Chapter 84: Too Soon
The guardhouse went dead silent.
Nuri and the others exchanged sharp, uneasy glances as another violent surge of magic swept through the stone walls, making the iron floor-latch vibrate.
Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.
A power shift this sudden wasn't normal, even with the Eye hanging above the capital. It felt like the air itself had turned thick and acidic, stinging their lungs with every breath.
Nuri rushed to the narrow high window, his boots scraping on the stone. Alina and Turman shoved past the overturned desk to crowd right behind him.
And there it was.
The Eye.
It looked far more terrifying than it had twenty minutes ago. The central black pupil seemed to widen, burning through the dark sky like a scab being ripped open, pressing a suffocating, physical weight down upon every rooftop in the city.
Alina swallowed hard, her hand trembling against her spear shaft. "...Is it just me, or is that thing swelling?"
Nobody answered.
They had all felt it. The atmosphere was twisting, warping into something far worse than a simple hex.
"Look at that," Lucien murmured, leaning his shoulder against the tall arched window frame of the upper estate.
He stared out at the dark pupil hovering above the sun, his umbrella dangling casually from his right hand.
"A little touch of divine magic, and an entire capital city crumbles into panic in half a day." He flicked his eyes down toward Mo. "Doesn't that remind you of anyone?"
Mo slowly turned his head to look at him.
His void-black eyes were cold, flat, and filled with a murderous intensity. If looks had physical weight, Lucien would have been reduced to a pile of smoldering ash on the floorboards.
Unfortunately, Lucien just offered a dry, infuriating smirk and turned back to the glass.
Mo looked back toward the window, suppressing the urge to kick Lucien's shin. As obnoxious as the Heretic was, Mo couldn't deny the terrible fascination of what was unfolding in the sky.
THUMP.
A sudden, sharp spike of raw power tore through the atmosphere, hitting Mo's chest like a physical hammer.
Mo's breath hitched, his small eight-year-old body locking up instantly. "...What?"
He felt it.
It wasn't just a heavy concentration of mana. It was something far more distinct, a jagged, violent tearing at the actual fabric of spatial reality, disturbing the realm from the inside out.
Mo knew that exact sensation better than anyone.
But beneath that spatial disruption, he caught something else. Something that sent a cold, sickening shiver straight down his spine.
It was a presence that felt uncomfortably, terrifyingly close to his own soul.
A familiar echo. No... not just an echo.
It felt like sensing a missing piece of himself.
Mo stood frozen on the velvet rug. He had known that sensation for centuries. After all, he was merely a fragment himself, a severed portion of a far greater existence, stripped of his whole form and left to wander in a incomplete state.
He had adapted to living as a piece. He had gotten used to the hollow sensation in his core. But he had never forgotten that fundamental, aching incompleteness.
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And now... he could feel that exact same incompleteness pulsing from somewhere out in the city.
Another fragment.
Mo's face went dark, his small jaw clenching tight.
The power spilling off the Eye wasn't just similar to his own abilities. It carried the exact same underlying signature, the same unmistakable weight of an entity that belonged to something vastly larger than the piece left behind.
Yet someone was forcing that fragment to work.
Whoever was holding it was dragging its authority out by force, expanding its influence far beyond what an incomplete piece should ever be capable of outputting. The sky was buckling under the strain. The boundaries of the realm were stretching thin, like damp parchment being pulled from both ends.
How is this possible? Mo thought, his pulse hammering wildly against his ribs.
Even he couldn't bypass the physical limitations of being a fragment. Incompleteness meant restriction. There were arts he could no longer invoke, authorities he could no longer command without destroying his vessel.
Yet whatever was driving the Eye outside was tearing through those boundaries without a second thought.
Unless...
Mo stopped his own thoughts right there. He didn't have enough pieces of the puzzle yet.
But one truth was crystal clear: the Eye wasn't just a cult's spell array. Something far more personal was tied to it, and its connection to his own nature was too direct to ignore.
Mo slowly turned toward Lucien. "Can I go inside?"
Lucien stared down at the small boy for a long, silent moment.
Then, he let out a quiet, breathless laugh. "Honestly... I really should have left you as a severed Hand back in that pit."
Mo gave him another thoroughly unimpressed, deadpan glare.
I swear to God, one day I'm going to rip your—
He cut himself off. Arguing with Lucien was a waste of breath, and more importantly, Lucien hadn't actually forbidden him from moving.
Mo took that as permission.
He turned toward the empty air in the center of the hall and raised his small, pale right hand.
CRACK.
The spatial fabric fractured.
Thin, jagged lines of void-black light spread through the air like a sheet of ice shattering under a heavy boot.
Then the space completely caved in.
Beyond the rift lay a vast, empty expanse. A world of pure, blinding white. No sky, no stone floor, no horizon, just an endless, hollow void that stretched into infinity.
Mo stared into the gap.
He remembered this place. It was the sub-dimensional rift where he had first encountered Lucien years ago, back when he was nothing more than an ancient, severed Hand crawling through the dark.
And now, somewhere deep inside that empty domain, someone was wielding a fragment of his own authority.
He had known the Liberators were hunting him. He just hadn't expected them to harvest a piece of his original self and turn it into a weapon.
Mo stepped forward, his small boots crossing the shattered threshold.
The moment his feet touched the white expanse, the spatial cracks behind him snapped shut, sealing the grand hall away.
The white world swallowed him whole.
For three seconds, everything was dead quiet.
THUMP.
Mo froze in place.
A sickening, violent tug pulled straight at the center of his chest, as if an invisible claw had reached inside his ribs and yanked on his core.
His fingers twitched uncontrollably.
"...Ah."
Mo looked down at his small hands. For a terrifying millisecond, the physical outline of his fingers blurred, turning semi-transparent, his spirit form briefly forgetting how to hold the flesh together.
Then the physical body snapped back into shape.
Mo's brow pulled tight into a dark scowl. So that's how you're driving it.
The power echoing through the void wasn't just matching his signature, it was actively vibrating at the exact same frequency that defined his existence.
Every pulse from the Eye sent a shockwave through his soul. With every beat, the line separating his own consciousness from the distant fragment thinned out.
It wasn't strong enough to tear his mind apart. Not yet. But it was destabilizing his grip on this child vessel.
Mo squeezed his fists tight, locking his jaw to force his mana back into his core. The violent resonance receded slightly.
He reached out his spiritual awareness, trying to pinpoint the origin of the pulse
BAM!
Another wave hit him full-force.
Mo's vision split. For a horrific second, the endless white space fractured into three overlapping, translucent layers, each tilting at a different angle. His balance vanished, his weak knees buckling under him.
Mo instantly snapped his awareness back inside his own chest, severing the link.
The overlapping layers collapsed back into a single white plane.
Mo stood trembling in the quiet, his face pale and sweating.
It was trying to drag him back in to make itself complete again.
Mo went completely quiet, his stomach dropping. He hated that thought with every fiber of his soul.
THUMP.
A third pulse rippled through the void.
Mo staggered half a step, his boots slipping on the non-existent ground as he instinctively thrust his hand out to catch himself against a wall.
His hand found nothing but empty air.
Of course there was nothing there. He was standing in a featureless void. Yet for a fraction of a second, the entire dimension had felt like it tipped forty-five degrees under his feet.
Mo forced his legs straight, pushing himself upright with a heavy, exhausted breath.
"...What a absolute mess."
He stared out into the vast, blinding white expanse ahead. He still couldn't see the physical core of the resonance, but he could feel its heavy, inescapable gravity pulling at his soul.
Nothing in this world was ever simple.
Mo let out a quiet sigh, took a deep breath through his small nose, and set his boots forward into the void.