I gawked. I absolutely gawked. There it was, right in front of : the headless, kneeling body of a King-Class mage—except it wasn’t a body at all.
Not flesh, not sinew, not even the faintest suggestion of breath fogging in the cold. Empty. Hollow. A mannequin with pretensions of grandeur, a scarecrow dressed in death.
My mind staggered under the weight of it, like a donkey forced to carry the world’s ugliest wardrobe.
I wanted to scream that this wasn’t fair, that my pen should have worked, that reality itself should be apologizing for such a cruel prank. But all that ca out was a strangled laugh, sothing between hysteria and awe.
Behind , the others stumbled forward in disbelief, tripping over one another to gaze upon the horrifying reality before us.
But the Man in White? Oh no. He did not stumble. He did not gape. He stood there with his hands neatly clasped behind his back, as if this revelation were nothing but a natural conclusion.
"Of course," he murmured, his tone so insufferably calm I wanted to strangle him with his own immaculate cloak. "The signs were there. The refusal to bleed. The silence of breath. The stiffness in his movents. He was not a man. He was a vessel."
I blinked. Vessel. The word rattled around in my skull, sharp and rciless. Saints above—the faint tallic clinks I had heard between his vanishings. They were not the sound of steel on stone, but sothing else entirely. A chanism. A control. A puppeteer.
My stomach dropped.
"He was being moved. Like a toy. Like a cursed marionette in a very elaborate puppet show."
And where there are strings, there must be a hand.
I whirled, scanning the rubble with manic intensity. Every collapsed pillar, every broken beam, every shadow that twitched in the firelight. He had to be close. He had to see us to control the body with such precision, to react to Salem’s every move. My gaze darted left, then right, and then—
There. A flash. A darting figure in black, slipping behind a collapsed pillar as though he had never been there. I saw the tail of his robe vanish into shadow, and sothing in snapped.
"There!" I shrieked, my voice breaking like glass underfoot. "Behind the pillar!"
Salem’s head jerked toward , his eyes blazing, and for once we didn’t exchange barbs or snide comntary. For once, we simply nodded. A pact without words. A vow to hunt.
"Take care of Rodrick for !" I shouted to Nara who nodded with a quiet look of determination.
And just like that, we surged forward together, boots hamring the broken cobblestones, lungs heaving, blades and pen gleaming in the firelight. I felt the stopwatch pulse in my pocket, eager, hungry, its manic face hot against my palm.
But when we reached the pillar, the figure was already gone—darting across the street with the speed of a startled crow.
Salem didn’t hesitate. He leapt high, his blades arcing down, cleaving the rubble the figure had just hidden behind. Stone split like parchnt, dust exploded outward, and the figure was forced into the open.
And then I saw him clearly for the first ti.
He was no zealot, no ragged conjurer. He wore robes of black embroidered with delicate decorations of purple and gold, the fabric shimring faintly even beneath the soot and fire.
A wide, absurdly large hat shaded most of his features, but when the flas caught his face, I saw the gleam of glass. A monocle. A saint-forsaken monocle, perched on his face as though he were about to conduct a musical performance rather than orchestrate our deaths.
But more damning than the monocle—more terrifying than his calm stride—was the staff. Oak wood, curved at the end like a shepherd’s crook, yet alive with dark purpose.
Around its head floated crystals of deep violet, shards that pulsed with power, orbiting lazily as though gravity itself had decided to take a holiday.
My throat went dry.
"Oh good," I rasped. "A fashionable maniac with accessories. Just what I needed."
The figure glanced back at us, eyes sharp beneath the brim of his hat, and then he ran.
What followed was less a chase and more an extended exercise in humiliation. Salem and I were fast—pushed forth by Incarnic enhancents, by steel and stopwatch, by fury and by desperation. But the monocled bastard had gravity itself in his pocket, and apparently he enjoyed using it as a toy.
He sprinted down the street, then with a flick of his staff, shifted the very pull of the earth. Suddenly he was not running forward at all but sideways, his body leaning into the wall as though the street had politely rotated ninety degrees just for him.
His boots struck stone, clinging unnaturally, and he sprinted along the vertical surface with a grace that made want to vomit.
"Unfair!" I screeched, my lungs already burning. "That’s cheating! Pick a direction and commit like the rest of us, you gravity-defying parasite!"
Salem didn’t waste his breath.
He simply gritted his teeth and pursued, blades flashing, his movents sharp as lightning. But the mage was clever. Every ti Salem leapt to intercept, the bastard flicked his staff, and suddenly the street’s pull was reversed. Salem’s leap beca a stumble, his strike beca a skid, and the mage laughed softly as he vaulted away.
I snarled and snapped at my stopwatch. Ti lurched, my stomach knotting as the world warped under my will.
Seconds slowed, thick and syrupy, the mage’s movents dragging like a puppet subrged in water. I sprinted forward, every muscle screaming, and for one glorious mont, I thought I had him.
I thrust my pen forward, ink flaring—
But then his staff struck the ground.
A sigil blood across the cobblestones like a snare, its lines writhing with violet light. The mont my boot crossed it, the world slamd down on . An impossible weight crushed my limbs, dragging toward the earth, as if the city itself had decided it was tired of my antics and ant to staple in place.
My pen sliced empty air, my ti bubble imploded, and I was left wheezing in outrage.
"Oh, splendid!" I gasped, staggering upright and bolting from the trap. "Of course you’d turn the ground into a bloody ankle trap. Saints preserve , it’s not enough you defy the laws of nature—you’ve got to make look like an idiot while doing it!"
The mage didn’t answer. He simply flicked his staff once more, turning gravity on its head. His body fell forward this ti, flying along the street itself, accelerating at impossible speed, his hat fluttering like a banner of mockery.
We raced after him, Salem leaping from wall to wall in furious pursuit, his body a streak of steel and fury. I kept fumbling with my stopwatch, snapping bubbles of ti to slow the mage’s steps, rewinding him back by desperate seconds, forcing him into half-collisions with rubble.
But each ti, he slipped free with a twist of his staff, the crystals blazing, the street itself bending to his whim.
The chase beca a nightmare carnival of shifting forces. One mont I was sprinting forward, the next I was tumbling sideways as gravity yanked backward down the street.
I swore, flailed, and clutched a broken beam until the pull snapped back to normal, sending sprawling across the cobblestones. Salem cursed in tandem, his boots sparking as he tried to adjust his leaps.
And still the mage laughed. Soft, mocking, effortless in nature.
We burst through alleys, leapt across collapsed houses, hurdled over burning wreckage.
"Salem!" I shouted between ragged breaths. "If you don’t decapitate him soon, I swear I’ll collapse here and now and haunt you personally for the rest of your life!"
He grinned, sweat dripping down his face. "Then keep running. I want you to see it when I do."
Saints help , he ant it.
At last, the chase funneled us back toward the plaza. The ruined archways lood ahead, dust curling in the moonlight, and the glow of fire illuminated the square.
The mage slipped inside first, gravity flipping him effortlessly through the shattered gates. Salem and I tumbled in monts later, crashing against stone, rolling to our feet with curses and gasps.
And what awaited us was no triumph.
The plaza still lived. Huddled survivors—competitors, zealots, broken n clinging to the promise of survival—crowded the corners, their faces pale in the firelight. So wept openly. Others stared blankly at the ruin around them. The barrier was gone, but their relief had not yet dissolved.
Above, the air balloons that once carried nobles swayed drunkenly. So had crashed outright, their silken canopies afla, corpses of wealthy patrons dangling from the wreckage. The stench of burning silk and roasted at curled across the plaza, acrid and suffocating.
I scanned the square, my pen hreld ready, my lungs ragged. The priest was nowhere in sight. And sohow, against all reason, that absence brought comfort.
One less monster in the square.
But one very present monocled bastard remained, his staff blazing, his laughter ringing in my ears.
It was ti to end this.
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