While the fires of rebellion consumed the horizon, the silence inside Emperor Arthur's palace was broken only by the rhythmic click of boots against polished stone. Valerus moved through the labyrinthine corridors alone, a singular storm cloud drifting toward the center of the world.
He came to a halt before a massive door of reddish iron, the metal pulsing with an ominous, rusted heat. Guarding this final threshold were twenty-three elite soldiers, their armor gleaming with the desperate light of a dying regime.
Valerus didn't draw a weapon. Instead, he stopped several paces away and lowered his head, bowing with a humility that seemed jarringly out of place amidst the carnage.
"Please," he pleaded softly, his voice echoing in the vaulted hall. "Just let me through. There has been enough blood today."
The soldiers offered no mercy, no hesitation, and no words. As one, they let out a collective war cry and rushed him, a tidal wave of steel and Hera-enhanced strikes aimed directly at his heart.
Meanwhile, in the Throne Room...
The air was so heavy it felt like breathing lead. The opulence of the room offered no comfort to the man pacing frantically before the high seat of Aethelgard.
"How?" Emperor Arthur's voice was a jagged rasp of disbelief. He gripped the hilt of his sword so hard his knuckles turned white. "How on earth did eleven provinces and their Tetrarchs fall so quickly? Eleven! In a single day! It's impossible!"
"Calm down," Lysandra urged. She was leaning against a pillar, her posture unnervingly relaxed compared to Arthur's spiraling panic.
"Don't tell—" Arthur began to snarl, but his words were cut short.
Lysandra's head snapped toward the entrance. Her Roogan eyes ignited with a terrifying, ethereal glow, the pupils narrowing as they pierced through layers of stone and iron.
"He's here," she whispered.
"Hey! Are you even listening to me?" Arthur snapped, his face flushed with rage.
"Valerus is here, dummy!" Lysandra yelled, her voice sharp enough to crack the tension.
Before Arthur could even process the name, a thunderous blast rocked the foundation of the palace. The massive reddish iron door didn't just open—it shattered. The heavy metal slabs became shrapnel, flying through the air toward the throne alongside the mangled bodies of the twenty-three guards.
Dust and smoke swirled in the doorway, illuminated by jagged, violent arcs of electricity. As the haze cleared, Valerus was standing there, his silhouette framed by the wreckage. Lightning crackled around his frame like a living crown, and despite the chaos, he wore a casual, almost boyish smile.
"Yo!" Valerus greeted, raising a hand in a light wave. "I'm finally here."
Arthur's face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred. He drew his blade, the air around him scorching with lightning crackling around his body.
"Damn you!" the Emperor sneered, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and fury. "Damn you to the abyss, Valerus!"
The Silence Meridian was a horizon of nothingness—a vast, flat plain that served as a natural geomantic barrier. It was a dead zone for the spirit, a magical nullity that acted like a heavy shroud, smothering the Hera and elemental sparks of anyone who dared to cross its border. For a Hera user, entering the Silence Meridian was like a bird suddenly losing its wings mid-flight; the soaring power they relied on simply vanished, leaving them grounded, vulnerable, and forced to rely on nothing but raw combat instinct and physical grit. This was where the Empire brought those they could not defeat in a fair fight—to strip them of their godhood before the execution.
In the middle of this hollow land, a fierce exchange of gunfire shattered the oppressive quiet. Prince Thursday, who had originally been sent into the province under the cover of a spy to gather intel, crested a ridge to find a Chronohelix strike team pinned down. They were locked in a lethal stalemate with a battalion of Aethelgardian magicians who, finding their magic dampened, had resorted to the cold reliability of lead and gunpowder.
Thursday slid into the trench beside his men, his movements fluid despite the invisible weight pressing on his chest.
"Hey, guys—get me two pistols," Thursday commanded, his voice steady over the roar of the rifles.
The Chronohelix soldiers looked at him in shock, their eyes wide behind their tactical gear. "Prince Thursday? What about your Hera, sir?" one of them shouted over a burst of machine-gun fire. "Aren't you going to use your powers?"
"Ever since I crossed into this province, I haven't been able to spark a single flame," Thursday admitted, his jaw tightening. "I'm unsure why the suppression is this absolute, but for now, the guns will have to do. Get them for me."
The soldiers didn't hesitate further, handing over two high-caliber pistols. Thursday checked the chambers with a practiced flick of his wrists.
"Any new orders?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. We were ordered not to kill anyone," the soldier replied, cringing as a bullet ricocheted off a nearby rock. "The only exception is a dire situation where there is absolutely no other choice."
Thursday's eyes narrowed into a glare. "Who gave such a ridiculous order in the middle of a war zone?"
"Valerus, sir."
"That man..." Thursday fumed, a vein throbbing in his temple. He knew Valerus's philosophy of mercy, but in the Silence Meridian, mercy was a luxury they couldn't afford. "Fine. Take your positions and keep the pressure on. Move!"
"Yes, sir!" The soldiers saluted and vanished back into the cover of the trenches.
Thursday didn't wait. He rose and fired a single, precision shot at one of the Aethelgardians. The bullet found its mark, and the enemy soldier let out a scream of such agonizing pain that his finger locked on the trigger of his own machine gun. In his frantic thrashing, he accidentally mowed down five of his own allies before collapsing.
I wonder if Overdrive even works in a place like this, Thursday thought grimly. Not being able to tap into my Hera makes this hard enough, but there's still a Tetrarch governing this province. If I encounter them, I'll need my Overdrive just to stand a chance. But if the Meridian has truly severed my connection...
He pushed the thought aside. He couldn't afford to doubt.
Thursday vaulted over the cover and sprinted into the open. The Aethelgardians immediately redirected their fire, a wall of lead tearing toward him. Moving with a speed that felt supernatural even without Hera, Thursday danced between the bullet paths. He was a blur of motion.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!
In five shots, he hit the trigger fingers of five soldiers, disarming them instantly. He didn't stop. He pivoted, his pistols singing a rhythmic song of precision. He targeted the legs of thirteen more Aethelgardians with such terrifying accuracy that they dropped to the ground in a chorus of agony, their weapons falling uselessly into the dust.
Before the remaining enemies could reload, Thursday was among them. He slid into their hiding spot, his pistols leveled at the survivors' heads.
"Hey! Drop your weapons. Now!" Thursday's voice rang out with the authority of a prince.
The Aethelgardians gripped their rifles, their eyes darting for an opening, but then they saw the shadows moving behind Thursday. The other Chronohelixians had followed their Prince's lead, their guns now trained on every remaining enemy. Realizing the "Lions of the Chronohelix Empire" didn't need Hera to be monsters, the soldiers obediently dropped their weapons.
The Silence Meridian had its first set of prisoners.
The Valence Shatter was a landscape of pure, crystalline agony. It was a desert not of sand, but of razor-sharp, reflective shards that acted as a literal sensory meat-grinder. The light here didn't just shine; it weaponized itself, amplifying until it caused instant blindness. More terrifyingly, the crystals functioned as psychic conductors, magnifying every stray thought and echo of pain into a cacophony of migraines and intense sensory overload. It was a province designed to shatter a warrior's mind long before they ever laid eyes on an enemy.
Thane, a citizen of the newly built Chronohelix empire, who had infiltrated the desert under the guise of a spy, stood among his strike team. They had successfully seized the primary crystal hubs and were now collapsed in the shade of a jagged obsidian dune, their bodies trembling with exhaustion as they tried to recharge their depleted Hera.
The peace lasted only a second.
Suddenly, Thane's instincts—honed by years of combat—screamed. He felt a presence, a weight in the psychic air that was far heavier than any soldier. He surged to his feet, his muscles tensing as he fell into a combat stance.
The soldiers around him looked up, confused by his sudden aggression. "Thane, what's wrong?" one of them asked, wiping sweat and crystal dust from his brow.
"We've got company," Thane replied, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous growl.
As if summoned by his words, the air began to scream. A freakish burst of wind tore through the camp, but it wasn't just air—it carried a localized, invisible lethality. The Chronohelix soldiers were suddenly tossed aside, their armor and skin opening in deep, jagged gashes as if an invisible swordsman were dancing among them.
"What the...?" Thane hissed, his eyes darting frantically. He couldn't see anything, but he could hear the wet thud of blood hitting the glass sand.
The attack was a ghost. One moment, the pressure was in front of Thane; the next, it was behind him. Then, a chilling sound echoed through the dunes: the Aethelgardian prisoners began to scream in agony as well.
"Lady Laura! Why? Why attack us too?" an Aethelgardian officer wailed, clutching a stump where his hand had been.
"The attacker is hitting her own allies?" Thane's blood boiled. The cruelty of it—treating loyal soldiers like chaff to be harvested—snapped something inside him. "What the hell do you take your people for?!" he roared into the empty air.
A sharp, searing pain sliced across Thane's shoulder. He didn't flinch. Instead, he leaned into the strike. Using the moment of contact, he reached into the vacuum where the strike had come from. His fingers caught something solid—a shoulder, a neck. With a guttural shout of rage, he heaved the invisible weight upward and slammed it into the crystalline ground with enough force to crater the earth.
The shimmer of invisibility shattered.
Standing over the crater was Laura, the Tetrarch of Valence Shatter. She was a haunting figure, her freakishly long, claw-like nails dripping with a mixture of Chronohelix and Aethelgardian blood. She stood up slowly, seemingly unfazed by the impact, and licked a crimson drop from her index finger.
She looked at Thane with a twisted, predatory smirk. "You could have let yourself be cut down quietly," she purred. "Now, it's going to be much more painful."
Thane didn't look back at his men. "Guys, get out of here now! Take the Aethelgardians with you. Ensure everyone is safe. This woman isn't normal. Go!"
"Right!" the commander shouted. The Chronohelixians scrambled, dragging their wounded and their prisoners away from the psychic epicenter, leaving Thane and Laura alone in the blinding glare of the desert.
"You're just prolonging the inevitable," Laura laughed, her voice echoing through the crystals. "You're all going to die in the Shatter."
Thane settled his weight, his eyes locked on her bloody claws. "Shouldn't you be doing more acting than talking? If you're really powerful enough to take us all down, why don't you stop posing and do it for real?" He narrowed his eyes. "That is... if you actually can."
"Oh?" Laura's smile widened, revealing teeth that looked just as sharp as the crystals surrounding them.
Marrow was a sprawling, subterranean nightmare—a massive network of ancient catacombs and uncharted tunnels that snaked beneath the foundations of the Empire. It was a realm of absolute darkness and crushing claustrophobia, a place where the air felt like velvet and every sound was a lie. This was the home of the Empire's most desperate smugglers and "forgotten creatures" that had never seen the sky. To take Marrow, a warrior had to fight in a world where shadows were blades and Aethelgardian magicians had spent centuries turning every corner into a lethal trap.
Wednesday, the most analytical of the seventeen spies, had moved through the darkness like a ghost. Having infiltrated the province to gather intelligence, he had led a Chronohelix strike team through the tunnels, seizing control of the vital hubs with unnerving speed.
But as he stood in the center of a hollowed-out cavern that served as a makeshift base, the "victory" felt hollow.
This was too easy, Wednesday thought, his eyes scanning the pitch-black tunnel mouths. Where are the soldiers? Why were there no barricades to protect the citizens? This feels less like a conquest and more like a baited trap.
A Chronohelix citizen stepped into the dim lantern light and saluted. "Sir! All citizens have been secured and gathered in the central plaza as ordered," she reported.
"Alright. Good work," Wednesday replied, though his voice remained flat. "Now, we hold. We wait for word that the other provinces have fallen."
"Thank you, sir!" She saluted.
Wednesday remained still, his mind spinning like a clockwork engine, dissecting the lack of resistance. He was searching for the flaw in the silence when a jagged, agonizing scream pierced the air.
"Aaahhh!"
The sound was raw and close. It snapped Wednesday out of his thoughts instantly. He surged toward the noise, finding a group of his soldiers in a state of confused horror.
"What are you doing? Why did you attack your own ally?" a soldier screamed, pointing her rifle at one of her comrades.
"It's not me!" the attacker shrieked back, his face contorted in terror. His arm was twitching violently, swinging his sword in wide, jagged arcs as if pulled by invisible wires. "My body... it's moving on its own!"
"What?" Wednesday's eyes narrowed. He didn't hesitate. He pounced on the controlled soldier, using his superior weight to pin the man to the stone floor. "Tie his hands and legs! Now! Medical team, get over here and attend to the wounded!"
As the soldiers scrambled to obey, another cry rang out from the opposite tunnel. Before they could even turn their heads, a third scream erupted from behind them.
Then came the gunshots.
The cavern dissolved into utter chaos. Muzzle flashes lit up the dark in staccato bursts. "Please! Stop me! Someone, anyone, help!" a Chronohelixian wailed, tears streaming down his face as he lunged at his best friend with a combat knife, his movements jerky and unnatural.
What is this? Wednesday thought, his heart cold. An infection? A frequency?
"People often wonder why I didn't bother mounting a standing army in the province of Marrow," a voice drifted down from the shadows above. It was a calm, melodic voice, accompanied by the faint clack-clack of fingers moving in the dark. "It's quite simple, really. I don't need an army if I can just turn my enemies into my own personal puppet theater."
Wednesday looked up. Perched atop the roof of a stone dwelling sat a figure draped in ornate, dark robes. His fingers were dancing in the air, twitching and pulling at unseen threads of mana.
Wednesday squared his shoulders, his gaze piercing the gloom. "Who the hell are you?"
"My name is Tatterus, Tetrarch of Marrow," the man said, leaning forward into the light with a thin, predatory smile. He gave a slight, mocking bow of his head. "It is a pleasure to finally meet the man who thought he could conquer my darkness."
Back in the dead heart of the Silence Meridian, the victory Thursday had secured over the guards felt like a fleeting dream. He stood amidst the Chronohelixians, his hand resting on the hilt of a pistol, his eyes scanning the flat, grey horizon. Every muscle was coiled like a spring. He knew the terrifying reality of their situation: they were in a tomb for the living. Without Hera, facing a Tetrarch wasn't a battle—it was an execution.
He prayed to a God he didn't believe in that the overseer of this dead land would stay in the shadows.
Then, something broke the silence.
It was small, black, and spherical. It bounced across the cracked earth with a rhythmic, hollow thud-thud-thud that seemed to echo for miles in the quiet. It slowed, rolling toward Thursday like a child's toy, until it finally came to a rest against his boot.
"Huh? A ball?" Thursday mused, his curiosity momentarily overriding his caution.
He reached down and picked it up. The surface was cold, inscribed with strange, pulsing symbols that felt oily to the touch. He turned it over in his hand, squinting at the markings. Suddenly, the air around the sphere began to vibrate. Recognition hit him like a physical blow.
"Everyone! Get down!" he screamed, hurling the sphere as far as his strength allowed.
The moment it left his hand, a sliver of light pierced the black shell. It didn't explode with fire; it exploded with shadow. A terrifying, obsidian light erupted from the device, swallowing the landscape in a void so absolute it felt as though the world had been erased.
When the darkness finally receded, the Chronohelixians began to peel themselves off the dirt, coughing and gasping.
"Is everyone alright?" Thursday called out, his voice strained.
"Yes, but most of us are hit," a soldier replied, clutching a shrapnel wound. "It... it wasn't just light. It tore through the armor."
"Well, well, well," a dry, rasping voice broke through the air. "I had hoped to take you all out with that little gift this morning. Yet, here you stand. May I ask how you managed to survive the Void?"
Thursday's gaze locked onto the horizon. An old man stood several yards away, leaning heavily on a gnarled walking stick. He looked fragile, but his eyes held the weight of centuries.
"Bastard," Thursday spat, his grip tightening on his gun. "Who are you?"
The old man offered a thin, toothless smile. "I am Emmerus, the Tetrarch of the Silence Meridian—and perhaps the oldest man left alive."
He opened his mouth, and to Thursday's horror, another black sphere emerged from his throat, slick with saliva. Emmerus caught it with a nimble flick of his wrist. "The first one failed to kill you. This one will not be so merciful."
With the grace of a professional athlete, the old man wound up and hurled the sphere.
Me again? Thursday thought, his heart hammering.
The void-light erupted once more, a blinding, crushing wave of energy that leveled the remaining ruins. When the dust finally settled, the Meridian was a graveyard of rubble and broken bodies. Most of the Chronohelixians lay buried under debris; others had lost limbs to the jagged explosion.
Thursday was still standing, but barely. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, broken and horribly dislocated. He gasped for air, his vision swimming. I knew it, he thought, a cold dread sinking in. Facing a Tetrarch without Hera is a death wish. What do I do? What can I even do?
He did the only thing he could. He ran.
Thursday bolted past Emmerus, his boots drumming against the hard earth.
"Where are you running?" Emmerus called out, turning slowly to watch the retreating prince. "Have you given up? Surely you realize it is pointless to flee from me in my own domain."
Emmerus followed, his walking stick clicking rhythmically. Thursday was fast, pushing his body to its limit until he vanished behind a jagged rock formation at a dead end. When Emmerus arrived, the area was empty.
"I know you are here," Emmerus whispered to the wind. "You cannot hide for long."
Behind a dense pile of rubble, Thursday sat in absolute silence, completely concealing his presence. He bit back a scream as he used his teeth and his good hand to tear a long strip of fabric from his cape. He wrapped it tightly around his shattered arm, bracing it against his chest.
In the darkness of his hiding spot, his mother Luisa's voice echoed from the past: "Hera is the use of one's life force to manipulate the elements, Thursday. Never forget that."
Outside, Emmerus released five more black spheres into the air, detonating them one by one to flush his prey out.
If Hera is the life force of the user, Thursday reasoned, his brow slick with sweat, then pushing past the limit— In situations where you over use it or push yourself beyond your limit, it could result in sacrificing one's own life force. In a place where the world suppresses the element, I have to find the element inside myself. It's a gamble... but I'm all in.
Thursday stepped out from the shadows. "Hey," he called out.
"So, you finally got tired of hiding?" Emmerus said, his hand already moving toward his mouth for another sphere.
Thursday didn't answer. He closed his eyes, centering every ounce of his will on the blood pumping through his veins.
"Looks like you're finally ready to die," Emmerus taunted, his jaw unhinging.
Suddenly, blood began to stream from Thursday's eyes like crimson tears. He snapped them open.
The change was instantaneous. The pale, grey sky of the Meridian vanished. The sun overhead turned a violent, bruised red, casting a warm, horrifying crimson glow across the entire globe.
Emmerus froze, his black sphere halfway out of his mouth. "What... what did you do? Why is the sun red? You shouldn't be able to use Hera here! This is a null zone!"
"Overdrive: Crimson Sun," Thursday rasped, his voice vibrating with a power that didn't belong in this world.
A drop of moisture hit Emmerus's hand. He looked down, expecting rain, but his eyes widened in terror. "Blood?"
"Yes, blood," Thursday replied. "Overdrive is the second stage of Hera. The Overdrive form of Water Hera is not ice or steam—it is Blood Control. Crimson Sun forces the heavens to weep. It turns the very rain into boiling, poisonous blood. And in this storm, Emmerus... a single drop is a death sentence."
Emmerus's eyes widened, a flicker of primal terror dancing in his ancient pupils. "Even... just a drop?" he whispered, his voice cracking like dry parchment.
He didn't have to wait for an answer.
The heavens opened. A violent, heavy downpour erupted from the crimson clouds, but it didn't carry the scent of rain. It smelled of iron and salt. A deluge of thick, steaming blood slammed into the earth, soaking into the dry, grey soil of the Meridian. Emmerus's pristine white robes were instantly stained a gruesome scarlet, the fabric clinging to his frail frame.
Then the screaming began.
The blood wasn't just poisonous; it was boiling. Emmerus writhed in the mud, his skin blistering where the liquid touched him. The heat was internal and external, a chemical fire that melted through his magical defenses as if they were nothing.
"Yes," Thursday said, his voice echoing through the roar of the red rain. "In a place where Hera is strangled, I realized I couldn't fight you with tricks. I needed the absolute authority of an Overdrive to put you down. And knowing the sheer scale of what I was about to unleash... I had to move."
Emmerus looked up through the stinging, hot spray, the realization hitting him harder than the toxins.
"Do you get it now?" Thursday continued, his face pale from the strain. "I didn't run because I was afraid of you. I ran because I didn't want to slaughter my own comrades. While the entire Aethelgard Empire can see the Crimson Sun hanging in the sky, the rain itself is focused. I am the epicenter. I led you away so I could drown you in this hell without touching a single hair on the heads of my men."
Emmerus coughed, a spray of dark fluid escaping his lips. His chest felt as though it were being crushed by an invisible vice. "How...?" he wheezed, his voice fading. "How could you possibly... spark an Overdrive in the Silence? The suppression... it's absolute."
Thursday looked down at his own shaking hands. "Oh, that? It was a simple trade. I didn't use the world's energy. I used my own. I sacrificed ten years of my life to bridge the gap."
"Ten years?" Emmerus gasped, his heartbeat faltering.
"You sound surprised," Thursday said, a sad, weary smile touching his lips. "Yes, ten years. To protect the people I love, and to end the reign of men like you... it was a bargain I was more than willing to make."
The Tetrarch of the Silence Meridian—the oldest man alive—finally collapsed. He hit the bloody mud with a wet thud, his chest heaving one last time before falling still. The black sphere he had held so dearly rolled out of his cold, stiff fingers, settling in a puddle of crimson. His heart, which had beaten for centuries, gave one final, stuttering thump and went silent.
Thursday didn't linger. He turned his back on the corpse, his broken arm tucked tightly against his chest as he began the long trek back toward the ruins.
"The price for violence and the price for peace are equally great," he mused to the empty air, his voice heavy with the weight of his shortened life. "Don't try to pay either of them if you aren't prepared to lose everything."
Behind him, a muffled crump echoed across the plains as Emmerus's final black ball detonated, erasing the remains of the old man from the world.
By the time Thursday regrouped with the surviving Chronohelixians, the red rain had stopped, and the sun had begun to fade back to its natural hue. The silence that followed was no longer the oppressive weight of the Empire—it was the quiet of a land that had finally been set free.
The Silence Meridian has fallen.
The Countdown: 3.
The final three brothers—Thane in the Shatter, Wednesday in the Marrow, and Valerus in the Capital—remain locked in their final struggles
While the dust settled in the Meridian, the heart of the Empire was gripped by a celestial omen.
In the throne room the Emperor's Castle, in Cinder, Emperor Arthur stood by the towering arched window, his face pale as he watched the sky bleed. The sudden appearance of the Crimson Sun had shattered his remaining composure.
"Now the sun turns red?" Arthur snapped, his voice hitting a frantic, jagged pitch. "What is going on in my Empire today? Is the universe itself revolting against me?"
"Calm down," Lysandra urged, though she hadn't moved from her pillar. Her Roogan eyes were fixed on the horizon, unblinking.
"Don't tell me to calm down!" Arthur whirled around, gesturing wildly at the bloody sky. "Are you blind? Look at Aethelgard! How can you stay so detached while the world ends?"
Lysandra's silence stretched for a long beat. "I'm scared too," she confessed softly.
Arthur froze, his rage momentarily replaced by confusion. "You are? Why?"
"The vision I had earlier... it was disturbing," she murmured, her gaze finally drifting toward the man standing at the broken door.
Valerus let out a sharp, mocking laugh, the lightning still dancing lazily across his shoulders. "Your Majesty, you've got so much more to worry about than a red sun," he teased, gesturing toward the window just as the crimson hue began to drain away. "Oh, look. It's back to normal."
Arthur sighed with visible relief as the golden light returned, but Lysandra remained tense. "I wonder who cast a spell powerful enough to change the very sun," she mused.
"Perhaps the caster has been defeated," Arthur bragled, his ego returning with the sunlight. "My Tetrarchs are super strong, after all!"
"Ah! I thought eleven of those 'super strong' Tetrarchs had already fallen," Valerus countered with a playful, razor-sharp smile. However, internally, his expression clouded. Seriously, he thought, whoever cast that... I hope you're still alive.
Meanwhile, in the jagged glass wastes of Valence Shatter...
Thane stood amidst the razor-sharp dunes, his eyes locked on the bloody-clawed woman before him. His anger had reached a boiling point, but it was a cold, focused heat.
"I've seen through your tricks, Miss Tetrarch," Thane said, his voice overflowing with a new, terrifying confidence.
Laura threw her head back, letting out a cacophony of mocking, shrill laughter. "And what is that supposed to mean, little mouse?"
"It means you can't win this fight unless you've got a brand-new trick up those sleeves," Thane replied.
"How can you be so sure?" Laura hissed, her body blurring as she prepared to strike.
"Your ability... it's 'Air Kicking,'" Thane explained calmly. "When you kick the air with enough force, it looks like you're teleporting. But you're just running—moving fast enough to fool the human eye. You aren't a teleporter, Laura. You're just a speedster."
Laura's smirk didn't fade. "Oh? And how do you plan to counter my speed with mere knowledge?"
"You're fast," Thane admitted, his stance shifting. "But when it comes to speed, I am on a whole different level."
Suddenly, the air around Thane began to hum. Violent, white-hot lightning erupted from his skin. His dark hair began to shimmer, turning a brilliant light blue and white, and his very clothes transformed into a raiment of electrical energy.
"We will see about that!" Laura shrieked.
She vanished, reappearing instantly in Thane's face, her lethal nails swinging for his throat. But to her absolute bewilderment, her claws met only empty air. Thane was gone.
"What the...?" she gasped, spinning around. Thane was standing five feet behind her, his entire silhouette glowing with a celestial radiance.
"What did you do?!" she screamed.
"Overdrive: God of Thunder," Thane declared.
"Over—what?" Laura stuttered, her mind racing to process the raw power radiating from him.
"Overdrive is the second stage of Hera," Thane explained, his voice sounding like rolling thunder. "I am a Lightning Hera user. My Overdrive makes me the incarnation of the God of Thunder himself. Now, prepare your—"
Laura didn't let him finish. She blurred again, launching a desperate flurry of strikes. But this time, Thane didn't dodge. He simply reached out and caught her wrists mid-swing. Laura's eyes widened in sheer shock. Impossible.
"It seems you're obsessed with these nails of yours," Thane said with a cold smile.
"So what if I am?" Laura spat.
Thane tightened his grip. With a sickening crack, he snapped the long, bloody talons clean off.
"What?!" Laura screamed, dropping to her knees to frantically gather the broken pieces of her pride from the glass sand. "How dare you! How dare you!"
She surged up to strike back, but Thane was gone again. The weather in the Shatter shifted instantly; dark, heavy clouds swirled directly over the desert. A bolt of natural lightning hissed down. Laura dodged the first, but a second bolt took her squarely in the hip, sending her spinning.
Thane materialized out of the clouds above, holding a jagged spear of pure lightning. He hurled it with the force of a falling star. The spear pierced Laura's chest, pinning her to the ground as she coughed up a spray of crimson.
Thane landed and began to run. He didn't move toward her—he moved around her. For ten straight minutes, he circled the fallen Tetrarch, moving so fast that he became a solid ring of white light and crackling electricity. Every rotation added to his kinetic charge until his body glowed like the core of a sun.
Laura stared up at the blinding halo of light in pure, unadulterated fear.
Thane lunged. "One Billion Bolt Punch!"
The impact was cataclysmic. The shockwave shattered the surrounding crystal dunes for miles. Laura didn't just fall; she was launched like a projectile, hurtling across the sky with enough force to breach the border, eventually crashing deep into the Province of Rune.
Thane stood alone in the silence, his Overdrive deactivating. His hair returned to black, and his breath came in heavy, ragged gasps. He sank to one knee, trying to reclaim his air, watching as the Chronohelixians moved in to secure the province.
Valence Shatter has fallen.
The Countdown: 2.
Only one front remains outside the Capital. In the lightless depths of the Marrow, Wednesday stands before the puppet master Tatterus.
In the wake of Tuesday's brutal victory over the Tetrarch Vexis, a rare atmosphere of levity had taken hold. The Chronohelixian strike team, having successfully secured the runic hubs, had transitioned from warriors to revelers. Under the shadow of ancient monuments, the air was filled with the sounds of home—men and women engaged in spirited chats, boisterous laughter, and the clattering of steel as they played the traditional sword-games of Vylonia.
It was a scene of triumph that tasted like ash to those watching from the sidelines.
The captured Aethelgardian soldiers sat huddled together, their wrists bound, forced to witness the desecration of their pride. They watched the invaders rejoice with a mixture of simmering hatred and profound despair.
"It hurts to see them celebrate like this," one Aethelgardian whispered, his head bowed in shame.
"Yeah, it does," his comrade replied, his voice thick with bitterness. "I hate seeing them rejoice. But to be forced to watch it up close? It's a humiliation I didn't think I'd live to see."
The conversation was abruptly cut short.
A high-pitched whistle, like a falling star tearing through the atmosphere, shrieked across the sky. Before anyone could track the source, a massive object plummeted from the clouds, striking a nearby stone building with the force of a tectonic shift. The structure didn't just collapse; it detonated. Stone and mortar were reduced to a cloud of pulverized rubble, and a shockwave rattled the teeth of everyone in the plaza.
"Ah! What was that?!" a soldier cried out, hand flying to his hilt.
Tuesday didn't hesitate. He surged toward the smoking ruin, the Chronohelixians and the prisoners following in a frantic wave of curiosity. As the thick dust began to settle, the crater revealed its passenger.
Lying amidst the broken stone was a woman. She was unconscious, her body battered and broken, but the most terrifying detail was the residual energy clinging to her skin. Violent, white-hot lightning crackled and hissed around her frame like a living cage, the smell of ozone filling the air.
The Aethelgardian prisoners let out a collective gasp of horror. Several of them stumbled back, their faces turning a ghostly shade of white.
"Who is she?" Tuesday asked, his eyes narrowing as he noted the sheer terror on the faces of the locals.
One of the prisoners swallowed hard, his voice trembling so violently he could barely form the words. "That's... t-t-that's Lady Laura! The Tetrarch of Valence Shatter!"
Tuesday paused, his gaze shifting from the fallen woman to the distant horizon of the neighboring province. He realized then the sheer power it must have taken to launch a Tetrarch across a provincial border. A slow, bright smile spread across his face—a look of pure, calm satisfaction.
"Sweet," he said softly.
The silence of the plaza was shattered as the Chronohelixians erupted into a deafening cacophony of celebration. High-fives were exchanged, and cheers rang out across the runic plains. The atmosphere became truly electric; it wasn't just a victory for Rune anymore. It was proof that the dominoes were falling faster than the Empire could count them.
Deep within the lightless veins of the Empire, the province of Marrow had become a theater of the macabre. The subterranean tunnels were choked with a frantic, senseless violence as Chronohelixian soldiers—turned against their own by invisible forces—struck out at anyone in their path. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and the heartbreaking sobs of the innocent, trapped in a civil war of marionettes.
Tatterus stood above the chaos, his thin, pale fingers twitching in the air as he let out a jagged, sinister laugh that echoed off the cavern walls.
Wednesday watched his men tear into each other, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Stop it," he whispered, his voice trembling with a growing, cold fury. "Stop it. Stop it."
With every repetition, his voice climbed in volume until it broke into a roar. "STOP IT!"
He lunged, his body trailing arcs of blue-white lightning as he aimed a killing blow at the Tetrarch. But before he could reach Tatterus, a young man with the rough, scarred face of a street thug intercepted him. The stranger caught Wednesday's momentum with a grunt, his eyes cold and devoid of fear.
"What?" Wednesday's eyes narrowed in shock.
The thug didn't hesitate. He drove a heavy, reinforced fist into Wednesday's jaw, the force of the impact sending the Prince spiraling backward across the stone floor. Wednesday skidded through the grit, eventually pushing himself back to his feet. He spat a mouthful of dark blood onto the floor, his gaze never leaving Tatterus as the Tetrarch's laughter intensified.
"I see you've got soldiers after all," Wednesday gritted out.
"Look at him," Tatterus mocked, gesturing to the thug. "Does he look like a soldier to you?"
Wednesday's brow furrowed. The man lacked the discipline of the Imperial Guard, moving instead with the raw, jagged efficiency of a predator.
"This province isn't just a grave, little Prince," Tatterus said, walking up to Wednesday with an arrogant stride. He reached out, placing his hands on Wednesday's shoulders with a terrifying familiarity. "Marrow is home to the Empire's most dangerous smugglers. We are the ones who thrive when the world forgets us. Why die for a lost cause? Give up. Join me."
Wednesday's eyes widened at the audacity. He violently brushed Tatterus's hands away. "Join you? You must be sleep-talking. Besides," he gestured to the empty space behind the Tetrarch, "there are only two of you."
Tatterus's grin turned predatory. "Who said anything about just two of us?"
As if the shadows themselves had come to life, the cavern began to vomit forth a nightmare. From every tunnel and crevice, a mixed army began to materialize: cutthroat smugglers, ancient dinosaurs with scales like iron, and subterranean dragons with wings that beat like war drums.
Wednesday's pupils shrank as he took in the sheer, impossible numbers.
"It's one man against a mixed army of one hundred and fifty million!" Tatterus shrieked, his voice filled with a manic, horrific glee. "Are you ready?"
Wednesday lunged again, lightning crackling around his fist, but the world exploded in heat as a dragon unleashed a torrent of fire. He dove away, only to be swarmed by smugglers who beat him down with the weight of numbers. Suddenly, a sharp, stinging pain pierced the base of his neck.
His body went rigid. To his horror, his limbs began to move of their own accord. His hand reached down, gripping a discarded sword with a strength that wasn't his.
"How does it feel?" Tatterus laughed, leaning over him. "To kill your own allies with your own hands?"
Wednesday's mind spiraled into a void of confusion and despair. He closed his eyes, the sensory input of the slaughter around him becoming too much to bear. What should I do? he asked himself. Will I really die in this hole?
"No!" he thought, a spark of defiance catching fire in his soul. "I refuse to let it end here!"
He surged his internal Hera inward, focusing his lightning not outward, but directly into his own neural pathways. With a mental snap, the Mana threads at his neck were scorched into ash.
"What? He broke my thread?" Tatterus stammered, his eyes wide with shock.
Nearby, a possessed Chronohelixian swung his blade at Wednesday's head, tears streaming down his face. "Please... dodge! My body is acting strange!"
But before the blade could connect, the soldier suddenly froze. His limbs went limp for a second before he regained control, looking at his hands in disbelief. Across the entire cavern, every soldier, every "puppet," was suddenly free.
"All my prey... free?" Tatterus whispered, his eyeballs shaking. "How? What did that man do? What is going on?"
Wednesday looked at Tatterus, a serene, lethal smile spreading across his face.
"Overdrive: Electrical Synapse," he declared.
"Overdrive?" Tatterus stammered, his mind struggling to process the shift in the air.
"Overdrive is the second stage of Hera. Every Hera user can achieve an Overdrive form through relentless training," Wednesday explained, his voice sounding oddly distorted, as if coming from multiple places at once. "And this is mine."
A group of smugglers lunged at him, but Wednesday simply vanished. There was no blur, no sound of movement.
"Hey," Wednesday's voice rang from directly behind Tatterus.
The Tetrarch whirled around, his heart stopping. Behind Wednesday, the entire mixed army—the dragons, the giants, the dinosaurs, and the millions of smugglers—collapsed to the ground in a single, deafening thud.
"Wh-what did you do?" Tatterus gasped, his voice cracking.
"Simple," Wednesday said, his smile widening. "I beat them all."
"In just a second? That's impossible!"
"I'll explain," Wednesday said calmly. "Electrical Synapse is a biological 'overclocking' of my nervous system. I've converted my entire neural path into a high-speed fiber-optic network. Normally, nerve impulses travel at 120 meters per second. In this state, I force my neurons to fire at near-light speeds—3 \times 10^8 meters per second."
"Because my brain is processing information thousands of times faster than a normal human," Wednesday continued, "the world appears to stand still. To me, you were all statues. I walked through your army and neutralized them before your brain could even register my first step."
Before Tatterus could even blink, Wednesday was chest-to-chest with him. Before the Tetrarch could scream, Wednesday's lightning-coated hand drove through his chest.
Tatterus's eyes widened, his pupils quivering as the light faded from them. Wednesday withdrew his hand with a sharp, wet sound, and the Tetrarch's lifeless body slumped forward, hitting the floor with a hollow thud.
Wednesday pulled a cloth from his pocket, calmly cleaning the blood from his hand.
"Those who don't want to coexist," he mused, looking down at the corpse, "don't have the right to live in the new era."
Around him, the Chronohelixians let out a roar of triumph that shook the very foundations of the cavern.
The Province of Marrow has been captured.
The Countdown:1.