The shadow void grew further, like ink from a broken pen or blood from a wound that’d never close. It flooded the snow plains, swallowing almost everything, with no exception for rocks, ice, or even light.
Jian Yue, in the center of the shadow barrier of Xul-Thal, was there like a dull, dying flower. He tried to follow its attack, but the attacks followed him instead.
Xul-Thal didn’t raise its hand. ’It’ watched with its ten eyes, watching him struggle and realize. The shadow stretched beneath his feet. Jian Yue knew what came next.
Shadow edges.
Blades of shadows came from the ground, thousands cut from a thing that didn’t need to hold it.
Jian Yue moved, but he wasn’t fast enough. The first shadow blade missed by an inch; he felt the passing wind. The second blade grazed his cheek, followed by the treacherous pain.
Just in the moment, the third blade rushed through the air. It almost reached his throat, but Jian Yue chanted.
"Interval!"
His blade met the shadow strikes. The shadow edges stopped just for a few seconds; the impact of the attack vanished. He quickly swung his hand, slashing down the blades.
Sweat dropped from his forehead. Using his Authority gave him a cost; it always did, but this time he didn’t... Or couldn’t hide. His body dropped the guard, and his senses harshly fell.
The result was a thick wall between him and the world. Everything was further from it, including himself. He was still there but his mind was elsewhere. "I can’t keep up with this rate."
Another attempt from Xul-Thal’s shadow to hit him: Arrows covered in the black blood launched from beneath. Jian Yue stumbled back.
His sword became a motion of blur, one... Two... three. The counting was instinct. The only way to survive that fast was to break it into pieces. Ten, twenty. The arrows slashed and dissolved into nothingness. Thirty, thirty-five. His arms screamed from relentless strikes.
Fifty.
The last arrow disappeared. All of them slashed down precisely.
Xul Thal tilted its head and spoke almost gently. "Fifty-three... you missed them." The Xul-Thal corrected him and counted; of course, it did. It had nothing more than time, patience, and curiosity about these small struggling things.
Jian Yue looked down; three arrows pierced his thigh and guts, but he couldn’t feel any pain. The cost was numbness. His hand curled around the arrow, and pulled it out, one by one.
Surprisingly, no blood came out... A wound from shadow never did; they just left hollowness.
The Xul-Thal twisted its head; a small bone-cracking voice echoed in the veil of shadow. That gesture, that horrible human gesture. It held the weight of once being something that understood everything.
"Oh, ’They’ are watching." It said in his mind.
They? Jian Yue swept his gaze over. There was no one; no one ever was. He had fought It before, but there were few Xul-Thal who had achieved–
Omniscience...
It knew. It saw ’Them’...
Was It really... An omniscient Xul-Thal?
"They?" Jian Yue’s voice was barely a whisper. "Who are they?" Jian Yue’s fingers clenched his blade tight. He felt the weight of an invisible gaze, something vast and distant, but utterly indifferent, utterly silent, and watching.
It didn’t answer immediately. It raised its head toward the endless sky, at nothing, but at everything, and at the space where light forgot Its own purpose. "The Spectators, they watch and wait. They wager on who wins."
Hands came out beneath him. It spoke again, or better to say, the world spoke for It. "You’re dying... Authorities already cost a lower Ordinal, and now you are in my domain." Black, thick mist came out of Jian Yue’s thigh from the wound, and it dissolved in shadow. "And here you lost twice the cost."
"This won’t end soon."
***
At the entrance of the Cathedral.
The wind breathed a warmth in the cold, spreading sultry breathing of something that lowered the temperature of the blizzard.
Zhuo ran toward it, unaware of the path leading him towards the hatred of a calamity.
SCREECHH!!
A harsh sound that was abandoned by the long-forgotten chamber of execution. Utterly loud and filled with rampage.
Zhuo’s steps slowed down and stopped. He stood at the gateway of the cave, his hand trembling on his blade, almost losing his grip.
"Where... Where is the eye?" His eyes scanned around, and he felt the scorching pressure in the air.
Something had awakened.
He was desperate, remembering the small nod of Jian Yue and his futile attempt at reassurance to Zhuo.
The ground trembled beneath him. The ice on the cave fell with a loud thud.
SHRIECK!!
The Kholkis.
It slowly rose from behind the cave. Its deep eyes stared inside Zhuo’s soul. It had smelled the scent of those offerings it had failed to kill. Its pride stung more than physical wounds.
It remembered every single thing. It remembered being forced into submission, and pinned by the creatures that should have been a waste of meat. It remembered the chain that bruised its neck. Every single detail repeated in its eyes.
It looked at Zhuo, his steps falling three steps back. His hand tightened around the blade, speaking not of comfort but of the shaking of metal.
Its eyes met a treacherous figure of Zhuo. The scent of the one who had seen its weakness, the hideous creature in its eyes, wasn’t there. But this one, that small one smelled like all of them.
Another squawk that simply meant.
"Close enough."
The wings partially cut the blizzard, and a sound of a sonic boom popped out. Finally, it descended. Zhuo felt the rush in the air that meant death was coming.
Left! Move left!...
The silver icicle wings burst into the ground. Zhuo’s steps moved left. His vision was buried in the snow that burst out from the ground.
The wind itself scratched his face like a knife.
He held his blade tight. The Kholkis didn’t wait; it had one intent: ’Kill,’ and kill anyone who had the same scent as those hideous creatures. Kholkis thrust its beak toward Zhuo.
His hand curled on the handle of the blade. With a metal sound echoing. His blade blocked the hit, the beak pushing him back.
The difference in physical capacity was clear: a beast that could tear the wind and shake the ground.
How could a kid like Zhuo fight it?
He dove right, his blade almost slipping away as the metal scratched on the beak of Kholkis. Its talon smashed the place where he’d been. The frozen plains trembled, and the vast cave fractured, cracking like webs.
"Think!" He gasped. "Think, think, think." He had never fought an entity that strong. "My Authority... No, it won’t work." He couldn’t keep the thoughts longer. It flew high and then descended like a crushing mountain.
Zhuo launched his body backward and snapped his fingers.
The attack slowed down, but it was nowhere close.
The Arbiter of Motion, Ordinal 7: He couldn’t stop the motion or steal it from living things, but the movements of its beak, he could still slightly slow down... only enough to evade.
His eyes traced the lines of ’Motion,’ the next steps of Kholkis.
The Kholkis reacted again, but the next lunge faltered for fraction of a second, before it could reach, but Zhuo reached it first.
Splash!
His blade bit the wings of Kholkis, deep enough to infuriate it.
Kholkis screamed, another sound building in its throat, but Zhuo slowed it down. The scream came half a second late, and Zhuo was already behind it.
Shhh.
Another stab, but his sword began to freeze. He quickly pulled it out. The eyes of hatred looked at Zhuo, its neck tilted backward, and it charged at him with its beak.
Zhuo tried to block it with the blade, but it slipped off. The beak slashed his shoulder. Blood dropped from there.
His hands clenched tightly, and he jumped on the ground, stepping back. It blitzed again, but Zhuo snapped his fingers, and it slowed down.
Zhuo used his ’Authority.’
The Kholkis pounced at him, blitzing his reaction speed. He couldn’t avoid it; his eyes slowed down the world.
His body moved on its own to the side, at an angle that he could never use again.
A single perfect evasion, like a gift from his future self.
"The motion original eye." But the current situation and relentless strike from Kholkis allowed him no time to lose his grip.
Another strike... then another.
He moved under the legs of Kholkis. He dashed between its talons and saw a motion; the traces of the lines were the same as a human eye’s. Same as pupil’s blinking would feel.
Inside the left leg of Kholkis.
His blade struck its leg, but it bounced back. It felt as if hitting a stone with a metal tool. It didn’t even react to that small scratch. The edges of his blade... he noticed them, the thorny pattern appearing. His blade already got dull from useless assault.
"I can only steal motion from non-living things with many exceptions." Exceptions... a motion that could tear his body, if it was out of his physical capability.
He raised his blade.
"Lin taught me this; watch it. Kholkis." He threw his blade off with all his might; the blade moved faster, and the Kholkis looked at him in puzzlement.
He saw lines around the blade. His hand touched the silver tracing of motion. Where the ghost image was. He stole the motion when it was at the peak of its speed. Then the sword fell on the ground, totally useless.
Zhuo ran, much faster than before, adding the speed of the sword. He took out the dagger from his waist.
The Kholkis reacted and attacked with its wings. Zhuo didn’t stop. He jumped higher than human capacity and landed on its wing. He threw the dagger. It spun in the air twice, then it struck the Kholkis’s eye.
The beast screamed in agony, but Zhuo was already near. His hands had reached out for the dagger in its eye, fingers finding the hilt.
He pushed it deeper, twisting it. Something vicious like blood but blue and wrong sprayed across his face. Zhuo didn’t stop stabbing; stopping here meant giving it another reason for hatred, so he kept pushing.
"Time for the eye." That was his strategy to distract it first.
The ’Original Eye.’ Zhuo, distracted by his thoughts, didn’t realize the Kholkis began flying upward. Before he could jump, the Kholkis descended with a crushing speed.
It adapted; they both did. Zhuo’s hand tightly curled around the feather of Kholkis began to froze. The temperature dropped significantly, his palm changing color and became hard and waxy.
A frostbite that should have taken at least five minutes only needed seconds. Zhuo’s breath slowed down from the cold, and then it threw Zhuo on the ground.
Crash!!
He fell on the ice, his eyes closed in pain, and the next scene he saw was his death spreading its wings.
He couldn’t move.
The Kholkis watched him struggle, trying to steal motion from air that had nothing to give in. With a crushing weight, it smashed its talon on Zhuo’s chest.
"AHGH." Zhuo groaned. His mouth opened in pain. At his lowest moment. The Kholkis watched him that seemed pleased to take its revenge.
"Why am I here?" His eyes squinted in pain. "To survive? Perhaps so they don’t have to, but it hurts. I’m hurt and tired. They can’t help me, but I could have. This was the moment where I could have helped them and eased their concern. I didn’t grow, but I needed to."
From the cave a melodic voice came. The scent of the perfume reached his nose. "A child fighting his destiny. My, how cruel." A smug, soft voice that he’d never heard before.