The crater was no longer just a hole in the ground; it was a pressurized oven.
Vane of the Iron Cloud hovered five feet above the bubbling glass floor, his expression shifting from boredom to a flickering spark of annoyance. The "peasant" below him should have been a pancake by now. Instead, the boy was standing.
"A Seismic Pulse?" Vane sneered, his fingers weaving a complex pattern in the air. "A common technique for earth-rats. You think shaking the dirt will save you from the Heavens?"
Vane pushed his palm downward. [Technique: Iron Pillar of the Ninth Sky].
The air solidified. A massive, invisible column of density slammed into Zayn's shoulders with the weight of a mountain. The sound was sickening—the sound of a human spine reaching its absolute limit.
Zayn's boots disappeared into the rock. Blood sprayed from his nose, but he didn't scream. He grinned. His teeth were stained red, looking like jagged rubies in the dim light of the crater.
"Common?" Zayn's voice was a guttural rasp. "You... you talk too much."
Zayn didn't punch. He didn't kick. He simply let go of his own physical form and leaned into the Internal Burn. He reached his consciousness past the mud, past the bedrock, down to the tectonic plates that groaned beneath the continent.
[PLANETARY RESONANCE: STAGE 1 - SEISMIC PULSE]
Zayn's fingers dug into the molten glass.
THUMP.
The first wave hit. It wasn't a blast of energy; it was a frequency. Vane's white silk robes began to ripple like water in a storm. The "Iron Pillar" cracked.
"What... what is this?" Vane gasped. He tried to fly higher, but the air itself was vibrating so fast it had become a vacuum. He couldn't catch a breath.
THUMP.
The second wave was the Eye-Action moment. The vibration hit the frequency of Vane's own bones.
"I don't just shake the dirt," Zayn growled, pulling his fist back. The amber light in his veins was now so bright it was blinding. "I shake the soul."
Zayn exploded forward. He moved so fast he left a trail of steam in the air. Vane tried to throw up a gravitational shield, but the Seismic Pulse had already turned the air into a chaotic mess of interference.
Zayn's fist connected with Vane's stomach.
There was no "thud." There was a CRACK that sounded like a tectonic plate snapping in half.
The Seismic Pulse traveled through Zayn's arm and dumped its entire frequency into Vane's body. The high-born's back erupted—not from the punch, but from the shockwave exiting his body. Silk, blood, and pieces of refined Qi sprayed into the air in a gory mist.
Vane was sent hurtling upward, a white streak against the dark sky, slamming into the hull of his own Cloud-Galleon with enough force to dent the spirit-metal.
Zayn stood at the bottom of the crater, his arm smoking, his skin cracked and leaking orange light. He looked up at the massive ship.
"One down," Zayn whispered. "A whole sky to go."
Above him, the ship's sirens began to wail—a high, melodic sound that signaled the arrival of the Harvester Guard.