The first thing that rang in Celia’s mind was simple.
Defeat him.
The words pulsed through her skull like a command seared into her very existence.
And then.. In that moment of confusion...
Agony descended..
It crashed down, all-consuming, formless, boundless. A weight that was not a weight, a burn that was not a burn. A pain beyond mere suffering, something more primal, more absolute.
Her exoskeleton bio-armor pulsed against her skin, iron-touched blue warping under the unseen pressure. The world twisted, reality thinning.
She heard nothing. Not the wind, not her heartbeat.. only the silent, screaming void.
A ripping that wasn’t a ripping.
A severing of something deeper than flesh.
It stole breath, voice, thought.
Jess convulsed beside her, her iron-touched red armor dimming, hands clawing at her own throat, ember-lit eyes widening. Uvan had dropped to one knee, his black armor grinding against stone, veins bulging as if something inside him was trying to burst free. Lovia trembled, green gaze dull, lips parted in an unheard gasp.
The Wanderers around them collapsed in silent anguish.
The world blurred.
Then suddenly... It stopped.
The weight lifted, but the absence of it felt like a wound.
Celia’s breath came in jagged gulps. Her body remembered the agony, even if it was gone. Her knees threatened to give, but she forced herself upright, teeth clenched.
Her head snapped to Jess.
"Something happened to Agon. We have to help him." Her voice was hoarse, raw.
Jess exhaled sharply, nodding, trying to steady herself.
And then...
She saw it. The Future
A ripple in the air. Like the tremor before an earthquake.
Another wave was coming.
Celia moved.
She didn’t think... she acted, body blurring through the air, exoskeleton humming as she closed the distance. In a blink, she was there, above him.
The figure levitated, arms wide, head tilted in amusement. White-gray hair billowed against the unseen force surrounding him, skin darker than void itself. His eyes.. deeper than yellow, deeper than light.. pinned her in place.
She grabbed his shoulders. Felt the wrongness beneath her fingers. The texture of the exoskeleton... white ash, metallic yet organic. It was breathing.
"Agon, snap out of it!"
The Wanderer Who Laughs turned to her, lips stretching into something almost human, but not quite.
"Do I know you, beautiful lady?"
His voice dripped with amusement, with something ancient and wrong.
Celia’s gaze saw it.
Her instincts screamed.
She twisted away instantly...
SHRRRRK!
A massive slash of mist carved through the air where she had been, cold, formless, deathly.
She landed lightly, ice-blue eyes narrowed.
He chuckled.
"That’s one nice ability you have there. You saw it slowly.... Mind if I borrow it?"
He moved.
Celia saw him... her world slowed, she saw him clearly..
He was already in front of her.
A hand reaching..
She dodged, twisting, the exoskeleton shifting with her movements. A surge of frost coiled around her hands, condensing into a massive boulder of icy blue frost.
She launched it.
It hurtled down, spiraling with raw, freezing power.
It hit.
For a fraction of a second, there was silence....
Then...
The frost shattered.
The Wanderer Who Laughs remained, hovering.
His smile widened.
BOOM!
A burst of flames, hot, seething, untamed.. erupted from below.
Jess.
The attack struck inches from him, a pure detonation of raw destruction.
For the first time, The Wanderer Who Laughs lifted his hands, casually clapping.
The flames flickered, fought.. then vanished.
His smile never wavered.
"Ash of negation in the flames. Interesting."
Another slash of fire tore towards him. He sidestepped, fluid, untouched.
And then... He froze.
Not because of the flames. Not because of Celia.
Something else.
Something inside him.
He was trying to raise his arm, trying to calmly summon multiple mist slashes. But his body... Agon’s body resisted.
For a moment, his expression shifted.
For a moment, there was conflict.
Then.. "Now it’s your turn. Huh."
His voice was barely above a whisper as he spoke to himself, the amusement in his tone ran deep.
"Go on, try to stop me."
And before he could react...
BAM!
Celia was there.
A kick, frost-imbued, colliding with his face.
He didn’t even flinch.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t react.
He simply smiled.
"Nice."
"But I think my playtime is over."
In that moment, she saw it.
Another wave.
Another storm of agony.
A tide of absolute grief.
And there was nothing she could do to stop it....
Her voice cut through the thinning air.
"It’s about to come!"
Jess. Uvan. Lovia.
They braced. they braced what is about to descend.
And it was then...
DUUUUUUM!
It came.
It crashed.
An unrelenting, unquenchable tide of despair.
A force beyond words, beyond thought.
And they could do nothing..
But Grieve...
...
DUUUUUUM!
It came.
A silent scream stretched across existence, a force unseen but all-consuming. The very air warped beneath its weight. The heavens above, vast and merciless, bore witness as an unrelenting tide of agony and absolute grief crashed down upon the battlefield.
A crushing pressure... like an unseen god pressing a hand to their souls.
The loose camp fell.
Wanderers who had not joined the battle slumped where they stood, bodies trembling, exoskeletons dimming. Some dropped to their knees, unable to resist. Others simply collapsed, breath stolen, limbs unresponsive.
Uvan bit his lip.
Hard.
The taste of blood spread across his tongue, metallic and real. A tether to reality. But even that wasn’t enough to fight the thing drowning him.
His mind twisted under the weight.
He was not a good leader.
He was not fit to lead them.
Not Celia. Not Jess. Not Lovia. Not Agon. Not anyone.
He was weak. Pathetic. A failure of a captain.
His fists trembled. His fingers dug into his palms so hard that pain sparked through his knuckles.. but it was distant, swallowed by the suffocating grief pressing into his lungs. His breath came in sharp, uneven gasps, ribs aching with each inhale.
But he refused to fall.
Not yet.
Not...
BAM!
His knees buckled. The ground met him. A sharp jolt rattled through his bones as he slammed his fist into the cold, unfeeling earth beneath.
He couldn’t help but blurt out...
"Damn it!"