The mental voice faded, but its chilling echo remained, a sliver of absolute zero jammed into the core of their souls. The shock of recognition was a physical blow, worse than any monster's attack. The silent boy. The sixth one. The one they had been made to forget. He was the architect of their entire nightmare.
The rage, when it came, was volcanic.
"YOU!" Draven's voice was not a word, but a pure, elemental roar of betrayal and fury. The grief for their lost world, the pain of their trials, the terror of the valley—it all coalesced into a singular, burning point of hatred aimed at the still, silent figure. [Titan's Will: Maximum Output!]
His body erupted in a blinding aura of bronze light. The very stone of the throne room floor cracked under the pressure of his power. He was no longer just a man; he was the avatar of a fortress, the concept of unyielding defiance made flesh. He charged, his fist cocked back, not to punch, but to deliver a blow with the metaphorical weight of a falling mountain. This was the ultimate expression of his system, a strike meant to shatter gods and break down the gates of creation.
Lucian did not move. He did not raise a shield or prepare a counterattack. He simply watched the oncoming cataclysm with the faint, detached interest of a being observing a particularly energetic weather pattern. As Draven's fist, wreathed in the absolute power of his will, was an inch from his face, Lucian had a single, simple thought. A declaration. A quiet amendment to the laws of reality in this room.
No.
His Authority of Oblivion was not a force to be wielded. It was a fact to be stated. He did not target Draven. He targeted the concept that defined him. He simply... unmade his Titan's Will.
The brilliant bronze aura vanished. Not faded, not shattered. It was simply gone, as if it had never existed. The conceptual weight behind Draven's punch evaporated. All that was left was a large, strong man throwing a clumsy, over-extended punch. The fist, now just flesh and bone, sailed harmlessly past Lucian's head, the momentum sending Draven stumbling past him, his face a mask of utter, soul-shattering confusion.
He looked down at his hands, his knuckles no longer glowing, his body just... a body. The power that had defined him since arriving in this world, his core identity, was gone. He tried to summon it, to feel that familiar strength, but there was nothing. Only a hollow, terrifying emptiness. He was a protector with nothing left to protect with.
"My… power…" he stammered, his voice cracking, the roar gone, replaced by the terrified whisper of a child.
While Draven was still reeling from this conceptual annihilation, the others reacted.
"Now! Together!" Mira screamed, pouring her will into a focused beam of pure, unifying energy, not as a weapon, but as a conceptual shackle meant to impose the idea of "harmony" and "stasis" upon Lucian. Selvara, seeing that direct power was useless, used her Web of Deception to alter Lucian's perception, trying to make the others invisible, to make the walls seem to close in on him—a desperate gambit to find a psychological crack.
Lucian felt their pathetic attempts brush against his consciousness. Cute.
He addressed Mira's power by negating the concept of "together." The beam of unity, with no concept to enforce, simply unraveled into useless, fading light before it even reached him. Mira gasped, stumbling back, the backlash of her own fizzled power leaving her dizzy and nauseous.
He dealt with Selvara's by simply refusing to perceive her illusions. Her deceptions, no matter how clever, were suggestions. And he, the sovereign, did not accept suggestions. She saw his starless eyes flick towards her for a microsecond, a gaze that saw past every lie, every feint, and looked directly at the terrified, calculating mind behind them. She felt utterly, completely naked, and her intricate web of deception shattered like glass.
Four of the five heroes were now neutralized. Not beaten, but... dismissed. Their defining strengths, the very gifts that had made them heroes, had been erased with less effort than a man swatting away flies.
Only Elara remained.
She had watched it all, a cold, silent horror gripping her. She saw Draven's power vanish, Mira's light die, Selvara's will shatter. She understood. They were not fighting a man or a monster. They were insects trying to fight the concept of a boot.
But as he turned his empty gaze to her, her fury overrode her fear. The seed of pride he had planted in her, the seductive memory of that dark, dominant power, now mingled with her own defiant spirit. If she was going to be erased, it would not be as a terrified victim.
She brought her hands together. She didn't try to summon a delicate ice lance or a defensive wall. She reached for the darkness. She called upon the tainted power, the annihilating cold that had shattered the temporal lock, this time embracing it fully. She would throw the full, untamed, corrupted force of her being at him. Let him see what his meddling had created. Black-laced frost, cold enough to freeze time itself, began to coalesce around her.
Lucian watched her, and for the first time, a change occurred. It wasn't a smile. It was something far more terrifying. A flicker of genuine interest. A hint of approval in those starless eyes.
The four other heroes, crippled and powerless, were forgotten. He had no more use for them. They had served their purpose as a canvas upon which to display his power for her.
The air in the room warped. One moment, Lucian was standing twenty feet away, before the throne. The next, he was standing directly in front of Elara, less than a foot away. There had been no sound, no flash of light. He had not moved; he had simply ceased to be in one location and begun to be in another. Void Step.
The immense, world-breaking power she was gathering died in her throat, sputtering into nothingness as he stood before her, his presence a gravity well of absolute silence and control. Her fury, her defiance, her power—it was all irrelevant. The game was already over.
His mental voice, now soft, intimate, and chillingly possessive, brushed against her mind alone.
They were a distraction. Now, your audience with the throne can truly begin.
He raised a single, pale hand, not to strike, but to gently, almost tenderly, reach for her face. Her body was frozen, not by her own power, but by a will so absolute it had become a physical law. She was a statue. A prize. His prize. And he was here to collect.