The Snap: Target Divine
"Try me," I whispered.
The man didn't reach for his sword. To him, using steel on a ragged kid was a loss of face.
He lunged, a gauntleted fist aiming a heavy hook meant to shatter my jaw.
To the crowd, he was a blur of speed. To me, through the haze of the venom… he was slow.
I stepped in.
I caught his wrist.
The sound was a sickening CRACK. The metal of his gauntlet buckled. I felt the bone underneath snap like dry firewood.
The man's eyes blew wide, the purple rage draining into a pale mask of shock.
Before he could scream, I drove my palm into the center of his chestplate.
THUD.
The air left him in a wet wheeze.
He hit the stones like a sack of meat, his ivory-handled sword clattering uselessly beside him.
The silence that followed pressed in.
No one moved.
I stood there, chest heaving, my left arm still hanging like dead weight.
I wiped blood from the reopened wound with my right hand.
Tried to lift the arm.
Nothing.
When I let go, it dropped like a stringless puppet.
Great. Three thousand valis for antidotes.
I looked at the crowd. They were backing away, like I'd just set off a bomb.
"Did he just..." a voice whispered from the back, trembling.
"He's a Level 2. But that kid beat him with just one arm?"
My heart skipped a beat.
I looked down at the man twitching in the dust. My stomach did a slow, cold flip.
That was a Level 2? I hadn't felt the gap. I hadn't felt the "status" at all.
I just felt a bully.
"Guards!" someone shouted from the distance.
Two figures in city guard uniforms broke through the crowd, wore masks that covered their eyes.
Great. Ganesha Familia.
Today wasn't getting any luckier.
I spun on my heel, my boots sparking against the stone as I bolted. I dived toward the first alleyway I saw.
Standing at the edge of the crowd, right at the mouth of the alley, was Raska.
Our eyes locked for a fraction of a second.
Her face was a map of pure, unadulterated disbelief. Her amber eyes were wide, her tail stiff.
She looked at me, then at the broken man in the square, then back to me—as if she were seeing a ghost manifest in broad daylight.
I ran, didn't wait for her to move. I shoved past her, plunging into the dark of the backstreets.
"Hey. Wait!"
She called out. I didn't look back.
---
The pressure hit me three blocks deep.
That cold, silver needle pressed into the back of my neck.
I stopped, leaning against a damp brick wall, my vision blurring from the venom and the sheer stress of it.
I looked up at the white spire of Babel, the fury finally bubbling over.
"Oh, come on! Don't scare the shit out of me like that!" I hissed.
"You can talk to me in the tavern. But you sit there and ignore me most of the time!"
I thought of the grey-haired girl in maid uniform and the silent goddess, the meta-knowledge making my skin crawl with the absurdity of her game.
I didn't wait for an answer. I turned and disappeared into the heart of the Astrea ruins, leaving the gods and the wolves behind.
---
Raska stood at the alley mouth for a long time after the boy vanished.
Behind her, the square was chaos—shouting guards, the crowd surging forward to see, someone calling for a healer. She could hear fragments over the noise:
"—that was Sirus—"
"—beat him in seconds—"
"—didn't even use those blades—"
"—what kind of rookie—"
She looked down at her shoulder where he'd shoved past her. Her combat instincts had screamed to grab him, stop him, demand answers. But her body hadn't moved. Because in that half-second of contact, she'd felt it.
The pressure.
The weight of someone operating on pure survival instinct, every muscle in his body coiled to destroy anything that got in his way.
She turned back toward the square. Through the crowd, she could see Sirus being loaded onto a stretcher, his wrist a mangled mess of bone and steel, his chestplate dented inward.
Raska's tail went still.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Elara wasn't wrong."
"She is right to be wary..."
---
The Divine Observation
Bathed in the glow of the setting sun, the silver-haired Goddess observed the city below.
Her eyes, capable of seeing the very essence of a soul, were locked on two distinct lights.
One presence called out to her without restraint—bright, flickering, and honest. The other remained unseen—unfelt—despite standing in plain sight.
A shadow that refused to be cast.
Then it moved.
For the briefest moment, color bled through the void—thin, unstable, wrong—then collapsed back into nothing.
Freya's smile stilled.
Then it deepened—the silver in her eyes swirling with interest.
"How curious," Freya murmured. "One shines so brightly… and the other chooses the dark. What a fortunate woman I am."
She did not turn her head as the silhouette of the Warlord shifted behind her.
"Ottar."
"Yes, my lady."
"You polished one gem," she said, her voice like silk. "Now… can't you do the same with this one?"
A silence followed. It was heavy, unusual. Ottar did not move to obey.
"I am afraid I cannot, my lady."
Freya's eyes shifted—not with displeasure, but with a sharp, newfound interest. "Oh?"
Ottar inclined his head, his voice a low rumble—steady as stone.
"He is not the same as the White Rabbit."
"Explain."
"The Rabbit is flexible," Ottar said evenly.
"He bends when he is pushed; he grows through the strain. But this one?"
Ottar looked down at the boy in the distance.
"This one is fragile in a different way. He does not bend. If I interfere now—if I touch him too soon—he will break."
Freya's smile reached her eyes, a dark, melodic laugh escaping her lips.
"A soul that breaks instead of bending..." she whispered, her gaze returning to the boy who knew he was being watched.
"Even better. Let us see how long he can hold his shape before the world forces him to shatter."