Atticus didn't know what awaited him once he crossed the barrier, but he had long since accepted one thing: fighting the Marquis was pointless. He wanted to avoid it at all costs. Each of them was effectively immortal in this world, and any confrontation would only drain ti he couldn't afford to lose.
He glanced toward the woman.
"Are you coming with ?"
She paused, her expression briefly distant, almost puzzled.
"Will the elents follow?"
"A simple yes wouldn't kill you."
When she continued to stare at him in silence, Atticus released a tired sigh.
"What does that an for ?" he asked. "If it cos to a fight, will you step in?"
The last thing he needed was a repeat of their previous encounter, where she had stood aside, observing in silence, only to interfere at the very end. Before stepping into enemy territory, he needed to know exactly what cards were on the table.
"That would be inappropriate."
"What do you an…?"
"It is not mine to engage," she replied evenly. "If I fight, you will not learn."
Atticus' frown deepened. He had no aversion to learning, if anything, he welcod it, but never when his life, or the lives of his family, were on the line.
"Then what's the point of coming along," he asked, "if you're not going to do anything?"
"I will observe," she said. "I will offer correction if the need arises."
Atticus held her gaze for a mont, finding nothing there that suggested compromise, then turned away. Her manner of conveying information had always been… difficult to interpret. Still, he wasn't in the habit of begging for assistance. Whatever lay ahead, he would have to manage with what he had.
He fell from the tree, landing softly on the forest floor.
'Now… what thod should I use?'
Camouflage was the obvious choice, yet Atticus hesitated. He wasn't sure how to approach it anymore. In the past, he would have bent light around himself to vanish from sight or moved carefully from shadow to shadow, but this new understanding of the elents had changed how he viewed such techniques.
Both thods relied on manipulating the elents to distort others' perception, and anyone with sufficient awareness or ability could eventually see through that distortion. At its core, it was deception, and deception was flawed.
This new approach was different.
He wasn't using the elents to produce an effect.
The elental molecules were the fabric of the universe itself. When fire molecules converged to form a fla, no power in existence could convince the world that there wasn't a fire burning there.
What he was doing now was exerting authority over those molecules, rewriting how they behaved and, in doing so, redefining reality itself. His intent beca the new truth.
In its simplest form, his words were law.
Atticus thought for a mont longer before settling on his approach. He drew in a slow breath, deliberately ignoring the weight of the woman's gaze pressing into his back.
"Sound. Light. Pressure. Heat. Disturbance. No propagation."
The molecules around him shuddered, trembling as though resisting, before falling utterly still. Pain exploded in his head without warning, forcing him back two steps before he caught himself. He clenched his jaw, gripping the side of his head as he breathed through it, focusing on steadying himself against the violent hamring in his skull.
Several seconds passed before the pain finally began to recede. Atticus exhaled heavily and lifted his gaze, only to find the woman watching him with an expression that was neither concern nor indifference, but sothing closer to fascination.
"No propagation… interesting."
He ignored her comnt, concentrating instead on holding himself together. No propagation was simply the term he'd assigned to what he had just done.
Propagation was anything that spread outward from a source. Movent carried sound. Light reflected. Heat radiated. Pressure displaced the air. Disturbance rippled through the world. What Atticus had done was remove that spread entirely, forbidding any of it from leaving the space imdiately around him. He could still move, still breathe, still perceive the world, but none of his actions produced an effect beyond himself.
To everything outside that space, Atticus no longer existed.
With no sound, no light, no heat, no vibration escaping him, reality had simply… closed over the absence he left behind. This was the new truth.
"No propagation."
To his irritation, the woman mirrored the effect effortlessly, bending the elents around herself into the sa state without so much as a flicker of strain.
'Show off.'
Even so, Atticus couldn't help but wonder why he could still see her. Was it his bloodline? So interaction between his control and her own? Or were the molecules simply behaving differently in his presence?
He didn't dwell on it.
Without another word, Atticus started toward the opening in the barrier. Pain flared with each movent, sharp enough to make him squint as he pressed forward. He had achieved this state by exerting control over each category of molecules one at a ti, but the problem was that the strain never truly eased. Every mont the propagation remained suppressed, it felt as though he were imposing his will all over again.
There was no montum. No settling into it.
Each step demanded the sa cost as the first.
As a result, he was forced to move at an agonizing pace, pausing repeatedly to recover before continuing. Step by step, he advanced toward the open path. The woman kept pace beside him, her movents unhurried, her expression calm, watching him closely while he clearly struggled.
Eventually, Atticus reached the opening and paused at its edge, testing the space ahead for any reaction, any resistance, any sign of an enemy. When nothing ca, he continued forward.
As they moved, pain was all he knew.
Every step sent a spike through his head. Every brush of air against his skin, every subtle shift in light around him, felt like another reminder of the strain he was under.
Still, Atticus kept his eyes forward and his mind fixed on his goal. By sheer luck, he reached the base of the mountain without encountering a single enemy.
By then, his clothes were soaked through with sweat and his breathing had grown heavy, a discomfort that only deepened when the sll reached him, adding yet another layer to his misery as he had to account for it too.
The woman remained close, though her attention had shifted away from him, her calmly gaze now roaming the surroundings. As Atticus paused to steady his breathing, his eyes caught a faint glow spilling from an opening carved into the mountain's face.
'Is that…?'
He drew in several slow breaths before moving toward it. As he approached, it beca clear that the opening led into a cave, though his attention remained fixed on the purple light bleeding from within.
Atticus' expression hardened.
'Solvath.'
He looked back toward the woman and froze when he caught sight of her expression. It was twisted in a way he hadn't seen before, tense, unsettled. He blinked.
'Is she… scared?'
Though he stood just outside the entrance, she lingered several steps back, as if the very sight of the cave repelled her.
Atticus hesitated. On one hand, having soone as overwhelmingly powerful as her beside him when facing the fragnt would be invaluable. On the other, this was neither the ti nor the place to stop and coax her forward.
'I'll just enter… let's hope she follows.'
He steadied himself and advanced inside, moving into a dry, lightless passage that posed no obstacle to his vision.
A mont later, he heard the faint, uncertain sound of footsteps behind him and felt a quiet relief when he realized she had chosen to follow.
He moved deeper, guided by the soft purple glow, until the passage opened into a vast chamber. Atticus stopped at the threshold, his heart pounding as his gaze locked onto the scene within.
Three purple fragnts hovered in the center of the cavern, radiating intense light that washed over every surface, filling the space entirely.
'There they are.'
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