Without warning, the woman tore off a fragment of her own flesh and hurled it at him like a lethal projectile.
The projectile traced a swift arc before returning to her hand, which regenerated instantly in the blink of an eye, sealing the skin as though it had never suffered a single scratch.
Does she have the same body control ability? Alphard reasoned, chilled by the surprise.
Reacting quickly, Alphard lunged forward while reshaping his own arm, molding tissue and bone into an ultra-thin blade, sharp as a scalpel.
He struck at her in a downward slash, but the woman dodged the blow with stunning agility and answered with continuous bursts of hyperdense muscle mass.
The impacts of hardened matter struck Alphard with the force of cannon fire. Cornered, he transformed his limb into a bone shield to absorb the punishment.
The kinetic force was so extreme that the wall of flesh cracked, and the skin tore open, drawing a stream of burning blood that forced a groan of pain out of him.
"Ugh!"
Before he could recover, he felt the intrusion: it wasn't a physical attack, but an invisible claw carving its way through his forehead. The woman's mental perception seeped into his brain like liquid, freezing mercury, crawling through his thoughts to parasitize his own decision-making center.
It was a suffocating, depressing sensation, as if some foreign will had seized the strings of his mind and was twisting them at leisure. Within milliseconds, he lost control over his own nerves: his arm, out of his command, began warping into a grotesque mass of lumps and cartilage, twisted beyond recognition.
No... this can't be happening! Alphard told himself, desperate.
The veins at his temples bulged to their limit as he clenched his teeth, fighting a fierce battle within his own mind to expel the invading presence. With his physical body on the verge of collapse, he reached for his last resort: severing the earthly link and summoning the dimensional circus.
His shell of flesh dropped lifeless onto the stone slabs of the ruins while his consciousness was cast out into the astral dimension.
"AAAAAH!" Alphard screamed, reappearing on the spiritual plane, feeling the cerebral pressure dissipate instantly.
He collapsed onto his throne, gasping convulsively as he tried to catch his breath amid the clarity of the circus.
After a few seconds of deep breathing on the astral plane, Alphard managed to steady the pulse of his own consciousness. Still, anguish over the fate of his earthly shell began gnawing at him.
What do I do? If I don't react right away, that woman's going to take my body, and I'll be entirely at her mercy the moment I wake up, he reasoned pragmatically.
He calculated his timing with surgical precision and drew up a risky plan: he'd wait for the exact moment she moved to transport him, then land a decisive strike.
Without wasting another second, he slipped back into his physical body, keeping his muscle mass slack and simulating a total faint.
"I'll have to take you with me, boy..." the woman whispered coldly.
She hoisted Alphard's lifeless body over her shoulder and set off toward the exit of the ruins.
Just as she assumed her victory secure, Alphard opened his eyes in silence and reshaped the anatomy of his hand, transmuting bone and skin into a blade as sharp as a stiletto.
"AAAH!" the woman shrieked, a tearing wail.
Alphard stabbed her from behind in betrayal, driving the blade of flesh and bone deep into her back until it pierced through her chest, making sure to tear through something vital. The torrent of hot blood soaked his arm as the woman doubled over in agony, covering her face with both hands.
"Why...?" she murmured between choking gasps.
Suddenly, the sobbing stopped dead. The woman pulled her hands from her face and turned to look at Alphard. Her expression had changed entirely; her aristocratic features twisted into an unsettling, unnervingly familiar grimace.
"Why would you want to kill your own father... Alphard?!"
Terror seized Alphard's heart. Frozen by the use of that name and the warped vision before him, he delivered a second blind slash to break free and took off running at full speed into the night, feeling the air fail him in his lungs.
Behind him, the woman was left sprawled across the gallery's cold slabs, pressing a hand to the bleeding wound in her chest as her aristocratic pride crumbled into rage.
"I can't believe... that a mere clown managed to defeat me," she muttered venomously.
As he ran through the dark streets, a sudden wetness blurred his vision. Tears spilled from his eyes with a cold spontaneity, clean and precise, as though an invisible tap had been opened inside him the moment his father's name had struck home. Still, he felt no lump in his throat, so he stopped for just a second to wipe his cheeks with the back of his hand and pressed on at full speed until he reached the hotel's entrance, the night wind whipping against him.
Pushing the door open, the light of the lobby revealed the scale of the damage: his arm sat soaked in fresh blood, and a crimson trickle ran once more from his temple.
It can't be... he told himself, trying to steady the trembling in his hands.
Right at that moment, Didier was coming down the wooden stairs. Catching sight of his companion's battered state, the young man's face fell apart completely, and he took the steps two at a time, rushing toward him, gripped by panic.
"Alphard! What happened to you?!" he exclaimed in an alarmed whisper, holding him with overwhelming concern.
Seeing the state he'd arrived in, the young receptionist reacted instantly, hurrying over with clean cloths and warm water to help. The innkeeper stepped in quickly as well, helping settle Alphard onto one of the leather sofas by the warmth of the fireplace.
"I'm sorry... that was too reckless," Alphard apologized, his voice worn thin, looking at Didier.
"Don't worry about it, friend. All that matters is that you're all right," Didier answered with genuine warmth, giving him a pat on his uninjured shoulder.
After a few minutes spent disinfecting the wound at his temple and bandaging his lacerated arm, Alphard managed to recover his composure. With Didier's support, he climbed the wooden stairs to the second floor, and they made their way to the room.
Opening the door, they found Antonie already sitting up in bed, in complete silence, his gaze lost in the intense light of the crimson moon filtering through the window.
Antonie turned his head toward them for a moment; his eyes, stripped of any human reaction, slid back toward the bloody glow of the crimson moon.
Alphard stayed quiet, and Didier followed suit almost immediately, both of them sinking heavily onto the adjacent bed in the room.
Suddenly, the icy silence cracked. A wrenching sob tore from Antonie's throat, a lament so thick, so heavy with grief, that it seemed to reverberate through the chests of all three men present.
Alphard fixed him with a steady, calculating stare, watching the old man raise the back of his hand to cover his eyes in a futile attempt to hide the tears streaking down his skin.
Beside him, Didier watched his veteran companion with a face undone by genuine anguish, deeply shaken to witness his composure finally break.
The atmosphere in the room turned heavy and melancholic. It was the catharsis of a man finally breaking the dam on a pain he'd repressed for years.
Alphard let his cautious, distant gaze soften into something of genuine concern; he moved to take a step toward him to offer comfort, but stopped himself, worried the gesture might be seen as an intrusion into the old man's vulnerability.
Didier, though, didn't hesitate. He rose from his bed, walked quietly to Antonie, and sat beside him, pulling him into a warm, brotherly embrace.
Within seconds, Antonie's wrenching sobs began losing their force, fading into tired sighs.
Opening his blurred eyes, he took in Didier's gentle face offering him shelter, and Alphard's figure, watching him in silence with a calm, empathetic smile.
Antonie ran his fingers over his cheeks to clear his vision. His eyelids felt swollen, his head heavy, crushed under the emotional weight of the breakdown.
"Forgive me... forgive me for behaving this way," Antonie whispered, his voice broken.
"Don't worry about it, Mr. Antonie," Didier answered, giving him gentle pats on the back. "All of us, one way or another, carry too much every single day, until the mind simply can't hold it anymore."
"That's true, Mr. Antonie... sometimes you just need to let go of the weight you've been carrying," Alphard added, turning his gaze toward the window glass as the memory of the night he'd transmigrated into this world crossed his mind once more.
His strength spent but his spirit a little lighter, Antonie rose to his feet and walked to the window. He stopped to watch the crimson glow of the moon reflected once more against the glass.
The night carried on in the darkness, but the anguish weighing on his chest had finally eased; the silence wrapping the room no longer felt like an unbearable burden, but a necessary truce.