BaiShe turned abruptly. The man standing behind him was a mountain of muscle and fury. His hair, black and thick like a wolf’s mane, fell untidily over his shoulders, adding to his wild and untad appearance. His eyes, a piercing and bright green, seed to pierce the soul of anyone who dared look at him, delving deep into their thoughts and fears.
His build was imposing, muscular and massive, towering nearly three ters tall. His features were angular, and his jaw pronounced. His hands, abnormally large, ended in sharp claws, tinged with blood red.
He advanced, weighing each step, and shoved BaiShe without rcy, sending him flying into the sky like a feather caught by the wind. The force of the impact left him montarily disoriented.
"You kill a son of Yggdrasil and think there will be no repercussions?" The voice rumbled, saturated with anger and indignation. BaiShe felt the raw power emanating from this being, a power that far surpassed his own.
On his forehead, a rune in the shape of an inverted cross was engraved. BaiShe recognized it instantly; it was the sa one inscribed on his chest.
’What does this an?’
Shaking his head to clear the confusion, BaiShe retorted, his voice trembling: "Who are you? How can you enter my inner world?" He didn’t understand how this man had breached the barriers of his mind, a sanctuary that was supposed to be inviolable without his consent.
The imposing man looked at him with icy disdain. "If you want to kill them, divert them from their destiny." His words were enigmatic.
His broad, powerful back bore the Thurisaz rune (ᚦ). Around his neck and wrists were broken chains.
"It’s the second ti she’s saved you. There won’t be a third," the man stated, his voice laden with a sinister warning. BaiShe wondered who he was referring to. He had been saved? By whom?
"Who the hell are you!" BaiShe felt anger rising within him. He didn’t like being manipulated, let alone threatened.
The man looked at him one last ti before sniffing, as if slling sothing foul.
"You only have your pretty face. Next ti we et, I’ll remake you... The Favorite of our Mother, huh? You’d better survive, so I can kill you." His tone was sarcastic, filled with contempt.
’He seed to know . But "Favorite of Mother"? That title made him uneasy. He didn’t understand it. Maybe he was one of Sijin’s enemies...’
He said this before looking at the sky of his inner world, inhaling deeply as if drawing in all the surrounding energy. BaiShe felt a terrible pressure descend upon him, as if the air itself was solidifying.
Then, before his horrified eyes, the man began to transform. His flesh twisted and reshaped, his bones cracked and broke to rebuild into a monstrous form. Soon, in place of the man stood a three-headed, seven-eyed monster, an abomination that seed to defy the laws of nature.
BaiShe began to vomit, overwheld by the raw power emanating from the creature. It was too much, far too much for his mind and body. He could barely withstand the presence of this being in his own inner world.
Each of its heads was an incarnation of its destructive nature, with exaggerated lupine features to inspire terror. Its maws were wide open, revealing rows of sharp fangs, glistening with drool and ready to tear. Its seven eyes, unevenly distributed among its three heads, glowed with a sinister light, each a hypnotic and piercing green, like flashes in the darkness.
"No, it can’t be. He said ’our’..."
Its fur was black as night, bristling and thick, with silver highlights that shimred under the pale light of his inner world. Every movent of its massive, muscular body made the ground tremble beneath BaiShe’s feet, and its paws, ard with red, bloody claws, left deep marks in the earth, a testant to the destructive power it embodied.
"Wait!"
BaiShe tried to activate Omnis, his ultimate power, his absolute defense. He needed to protect himself, to repel this threat that was overwhelming him. But his vision blurred, his head spun, and his limbs refused to respond. The monster’s power was so great that it short-circuited his abilities.
"My brother?"
The last thing he saw was the three-headed wolf leaping into the sky with a deafening roar, a war cry that promised destruction and chaos.
*Raaaaaaarrrhh*
The sound resonated through his entire being, paralyzing him with fear. Then, everything went black. BaiShe fell into unconsciousness.
Another person who wanted to kill him had been added to the list.
***
BaiShe was brutally torn from the inner world and hurled back into reality. His body slumped weakly against sothing warm and shifting. It took him a few seconds to realize it was Zhulan holding him, her slender yet sturdy fra moving with agility through the surrounding chaos.
All around them, the labyrinth was disintegrating, its walls cracking like a shattered mirror, collapsing in on themselves with a deafening crash. Zhulan deftly dodged the falling debris, using her intangibility to avoid the worst. But BaiShe was a walking disaster.
His body was a wasteland. Blood oozed from every pore of his skin, sticky and infused with the foul aura that belonged only to the Devourer. His clothes were in tatters, his broken bones scread with every jolt, and his breathing was barely audible, a labored, whistling sound. The veins in his body pulsed with a strange, chaotic golden glow, especially around his bandaged arm, where the Yin Qi churned violently.
He tasted tal flooding his mouth, then a fit of coughing shook his body, spewing a gush of blood onto the already stained ground.
"What’s happening?"
Zhulan stopped for a mont, holding him a little tighter. She didn’t know what to do, her gaze shifting between worry and confusion.
"BaiShe! Can you hear ?"
He groaned weakly, unable to formulate a coherent response.
"Is it my poison?"
She frowned, searching for an explanation. During the fight, one of her hair blades had grazed him, and her weapons were always poisoned. Yet, the foreign Qi she sensed bore no resemblance to hers. The Devourer’s aura wasn’t like this either...
Her heart skipped a beat.
’It couldn’t be him... could it?’
She imdiately dismissed the thought. Impossible. She wasn’t one to believe in coincidences, but the idea was utterly unthinkable.
She regained her composure and quickly pulled a dicinal pill from a hidden compartnt in her sleeve. It wasn’t enough to heal him, but at least it would mitigate the effects of the destructive Qi.
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