The envoy yelped, the force pressing him deeper into the ground under the tal restraints.
Cain inhaled sharply. "Alright. That’s how you want it."
He moved.
Not with Nexus Tether—no spatial swapping, no tricks. That ability was gone. But Cain’s raw physicality, boosted by the fractured power inside him, was still enough to blur the line between human and sothing else. He crossed the gap in a heartbeat and went straight for Arx-7’s throat.
A gauntleted hand caught his punch.
The impact cracked the ground under them, sending a spiderweb fracture racing across the plaza. Arx-7 didn’t stagger. Didn’t flinch. He simply pushed Cain back with the sa asured calm of soone adjusting furniture.
"Your strength is incomplete," Arx-7 said. "Unrefined. It will be corrected once the shard is—"
Cain didn’t let him finish. He swung again, faster, hitting the armored chest with enough force to dent the plating. This ti Arx-7’s footing shifted half an inch.
Good.
Cain pressed harder, unleashing a barrage of strikes that echoed through the plaza like hamr on tal. Each hit rang out sharply, sending shockwaves through the air. Each one forced Arx-7 to adjust, absorb, re-center.
Cain stepped in with a low sweep, catching Arx-7’s legs and dragging him partially off-balance. He followed with a rising strike to the jaw—
And that was the one Arx-7 caught.
His grip tightened on Cain’s forearm.
"Correction in progress," Arx-7 said.
Energy pulsed down his arm.
Not magic. Not an elent. Not mana.
Just pure force.
It blasted Cain backward, slamming him into a broken pillar hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs. Stone shattered around him in a burst of debris. He slid down the rubble, breathing hard, ribs aching.
Two of Arx-7’s subordinates advanced.
Cain pushed himself to his feet before they reached him. Pain thrumd through his side, but pain wasn’t new. Pain didn’t matter. He lifted one hand and reshaped the broken tal near his feet into crude shards—nothing elegant, nothing like his old forging techniques. More like claws torn from raw ore.
He flung them.
The projectiles bent mid-air.
No—were bent. One of the subordinates redirected them with a flick of the wrist, sending the shards spiraling into the ground.
"Unrefined," Arx-7 said again. "You require containnt."
Cain spat blood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Not happening."
He sprinted forward, ignoring the sharp pull in his ribs, and closed the distance with one of the subordinates. This one moved differently—slower, heavier. Cain slipped under a swing, planted a knee to its midsection, and the force of the blow cracked the armored plating. The subordinate stumbled.
Cain seized the opening, drove his foot into its leg joint, and forced the figure down to one knee.
Arx-7 finally moved.
Cain felt it before he saw it—pressure, sharper and more focused this ti, slicing across the battlefield like an invisible blade. Cain twisted aside, but the edge grazed him hard enough to rip a line across his shoulder.
He kept pushing anyway.
He grabbed the staggering subordinate by the collar, pivoted, and hurled its armored body into another soldier behind it. The collision sent both skidding backward in a heap of tal and dust.
Cain’s lungs burned. His side ached. The fractured power in him flickered unevenly, unreliable but present.
Arx-7 watched him calmly.
"Resistance confirms instability," he said. "Priority shift: forceful extraction."
Cain braced, expecting another blast of pressure.
Instead, Arx-7 raised both hands—and the sky answered.
The spiraling clouds tightened. A beam of pale light broke through the vortex, narrowing, focusing, locking onto Cain like a celestial spotlight.
Cain’s head lifted slowly.
The envoy whimpered. "Oh no... no, no—he’s marking you. He’s calling the others."
Cain’s jaw tightened.
More?
There were MORE of these things?
The beam intensified.
Cain took a slow breath.
"Fine."
He stepped forward.
"If you’re calling more," he said, "I’ll just break all of you before they get here."
Arx-7 tilted his head again. "You do not have the capability."
"We’ll find out."
Cain launched himself forward again—straight into the light.
And the sky trembled.
Cain hit the ground like a stone thrown by sothing that hated him. The air punched out of his lungs, gravel tore at his palms, and for a beat he couldn’t hear anything but a high ringing that split the world into two halves: the impact... and the fact he was still alive.
He rolled onto his back, chest heaving. The tear in reality—that molten wound—hovered above him, shrinking, folding in on itself like a dying eye. The last thing he saw inside it was the blurred outline of the woman’s hand reaching toward him as the tear snapped shut with a crack that vibrated his bones.
Silence fell. Too fast. Too complete.
He forced himself upright, expecting broken ribs, shredded muscles, sothing permanently ruined. Instead he felt... steady. Not unhard—his body throbbed, and his right shoulder burned—but stronger than he had any right to be.
The feeling wasn’t natural.
He spat dust. "Great. Another gift I didn’t ask for."
Movent echoed behind him—soft, deliberate. Cain went still, then pushed himself to his feet in one fluid motion and turned.
A girl stood ten ters away.
Seventeen, maybe. Barefoot. Hair black and matted with soot. Skin marked with symbols that looked carved rather than drawn. Her eyes—grey, almost silver—didn’t blink. She stared at him like she was morizing the mont he breathed.
Cain didn’t speak right away. She wasn’t so lost kid. The air around her felt wrong. Heavy. Like the atmosphere bent around her shape.
"What are you?" he asked finally.
Her lips parted. "A remainder."
"From what?"
"You tore a hole." Her voice was quiet but carried like a blade sliding across glass. "You were supposed to die in it. When you didn’t, the gate had to seal around sothing else."
Cain exhaled sharply. "You’re telling reality grabbed the nearest thing and patched the wound with it?"
She nodded once.
"And that was you?"
Another nod.
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