Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The sound did not travel.
It arrived.
The land shuddered as if struck by a god's fist, mountains groaning before they split apart, entire ridges collapsing into themselves. Valleys folded inward, crushed by pressure that had nothing to do with gravity. Rivers were torn from their paths, their waters lifted screaming into the air before being sealed inside rigid spatial cubes—frozen mid-flow, trapped in perfect, merciless stillness.
The earth tried to resist.
It failed.
High above the ruined terrain, two figures ruled the sky.
Henry floated as though the concept of falling had been politely removed from his life. Translucent cubes of space formed beneath his boots, appearing and vanishing in sequence, carrying him forward with effortless precision. His coat fluttered wildly in the violent shockwaves, yet his posture remained relaxed, almost bored—like a man rearranging furniture rather than reshaping reality.
Across from him, Thalassa hovered in a roiling mass of steam.
What remained of her clothes clung stubbornly to her body, scorched and torn, fabric sacrificed to heat and force. Beneath the rolling vapor, magma glowed like a living heart, pulsing and shifting with her breath. The air around her shimmered, thick with pressure and heat, bending light into wavering lines.
They moved at the same time.
Henry lifted his hand.
Three cubes snapped into existence and shot forward, small, sharp-edged, and terrifyingly fast. They didn't cut through the air—they skipped past it, collapsing distance as they went. One moment they were near him, the next they were already where Thalassa would be.
She twisted in midair, spine bending as she spun sideways, narrowly avoiding the first cube as it locked shut behind her. The second cube adjusted instantly, sealing off her escape. Thalassa released a violent surge of steam, pressure exploding outward in a concussive wave that forced the cube to stabilize early.
The space it sealed vanished.
Below, the ground warped and hollowed out, a cube-shaped absence replacing soil and stone. The world stuttered around it, unsure how to exist next to something that simply wasn't there anymore.
The third cube descended from above.
Thalassa dropped.
Steam detonated downward, carrying her in a controlled fall. She flipped upright mid-descent, eyes sharp and focused, steam tightening around her like coiled muscle. With a sharp motion, she compressed the vapor—long, narrow constructs forming instantly.
Arrows.
They fired in a dense barrage, dozens of shimmering streaks cutting through the sky toward Henry and the third cube which immediately detonated after impact.
He raised a cube.
The arrows struck and shattered, dispersing into boiling mist that washed harmlessly across the cube's surface. Henry stepped sideways in midair, space folding smoothly beneath him, and sent another wave of cubes outward with a flick of his fingers.
Thalassa didn't retreat.
She dove.
The moment her feet neared the ground, the land responded violently. The soil glowed red-hot, cracks racing outward in jagged lines before the earth ruptured completely. Magma erupted skyward, molten rock spewing like blood from a torn artery.
Thalassa seized control.
The magma bent in mid-eruption, thick streams curving unnaturally as they arced toward Henry, flowing like molten wax guided by invisible hands. Heat rolled outward in crushing waves, turning stone brittle and air heavy.
Henry moved.
He twisted, ducked, and slid through warped space, cubes snapping into place just long enough to intercept splashes of magma before dissolving again. Even fragments no larger than fists were caught and erased, sealed away before they could touch him.
Then he stopped.
Space stilled.
Henry raised his hand, palm open, fingers spread wide.
The sky fractured.
Above the battlefield, massive cubes formed—huge, layered constructs stacked with crushing pressure, their edges vibrating as they displaced the world around them. They hung there for a heartbeat, casting unnatural shadows over the broken land.
Henry smiled, slow and easy.
"Space Technique: Meteoric Mass."
The cubes fell.
The air screamed as they descended, weight bending distance itself. Below, the ground began to collapse inward, pressure alone forcing the land to yield before impact.
Thalassa looked up.
She sighed, more annoyed than afraid.
Steam collapsed inward around her as she reached deep, drawing power from the molten veins beneath the earth.
"Magma Technique," she said coldly.
"Erupting Fracture."
The world answered.
Forty meters out, the ground split open in a perfect ring. Magma surged upward in a towering column, heat so intense that everything within its reach plants, stone, remnants of soil turned to ash instantly. The eruption met the descending cubes head-on.
Impact.
Light swallowed everything.
For a brief, terrible moment, the world ceased to exist—sound erased, color stripped away, reality reduced to blinding white.
Then it snapped back.
The battlefield was gone.
Not destroyed—removed.
Ash drifted slowly through the air, settling over an empty scar where the collision should have annihilated the land. The space itself had been taken elsewhere, sealed away by Henry's technique.
At a distance, three assassins stared in stunned silence.
This wasn't a fight.
It was an argument between two forces that treated the world as expendable—and the world had lost.
In this age, the first trial to be come awakened means stealing a spark of creation.
While for Conjurers is to shaped it.
But Shapers?
They rewrote it.
As the ash settled, Thalassa stood below, steam thinning around her, molten glow still pulsing beneath the surface. Above her, Henry hovered calmly, a faint spatial cube supporting him.
Neither had fallen.
The land waited to see which of them would break it next.