The echo of the last shots was still vibrating through the ruins when Éreon stepped forward once.
Dust rippled around him, pulled by a force that should not have existed there.
The soldiers hiding in the windows raised their weapons at the same time—tense fingers, breath caught, eyes wide.
Éreon tilted his head by less than a centimeter.
That minimal gesture—almost lazy—shifted the world around him.
The bullets that came toward him lost their course, curving as if they had found a new gravitational pole.
They spiraled… and shot back toward their own shooters at amplified speed.
The impacts were dry, curt.
No screams.
Only bodies collapsing like puppets whose strings had been cut.
Éreon did not stop.
When he stepped forward again, purple filaments ran along his arms, spasmodic, alive—like roots of energy searching for where to sink in.
He raised his hand.
Two fingers.
The entire base reacted.
Soldiers hidden behind walls invisible to anyone else were ripped from their posts by a force with no direction—only intention.
Their bodies were dragged forward, compressed together in the air, as if being shaped by invisible hands.
The crack of bones was muffled, almost polite.
Éreon watched for a moment, assessing the result with the same calm as someone inspecting mechanical work.
A lateral movement caught his attention.
A soldier emerged from behind a collapsed wall, rifle raised—
Éreon opened his palm toward him.
The man froze mid-motion.
His feet left the ground.
His body went rigid, suspended like a doll hanging from invisible wires.
Another enemy fired from the side.
Éreon simply turned his wrist.
A bullet swerved off course a few centimeters from his face—drawing a perfect arc before tearing through the shooter's own throat.
The hanging man began to tremble.
Éreon brought two fingers close to the man's temple—an elegant gesture, almost gentle.
The body in the air convulsed.
The armor dented inward.
Something gave way inside with a wet crack.
He released the corpse.
Didn't even look where it fell.
"Humans…" he murmured, voice low, more curious than irritated. "Always trying to fight what they don't understand."
Then he took the third step.
The step that would make the entire base understand this wasn't a war.
It was an execution.
And it was exactly at that moment that more soldiers emerged.
From the left.
From the right.
From the broken structures.
From the fallen corridors.
A torrent of raised weapons, trembling rifles, uncertain steps.
The dust had barely settled and already twenty, thirty, maybe fifty men were aiming at him.
Éreon didn't move.
He just made a short gesture with his hand—a snap in the air, almost disinterested.
"Mentis."
The word left him like an ancestral command.
Something invisible spread outward from him.
A pulse.
A silent wave.
The air vibrated, bending the light for a second.
And every soldier felt it hit their minds.
Their eyes rolled upward for an instant—then dropped back down, now glowing a deep violet, as if their consciousness had been ripped out and replaced by another.
By him.
Weapons trembled.
Bodies hardened.
And then Éreon said, unhurried:
"Stop."
The order slid into their minds like blades, and they all froze at the same moment.
Triggers suspended.
Steps halted.
Breaths locked.
An entire army paralyzed by a single command.
By a single look.
The soldiers opened a path.
Without glancing sideways.
Without hesitation.
Their bodies moved on their own, forming a perfect corridor for Éreon to walk through.
He walked slowly.
Each step followed by a subtle shiver in the ground, as if the earth itself accompanied his presence.
When he reached the center of the concrete clearing, he stopped.
Looked up.
A small smile—cold, almost bored—crossed his face.
"How long do you intend to just watch?"
The wind blew.
A shadow moved across the collapsed roof of the old arsenal.
And then she appeared.
The figure stepped down once, emerging from the shadows like something that should not exist in daylight.
Her armor was made of liquid black metal—shiny, polished, almost organic.It molded to her body as if alive.
Smooth plates, aggressive curves, edges sharp as blades.
Pulsing across its surface, incandescent red lines ran like burning veins, forming symbols that looked like torn flowers or cracks bleeding light.
The helmet had a predatory shape:
two upper projections like crown points,
a narrow visor of red slit,
no human features—only an inhuman presence staring downward.
In her hands, she held a double-bladed spear—the red light coursing through the metal like blood being pumped.
The entire base seemed to sink beneath her presence.
Éreon looked at her without lifting his chin.
"It seems…" he said, voice calm, almost satisfied, "…that woman wasn't lying."
The figure didn't answer.
She only tilted her head, studying him, like a predator observing prey.
Éreon continued:
"You must be one of the Crimson Ladies."
A red pulse shot through her entire armor—like a heart beating hard.
The figure remained still.
The silence weighed.
Éreon narrowed his eyes slightly.
"You and that woman… Brianna… are very different."
The Crimson Lady finally moved.
A subtle adjustment of the foot.
A shift of the shoulder.
The spear tilting forward.
When she spoke, her voice came distorted through the helmet—metallic, deep, layered with echoes, as if more than one presence spoke at once:
"Brianna is a traitor.
"Hunted by the Hive."
The spear glowed, alive, hungry.
"…but not that it matters… to someone already dead."
The Crimson Lady charged in absolute silence.
Her movement was direct, explosive—a displacement fast enough to pull a straight line of dust behind her leap.
The spear cut the air in a clean horizontal trajectory, aiming to slice Éreon in half.
Éreon raised two fingers.
The weapon veered the instant before touching him—pulled aside by an invisible force, bent mid-air as if it were nothing more than a flexible branch.
But the blade flashed.
The crimson fissures lit violently, growing like burning roots.
The armor was reacting, sucking in the energy that tried to restrain it.
His telekinesis dissolved, draining through the weapon like water being siphoned.
The Crimson Lady used the opening without hesitation.
She advanced again—now in a rapid sequence, almost impossible to track with the naked eye.
An upward strike.
Another descending.
Then a tight hip rotation that sent the blade into a lateral arc, aiming for his neck.
Each attack was followed by that same crimson flare.
Each clash with Éreon's force made the cracks blaze brighter, releasing short breaths of heat.
Éreon did not step back.
He moved only enough to prevent the cut—minimal steps, millimetric shifts, as if studying her cadence.
On the fourth strike, he extended his hand and tried to bend the air around her helmet, compressing pressure around her head.
The armor reacted immediately.
The red cracks ignited all at once, as if a flame ran through her body.
The pressure he applied simply vanished—swallowed.
He narrowed his eyes.
Not in irritation.
In interest.
"Total dissipation," he murmured, studying the pattern of light. "Coherent."
She didn't wait for him to finish.
Using the momentum of the last strike, she launched her body forward, rolling beneath his extended arm and reappearing behind him, low enough that the blade scraped near the ground before rising in a diagonal strike for his flank.
Éreon twisted his wrist.
The blade locked mid-motion, trapped in the air by raw telekinetic force.
The cracks brightened.
The spear vibrated.
His energy began to drain, pulled into the weapon like blood being drawn out.
She stepped forward to force the blade into him.
Éreon kept his hand open, steady.
"Persistent," he commented, tone unchanged.
He closed his fingers.
The spear twisted as if the air itself had changed direction—and with it, the Crimson Lady's body was forced to spin, pulled out of her offensive line and hurled to the side.
She spun through the air, landed in a crouch, and slid a few centimeters across scorched concrete.
The crimson fissures throbbed hard.
Heat escaped in small wavering waves.
She lifted her head.
Silent.
Precise.
The red visor seemed to narrow, as if evaluating distance, angle, risk—everything calculated in fractions of a second.
Éreon watched.
Did not step back.
"I must admit…" he said, voice calm, almost analytical, "…I understand the danger your organization poses to lesser divinities."
A strange sound formed in the air.
Magnetic.
Vibrant.
Like metal being bent inside the atmosphere itself.
Éreon raised his hands.
Behind him, all the paralyzed soldiers turned at once, locked in place by minds still trapped under his command.
Their weapons aligned forward, aimed straight at the Crimson Lady.
"But before me…" Éreon concluded, with the casual certainty of someone stating a physical law, "…any effort of yours rings useless."
He tilted his wrist.
"Fire."
The command shot through the soldiers' minds like a mental bullet.
And they obeyed.
All at once.
The storm of gunfire exploded toward the Crimson Lady, filling the concrete corridor with trails of golden light and kinetic shock.
She advanced into the barrage.
Her blade traced rapid arcs through the air, almost imperceptible—each strike deflecting a bullet, softening another, slicing projectiles in half before they reached her armor.
The crimson fissures on the weapon glowed at every impact, drinking in the shots' energy as if they were harmless sparks.
Bullets ricocheted away.
Others were knocked to the ground with muffled thuds.
None made it past the living barrier of movement she carved.
And step by step, she kept advancing.
Fast.
Steady.
Inevitable.
The soldiers, bound to the order, continued firing until the last magazine ran dry.
Clack—
The metallic click echoed almost in unison.
They all locked their weapons at once, automatic hands going to their magazines to reload—machines controlled by Éreon's mind, still limited by human mechanics.
The firing line ceased.
The dust began to settle.
And the Crimson Lady was still coming.
Without pause.
Without retreat.
Her blade carving a continuous red streak through the air.
Ready to strike again.
The Crimson Lady exploded toward him in the next instant.
The cracked ground trailed behind her as she propelled forward, her arm drawing a perfect arc—a sharp red line calculated to cleave Éreon in half.
He raised his hand.
Without hurry.
Without urgency.
The air folded.
A barrier formed, abrupt, solid as glass pressed from within.
The impact of the blade produced a deep sound—almost a muffled roar—when the crimson metal met the raw resistance of manipulation.
The fissures in her armor and weapon reacted.
The blade vibrated, hungry.
Cracks of energy began to spread across the barrier, as if the force wall were being devoured from the inside out.
Éreon held his hand steady, eyes fixed on her movements.
He felt the drain—the blade trying to drink his energy as before, pulling strands from his protection, making the air irregular, fragmented.
The barrier trembled.
Bent.
Started to tear.
First, a thread of crimson light pierced through the center.
Then another.
And another.
The blade pushed through millimeter by millimeter, burning the space, opening a slow, inevitable cut, as if slicing through the very concept of defense.
The sound was almost organic.
A crack.
A deep vibration.
A held breath.
The barrier gave a little.
She advanced one step—firm, steady, relentless.
The blade sank deeper into the fissure.
Éreon's defense recoiled with a groan of energy.
The Crimson Lady's visor glowed, intense.
And for the first time in the entire fight, she spoke with a voice carrying something primordial—not rage, not haste… but conviction.
"The gods have fallen… again."
The blade forced another centimeter in.
The barrier shook under the combined pressure of force, technique, and drain.
Éreon felt the air vibrating against his fingers.
And he smiled—a short smile, cold, almost imperceptible.