"Denish," Atlas barked, his voice a low, commanding growl that sliced clean through the heavy silence blanketing the chamber like a funeral shroud. "Claire’s coming soon. Tell her to give Kury every drop of the healing potion—she needs it all."
His words ca fast, clipped and brutal, every syllable sharpened by urgency. The floor beneath him was slick with blood, the stench of iron and burning stone thick in the air. Each of his steps landed like a war drum, echoing off the jagged trees of the ruined forest. The branches guttered, shadows flinching as his presence passed.
He didn’t spare a glance at Denish. His gaze was locked, unwavering, on the Pri before him.
Number Nine.
The imperial sigil glead faintly beneath the gri, etched into the man’s chest plate like a badge of twisted pride. A Pri of the Seventeen. A decorated predator. His rank scread arrogance—his presence reeked of it. And now, Atlas could sll sothing else beneath it all: fear.
He didn’t need to ask what this bastard had done. Kury’s blood on the stones had told him everything.
There would be no rcy.
Crunch. Crunch.
The Pri staggered forward, boot heels scraping broken gravel, blood leaking from his cracked lips. His breathing was ragged, irregular, but he still wore that grin—feral, wide, shaking at the edges. He wiped his chin with the back of a gauntleted hand, saring dark red across his knuckles, then licked the blood absentmindedly like a beast savoring the taste of a hunt gone wrong.
"My death, huh?" he rasped, spitting out another wad of crimson. "Cool line."
His shoulders twitched with a dry, humorless laugh. "But cooler than that? That ’fucking punch’—’ohhh.’"
He chuckled again, throat rattling. The sound was jagged, almost crazed, echoing too long in the stone-choked air. Around him, lines of artificial blue veins lit up along his arms, flickering with volatile energy—mana injectors, unstable and buzzing. Zzzt-zzzt. Sparks jumped off his forearms like a storm winding up behind steel skin.
"It’s been a while since I felt sothing," he whispered, more to himself than anyone else.
Atlas stood still.
His crimson aura pulsed around him, growing thicker, denser, until the very air trembled—whooom—like the heartbeat of sothing divine and monstrous. His hair lifted slightly with the force building around him, red strands glowing like burning threads. His eyes, molten with fury, stayed fixed on the Pri. No blinking. No rcy. Just judgnt.
The Pri didn’t stop. He was spiraling now, pacing in tight, erratic circles, breathing faster, frothing with adrenaline and the thrill of his own stupidity.
"Black hair... golden eyes..." he muttered. "I see...I hit the fucking jackpot! Who knew a little mage-bait would drag out the god damned commander, the lioness of berkimhum kury Bitch herself, and now... the ’Bloody Prince.’"
He flung his arms out, grinning like a man ready to be struck by lightning.
"Sorry—Mad prince, right? Or do you prefer ’Heretic’ these days? Or do they just call you monster now?"
He barked out another deranged laugh, veins along his neck bulging with magic and madness.
"I was told you were equal to your sister in strength. Tell —" his eyes glead, fever-bright, "—does your sist—"
He never finished.
There was a snap in the air, the sound of sothing breaking.
Then—WHOOSH.
Atlas vanished. A sonic boom exploded outward, shattering the stillness like glass under a hamr. The walls trembled. Torches extinguished. The wind shrieked through the stone like a banshee in mourning.
The Pri barely had ti to flinch.
A blur of red light, a cot made of raw hate, slamd into him.
CRACK!
Atlas’s fist collided with the Pri’s face—no finesse, no hesitation, just divine, unstoppable force. The sound was deafening, a thunderclap inside the bones. The Pri’s head snapped sideways, mouth open in mid-sentence, eyes bulging in a frozen second of pure, distilled terror.
Blood burst from his mouth in a grotesque spray, teeth and gore flying like shrapnel.
His jaw ’caved in.’
His body lifted off the ground, boots scraping empty air, arms flailing like a ragdoll caught in a hurricane. The impact tossed him like a corpse through the air—backward, fast—before slamming into a crumbling stone pillar with a KRASH that split the column clean down the middle. Shards of rock exploded outward. Dust billowed, choking, thick.
Then silence.
Then—
Splat!
His body landed hard, bouncing once before sliding in a bloody sprawl across the ground. One leg bent the wrong way. Armor cracked. Blue veins flickered and died.
"..You talk too much," Atlas growled.
His voice wasn’t just sound—it was weight, a low, guttural snarl that vibrated through the clearing like thunder chained to fury. Pebbles scattered, grass flattened beneath the pulse of his aura, and the air itself seed to ’shrink’ around his rage.
Then he moved.
His fist ca down like a teor, a blistering ’WHOOSH’ that cut through the stillness with death’s precision. The Pri’s eyes widened—reflex and fear tangled into one twitch of survival. He raised his arms in a cross, blue mana crackling up his forearms in jagged arcs of light—’Zzzt! Pop! Zzzt!’—barely forming a defense in ti.
The impact landed with a cataclysmic BOOM!
It sounded like stone shattering in a canyon.
The Pri’s arms broke instantly—CRACK!—SNAP!—both forearms folding the wrong way, bones punching through skin like spears. Blood exploded in arcs across the clearing—splat-splat—painting the dirt in a rain of gore. His feet skidded backward through the dirt, carving trenches, legs barely holding.
"YOU—!" he choked, breath ragged, voice catching in his throat like a blade. Sweat poured down his brow, mixing with blood on his face—’drip, drip’—as he staggered to remain standing.
The ground beneath him groaned—’CRUNCH!—fracturing outward in spiderweb lines, the sheer force of Atlas’s blow splintering the earth itself. The trees quivered. Birds scattered in a panicked burst above the clearing.
Still, the Pri trembled on his broken legs, defiant to the edge of madness.
"This... isn’t enough!" he roared, spitting blood and teeth in the sa breath—splurch!
Mana surged around him in unstable convulsions, zzzt-POP-zzzzzzzt, his veins flashing a sickly neon blue. His body shook under the overload, skin bubbling where circuits ruptured beneath flesh.
Atlas’s lips twisted into sothing cold and cruel—a smirk, but one without mirth. There was no pleasure in it, only purpose.
"I know."
Then he vanished again—’blur.’
A full-body pivot—’WHOOSH!’—his red cloak whipping like fire in the wind as his heel sliced through the air, a clean, brutal arc. The kick landed on the Pri’s chest with a THUD! like a battering ram against stone.
The Pri’s ribs snapped—snap-snap-snap!—audibly crushed, the sound like dry twigs breaking underwater.
He flew.
A blur of blood and broken tal arced into the sky—whooooosh!—his body crashing through branches above, shattering limbs—crack-crack-crack!—before breaching into open air. He soared like a dying cot, red mist trailing from his mouth—splatter!—as his body twisted in a grotesque spin.
But Atlas was already gone from the ground.
Already above him.
The Mad Prince moved like wrath incarnate, a crimson blur reappearing mid-air with his legs tucked—then ’unleashing’ another kick to the Pri’s side.
CRASH!
The Pri’s body convulsed—ribs and spine shifting with a sickening CRUNCH—as the second kick torqued him mid-flight, flipping his body again. His vision whirled—sky, trees, blood, light—his mind cracking under the inertia. He tried to scream, but only gurgled, thick blood choking his throat—splurch! hack-hack!—as lungs struggled to breathe past broken ribs.
He plumted, but his descent was halted.
Atlas caught him by the throat mid-fall—SLAM!—his hand locking tight, fingers digging into skin and bone like steel clamps. The Pri’s legs dangled, twitching, useless, as he choked and writhed, the world narrowing into black at the edges of his vision.
His eyes bulged. Purple blood in his cheeks. Blood vessels burst across his sclera.
The air around them ’humd’ trembling with the weight of Atlas’s aura—whooom-whooom—a steady, furious pulse, like a war drum echoing through the trees.
Atlas stood still in the center of it all, holding the Pri like a slaughtered boar, his Truth Eyes glowing—one orange, one green, each burning with layered intent. His cloak flared behind him in the wind. Not a scratch on him. Not a breath wasted.
"Every bruise I saw on her," he growled.
His voice rumbled low, subterranean, rising from so depth far beneath anger—sothing older, more personal.
"You’re gonna feel it."
He tightened his grip—crack-crack—windpipe collapsing, blood spilling from the Pri’s nose and ears.
"And you’re gonna feel it hard, motherfucker."
The Pri made no sound now. Only the wet ’drip-drip-drip’ of blood onto the dirt. His limbs twitched. Mana flickered in dying spasms across his body—like a lightbulb about to burn out.
Atlas leaned in, his forehead nearly touching the Pri’s, eyes locked, calm as execution.
"Let show you what kind of monster I am."
Then he slamd the Pri down—BOOM!—cratering the ground beneath them.
And again.
And again.
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