Wake Up, Sera
High above on the narrow walkway, Kael's finger tightened against the cold trigger.
The ambient light caught his eyes, silver fading into a absolute, dead calm.
"He's threatening your little pet," Vespera purred, crimson eyes flashing in the gloom.
"Shall I step through the shadows, slip inside his armor, and pull his spine out through his throat?"
"No," Kael whispered.
His gaze shifted down to the digital HUD flickering inside his scope.
Eight hundred meters away, Vance's thumb hovered a hair's breadth above the glowing red 'EXECUTE' switch.
Around Seraphina's neck, the heavy Class-X Subjugation Collar let out a high-pitched, lethal hum.
Blinding white light surged through the metal casing.
It was arming.
One downward twitch of that thumb, and a massive electrical surge would detonate the charge, frying her brain instantly.
Kael didn't have seconds. He had a split instant.
A headshot was out of the question.
The mech-suit's built-in neurological dead-man's switch was wired to his brainwaves, the moment his heart stopped, the signal would trip automatically.
Shooting his hand was equally impossible. The shockwave from a heavy singularity round would crush the button anyway.
There was only a single, impossible path forward.
"System," Kael muttered under his breath. "Maximum magnification on the collar."
The neural-scope instantly narrowed, bending light and distance to force the target into sharp focus.
Eight hundred meters melted away in an instant.
Through the crosshairs, every single scratch etched into the burning alloy around her neck stood out with terrifying clarity.
He could see the beads of cold sweat rolling down the faded scars on her skin.
And there, buried deep between the interlocking outer plates, rested a single thread of copper.
A millimeter-thick blue wire, carrying the execution pulse directly to the internal charge.
Sever that thread, and the entire circuit dies.
Miss by half a millimeter to the left, and the heavy round tears through her jugular.
Miss by half a millimeter to the right, and he hits the casing, triggering the bomb himself.
[User 'Weapons_Nut_44': Wait... NO. NO WAY. Is he aiming at the collar?! The signal line inside a Class-X is literally ONE MILLIMETER wide! YOU CANNOT HIT THAT WIRE!]
[User 'Star_Dust_69': HE'S GONNA BLOW HER HEAD OFF! BRO STOP HIM SOMEONE STOP HIM ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜]
[User 'Zark': I can't watch. I literally just closed my eyes. Tell me when it's over.]
[User 'Feral_For_Cross': NAH BRO HE IS A MADMAN! A PURE UNFILTERED PSYCHOPATH!]
[User 'Gore_Whore_9': The lethal focus in his eyes right now... my pulse is over 160 and I'm literally trembling. Shoot it, Kael. Make it messy. If he threads the needle on that collar, I am officially offering him full ownership of my soul. Take me, Kael! 🤤💦]
[User 'X_Void_Walker_X': 800 meters. Subterranean crosswinds. Heavy atmospheric drag. He's throwing. HE IS LITERALLY THROWING.]
[User 'Void_Cynic_01': Impossible shot. Pure math says it's 0.000001% success rate. He's going to turn her into red mist.]
[User 'GamerGrip_X': IF HE PULLS THIS OFF I AM TATTOOING HIS FACE ON MY CHEST LFG!!!!!!]
[User 'Succubus_Envy_99': God, the cold sweat dripping down his jaw... he looks so ridiculously hot when he's about to commit murder 🥵🩸]
[User 'Point_Gamble_God': IF THIS MISSES I AM GOING TO THE MINES FOREVER 📉📉📉]
[User 'Blood_Bath_Bill': RIP THAT LADY'S NECK CLEAN OFF! NO HESITATION! POP IT! 💥💣]
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[User 'Mod_Viper_Admin': SLOW DOWN CHAT! MODS CAN'T KEEP UP WITH THE SPAM!]
[User 'DragonBoredom': Silence, you panicking swine. Watch closely. You are about to witness a masterpiece.]
[User 'Mod_Viper_Admin2': SUB CHAT ONLY IN 3... 2... 1...]
Kaelen Cross didn't blink.
Subterranean wind roared through the cavern, howling with thick dust and grinding debris.
Vance's hand trembled violently, flooded with raw adrenaline.
In his crushing grip, Seraphina's body swayed like a dying flame.
It was an impossible calculation. A line of sight that mocked physics, logic, and human limits.
Kael exhaled, draining every last drop of air from his lungs.
His pulse slowed to a complete halt.
The surrounding world collapsed into absolute, dead silence.
His finger compressed the trigger.
SHHHHLLLLUCK!
The singularity slug tore through the air, screaming out of the barrel.
No dimensional distortion. No spatial refraction.
It moved along a flawless, absolute trajectory of pure kinetic destruction.
Vance screamed, slamming his thumb down onto the glowing red EXECUTE button.
"DIE!"
The execution command burst from the wristpad, racing down the circuit toward the collar at the speed of light.
Yet Kael's bullet arrived a microsecond faster.
SNAP!
The depleted star-metal slug grazed the side of Seraphina's neck, leaving a paper-thin thread of blood.
Slipping clean through the razor-thin gap in the outer casing, it found its mark.
It flawlessly sheared the microscopic blue wire in half, carrying the severed copper away before detonating violently against the concrete wall a mile down the dark tunnel.
The high-voltage execution signal hit the break.
It had nowhere to go.
FZZZT.
The blinding white light of the Subjugation Collar violently flickered, sparked heavily, and died.
The heavy locking mechanisms disengaged.
Clank.
The blinding white light on the Subjugation Collar flickered violently, spat a cluster of dying sparks, and went pitch black.
Internal locking pins disengaged with a dull, heavy clank.
The massive, oppressive iron ring swung open, falling uselessly onto the rusted train tracks below.
Vance froze.
He stared down at his wristpad, frantically slamming his thumb against the red button in a frenzy of total panic.
"Why isn't it working?! WHY ISN'T IT WORKING?!" Vance shrieked, his voice cracking with hysteria.
Seraphina collapsed to her knees, the sudden release of ten years of heavy mana suppression sending violent tremors through her entire body.
Vance snapped, raising his plasma cannon to vaporize her point-blank.
Before his finger could hit the trigger, the shadows beneath a ruined subway car twisted.
Kaelen Cross stepped out of the dark.
Dropping from the high walkway, he moved faster than human vision could track, completely cloaked by Vespera's passive shadow veil.
He was standing less than ten feet away.
Vance gasped, wildly whipping his heavy plasma cannon toward the intrusion.
Kael didn't bother raising a long rifle.
He casually lifted his right arm, holding the eighty-pound heavy crossbow, 'Vengeance', by its pistol grip with a single hand.
His index finger pressed back.
THWOOM!
At point-blank range, the dense bone-bolt slammed into Vance's chest plate like a runaway train.
It sheared straight through the star-metal armor, shattered his sternum into splinters, and pinned the eight-foot-tall Titan Mech backward against a concrete pillar.
Vance let out a wet, bubbling gasp, dark crimson spilling past his cracked visor.
Kael calmly racked the heavy tension lever on the stock.
Click-clack.
He turned, walking over to where Miller lay weeping, bleeding out in the mud with only one arm remaining.
Kael leveled the crossbow down at the rookie's cracked helmet.
"Tell Marcus I said hello," Kael whispered.
THWACK!
The kinetic force blew Miller's head completely off, embedding the shattered helmet directly into the concrete below.
The cavern collapsed into an absolute, suffocating silence.
The Vanguard Black-Ops squad was completely annihilated.
[SYSTEM ALERT: ANOMALY-CLASS EVENT COMPLETED!]
[Current Viewers: 154,200]
[User 'DragonBoredom' has donated 200,000 Cosmic Credits!]
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[ Total Balance: 216,500 Cosmic Credits ]
[User 'DragonBoredom': A MORTAL WHO COMMANDS IMPOSSIBLE PRECISION. NAME YOUR PRICE, KAELEN CROSS. I WILL BUY YOUR REALM.]
[User 'Weapons_Nut_44': THE WIRE! HE ACTUALLY SEVERED A ONE-MILLIMETER SIGNAL LINE FROM 800 METERS THROUGH SUBTERRANEAN ATMOSPHERIC DRAG! I AM QUITTING ENGINEERING! MY DIPLOMA IS A LIE! EVERYTHING I TAUGHT IS A LIE! I AM BURNING MY TEXTBOOKS! MY ENTIRE CAREER IS A JOKE!]
[User 'Zark': GOD TIER! ABSOLUTE, UNFILTERED GOD TIER! I JUST SCREAMED SO HARD MY NEIGHBORS CALLED THE ENFORCERS!]
[User 'Gore_Whore_9': THAT DUAL-KILL AT THE END! THE BONE-BOLT THROUGH THE CHEST AND THE HEAD SPLATTER! I AM HYPERVENTILATING! KAEL TAKE ME 🤤💦]
[User 'Star_Dust_69': LMAOOOO MILLER GOT HIS CRANIUM ERASED! NO TALK, JUST INSTANT EXECUTIONS!]
[User 'Point_Gamble_God': I'M RICH! I'M RICHHHHH! I PUT EVERYTHING ON KAEL AND WE ARE GOING TO THE MOON BOYS 📈📈📈]
[User 'Void_Cynic_01': ...I take it back. That wasn't luck. That was demon logic.]
[User 'X_Void_Walker_X': The Vanguard squad got erased like dirt on a windshield. He didn't even sweat.]
Kael didn't look at the chat. He didn't care about the credits pouring down his vision like golden rain.
He slowly lowered the crossbow, letting it hang by the leather strap against his hip.
He walked forward, his heavy boots splashing lightly in the puddles of blood.
He stopped directly in front of the kneeling woman.
Seraphina clutched her bare throat, where the suffocating iron ring had burned her skin for a decade.
Her golden hair was a dirty, tangled mess. She was shivering uncontrollably, the massive rush of suppressed memories and divine mana flooding back into her shattered mind.
Ten years of torture. Ten years of acting as a hollowed-out slave for the man she hated most in the world.
Hot tears welled in her golden eyes, carving clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks.
She slowly looked up.
She saw the spattered blood. She saw the fresh scars. She saw the abyss-like darkness radiating from his body.
Yet beneath the terrifying aura, she recognized the gaze of the man who had once stood beside her on the frontline.
"K-Kael?" Seraphina whispered, her voice a broken, raspy croak that hadn't formed a real word in a decade.
Kaelen Cross stared down at the Fallen Valkyrie.
The cold, ruthless predator vanished for just a single fraction of a second.
He reached out his scarred, calloused hand, offering it to her.
"Wake up, Sera," Kael said softly.
"We have a Guild to burn."