Corvis Eralith
The Barbarossa hit the Academy grounds like a god's hammer thrown from the heavens. Through the Dark Visor, the world was a smear of fire, smoke, and panicked mana signatures. Milliseconds before impact, I wrenched the exoform's colossal right arm upwards in a violent, piston-driven jerk.
The kinetic runes carved deep into its frame screamed in protest, channeling the apocalyptic force of our descent not into the fragile earth beneath us, but upwards, into the already bleeding sky. A visible shockwave, a ripple of pure concussive fury, blasted upwards with a thunderclap that momentarily silenced the inferno's roar.
The ground beneath the Barbarossa's feet buckled and cratered, but held—a testament to my desperate calculations.
And there he was.
Illuminated in the hellish glow, framed by the Barbarossa's looming shadow, was Lucas Wykes. Not the arrogant bully, but a corrupted nightmare. Veins bulged like black worms beneath skin stretched taut over unnaturally corded muscle.
His eyes blazed with pure, feral hatred, devoid of reason. And in his grasp, dragged by her hair like discarded refuse, was Tessia. My sister. Her vibrant signature on the Visor was terrifyingly faint, a guttering candle flame against the suffocating darkness of Lucas's corrupted power.
Bruises marred her face, her clothes torn, one arm hanging at a sickening angle. The sight didn't ignite fury; it extinguished everything else. A glacial, absolute zero settled in my core.
I pivoted the Dark Visor. Curtis laid slumped against a fractured wall nearby, unconscious but breathing—alive, battered, but intact compared to the devastation inflicted on Tessia.
The monstrous mana beasts, momentarily stunned by the Barbarossa's arrival, were already regrouping, their shrieks resuming with renewed, mindless hunger towards the Academy.
Lucas staggered, buffeted by the redirected shockwave. He turned, his grotesque face contorting with disbelief, then a dawning, manic glee as he recognized me emerging from its chest cavity. The cockpit seal hissed open, releasing a wave of acrid smoke and ozone.
"Corvis, what are you doing? Stop it!" Romulos's voice was sharp, uncharacteristically urgent, cutting through the ringing in my ears. It felt distant, irrelevant.
"I am going to save my sister," I stated, my voice flat, devoid of inflection. The words were facts carved in ice. My hands moved mechanically, unbuckling the safety harness. The cool metal of the release lever felt alien under my fingertips.
"Corvis, listen! This entire scene reeks! It's a trap! They baited you here with her!" Romulos insisted, his mental presence pressing against my consciousness like a choking hold.
"Shut up, Romulos." The command wasn't angry; it was absolute, final. "I am going to beat his very soul out of Lucas myself." Every syllable was a chip of ice falling onto stone.
"Oh no, little hero," Romulos snapped, his tone shifting to icy containment. "You are staying inside this armored coffin. The Lances will come. They are pitifully weak by my standards, but you? You are a gnat compared to them right now."
"Moreover," Romulos's voice took on a chillingly conversational tone, "if I recall correctly, the hateful brother of that brat playing with Dad's toys is quite possessive about his family…" His words dissolved into meaningless static. White noise against the roaring silence within me.
I dropped from the Barbarossa's chest cavity, landing lightly on the scorched, cratered earth. The heat radiating from the fires, the stench of ozone, burning wood, and something sickly-sweet like corrupted mana, hit me. But it registered only distantly. My entire being was focused on the tableau before me.
Lucas's grin widened, splitting his face into a rictus of pure malice as he saw me land. He tightened his grip on Tessia's neck, hauling her limp form higher, using her as a grotesque shield and trophy. Her head lolled, a faint whimper escaping bruised lips.
"Oh! The little runaway!" Lucas crowed, his voice distorted, thick with the unnatural power humming within him. "The manaless coward prince finally crawls out of his metal shell to rescue his precious twin!"
He spat the title like poison, shaking Tessia roughly. The sight of his filthy hands on her, the casual brutality, sent a tremor through the icy calm within me—not breaking it, but deepening its lethal chill.
My gaze swept the periphery. The shattered dome meant the Academy's defenses were breached. Distantly, I could sense flares of combat magic—students and professors rallying, fighting back against the corrupted beasts. The city burned below, a separate circle of hell.
But here, in this immediate radius of devastation centered on Lucas and Tessia, there was only us.
But for whatever reason, the chaos, the screams, the impending doom… none of it registered as panic. Only a terrifying, crystalline clarity. A deadly calm that settled into my bones, sharpening my senses to a razor's edge.
My entire world narrowed to the monster holding my sister and the distance between us. I couldn't shift my gaze from him. It was like staring into the heart of the corruption devouring Dicathen, made manifest in this twisted boy.
"Lucas Wykes," I said. The words emerged from my lips without conscious thought, cold, precise, and utterly devoid of mercy. "Your days are over. Time to die."
The pronouncement surprised some distant, analytical part of me. Since when did I speak like an executioner? But the truth behind it was absolute, unshakeable. For Tessia, I would tear down Dicathen, Alacrya, Epheotus.
Lucas blinked, momentarily thrown by the flat, absolute certainty in my tone. "Huh?" he grunted, recovering quickly with a sneer. "And what's that bravado fueled by? Scrap metal courage? Aren't you gonna hide behind your giant toy?" He jerked his chin towards the silent Barbarossa.
"No," I stated, taking a deliberate step forward. The ground felt unnaturally solid beneath my boot. "That would be a way too merciful death to five you. Unworthy of the suffering you've inflicted here. On her."
My eyes flickered to Tessia's broken form, then back, locking onto his with the intensity of a predator sighting prey.
"You've truly gone mad from months of hiding!" Lucas spat, a flicker of unease beneath the bravado making his eye twitch. His knuckles whitened on Tessia's neck. Such a fragile ego.
"Anyway," I shifted, "where's your master? Draneeve? Cowering while his pets get slaughtered?" The question served two purposes: genuine tactical need and a barb aimed at Lucas's pathetic need for validation.
His reaction was instantaneous, volcanic. "WHAT DID YOU SAY?!" he roared, the corrupted power flaring violently around him. A torrent of searing crimson fire, hotter and wilder than anything Tristan could conjure, erupted from his outstretched hand, not aimed with precision but born of pure, unstable rage.
It was a wave of annihilation, uncontrolled, wasteful—a symptom of the demonic serum poisoning him.
Accaron. The defensive resonance thrummed through me. Not a shield, but a vibration. A precise, high-frequency oscillation woven into the air molecules directly in the fire's path. The roaring flames hit the vibrating field and sheared, parting like water around a stone, dissipating harmlessly to either side of me in gouts of steam and scattered embers.
I didn't flinch. I took another step closer. The heat washed over me, drying my eyes, but the cold core within remained untouched.
"Corvis, you idiot!" Romulos snarled, his mental voice laced with genuine alarm now. "Maintain distance! You are not a brawler! Use For the Catastrophe! Turn his own fire into Soulfire! Then channel it back down his throat with Accaron! Let his own power eat his soul!" His plan was ruthlessly efficient, a dance of decay and resonance only we could perform. But it required space, control.
"It's time to join your sister, little bug!" Lucas shrieked, his patience snapping. He clapped his hands together with a sound like cracking stone. Beyond the Meta screamed its warning a split-second before a concentrated beam of molten energy, thin as a whip and blindingly bright, lanced from his palms directly at my chest.
Instinct screamed. I dropped, rolling sideways with a speed born of adrenaline and Grey's teachings. The heat-beam seared the air where my head had been, vaporizing the paint of the Barbarossa's armored foot behind me with a hiss and a shower of molten droplets. I came up in a crouch, heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs, the icy calm momentarily fractured by the close call.
Clicking my tongue in frustration, I realized Romulos was right. Lucas's wild, overwhelming power made the elegant decay-and-return strategy impossible. He fought like a rabid beast, all teeth and claws, no finesse.
"Yeah, yeah, back to running?" Lucas taunted, regaining his swagger, mistaking my evasion for fear. He gave Tessia another vicious shake. "Seems being beaten by me is the only thing you pathetic Eraliths are good for." He was trying to goad me, to break the unnerving calm.
Keep blathering, I thought, the ice reforming thicker than before. While he ranted, I began the internal work. I activated For the Catastrophe. Not on external mana, but on the pure, chaotic energy flowing within Against the Tragedy.
Then J drew upon the ambient mana, the chaotic remnants of the battle, and began the terrifying process of refining it. Not into simple decay mana, but something deeper, darker—the precursor to the transcendent horror that was Romulos's Anti-Matter.
From what I understood it required channeling Realmheart's perception into the fundamental structure of the mana, willing it towards entropic collapse. It was like trying to contain a miniature black hole in my soul, but lacking the necessary instruments as I had to use Beyond the Meta as a substitute.
The mana resisted, screaming silently as I forced it towards oblivion, feeding the nascent void within my left forearm. It felt… blasphemous. Like tearing at the fabric of reality itself.
The shrieks of the mana beasts were fading. Reinforcements were coming. But where was Draneeve? The architect? If Lucas was the weapon, where was the hand guiding it? The question was a cold ember in the back of my mind, buried under the immediate, consuming need.
Lucas growled, a low, bestial sound of frustration. "Months hiding made you a swift rat, little elf," he sneered. "You know that?" He suddenly yanked Tessia closer, his free hand clamping brutally around her throat again, cutting off her weak, pained gasp.
"I'm tired of chasing you! So be a good little prince…" His fingers tightened, making Tessia's eyes fly open wide in silent agony. "...or your beloved sister stops breathing. Right. Now."
I froze. Not out of fear for myself, but the sheer, paralyzing terror of seeing his fingers dig into her fragile throat, seeing the life flicker in her pain-glazed eyes.
"CORVIS!" Romulos's mental roar was a detonation in my skull. "DON'T YOU DARE! Don't listen to that lesser filth! DO NOT FALL FOR THIS PATHETIC TRAP!" His panic was palpable, a reflection of my own internal scream.
Lucas saw my hesitation, my locked muscles, and his grin returned, twisted with cruel triumph. "She cried for you, you know?" he purred, malice dripping from every word. "Whimpered for her precious brother and that bastard Grey. Draneeve said not to kill her… yet."
He leaned closer to Tessia's ear, his voice dripping with sadistic promise. "But that just means I can break her. Bit by bit. Snap her pretty limbs. Burn her flawless skin. And you… and Grey… you'll get to watch. You'll get to see the hopelessness in each other's eyes while I enjoy it!" The image he painted, the sheer, soul-shattering cruelty of it, shattered the last vestiges of restraint.
Romulos, I sent the thought, cold and clear through the maelstrom. Anti-Matter. It's the decaying of pure mana, augmented through Realmheart's perception, pushed past the event horizon of natural entropy. Yes?
Romulos's mental presence recoiled. "Essentially, yes, though Anti-Matter has become… transcendental. Bound to my nature as an instance of the Thwart. Why—" He stopped. A wave of dawning, horrified understanding crashed over our shared consciousness.
"NO. Corvis, NO! You can't—"
I flexed the muscles of my left forearm. For the Catastrophe wasn't just activated; it was unleashed. The carefully contained vortex of decaying mana within my arm tore at its metaphysical bonds.
I poured everything into it—my fear, my rage, my boundless love for my sister, my utter revulsion for the thing before me. The ambient mana around my arm screamed as it was ripped into the vortex, refined into pure, annihilating potential. It wasn't decay anymore. It was the end of things. The negation.
My senses began to fray. The world lost color, leaching into oppressive black. Sound distorted, becoming muffled, distant roars and shrieks overlaying a high-pitched whine emanating from the void gathering in my left hand.
A profound nausea, deeper than any sickness, churned in my gut—the sickness of unraveling existence itself. My skin crawled, feeling simultaneously too tight and insubstantial.
The icy calm fractured, replaced by a terrifying, all-consuming void where emotion should be. All that remained was the target. Lucas. And the imperative: unmake him.
"That is going to have consequences, Corvis," Romulos whispered, his voice stripped of its usual arrogance, filled with a dread that mirrored the sickness consuming me.
"I admit… you outmaneuvered me. Gaining insight into Anti-Matter's core without my noticing… clever. But For the Catastrophe is not a scalpel for this. It's a tectonic plate shifting. Your body… your soul… your mind... they are not vessels meant for this." His fear was genuine, a chilling counterpoint to the void within me.
Lucas, mistaking my stillness for capitulation, saw his opening. Triumph blazing in his corrupted eyes, he raised his free hand, fingers curled like claws, wreathed in fresh, malevolent fire aimed not at me, but directly at Tessia's exposed side. "Enough talk! Let's start with an arm, shall we, Princ—"
I took a breath. Not of air, but of the suffocating silence gathering around me. The word that escaped my lips wasn't a shout. It was a whisper. A command spoken into the fabric of reality itself. A single syllable that carried the weight of ending worlds.
"Decay."
The sound that ripped from Lucas Wykes wasn't human. It began as a choked gasp, escalated into a raw, animal scream scraped from the depths of his lungs, and dissolved into violent, uncontrollable convulsions.
He thrashed on the scorched earth like a landed fish, limbs jerking with unnatural force, spine arching until it seemed it might snap. Vomit, thick and acrid, sprayed onto the ground beside him. His eyes bulged, wide with pure, primal terror, fixed blindly on the smoke-choked sky as he desperately, futilely, tried to draw breath that wouldn't come.
"What... what have you done, Corvis?" Romulos's voice held none of its usual mocking certainty. It was pure, unadulterated shock. He had wielded Anti-Matter like a scalpel, a tool for annihilation. This was different.
I decayed his mana core, I thought, the words forming with chilling clarity amidst the encroaching numbness. Now he's like me. Allergic to the very essence of this world.
Only worse.
I watched Lucas writhe, a pitiful, broken thing. He has a Yellow Core still inside him. A dying star trapped in a collapsing cage. It's fighting him. Tearing him apart from the inside out.
"I…" Romulos faltered, a rare moment of genuine speechlessness. "I never conceived of applying it… that way. To leave the vessel intact while poisoning the wellspring."
A cold, detached curiosity settled over me as I stepped closer to the convulsing form. The icy fury that had propelled me was receding, replaced by the chilling cost of the power I'd unleashed.
"It hurts, doesn't it?" My voice sounded distant, even to my own ears. I pressed the sole of my boot against the side of Lucas's contorted face, feeling the tremors wracking his skull. He tried to snarl, to curse, but only managed a wet, gurgling choke.
"You're trying to grasp the magic that defined you, that made you feel superior," I continued, the pressure of my foot steady, impersonal. "But it rebels. It hates you now. Your own power is your executioner. Right?"
The numbness was spreading, a creeping frostbite on my soul. The vibrant greens of the shattered foliage, the hellish oranges of the fires, the stark whites of Lucas's terrified eyes—they were leaching away, fading into muted black. Sound was becoming muffled, distorted.
"It would be a shame for you to die too quickly, though," I murmured, crouching beside him. The movement sent a wave of dizziness crashing through me. The intricate, burning tattoo on my left forearm pulsed with a deep, sickening ache.
"Anti-Matter… it's terrifyingly potent. I didn't even need to touch you. The decay found its path through the corruption Draneeve pumped into you. The serum made you vulnerable. A conduit for your own unmaking." The irony was bleak, almost poetic.
Could I do this to anyone? The thought flickered, clinical and horrifying. Is this the ultimate expression of decay mana? Romulos knew. But he remained silent, a heavy, disapproving presence within my fracturing mind.
The cost wasn't just physical exhaustion. It was deeper. A violation.
"I warned you," Romulos finally spoke, his voice thick with a strange mixture of annoyance and… pity? "You weren't ready. Learning Anti-Matter isn't just technique, Corvis. It's integration. Acceptance. You forced it. You shattered the natural progression of Meta-awareness. You tried to steal fire from the sun before understanding its nature. Fate gifted me Anti-Matter… and you broke its rules to grasp it prematurely."
His words echoed in the growing silence of my perception.
The world dimmed further. Shadows deepened into voids. Voices reached me as if through thick water, distorted and meaningless. Then came the pain. Sudden. Concussive. A universe of white-hot agony detonating against my side. I felt, rather than heard, the crackle of raw, furious lightning. Bairon Wykes.
My body crumpled. Not from the blow, but from the implosion within. The numbness was complete now, a suffocating blanket. I couldn't see. Couldn't hear. Could barely feel the ground beneath me. But one imperative burned through the encroaching oblivion: Tessia.
Safe? I tried to summon Beyond the Meta, to pierce the darkness, but only a deeper blackness answered. My lungs refused to draw breath. The void beckoned, cold and absolute.
No. The denial was a silent scream, a final spark in the dying embers of my will. Not yet! NOT YET! But the spark guttered. My body was stone. My mind, a flickering candle in a hurricane. The icy embrace of nothingness closed in, relentless and final.