Ice shattered as Korin drew a deep breath, cold smoke spilling from his mouth like the exhale of a dying furnace.

  With that breath came the whispers. They slithered back into his ears and into his mind, voices he had buried, suppressed, and despised ever since the day he awakened, ever since that fateful day. That day when the whispers had taken control of him, used him, and turned him into something he loathed.

  Korin had sworn never again.

  But now, looking past the broken ice and the devastation, he saw his friends scattered across the chamber, injured, terrified, trapped. This man was too strong. None of them could defeat him. No one, except him.

  And the whispers knew it.

  'Kill them.'

  The voices multiplied, overlapping and screaming inside his skull, repeating the command again and again until it became a maddening chorus. Korin clenched his fists until his knuckles cracked, and his breathing grew uneven. Slowly, deliberately, he spoke, not aloud, but inward, into the abyss clawing at his mind.

  “…Kill him.”

  The whispers surged in response.

  Vale watched in horror as Korin’s very being was consumed.

  Dark atum erupted from Korin’s body, thick and violent, harmonic in structure yet utterly rejective in nature. It did not blend with the world, it repelled it. The air warped, the ground groaned, and reality itself seemed to recoil. Black and crimson energy churned around Korin like a living storm.

  It did not acknowledge the chamber or the people within it. It acknowledged only one thing, destruction, just like the Spawn that had been sent to fight.

  The mysterious man raised an eyebrow as he descended from the air, his boots touching the ground with unnatural grace. He watched with quiet curiosity as Korin’s eyes remained closed, his hair lifting as if pulled upward by invisible currents. Threads of crimson light bled through his hair like veins of fire.

  The man began walking toward him, casual and unhurried. Korin towered over him, nearly two and a half meters tall, but the size difference meant nothing.

  Vale ran. Summoning one of his onyx blades, he leapt toward the man with a desperate cry, striking with everything he had. The blade was caught, stopping dead in the man’s hand, who didn’t even bother to look. Vale’s eyes widened as he was thrown aside like trash, his body crashing across the floor dozens of meters away.

  The man turned back, and froze.

  Korin’s eyes opened. They burned a brilliant, violent crimson. Vale saw it. Everyone saw it. A grin twisted across Korin’s face, wrong, feral and fleeting. Then his mouth opened, and thousands of voices spoke at once. It was a chorus, a hive, a madness made audible.

  “Are you my prey?” the voices asked, all at once.

  The whispers smiled down at the man through Korin’s face.

  The man laughed. “Prey?” he said, amusement clear in his voice. “Are you a fool? I’ll entertain you, give you a free hit, but don’t mistake me for some weakling-”

  He never finished.

  Korin’s arm slammed into him with apocalyptic force. The impact shattered the air itself, and the man was launched backward, crashing into the barrier hard enough to crack it, black blood spraying from his mouth as he rebounded. Korin followed, laughing, his possessed body moving like a berserk god and unleashing an endless barrage of punches. Each strike obliterated the reinforced titanium floor, shockwaves rippling outward as if the chamber itself were screaming.

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  Vale stared in terror. This power was monstrous, and worse, it was uncontrollable.

  Vale sensed the atum levels of both Korin and the man, his stomach twisting as realization set in. Korin’s power was skyrocketing, climbing higher with every strike, but the man… the man was suppressing himself, holding back.

  Vale knew, then, that they couldn’t win, not like this. The man was on the level of a Paragon, and even August had only managed to damage him. If they didn’t exploit that restraint, they would all die, hundreds of students included.

  “Vale!”

  Nym’s voice snapped him out of it as she ran up beside him. He barely had time to rise before she tackled him to the ground. “Get down!” she shouted.

  The moment the words left her mouth, the man released more of his power. A colossal mountain of ice erupted outward, engulfing both him and Korin completely, sealing them inside a frozen monolith that shook the chamber to its core.

  Vale lay there, his breath ragged and staring upward. A figure rose effortlessly through the ice. The man stood atop the frozen mountain. His amusement was gone. What remained was cold, absolute malice.

  Vale glanced toward where Mirage had been, but the wolf was gone, likely drawn back into him. There was no time to check.

  The man descended slowly, step by step, as the students behind Vale shivered in terror. He stopped before Vale and Nym, raised his arm, and light devoured his hand, condensing into a beam of annihilation.

  “Deal’s off,” he said calmly.

  Vale’s eyes widened as instinct screamed at him to run. “I’ll kill you all.”

  Behind him, the mountain cracked. Ice exploded outward as something moved within. The man turned, just as Korin burst free once more, a madman reborn. Korin’s partially controlled body let out a feral roar, the sound of a predator finally marking its prey.

  The mysterious man’s attention snapped toward him for just a fraction of a second. That was all Vale needed.

  He focused inward, locking onto the bone-like implant embedded within his body. With a sharp exhale, he reshaped it, bones unraveling and reforming into a long, segmented whip. Brilliant white light flared along its length as Vale hurled it forward.

  The whip snapped tight around the man’s torso, catching him off guard. For an instant, the man was restrained.

  Korin crossed the distance in a heartbeat.

  Korin slammed into the man, one massive hand clamping onto his shoulder while the other gripped his metallic arm. With a brutal twist fueled by inhuman strength, he tore the arm free in a shower of sparks and fractured metal.

  The man didn’t scream. He didn’t even flinch. Instead, frustration twisted his expression.

  Then the severed arm moved. It split apart midair, unfolding like a living mechanism before surging forward to engulf Korin’s entire arm. Blue light ignited along its surface as it began to constrict.

  Korin roared in pain. Snarling, he seized the metallic mass with his free hand and ripped it apart violently, tearing chunks of glowing alloy away until the man was forced to disengage.

  Vale and Nym were already moving, perfectly in sync. Vale summoned a onyx blade and hurled it toward Nym without even looking. She caught it effortlessly, never breaking stride as they closed in on the man from opposite sides.

  Vale’s mind raced. Given enough time, the man could kill either of them in an instant. But now, he was facing three threats at once, Korin, an unstoppable force that would not stop until one of them was dead, Nym, an opponent who could read his movements before he made them; and Vale himself, unpredictable and impossible to track.

  The man’s lips curled into a thin, nervous grin. Vale and Nym struck together. The man caught Nym’s blade with his remaining metallic arm and twisted aside from Vale’s strike, barely evading the attack. As he recovered, Nym drove her foot into his abdomen, sending him staggering backward.

  That was Vale’s opening. He recalled his blade mid-flight and drove it straight into the man’s stomach. He twisted the weapon, slicing deep and tearing the man’s side open in a spray of dark fluid and broken metal.

  Then Korin was there again, recovered and raging. His punch connected with catastrophic force, launching the man skyward and slamming him into the barrier once more. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface as the man rebounded and hovered above them.

  Fury burned in his eyes. Metal flowed and rebuilt itself across his body almost instantly, sealing the damage as if it had never been there. He roared, not in pain, but in pure, seething irritation.

  “Fine!” he bellowed.

  The man’s body began to glow, a cold, brilliant energy surging outward from within. The air screamed as power condensed, and the temperature plummeted in an instant.

  The charge completed.

  Laughing maniacally, he thrust his arm downward and unleashed the beam.

  “I’ll use two percent on you insects!”

  Vale raised his arms instinctively, and then, suddenly, someone was there.

  A tanned boy with bright red hair and piercing icy-blue eyes stood before him. Eskar. His expression was determined, yet shadowed by doubt.

  The beam roared closer, its radiance devouring everything in its path. Vale lunged, grabbing Eskar and trying to shove him out of the way.

  “What the hell are you doing-”

  There was no time.

  Esk?r inhaled once, deep and steady, and spoke a single word,

  “Chasm.”