The darkness of night enveloped the bedroom in a deep, heavy silence. Nyx lay on Silarias's chest, her breathing steady and calm. Silarias stared up at the wooden ceiling. The tension was etched deeply into his face, refusing to fade. The weight of the past few days still rested on his muscles and bones like a leaden blanket.
Suddenly, the atmosphere in the room shifted. The air grew noticeably warmer, as if a fire were awakening deep beneath the wooden floorboards.
Beneath Silarias's skin, a warm, deep glow began to flare. From the core of his chest, thin, luminous veins spread outward, glowing a brilliant green. This wasn't a calm source of light, but a churning mass of ancient power. His heart began to pound against his ribcage with heavy, dull beats.
Thump.
A shockwave of pure energy rippled through his entire body. The green veins glowed brighter, like liquid light pumping through his system. With the next beat, the resonance spread directly to Nyx, who was still lying against him.
Thump.
Her skin reacted immediately. Thin, bright green veins began glowing in synchrony with his. The ancient Haomamane energy coursed through her arms, neck, and face. With every dull, rhythmic beat echoing through the silent room, the air around them seemed to compress violently. Their bodies pulsed intensely. With every heartbeat, their presence expanded briefly, only to contract immediately afterward, becoming more compact, denser, and more unyielding. It was as if the enormous quantity of Haomamane was reshaping their physical forms, restructuring them at a molecular level, burning away their weaknesses and drawing them relentlessly closer to the purest, most powerful state they were meant to attain.
The waves of light didn't remain confined to the four walls of the room.
High above the colossal domain of the Ward, the night wind raged. Deep below, the entire complex began to flash. Short, pulsating bursts of light broke through the stone walls, the moss, and the heavy roofs. From a distance, the Ward looked like a gigantic underground heart, glowing for a fraction of a second with every beat before vanishing back into absolute darkness.
Kilometres away, far beyond the borders of the Ward, the University of War towered over the chilly, dark landscape. At the highest point of the central temple stood Thung Zu. His long, dark robe billowed heavily in the biting night wind. On either side of him stood Morta and Haema, like two motionless shadows guarding the night.
His gaze remained fixed on the distant horizon. His eyes followed the unpredictable, intense flashes shooting across the landscape.
Suddenly, Haema's skin began to react as well. Thin, golden and bright green streaks of light briefly glowed beneath the skin of his forearms and neck. Haema stared at his own hands in shock, his breath catching in astonishment.
Thung Zu glanced sideways at Haema. A low, guttural laugh rolled from his throat. "Mm, yes... Didn't know you wanted to fight him so badly, Haema... And look around you, you're not the only one."
He gestured with a broad, theatrical wave toward the vast grounds surrounding them. Everywhere at the University of War, on the high watchtowers, in the stone courtyards, and across the bridges, identical light reactions flashed beneath the skin of fighters and guards.
Thung Zu's face tightened in an instant. His light, amicable tone vanished. His voice became cold, cutting, and full of authority. "Haema... Change the guards. Now. The Demonic Bulls must torture the prisoners for two hours."
Haema looked at him. The icy pressure radiating from his master's figure left no room for questions or contradiction. Haema bowed his head deeply. "My lord."
Haema turned around and hurried away from the temple roof. As he descended the steep stone stairs, the questions kept echoing through his head. Why did I light up just now? What was that resonance? Why did my body react at that distance?
He couldn't help himself and glanced back briefly over his shoulder. What he saw made his blood run cold.
Around his master's eyes, thick, ink-black circles were forming. They curled like dark, living clusters around his eye sockets, pulsating with a depraved, grim aura. Haema startled so violently that his foot slipped on the stone step. For a fleeting moment, he lost his balance and hastily stepped back.
Thung Zu noticed the movement. Without turning his whole body, his head swiveled halfway around. His dark eyes pierced Haema. "Surprised?!"
Haema recovered at lightning speed. His heart pounded in his chest as he bowed his head deeply. "No... no, my lord."
He turned sharply and hurried down the stairs. As he walked through the immense University of War, past several sealed sections, shielded areas, and heavily guarded gates, his mind raced. Those circles... I thought he wanted nothing to do with the Corrupted God... No, that can't be. That's impossible. He would never...
Haema finally reached the quarters of the Demonic Bulls. To his great surprise, a surprisingly jovial atmosphere prevailed there. Several imposing figures were sitting around a heavy wooden table, eating. They laughed loudly, slapped each other on the shoulders, and shoved large pieces of roasted meat into their mouths.
As soon as Haema crossed the threshold, the laughter died instantly.
With their mouths still full of food, their jaws tightened. Everyone stared at him rigidly, their faces transformed into icy poker faces.
Bainu, the immense leader of the group, swallowed a large bite of meat with difficulty. He wiped his mouth with the back of his massive hand and said in a low voice: "Ehh... Vice Haema. You look troubled."
Haema walked stiffly to the table and sat down directly across from Bainu. "You need to torture the prisoners now. Immediately." He paused, looked along the row of muscles, scars, and crude weapons at the table, and asked in an extremely low, tense voice: "When you're done... Something weird, but... have you noticed anything else about our master?"
The men around the table briefly glanced at one another. They shrugged slightly, tensed their muscles, and tried to act as tough and unmoved as possible. "Eh... um... He looks strong, or what do you mean?"
Haema leaned far over the table. His eyes narrowed to slits. "Right... Bainu, right now?.. But didn't you see anything... something more sinister than normal, perhaps?"
Bainu regarded him with a stern, unreadable gaze. He grabbed another piece of meat, took a quick bite, and said without blinking: "Yeah. More and more. But you don't get anything from us."
Bainu ate quickly and aggressively, cutting the conversation short and stifling any further questions.
Haema rose abruptly. The heavy wooden chair behind him scraped loudly across the stone floor.
EVEN SO, Haema thought to himself, while anger and doubt surged through his chest. But the realization immediately hit him like ice water: he needed tangible, irrefutable proof before he could voice such dangerous thoughts about his master. One wrong word without proof would cost him his head. Without another word, Haema turned around and strode away from the quarters.
As soon as Haema's heavy footsteps faded into the long corridors, Bainu stopped chewing. Under his breath, he muttered: "Is he gone?"
Chiti, the female apparition beside him, glanced sharply toward the door. "Yeah."
Mon, who was leaning with crossed arms against the wooden support beam behind them, added: "And completely."
Bainu turned his massive neck toward Chiti and Tiejo. "Chiti... Tiejo, any news about Iron Fan?"
Chiti leaned closer to him, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "She was all alone today. No guards, no followers."
Tiejo stared hard at the door and added softly: "Only now she's nowhere to be found. Here we go again... but there's still a chance."
Chiti nodded slowly. "If we find her, we can strike, take her out, and get the Iron Fan."
Bainu fixed his stern gaze on Mon. "Come, you and Chiti. The rest can stay. We have to do it... for the cloak."
Mon spat a black, corrosive substance onto the stone floor. The substance hissed violently and immediately scorched a deep, smoking hole into the stone. Without further hesitation, the three set off.
They walked through the dark, shrieking corridors of the complex. The walls seemed to hold the echoes of old pains and screams. They passed slaughterhouse after slaughterhouse, where the stench of old blood and rust hung thick in the air.
At one of the open rooms, they stopped briefly. Inside, a woman was patching herself up. She was an artificial humanoid creature with visible seam lines and marble-white skin. Her gaze was blank and dull. But in a fraction of a second, she darted toward the cell entrance with inhuman speed.
CLANK!
Heavy chains tightened with a dull thud, pulling her back against the wall. She was chained tightly to the rear wall. She stared at the trio with large, hollow eyes. "Ehh... visitors... Are you guys going to hurt me too?"
Bainu looked at Chiti, his jaws clenched so tightly that the muscles in his neck strained. "No... No, we're not here for you."
With their heads held high and their eyes fixed forward, they continued down the corridor. At the end stood a heavy oak door, wide open. Bainu stopped at the threshold, looked briefly at Mon and Chiti, and whispered: "Remember, these are students of this school. We're going to see what he did."
They stepped into the dark room. Across it, a man hung chained to the rough rock wall. He looked remarkably ordinary, apart from his wild, tangled hair and torn clothes. The prisoner looked up, spat with contempt toward the previous guard who had just hurried away, and fixed his eyes squarely on Bainu.
Mon stepped closer and inspected the man from head to toe. "Mm... this one is tricky."
Suddenly, the heavy door behind them slammed shut with a tremendous bang. The bolts automatically fell into place.
The chained student began pulling violently at his shackles and screamed, his eyes wild with fanaticism: "NO REGRETS! GLORY TO WHAT I DO!"
Before he could finish his sentence, Bainu stepped forward with devastating speed and lashed out.
BOOM!
A dull, cracking blow echoed through the entire room. The student was knocked unconscious instantly, his body hanging motionless in the iron shackles.
Bainu shook out his heavy fist. "Give me a second..." He looked sideways at Mon. "So, Mon, are you still eating or have you found something about him yet?"
Mon chuckled softly, somewhat cynically. "You... Well, it turns out that the top plate of his chest armour was awarded as a tribute for the complete extermination of the fifth Beast Human city of your people."
Bainu and Chiti stared at the incapacitated student. Bainu's eyes narrowed to two dangerous slits. He pointed with a trembling finger at the three remaining plates on the man's harness. "Mm... and the rest of those plates then?"
Mon quickly flipped through a small, stained parchment he had snatched from a wooden table. "Can't find exactly which is which... But it says here he set up ten slave camps. And conducted ten successful experiments on Beast Human children... and a few Hellverse creatures."
Bainu's blood began to boil. His breathing became heavy, hot, and audible in the small cell. "Mm... enough reason, then."
With two fast, practiced movements, Bainu unclipped the heavy weights around his wrists. He dropped the weight from his left arm.
BANG!
The leaden metal struck the stone floor with a tremendous crash, carving a deep, splintered crater into the rock. Almost immediately afterward, he dropped the weight from his right arm.
BANG!
The entire room shook to its foundations.
Chiti made her long, black hair rise. The strands moved like hungry snakes around her. "But I get to go too, right?"
Bainu began stretching his muscles. His physical form expanded with a dull cracking sound as his muscles and bones shifted. His frame contracted powerfully, then expanded again, changing its proportions until it matched the chained man's exact size. As the transformation settled into place with one final mechanical lock of his muscles, the prisoner jerked awake.
The man spat blood and stared blankly ahead. "Pff... do you really think..."
Bainu lashed out with an exact copy of the technique the student had used earlier, reproducing the attack with perfect precision.
CRACK!
The horrific crack of breaking bones filled the cell. The magical torches on the walls flickered violently, threatening to go out.
Chiti quickly thrust one of her sharp, hardened strands of hair deep into the man's ankle. "No, no... stay awake, you."
The man's eyes shot wide open. Chiti's hair tightened around his ankle, keeping him from slipping back into unconsciousness and forcing him to remain aware of the pain.
Mon quickly looked up from the parchment, his voice suddenly cold and dead-serious. "You've done more than stand here... Bainu... I... uh... there are two things. What I'm reading here is that his family, and especially he himself, had a direct share in the fall of Jigon... Your family."
Bainu barely heard Mon's words. Something inside him finally snapped. The anger he had carried for years over what had been done to his entire people erupted in one explosive outburst.
Without a word, he went completely berserk on the chained man. He tore him out of the shackles with one ruthless swipe, caught him in midair as he fell, slammed him against the stone floor with devastating force, and continued to kick him relentlessly. He beat him, kicked him, and tore into him with a merciless display of pure, unadulterated revenge.
Suddenly, the entire floor began to shake violently. The remaining iron shackles on the wall rattled wildly, accompanied by a deep, demonic howl that seemed to rise from the deepest layers of the complex.
Bainu startled at the intensity of the howl and stopped midway through a blow, his chest heaving heavily and rapidly. He stared forward with wild eyes.
Chiti grabbed him firmly by his tense shoulder and pulled him back with force. "We understand you! I should have said this differently... Come on, let's go!"
They dragged Bainu toward the exit. Just as they pushed open the heavy door, all three stopped abruptly.
Right in front of the doorway stood Lady Iron Fan.
She cast a quick, icy glance past them, into the cell, at the bloody ruin on the ground. "Maybe a bit much... But you were looking for me."
Chiti met Bainu's gaze and whispered so softly that only he could hear: "Not here."
Bainu stood there in utter astonishment, sweat and blood gleaming on his knuckles. He didn't know what to say, but managed to force out through clenched teeth: "Study... I need to know more. Do you have time later?"
Lady Iron Fan narrowed her eyes to two tiny slits. She stared at him in absolute, oppressive silence for a few seconds, weighing what she had just seen and what it meant. "Yeah... fine. BUT I need to take care of business with our master first. Then I'll teach you tomorrow night."
She looked the trio over with a strict, inexorable gaze. "Go to your rooms. It's getting late. Tomorrow you must prepare."
Bainu tried to maintain his posture, pushed his chest forward, and gave a stiff nod. "Then I'll see you tomorrow night."
Lady Iron Fan gave a short nod, turned her back on them, and walked past. Bainu, Chiti, and Mon quickly disappeared into the darkness of the long hallway. As soon as they rounded the first corner, Chiti leaned closer to Bainu and whispered, her eyes wide: "You actually have to do this?!"
Mon nodded gravely from the shadow of his cloak. Bainu stared straight ahead into the darkness. "She's right... But the rest need to hear this first."
Outside the walls of the University of War, the hours passed in silence. The pulsating green and golden flashes above the domain of the Ward slowly faded, swallowed by the night. The chilly, black darkness gradually gave way to the first faint purple and golden hues on the horizon.