"Mei..."
Raiden Mei's voice was hesitant as she called out to Xia Qi.
Xia Qi opened her eyes, arms folded across her chest, her gaze as calm and still as deep water, lit only by the occasional flicker of lightning.
"Is there something you need?" she asked. "If not, today's training will begin."
It was the middle of the night. Raiden Mei had only just fallen asleep.
Before she had, Kiana and the others had been hovering around her bed, faces tight with worry.
"Yes!"
Raiden Mei nodded quickly, then looked directly at Xia Qi. "You... would you be willing to come out? To meet everyone?"
"..."
Xia Qi's eyelids lowered just a fraction. Her expression was so placid it gave nothing away.
"That isn't necessary."
"Why not? Everyone wants to see you. They want to help you," Mei pressed, her voice urgent. "And I know... I feel... that you care about them, too."
"But it isn't needed."
Xia Qi let out a long, deep sigh and turned to look into the featureless distance.
"My appearance will only introduce more chaos into the future. That life out there... it belongs to you. Not to me. My existence has no place in it."
"So that's your plan? To stay here alone forever?" Raiden Mei's composure finally broke, her words tumbling out in a rush of emotion. "Locking yourself away in this dream? Or are you just trapped somewhere deep inside your own heart see this as the only way? Is the only point of you being here just so we might have a slightly better chance?"
She took a step forward, her voice rising.
"This is wrong! It's completely wrong!"
"Hmm?"
Xia Qi regarded her, a faint trace of genuine confusion appearing in her eyes.
"Come out with us," Mei pleaded, stepping closer. "Whatever it is, we'll face it together. Even if this is all in the past for you... the people here, right now, they care about you. They want you with them."
She reached out, her hand aiming to take Xia Qi's.
But Xia Qi didn't move. She only watched, cold and unmoving, as thunder began to roll ominously around her.
"Urgh—!"
Raiden Mei's hand jerked back. She clutched at it, wincing at the fresh, stinging burn now seared into her skin.
"Hmph!"
In a flash of violet light, the Herrscher of Thunder materialized at Raiden Mei's side. She took one look at the injury, then fixed a blazing, furious glare on Xia Qi.
"I refuse to believe that I—that we—are the kind of people who would just...stall here, paralyzed by what-ifs about the future," the Herrscher's voice was like cracking ice. "You show up just to make us stronger, but you won't even look at the people you once knew? You bury yourself here like you're already dead, too scared to actually change anything? You hide away in this little 'Euthymia' you've built—your own perfect, peaceful prison where you can just wait to fade away before you go find Kiana?"
Her power swelled, darkening the dreamscape. The sky churned with thunder.
"And you have the arrogance to think that with a few lessons from you, we can somehow avoid the fate you couldn't bear? That we won't have to suffer what you did?"
"A version of me like that... what right do you have to even speak of taking care of Kiana? If this is what you call 'walking into darkness to bring her back into the light,' then it's not noble. It's just pathetic!"
"A future that's already given up? A self that hides in its own mind and calls it peace? I will never accept that. I won't stand for it!"
The Herrscher's aura exploded. The dream space warped under the pressure, becoming a cavern of echoing thunder and violent, crossing arcs of lightning.
Through it all, Xia Qi remained perfectly, infuriatingly calm. Her violet eyes glowed with a detached, otherworldly light, looking down on them as if they were specks of dust.
...
Xia Qi's feelings, however, were far less simple than her face suggested.
Inside, her heart was a storm of its own.
"You call this place... the Euthymia?"
Xia Qi's gaze finally shifted, cooling from detached to actively icy. A slow, cold anger began to rise within her.
"You think your will alone can shake my resolve? That you can challenge my choice? Tell me... are you prepared for the price of that arrogance?"
Slowly, deliberately, Xia Qi drew her blade—The Key of Sanction: Seven Thunders of Retribution: Rumble (Katana). The metal gleamed with a cold, purple light as she leveled it at the Herrscher of Thunder, her eyes utterly without warmth.
The very space around them seemed to grow heavy and twisted. Raiden Mei and the Herrscher both felt the air thicken, becoming difficult to breathe. Their thoughts grew sluggish, weighed down by a palpable sense of dread—the intimate, closing-in feeling of mortality.
"Ridiculous," the Herrscher spat back, a mocking smile on her lips. "A coward like you, too scared to face a future you can't control? You don't deserve her. Leave Kiana to me."
As she spoke, her form began to blur and merge seamlessly with Raiden Mei's beside her. Two wills became one, a united front.
BOOM!
The challenge was given. Lightning answered.
In the space between thunderclaps, Xia Qi was suddenly there, right in front of them. Their blades met with a sound that was less a clash and more a detonation of raw power.
Lightning, violet and savage, tore through the dreamscape from both sides, scouring the emptiness. It was impossible to tell which arcs belonged to whom; they were two forces of the same storm, raging against each other.
"If you think you're some kind of god," the Herrscher's voice roared, louder than the thunder itself, "then I challenge you! A duel for the throne! I'll cut you down right here!"
"And if you're just human—if you're the Raiden Mei we all know—" she screamed into the gale, "then I'll smash this 'Euthymia' of yours to pieces! I'll drag you out of the miserable fate you built for yourself!"
The battle was a frenzy of light and sound. Xia Qi moved with chilling, relentless precision, each strike delivered with finality.
The Herrscher of Thunder fought back with everything she had, her own blade a constant, defiant flash in the gloom. But for every blow she parried, Xia Qi's power pressed down harder, an inevitable tide wearing away at a cliff.
Xia Qi's voice cut through the chaos, cold and clear.
"This self is the eternity you cannot surpass."
CRACK.
The dream space wasn't just trembling—it was fracturing. From a jagged tear in reality, an immense, mechanical looking hand reached through. Clenched in its fist was a blade of condensed lightning, vast enough to cleave the world.
This wasn't an illusion or a copy. It was a piece of Xia Qi's own power, bleeding into the broken dream now that its borders had failed.
Xia Qi raised her own hand. The giant, spectral hand mirrored the movement, lifting the colossal sword high.
"Feel this," Xia Qi said, her tone almost conversational. "This is the weight of a blade wielded by a self that has not yet fully awakened. Let it sever your vain, rootless dreams."
She brought her hand down.
The Herrscher of Thunder, still surging forward, met the descent head-on. There was no hesitation, only defiance.
The gigantic blade of thunder filled her entire universe. In that moment, all doubt, all fear, all distraction was burned away by its terrifying light. There was only the blade—a truth, a verdict, an ending that could not be dodged or debated.
BOOOOOOM——!!!
The world shattered in light and thunder.
Then, silence, and perfect dark.
Raiden Mei was falling. Or floating. It was hard to tell. Beside her, the form of the Herrscher flickered in and out. Both of them stared upward, eyes wide, vision dimming.
The last thing they saw, stamped against the fading light, was the figure far above them. She looked down, her expression one of absolute, undisturbed calm. There was no triumph there, no anger, not even pity.
Just the indifferent gaze of something infinitely greater.
A god, watching ants.
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