The air screamed.
It was a sound like tearing fabric—the displacement of atmosphere by a heavy object moving at subsonic speeds.
A decorative battle-axe, massive and ornate, spun through the darknes. It was aiming for the back of my skull.
I did not turn nor did I flinch.
Inefficient.
Before the blade could reach within a meter of my head, a shadow moved.
Kael extended a hand, palm open, and clenched his fist.
Crunch.
The air around the axe suddenly became heavier than lead. A localized field of the Fifteenth Name, Gravitas, slammed down on the projectile.
The axe's trajectory shattered. It fall and spiked into the ground.
With a deafening crash, the blade buried itself deep into the obsidian floor, inches from the heel of my boot. Stone splinters sprayed across the stage.
Silence fell over the Ember Bay.
I looked down at the axe vibrating in the floor. Then, slowly, I turned my head toward the shadows.
"A crude opening statement," I noted.
A figure stepped into the light.
Eugan Aldwulf.
He looked unrecognizable. The polished, arrogant noble from the museum was gone. In his place stood a man unraveling at the seams.
His silk suit was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot and wide with a frantic, cornered madness.
In his hand, he held a heavy pistol.
"You..." Eugan hissed, his voice trembling with hysteria. "You humiliated me! You stripped me naked before the Prince! Before the city!"
He raised the gun.
"You are a fraud! A trickster with a fancy light show! Let's see if your 'Divine Archives' can categorize a bullet!"
"Eugan!" Valerian's voice cut from the wings, sharp as a whip. "Stand down!"
But Eugan was beyond orders. He was drowning in shame, and the only life raft he could see was violence.
He pulled the trigger.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Three shots. Standard triangular formation. One for the heart. One for the head. One for the gut.
The crowd screamed.
I watched the bullets.
To the naked eye, they were blurs of light. To me, they were vectors. Red lines of probability intersecting with my physical form.
I reached for the Second Name.
Vertex.
I didn't need to stop them. I just needed to introduce a corner.
I visualized the air in front of me not as empty space, but as a geometric grid. I found the coordinates where the bullets would pass.
I snapped my fingers.
The reality in front of my chest broke and folded. A hard, invisible angle formed in the air.
The first bullet hit the coordinate and—ping—ricocheted at a perfect ninety-degree angle, slamming into the ceiling.
The second bullet hit the fracture and vanished into the floor.
But for the third...
I didn't fracture its path. I applied a massive Counter-Vector.
I extended my hand.
"Nauth."
The air solidified. The momentum of the third bullet met an equal and opposite force.
The projectile froze in mid-air, spinning angrily against the invisible force, before losing all kinetic energy and dropping into my gloved palm.
I closed my fingers around it. It was hot.
The auditorium was dead silent. Even the lava seemed to flow quietly.
Eugan stood there, his gun still raised, smoke drifting from the barrel. His mouth hung open. He looked at the axe in the floor and at the bullet holes in the ceiling. He looked at me, unharmed, holding his death wish in my hand.
"Impossible..." he whispered. "No shield... no incantation..."
"Physics," I corrected. "Applied with Authority."
I held up the bullet.
"You fire projectiles like a child throwing stones. You rely on the explosion to do the work."
I rolled the hot metal between my thumb and forefinger.
"Let me show you how a God applies a force."
I looked at his pistol.
"VEOTH... DONTHE..."
The First Name boiled in my blood.
I flicked the bullet.
My thumb snapped against my middle finger.
CRACK.
The sound was louder than the pistol shot. It was a sonic boom generated by a piece of lead accelerating to Mach 2 in the space of an inch.
The bullet tore through the air.
It struck Eugan's pistol.
Metal shrieked. The gun disintegrated instantly.
The impact shattered the barrel, the chamber, and the firing mechanism, sending a shower of hot shrapnel exploding outward.
Eugan screamed, dropping the useless handle. He stared at his hand, which was numb and bleeding from small cuts, but miraculously intact.
I had targeted the weapon, not the man. Precision.
I began to walk.
The tap-tap-tap of my cane on the obsidian floor echoed like a metronome counting down his remaining seconds.
I stopped at the edge of the stage.
Eugan fell to his knees. He looked up at me, stripping away the last of his nobility. He was just a terrified animal now.
I looked at the wings.
Prince Valerian was staring at me. His wine glass was forgotten in his hand. His green eyes were wide, not with fear, but with a terrifying, hungry awe.
He had never seen magic used like this—raw, mathematical, absolute.
Kael was excited behind me, his blue eyes glowing with a fanatical light.
Malakor was weeping silently, clutching his chest as if witnessing a miracle.
I turned my gaze back to Eugan.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a coin.
I held it up. I pointed it directly between his eyes.
"You attacked an Auditor of the Divine Archives," I said, my voice low, carrying to the back of the silent hall. "You attempted to murder a guest of the Prince."
Eugan trembled. "Please... mercy..."
"Mercy is a transaction," I whispered. "And you have insufficient funds."
I lowered the bullet.
"But I am feeling... educational."
I pointed the cane at the ground.
"KNEEL." I said, Loud and Clear.
The Word was like an absolute command.
Eugan slammed his forehead into the floor. His body obeyed the sheer weight of the Authority in my voice. He curled into a ball, sobbing, broken completely.
I looked at the crowd, some of them also were Kneeling in fear.
"The inspection is concluded," I announced.
"The items are confiscated. The heretic is neutralized."
I turned to Kael and Malakor.
"Collect the trash. We are leaving."