Chapter 10: In reverse
The air shimmered with heat and bled whispers on one end of the ring, but strange things were occurring on the other.
Kael and Sol were burning a hole in the world—one with light, the other with something worse. But the flames didn't reach here. Not yet.
Veyna stayed low, breath steady, eyes on the boy in front of her.
Soahc stood just out of reach, fingers twitching at his sides like broken metronomes. His lips were cracked, bleeding a little from the cold he'd brought with him. Around him, the air pulsed with something wrong. Reversed. Even the dirt beneath his feet seemed to flake upward.
She raised the Voltarm.
Six chambers loaded. Five standard shells, one trick. All of them enchanted— accounting for the temperature increase from Kael's crown
The enchantment sigils flickered along the barrel as she twisted the dial.
Speed, direction and heat. She was then fired.
CRACK.
3 starting bullets sprayed in directions, a few missing what it seemed at first, but 1 aiming head-on for Soahc
The bullet hissed through the air, glowing red-hot. For a moment it looked perfect, direct, a clean line toward his head.
Then it froze.
Hung midair like a fly in amber. The bullet drifted backward, spinning slowly—until it shattered.
Soach giggled. "Do it again. I like fireworks."
Veyna fired two more.
Same result. Freeze, reverse, shatter.
"I love these little tricks," he said, walking forward now. "But I would like to see better than that, Veyna."
She darted to the side, keeping distance and reloading. Watching his moves and reactions, Veyna already wasn't used to missing, but when your target negates your entire aevum its even worse. His snarky remarks were getting to her.
Soahc followed, slow at first—like a puppet testing its strings. His eyes glinted with something feral beneath the lazy posture.
He stepped in—and swung.
The punch looked lazy. Barely threatening. Like a drunk reaching for a fly.
It cracked past her guard, slamming into her ribs like a truck, like the vectors of his punch were all wrong.
Pain bloomed in her side as she was flung backward.
She rolled, then pulled up to her knee and fired again mid-motion.
The bullet should've gone right for his shoulder.
Instead, it curved. Backward.
Soahc aevum had seemed such a great match-up against this Veyna started cursing in her mind why Kael chose her to go against him. His Crownlight was wrong—grey, flickering in time with his laughter.
He was on her again.
He threw a flurry of punches. Some were jerky, slow-looking, and telegraphed. Others whipped forward with frightening speed—but landed like slaps.
It took her too long to realise he was mixing his tempo.
Fast punches that came late. Slow punches that hit early. Nothing made sense.
Her body was trained to read motion—but his wasn't motion. It was mockery.
She ducked one strike, slid back, and adjusted her Voltarm again.
An enchantment prepared as her crown light flickered again. One she'd loaded before the match even started.
Soahc tilted his head, grin widening. "Running out of toys?"
"No," she muttered. "Just finishing the game."
He lunged again—too fast, too wild—with an overhead swing that looked like it could crack the earth.
She didn't dodge.
She aimed straight at his chest and fired point-blank.
The bullet missed. Again.
But Soach blinked.
Then winced.
Because he didn't realise what she'd just done.
Thirty metres away, behind him, something snapped.
A floating sigil that had been dormant all fight—etched in the first bullet she'd "missed" on purpose—ignited.
The air shimmered in a perfect straight line.
The enchantment triggered.
A spatial redirect. A guaranteed path. The final bullet bent across the air for a split second, curving through the anchor from behind and piercing Soahc dead centre in the back.
The Voltarm hissed. Soahc gasped.
His body convulsed as the enchantment discharged: speed stay true. Flame rage on, and bite the mark.
Veyna had prepared enchantments, setting them up as soon as the battle started. Her calculating nature had made sure that the bullets that did hit Soahc did have an impact. Fast, hot and slowing down his movements were achieved in 1 shot.
And they did.
He stumbled forward, coughing, his whole torso steaming.
"...Oh," he said, turning halfway. "That was mean."
Veyna stood tall now, her purple hair damp with sweat, catching her breath as she stared her opponent down.
"So you aren't all-powerful; it seems you can't reverse things you can't react to."
Soahc stumbled again.
Steam hissed from his back , the bullet's enchantment still simmering beneath his skin. The sigils stitched across his arm flickered—some dissolving entirely.
For a second, just a second, Veyna thought she'd done it.
Thought he'd fall, but then he looked up, and his grin was gone.
Not replaced with a scowl or a scream. Just… nothing. His expression emptied like a mask falling off.
He straightened slowly. His spine popped. His shoulders slumped like a corpse getting yanked up by wires.
And then—
He laughed not high and sharp like before. But low. Hollow. A sound that vibrated in your teeth.
"I knew it," he said softly. "You think in straight lines."
He tilted his head. A reverse crown flared behind him—black and chalk-white, drawn in jagged symmetry. Where most crowns bloomed upward, this one fell. Its tips dripped down instead.
"You mark one path," he said. "But what if paths don't matter?"
Soahc moved.
Fast. Inhuman.
The stutter-step motion from earlier was gone. Now, he lunged without signal, without build-up, and without mercy.
She barely rolled in time, Voltarm scraping the floor as she redirected a shot toward his neck.
He caught the bullet in mid-air this time.
The arc seemed to melt in his palm, and he just stared at it, eyes wide, fascinated. "Hot," he whispered. "But not hot enough, Veyna. "
He dashed again—body loose, steps broken. Every time she blinked, he was somewhere else. A flicker. A glitch.
Veyna activated her close-range enchantment. A repulsion burst flared from her gauntlet, knocking him back just enough to reload. Her Voltarm clicked into its final stage—manual override.
"Come on then," she hissed. "Let's see what you do with no space."
They clashed again.
Up close now—Veyna's Voltarm swinging with brutal precision, aiming for bones, ligaments, and soft targets. Soahc wove through the strikes with nightmarish angles, sometimes bending his spine backward to duck under shots. Other times he simply reversed the motion of her arm mid-swing, jerking the kinetic flow backward so her punch flung her own shoulder out of socket.
Her breath came ragged. Her eyes darted, trying to track patterns, but none remained.
Because Soahc no longer fought like a human.
He fought like a mistake given shape.
Then—he whispered something.
Too soft to hear. But her Voltarm heated in response.
She looked down—
—and saw that the sigils on her weapon were backwards.
He'd reversed the bindings.
The Voltarm fired itself.
The shot screamed past her ear, nearly taking her head off.
She flung it down, cursed, and drew her knife—raw, physical, but enchantable.
That seemed to amuse him.
"Going to have to do better than that."
A sound cut across the ring.
A sonic burst. A flare of pressure.
Kael.
Bright as a star, rage thick around him, gauntlets glowing white-hot.
Sol was on his heels now, retreating behind a new avatar. One with horns. One that whispered back at Soahc's Crown.
Something in the ring had changed. A line was being drawn.
Kael's fury was clarifying.
Soahc's madness was deepening.
Veyna wiped blood from her lips and reset her stance.
She'd landed her planned shot.
But the fight had taken a wrong turn for her.