The last three enemies lowered their weapons.
Slowly.
Not because they believed rcy was likely, but because running had beco a joke that Horizon would punish.
Silence spread over the battlefield.
Then the twins' voices rang out in unison.
""We surrender.""
The twins stood shoulder to shoulder, their Synchrony still tight even in surrender.
The Riftglass stood in silence, its sharp features twisted into sothing ugly and strained. It said nothing, but whatever arrogance it once carried had completely drained from its expression.
Just then...
Every allied gaze shifted, converging on a single point.
Lucien.
Even the enemy Eternals felt it. The strangest part was not that an Ascendant stood among the group.
It was that the Eternals were waiting for his decision.
Their fate had been placed in his hands as if the world itself had signed the transfer.
Lucien hovered behind and reached out with divine sense.
His brows lowered.
Then his voice carried across the battlefield.
"That one hurt Aerolith," Lucien said, and pointed at the Riftglass, "he dies."
The Riftglass' eyes widened.
For half a breath it did not move, as if its mind refused to accept that a sentence could be spoken so simply.
Then rage and terror poured into the sa vessel.
"No," it hissed. "You cannot decide that. I forbid it."
Interdict flared.
Prohibitions layered into the air like invisible walls. The Riftglass tried to turn the battlefield into a courtroom where the world was required to obey its rules.
But there was no courtroom here.
Only hunters.
Kira moved first.
Her Ironweave limbs elongated without warning.
The scythe-limbs pierced through the Riftglass' "pressure points," the structural knots where its circulation gathered and distributed.
The Riftglass' mana flow stuttered instantly.
Its Interdict spasd.
Aerolith surged imdiately, eyes bright with a child's anger that had learned what cruelty was.
Continuance slamd into the Riftglass.
The Eternal tried to speak another prohibition.
Aerolith did not let it finish.
Her palm hit its chest.
Continuance insisted the impact did not end.
It carried forward, a mont that refused to be over, driving the Riftglass backward through its own broken rules until the air cracked like glass under pressure.
The Riftglass coughed and tried to stabilize.
It could not.
Kira was already there.
Ironweave threads snapped out and wrapped the Riftglass' body into a cocoon lattice.
The cocoon tightened..
The twins watched the execution and forgot how to breathe.
Their Synchrony held only because terror forced it to.
Their eyes changed from calculation to sothing smaller.
Fear.
They looked at Lucien again and imdiately looked away, as if even eting his gaze might be interpreted as disrespect and earn them the sa ruling.
Lucien noticed.
He even smiled.
To mortals, it would have been a mild expression.
To Eternals, it looked like the mont a blade decides whether to cut.
The Mirrorhorn Duants flinched at that smile as if it had teeth.
Lucien's gaze remained steady, not cruel.
He had seen sothing in them through divine sense.
Hesitation and unwillingness. The posture of creatures forced into roles they hated, trapped between obedience and extinction.
He had questions.
And he had no desire to waste them.
"Do not move," they warned quietly.
Lucien then summoned his Monsterdex.
His eyes moved across the entry about the Mirrorhorn Duants.
And as he read, understanding settled into place.
Mirrorhorn Duants are twin-born race defined by paired existence. Duants do not form as individuals. They form as a unit.
They were easy to recognize once you knew what to look for.
Their horns curved in opposite directions like mirrored crescents, and faint thread-lines of light ran from the base of one twin's horn to the other's, visible only when their Synchrony awakened.
So called those thread-lines "bond-veins," the physical hint of a deeper law-link.
Their eyes were different too
A Duant did not look at you alone. They looked at you together, even when only one faced you. Their gaze was a shared angle.
If one twin dies, the other collapses soon after. The bond cannot tolerate imbalance. Their Synchrony is not just a technique. It is anatomy.
Lucien exhaled slowly.
A race born for companionship... turned into a weapon.
He dismissed the Monsterdex and looked at them again.
"Tell ," Lucien said evenly. "How did you know I was marked?"
The twins stared at each other.
Their mouths opened.
Then closed again.
No sound ca.
For several seconds, the battlefield grew thick with killing intent.
Anvil-Horn's gaze sharpened.
Morveth's Continuance pressed down.
"Speak," Condoriano said. "Or you will not have ti to regret silence."
The twins swallowed, in perfect unison.
Then they finally answered, also in unison.
"It was the Void-Walkers."
Lucien's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Void-Walkers? How are you connected to them? Start from the beginning. How did you first encounter them?"
His eyes sharpened slightly.
"As far as I know, they only arrived in this world recently."
The twins fell silent for a long mont. Their shared gaze lowered as if searching for the right thread to pull.
They did not speak carelessly.
Lucien did not rush them.
Finally, the twins continued.
"The Void-Walkers have been here a long ti," the first twin said.
"Long before the Big World's change," the second added.
"They did not invade loudly," the first continued. "They infiltrated. They waited. They planted."
"They spoke to races," the second said. "They offered help. Longevity. Ascension. The peak."
"At first our race refused," the first admitted. "We are not… built for that kind of ambition. Our clans are families. We wanted peace."
"But so yielded," the second said. "Because of greed and fear of dying. Desire to be strong enough that no one could threaten our bond."
"And once a few yielded," the first said, "the rest were persuaded."
Lucien's expression did not change.
But the air around him did.
The twins' voices turned quieter.
Then uglier.
"The Void-Walkers used us," the second said. "They called it improvent."
"They called it research," the first whispered.
"They made so of us specins," the second continued. "Lab beasts."
The twins' eyes tightened, and for the first ti, their Synchrony did not feel like strength.
It felt like a chain.
"Our race was… ideal," the first said. "What happens to one happens to the other. Perfect for testing. Perfect for refining. Perfect for repeating results."
"And when they were done," the second said, "we were not free."
"They did not only do this to us," the first added quickly, as if desperate to make Lucien understand the scale. "Other races too."
"So joined willingly," the second said. "So were forced."
"So had no choice," the first finished.
Condoriano's feathers bristled.
Saber, who finished devouring, turned darker.
Kira's scythes flexed with a restrained, insectile anger.
Lucien's jaw tightened.
"What about the mark," Lucien said. "How did you sense it?"
The twins hesitated again, then spoke faster, as if afraid the battlefield would run out of patience.
"They injected us," the first said.
"An imprint."
They looked down.
Then up again.
And the truth landed like an iron weight.
"They made our Synchrony resonate with their marks," the first said.
"They carved a receiving lattice into our bond," the second explained. "A second layer of Synchrony that listens for that rhythm."
Lucien's eyes narrowed, interest sharpening into cold comprehension.
The twins continued, grim.
"When a Void-Walker brands soone," the first said, "the brand carries a void-pattern that remains tethered to the one who placed it."
"They made us compatible with that tether," the second said. "So we can sense any branded target within range."
"So of us were made executioners."
"Hounds," the second whispered. "Servants."
Lucien understood imdiately.
A genius chanism.
Void-Walkers did not need to chase every marked target themselves.
They built ears tuned to their frequency.
A distributed hunting network.
And then ca the final knife.
"Now, we cannot live without their rcy," the first twin said.
"They made us consu the miracle drugs they sold continuously," the second said. "If we stop…"
"We die," the first finished.
Silence fell again.
The silence of disgust.
Condoriano's voice rumbled first.
"How dare aliens ravage the Big World," he said.
Saber's voice followed.
"Millennia of being caged has made the world forget what true Sovereigns do to parasites."
Kira's scythes tightened.
Her eyes remained fixed on the twins, but her hatred was not aid at them anymore.
It was aid at the hands behind them.
Morveth's voice ca last.
"To turn families into instrunts," he said. "That is desecration."
The allies stared at the twins differently now.
Lucien exhaled slowly.
His anger was there.
The Void-Walkers were no different from the Black Mass monsters in the way that mattered most. They treated lives like materials. They treated cultures like clay. They treated the world like a resource to be harvested.
And the pattern behind it was worse.
Divide.
Turn the Thousand Races into suspicious fragnts that could not unite.
It was the sa old shape. The sa shape the Primordials did back in the Mural World.
Lucien's gaze lifted for a mont.
Then he looked back down at the twins.
His voice was quiet.
"You were made into hounds," Lucien said. "Then you will beco witnesses."
The twins stiffened, not understanding.
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