Colin just returned home, carrying a bag of groceries and a bouquet of flowers. His wife had been upset the night before because he had forgotten a few items, so he had headed out early in the morning to buy them, desperate to wipe away any lingering anger before she woke up.
The soft rays of the morning sun poured over his young daughter, Eva, gently waking her from her sleep. Her tiny, enchanting face looked like an absolute fairy bathed in the morning light. As she opened her eyes and saw her father standing at the door with her favorite flowers, a wave of pure joy washed over her. Just as she bounced up, eager to run and wrap her arms around him in a tight hug,
BOOM.
A deafening, terrifying explosion tore through the air, and the entire world plunged into sudden, suffocating darkness. Right before Eva's eyes, her father was crushed flat beneath a massive boulder from their roof. Terror gripped her soul, freezing every joint in her body; she trembled uncontrollably, blindly stretching out a shaking hand toward her father. Beneath the ruins of that devastating wreckage, only his hand was visible. In that split second of panic, she felt someone right beside her. Thinking it was her mother, she turned to her for comfort, only to be swallowed by a suffocating wave of horror. Her mother's severed head came rolling to a stop right beside her. Her mind screamed at her not to look back, refusing to let her turn her neck. But through a blurry, tear-soaked haze, she caught the horrifying sight: a lifeless, headless body lying just behind her.
Just a moment ago, everything was fine. What on earth had just happened? The image of her mother smiling while cooking that morning, and her father starting her day with her favorite flowers, was still flashing before Eva's eyes. But why did it have to end like this?
Eva wanted to scream, but no sound escaped her throat. With a trembling hand, she touched her own neck; she needed to call for help, but in her shock, she had completely forgotten how to speak. Pulling herself up with whatever strength she had left, she picked up her mother's severed head. The once-bright, angelic face with its soft, silky golden hair was now completely pale and lifeless. Clutching her mother's head tightly to her chest, she broke down in a torrent of silent tears.
Suddenly, a thought struck her, she needed to go outside and find help. Stepping out with tear-blurred eyes, she saw that nearly everyone was suffering the same fate. People were running in every direction; children were crying over the corpses of their parents. Someone fleeing frantically crashed right into her, but Eva's entire body remained rigid, her fingers refusing to let go of her mother's head. Everyone was too desperate and panicked to care about who was alive or dead beside them.
As her gaze shifted forward, she spotted Jack. His mother was half-crushed beneath a pile of heavy stones, but she was still alive, crying out for help while no one stopped to aid her. Little Jack was desperately trying to shove the boulders away all by himself. Seeing this, Eva ran over to help him. Jack momentarily forgot his own terror when he caught sight of the severed head in Eva's hands, and Jack's trapped mother stared in sheer shock for a second. Yet, paying no heed to the horror around them, Eva immediately pitched in to help Jack. Gently setting her mother's severed head down on the ground, she used every ounce of strength left in her tiny hands to assist Jack. Amidst the chaos, Jack's mother urged the two children to leave her behind and run to a safe place, but neither of them was willing to listen.
She had shared so many wonderful moments with Jack. Just last night, Jack's mother had baked her favorite cake. How could she possibly abandon her now? Even if she couldn't save her own parents, she refused to back down from saving someone else's.
Standing behind them, Tameem watched everything unfold. Dipping his finger into the blood dripping from the severed head of Eva's mother, he stared at it for a moment with a quiet, chilling smile, murmuring to himself,
"Old memories are waking up. I cried like this over my own daughter's head once, but the difference is back then, everyone watched and did nothing, and today, there's no one left to even watch."
He stood up, drew his blade, and walked slowly forward.
"I'll try to make it as painless as possible. Forgive me, little girl."
With a flick of his wrist, he slashed his blade through the empty air from a distance. For a few split seconds, everything fell completely still. Then, everything in his line of sight was sliced cleanly in half, diagonally through the middle. Because Jack's mother was trapped lower down on the ground, she escaped the strike, but she watched in sheer horror as the bodies of Jack and Eva were severed right before their eyes. Eva and Jack didn't even realize what had happened; a second ago they were trying to shift the stones, and the next, their vision was tilted toward the sky. Their legs felt as though they no longer existed, and the world slowly blurred into absolute darkness. In their final moments, all they could remember was the blood-curdling scream of Jack's mother and the shadow of Tameem's footsteps. Then, total silence.
Tameem walked forward, kneeling beside Eva's bisected body. The young girl hadn't even had the chance to close her enchanting eyes. Gently, he reached out and closed them with his own hand. Jack's mother glared at Tameem with eyes blazing with pure rage,
"You monster... slaughtering so many innocent people just for your own amusement."
Without a word, Tameem raised his foot and brought his heel down on Jack's mother's head, crushing it like a ripe melon bursting under pressure. Looking ahead, he saw the entire landscape fracturing, as if a hot knife were slicing through butter. Thousands of people were split right down the middle in a single instant.
Suddenly, Sameer stepped out from behind him, his overwhelming aura pressing down so heavily that even Tameem's frame momentarily stiffened under the crushing mountain-like weight. Yet, keeping his composure, Tameem smirked,
"How do you still manage to move so fast carrying this heavy magical seal?"
Sameer glanced briefly at Tameem's feet before pointing toward the massive royal palace looming behind them,
"You don't need to slaughter innocent lives here for fun. If you want blood, Maciej's entire royal family is right inside. Go kill them."
Tameem brushed off his boots, slid his blade back into its scabbard, and replied,
"I get that, but half the city just vanished into thin air, and yet Maciej is nowhere to be seen? What's going on?"
Even as he spoke, Tameem sensed a sudden, sharp shift in the surrounding air pressure and wind currents. Instinctively dropping low, an invisible blade-slash swept right over the top of his head. But before the strike could even graze Sameer's body, he casually reached out and caught the distortion between two fingers. Tameem stared in shock who on earth could throw a spatial-bending slash this powerful, only for Sameer to catch it as effortlessly as if he were picking up a grain of salt?
Turning around, he saw Maciej riding up at the head of a full army. The king had just slid his sword back into its sheath. By now, Tameem finally understood why Sameer had shown up here. Turning his head toward Maciej, Sameer looked at him and said to Tameem,
"Because Maciej knows the exact moment to strike. He never does anything out of blind haste, even if it means his entire kingdom burns to the ground in the process."
With a faint, mocking smile, Sameer looked directly at Maciej and shouted,
"What a surprise, my friend! I never expected you would stab me in the back!"
Dismounting his horse, Maciej stared at Sameer in sheer disbelief, unable to trust his own eyes. With a voice trembling with shock, he asked,
"Sameer?"
Sitting on the ground, Tameem glanced back and forth between Sameer and Maciej, finally beginning to grasp the full picture. Before he could say a word, Sameer cut him off,
"Your only job is to stop anyone who tries to get between me and Maciej. Even if God himself tries to interfere."
Tameem vanished into thin air, blending seamlessly with the shifting winds. Maciej instantly commanded his entire army to sweep the area for any trace of him. A senior military commander hurried to his side, his voice taut with concern,
"But Your Majesty, you are alone against..."
Maciej raised a single hand, cutting him off mid-sentence.
"Did you not see how he caught that light-sword slash between two fingers just a moment ago? He could grind every last one of us to dust before your brain even registers the impact."
Swallowing hard, the commander lowered his head and retreated, quickly signaling the troops to disperse and search the perimeter. With the soldiers out of the line of fire, Maciej drew his sword once more. The heavy steel slid from its scabbard with a crisp hiss as he stepped forward, his eyes locked onto Sameer.
"I don't know how you are even able to move under the weight of that magical seal, Sameer! But what is the meaning of bringing this slaughter to my doorstep?"
Sameer let out a low, humorless chuckle that quickly deepened into a dark, echoing laugh. He casually hopped up onto a massive pile of rubble from a collapsed stone roof, staring down at his own hands with a chilling detachment.
"You know, I can't even properly feel my own hands anymore. This seal has locked away both my power and my vision. I have to hand it to you, Maciej. You really know how to forge a prison."
Maciej stiffened, his grip tightening around the hilt of his sword.
"It is all part of Uriel's blessing."
Sameer tilted his head slightly, his gaze piercing straight through Maciej.
"Why lie to yourself, Maciej? You know as well as I do why angels hand out blessings, and what the true price of that power is."
Stepping forward, Maciej shifted his weight, blade poised for a lethal strike.
"You wouldn't understand. You're a monster who wouldn't think twice about playing with human lives just to serve your own ends."
Sameer pushed himself up from the rubble, his presence shifting like a dormant storm.
"And that coming from the man who drove a dagger straight through his best friend's back."
Without wasting another microsecond, Maciej exploded forward. He closed the distance in a blur, bringing his sword down in a ferocious, earth-splitting arc. But the moment his blade cleaved through Sameer, there was no impact—only the faint shimmer of displaced air. It was a residual afterimage.
In a heartbeat, Sameer materialized directly behind him. Leaning in close, his voice brushed against Maciej's ear like a death sentence.
"Still as painfully slow as ever."
Maciej spun on his heel with blinding speed, whipping his sword around in a vicious backhand slash. This time, Sameer didn't evade cleanly; the edge of the light-blade grazed his shoulder, tearing through his dark coat and drawing a sharp line of hot blood. But Sameer used the momentum, driving his heavy, sealed fist straight into Maciej's ribs.
The kinetic shockwave was brutal. Even with the divine weight shackling his limbs, Sameer's strike hit like a falling monolith. Maciej was launched backward like a cannonball, blasting through three consecutive stone pillars before skidding across the shattered courtyard. He spat out a mouthful of dark blood, his chest heaving violently.
Sameer stumbled half a step back, wincing as a sharp spike of agony lanced through his restricted joints. He clutched his bleeding shoulder, his breath turning ragged.
"Damn it... trying to throw a proper punch with these restricting bracelets while taking a counter-hit like that feels like a complete joke. My body is falling apart."
A few yards away, Maciej forced himself up from the rubble, his arms trembling uncontrollably. His ribs were fractured, and a cold shiver ran down his spine. If Sameer possessed this terrifying, bone-crushing dominance even while shackled by a divine seal and bleeding from his own sluggishness, what would happen if those restraints were ever removed? A wave of profound dread washed over him as a haunting thought gripped his mind:
Was that choice back then... truly necessary?
Before he could pull himself out of the spiral, a sudden shifting of the air made his instincts scream. He snapped his eyes open, and there Sameer stood, closing the gap with terrifying speed despite his injuries.
Tilt-headed, Sameer's voice carried a dangerous, quiet chill, though a thin trail of blood now dripped down his chin.
"What grave sin did I ever commit against you, Maciej, that you felt the need to completely destroy my family?"
Maciej's eyes widened in sheer disbelief, his breath catching in his throat. What was Sameer talking about? Before he could even open his mouth to defend himself, a massive shockwave rattled his core. Sameer drove another brutal, unyielding punch straight toward him.
Reacting purely on survival instinct, Maciej threw his light sword forward to intercept. The collision sent a deafening shockwave rippling across the courtyard, the sheer kinetic weight cracking the pavement beneath their feet into spiderweb fractures. A normal human caught in that kinetic backdraft would have been instantly liquefied into red mist. Maciej managed to hold his ground, but the recoil tore open his palms, spraying fine mist of blood into the air.
Roaring through the agony, Maciej retaliated instantly, unleashing a furious, blinding barrage of light-sword strikes. The clash escalated into a cataclysmic tempest, their kinetic output tearing the historic capital apart, reducing majestic stone structures to pulverized dust.
Miles away, Siyam reined in his horse as he crested a distant hill, his gaze locking onto the thick pillars of dark, oily smoke choking the sky above the Orel territory. He knew instantly that he was cutting it dangerously close. Dismounting in a single fluid motion, he left his mount behind, closed his eyes, and sank into a deep, absolute state of focus. He couldn't rely on brute travel speed anymore; he needed raw spatial traversal—a devastating power he had forcefully locked away within the deepest vaults of his soul for three long centuries.
The moment he unlocked the seal, a blinding wave of vertigo struck him, making the world spin violently behind his eyes. But before the dizziness could pull him under, the distant, ear-splitting screech of clashing steel and bone-shattering impacts echoed across the horizon, cutting straight through the ringing in his ears.
Siyam moved toward the sound. But before he could even take three steps into the war zone, a chilling pressure sliced through the air behind him. Instinct screamed in his mind. He spun around, drawing his sword in a blinding arc just in time to intercept a lethal ambush.
Standing right there amidst the falling debris, covered in fresh blood, Tameem wore a twisted, manic grin as he pressed the edge of his razor-sharp blade directly against the flat of Siyam's sword, his eyes gleaming with mad anticipation.
"Well, well... looks like you're the final roadblock."