The valley floor was a maelstrom of noise, but for Jai, only the sound of Zayn collapsing and the accelerating, rhythmic footsteps of the approaching enemy mattered. Jai's ears were filled with the relentless clanging steps of Zenos's elite guards and James's desperate voice, urging them to rally and fight.
Jai tried to push himself up, but his attention was snagged by the sight of Zayn crawling, holding his leg, utterly paralyzed by the trauma triggered by his cousin. It was the sight of this absolute, regressive vulnerability that unexpectedly slammed Jai into an involuntary, terrifying psychic vision of his own.
The memory was not real but it felt like real: Jai was standing over a pile of pulverized stone and human bodies. He held a massive, blood-slicked battle-axe. He saw a child crawling toward him, her small body broken. Her face was brutally cut, and her two eyes had been savagely slayed by Jai's own hand. She did not scream for vengeance; she only pleaded: "Please leave my brother. Just kill me."
In the vision, Jai looked down. He was pinning a smaller boy beneath his left leg, the boy desperately trying to attack Jai's greave with a small, ineffective knife. Jai showed no mercy. With cold, absolute indifference, he crushed the younger brother and finished the girl, killing both of them without hesitation. It was a vision of a ruthless execution, a chilling demonstration of a past act where compassion was entirely absent.
The vision faded, leaving Jai reeling from the intensity of his own historical brutality. It was a stark contrast to the trauma paralyzing Zayn.
Snapping back to the present, Jai realized they had mere seconds. He shouted an order to Winston, who was already straining to maintain the wider, weakened perimeter. "Winston! Create a new, small border—just large enough for Zayn and me! Now!"
Winston immediately reacted, diverting a precious fraction of his remaining energy. A compact, shimmering white magical boundary coalesced around Jai and the prone Zayn, shielding them from the immediate threats of Lenard and Zenos's advance guards.
"Hey guys, fight with all your might!" Jai ordered James and Brokk, his voice regaining its command. "After Zayn recovers, I will order you to remove the border, and we attack them fully. Until that happens, protect the boundary with your lives!"
Inside the temporary sanctuary, Jai knelt on one leg. Zayn was huddled, his face buried, terrifyingly unresponsive.
"Zayn! ZAYN!" Jai shouted, the sound echoing within the narrow boundary. "Why are you like this? You are a Prince of the Dwarf Kingdom! If you fall here, we lose this fight! Get up!"
Zayn still refused to move. Jai grabbed Zayn's shoulder, forcing eye contact, his tone shifting to one of calm, intense focus. "Zayn, what happened in the past? Why are you this broken?"
Zayn, triggered by the boundary's temporary peace and Jai's demanding focus, began to speak in a strained, rushed whisper:
"Seven or eight years ago, before Zeron left, he was ignoring me. I still loved my brother. My uncle's kids—Zenos and Rezo—told me they could help me earn Zeron's approval. They told me to listen to everything they said, that Zeron would like me if I did. So I started doing what they said. But they started doing so many things... brutal things..."
"Why?" Jai asked, his mind reeling from the intensity of the confession. "Why did you agree? What was the reason?"
Zayn looked at Jai with naked pain. "Arthur, I think you might understand. My mother died. My father, King Borin, was always away from the kingdom. I desperately wanted to show Zeron love because I had friends, but he didn't. I also carried the guilt—I felt my mother died because of me. I wanted to make Zeron feel like he still had someone."
Jai paused, taking a slow breath, controlling the brutal imagery his own vision had just shown him. "What kind of brutal things did they make you do?"
Zayn didn't answer with words. He slowly pushed himself up, pulling off his shirt. Jai stared, his jaw tightening. A massive, horrifying scar ran across Zayn's back—it appeared from nowhere, looking like the deep, raking mark of an enormous animal or a starving beast. Then, one after another, more scars began to emerge, visible across his entire body—scars so brutal, so systematic, that they were similar only to the severe damage Jai himself carried from his own father's sadistic training.
Jai understood immediately. "Even if I had been there, in his situation, I would have faced trauma."
The mental strain was too much. Zayn instantly fell into a deep, painful trauma vision. He relived the incident: Rezo holding a small knife, brutally plucking out three or four of Zayn's teeth, followed by the agonizing pain of having his fingertips plucked. Zayn screamed, but no one heard. His voice failed him due to exhaustion and the trauma itself. The brutal bullying was relentless, stealing his ability to speak.
In the memory, the sound of the assault abruptly stopped as his older brother, Zeron, approached. Zeron, paralyzed by fear or shock, could do nothing but observe. Zayn's golden eyes fixed on Zeron, a silent, desperate plea for help. Though his voice was gone, his eyes told the whole, tragic story of his pain and betrayal.
At that moment Zayn felt the true betrayal from his own brother and also he felt that he doesn't allow things just to get his brother's approval. Big the same brother betray him. At that moment zayn's heart started to become cold and unmoved like a iceberg.
Jai brutally forced Zayn out of the memory, shaking him until the golden eyes focused. "Zayn, the trauma was meant to break you, but you must not let it. You must use it to push yourself to be good."
Jai stood over Zayn, his voice now a low, rough, demanding chant, stripping away pity and offering only a terrifying path forward.
"Zayn. I don't know the whole story, and I don't need to. I know you were put through hell. I know the kind of brutal mess that leaves behind. It makes you feel like the world is nothing but predators and prey."
Jai met Zayn's golden eyes without flinching.
"But this? This war is your chance to draw the line in the sand. You can stay trapped back there, letting what they did to you define you—the victim, the one who couldn't fight back."
He leaned closer.
"Or you can take this fight, and you can let it free you. Every enemy you drop is you tearing a piece of that nightmare out of your own gut. Every person we save is you proving that what happened to you doesn't win in the end. Don't fight because of the past; fight to build a future where you don't have to carry that weight anymore."
"The war needs silent, ruthless men who know what real fear is, because they know how to beat it. Stop being the victim of the bully, Zayn. Become the reason the bullies fear the dark. Get up, and let's go earn back a piece of yourself they thought they stole forever."
"You must not be the 'Silenced.' You must become the 'Eliminator.' You must use the memory of that crushing helplessness as a roadmap to protect others from it. Let the desire for justice, the yearning to speak for the eternally silenced, become the Digestive Element for your potential."
"The war offers a way to cleanse the Stigma. Go out there. Be the terrible, silent answer to oppression. Let your golden eyes become the last thing the enemy sees before they realize they misjudged the true power of the one they thought they could silence. Do not merely fight, Zayn. Ascend."
Jai's words, demanding action, hit Zayn hard. The profound fear and shame that had held him frozen began to burn away, replaced by a cold, fierce resolve. The memory of Zeron watching, paralyzed, was no longer a weight of guilt, but a sharp fuel.
Zayn didn't shout or look up in sudden epiphany. Instead, he pushed off the ground with a grunt, his muscles responding instantly to the need for action. His movements were not rushed, but sharp and purposeful.
Outside the border, James, Brokk, and Winston were holding back the relentless enemy charge. Winston, sweat pouring down his face, maintained the main white border while simultaneously fighting the surrounding Tier 8 and Tier 9 enemies. Brokk and James fought with desperation, pushing their limits to prevent the perimeter from collapsing.
Inside the boundary, Zayn fully recovered. He stood tall, his eyes burning with a terrifying, cold resolve. His left hand slowly transformed, the ice hardening and shining until it became the elegant, formidable Silver Ice Bow. His right hand simultaneously created a quiver of razor-sharp Ice Arrows.
"Winston!" Jai commanded, his voice sharp and absolute. "Take out the boundary immediately! Now!"
The shield vanished.
Zayn didn't hesitate. He loosed his first volley of arrows, aiming precisely at the approaching Tier 9 and Tier 10 enemy elemental masters who had been tasked with overwhelming the team. The ice arrows struck their targets with devastating, focused precision.
The moment the barrier dropped, Jai's team surged forward, unleashing their full, combined attack. The enemy, momentarily startled by the sudden counter-attack and the loss of their high-tier masters, charged back, meeting the fierce, desperate power of Zayn, the Eliminator.
Zayn's new title is "Eliminator".