He needed the severed hand, but it lay in the middle of the fighting. If he moved for it now, they would notice him. The rope had to work like some kind of fingerprint sensor—keyed to Silas's touch alone. And the hand needed to be warm for it to work. That meant no waiting. No second chances.
Koby took a deep breath. The mountain air burned his lungs, cold and thin. He decided to risk it.
First, he positioned himself directly in front of Axle and James, facing the fight. He made himself visible—deliberately, dangerously visible—so Rowan would take notice of him. Behind Rowan, Silas's back faced Koby, the man too consumed by his battle to sense the boy creeping up behind him.
Koby pointed at the severed hand on the ground. He didn't speak. He didn't dare. He just pointed, slow and deliberate, and locked eyes with Rowan.
Then he started moving forward.
Toward the hand.
As soon as Koby's foot left the cover of the boulder, Rowan understood. The hand was important somehow. It was the key to freeing the boys.
At that exact moment, Silas activated the Chain of a Thousand Miles. Golden light flared. The restrictions on Rowan's pathways began tightening like a fist around his heart. The battle was no longer in Rowan's favor—every technique came slower, every surge of power weaker—but he still managed to keep Silas's attention. A slash here. A feint there. Just enough distraction.
Just enough for Koby to grab the hand and run back.
The boy's fingers closed around the severed wrist. The flesh was still warm—sickeningly so—and damp with blood. Koby didn't let himself think about it. He sprinted back to the boulder, the hand clutched against his chest.
In a hurry, he pressed the severed hand against the ropes.
The symbols on the bindings shimmered once, twice—then emitted a loud, piercing screech, like metal tearing against metal. The glow flickered, dimmed, and the ropes loosened from the boys' wrists.
The screech cut through the mountain air.
Silas's head snapped around.
He saw Koby.
For a single frozen heartbeat, the villain's expression shifted—surprise, then fury, then something colder. "No!"
Silas dashed toward them, his remaining hand outstretched.
Rowan moved.
He used the slight distraction—that half-second of Silas's divided attention—to catch the man by the shoulder. With a grunt of effort, Rowan twisted and flung Silas several meters across the clearing. The villain crashed into a pile of rubble, stones scattering around him.
"Boys, run!" Rowan screamed.
They didn't have time to take a single step.
A sonic blast ripped through the rubble pile, sending shattered stone flying in every direction. Silas rose from the wreckage, his appearance now thoroughly unhinged. His severed arm bled freely, soaking the ground at his feet. His brows were furrowed deep, his jaw tight, his eyes burning with something beyond anger—pure, raw frustration.
"Why don't things just go according to plan?"
A flare of aura erupted from him, thick and choking, pressing against the air like a physical weight. He raised Nithfang above his head, the green veins along the blade pulsing with violent intensity.
"Sixty percent life force."
The sword answered.
Energy pulsed from Nithfang—a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated in Koby's chest, in his teeth, in the marrow of his bones. The blade glowed, rose into the air, and fixed itself behind Silas's back, still maintaining its form but now radiating a presence that seemed to choke the life out of everyone nearby.
Danger. Pure, undiluted danger.
Then the crown appeared.
A jagged circlet of green light materialized on Silas's head, its edges sharp and uneven, like something grown rather than forged. Green, liquid-like tentacles erupted from his back, writhing slowly, and from the stump of his severed arm as well—a mockery of a limb made of pure energy.
His entire presence had changed. What had been a dangerous man was now something else entirely. Something more. The air around him shimmered with heat and malice. Koby's legs locked in place. James's breath caught in his throat. Axle stood frozen, his eyes wide, his hands trembling at his sides.
They couldn't move.
If they moved even an inch, they would die. Rowan might not be able to save them in time. He might not even see the attack coming.
Silas spoke, and his voice had changed too—deeper, layered, as if something else spoke through him. "Why can't you guys just fall in line?" There was no smile now. No mockery. Just pure frustration, the kind that came from being pushed far past reasonable limits. "I'll kill everyone of you and find the vessel myself."
"Run, boys!"
Rowan dashed toward Silas, sword raised, hoping to keep the enemy's attention fixed on himself. To buy them a single chance.
Silas stood still.
Two of his energy tentacles fired toward Rowan at incredible speed—faster than sight, faster than thought.
Instinct rang a loud, clear bell in Rowan's head.
Death.
He would die if he tried to block this. He would die if he tried to counter. His senses screamed at him to evade, to move, to get out of the way.
He saw it for a brief moment—the path of the tentacles, the trajectory. If he evaded, they would fly past him and head straight for the boys.
He made to block.
His body moved aside on its own, ignoring his will, overriding his command.
No—
That was how much of a threat the tentacle was. His own body had betrayed him to save itself. Before he could even process what had happened, he had already evaded, and the tentacle shot past him—
Heading right for the boys.
Rowan spun and swung his aura blade at the tentacle, hoping to cut it down mid-flight.
The blade shattered on contact.
The reality of it hit him like a physical blow. The reason his body had moved on its own accord. He couldn't cut it. He couldn't stop it. He could only watch as the tentacle streaked toward Axle.
Inches away. Too fast. Too far. He couldn't reach them in time. He couldn't pull them aside.
No...
And then, just before impact, a shove came from the side.
Axle was pushed out of the way—hard, desperate, full-bodied.
He hit the ground rolling, skidding across the stone, and looked up just in time to see who had saved him.
Koby.
Not James. Koby.
Surprise flashed in Axle's eyes. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
The tentacle caught Koby instead.
It whipped across his body with a sound like a thunderclap—a wet, heavy crack of energy against flesh—and sent him flying. He soared through the air, arms and legs limp, body already going ragdoll, and crashed several meters away, over the edge of the mountain, tumbling down into the valley below.
It all happened in a flash.
Right before Rowan's eyes.
He felt his blood boil. The heat spread from his chest to his limbs, his face, his fingertips. His vision turned hazy, unfocused—not from tears, but from something hotter, something rawer. He watched the spot where Koby had disappeared among the forest trees in the valley.
He wanted Koby to jump out. To wave. To call up and say he was okay.
But that was a delusion. A desperate, childish hope.
Koby would surely die from that attack. No one survived a direct hit from something that had shattered an aura blade.
Rowan turned toward Silas.
The villain approached slowly now, his green crown still pulsing, his tentacles still writhing. His presence still hazy and wrong. He looked like a king from a nightmare, and he moved like one too—unhurried, certain, already victorious.
Then Rowan felt it.
A sharp pain in his chest. Quick—like lightning streaking through his ribs—and just as painful. His breath caught. His heart stuttered.
And then his aura flared.
Not a trickle. Not a burst. A storm.
It erupted from him in waves so thick they shook the ground beneath his feet, cracked the stones around him, sent debris flying in all directions. The seal of the Lesser Vessel—the mythical-grade item that had been suppressing him all night—shattered. The golden chains of the Thousand Miles dissolved into motes of light.
The mountain itself seemed to tremble.
He remembered Lyrielle. Her grotesque state when he had left her. The smell of searing flesh. The strong, cloying stench of blood. Her body, torn open like a cow on a slaughter table, her grey face, her half-closed eyes.
He remembered that.
And then he replayed the tentacle hitting Koby. Over and over. The sound of it. The way the boy's body had gone limp mid-air. The crash of branches where he'd landed.
He could see it now: a grotesque image of Koby's body on the ground, broken and still.
His aura flared higher. Its density increased, pressing against the air like a second atmosphere, causing even Silas to raise his guard. The green crown flickered. The tentacles recoiled slightly.
Rowan stood in the center of the destruction, silent for a long, terrible moment.
Then, with a guttural sound that tore from somewhere deep in his chest, he screamed.
"ARGHHHH!"
The shockwave that followed was not an attack. It was a release. Decades of buried grief. Hours of helplessness. The sight of another person he cared about falling because he hadn't been fast enough, strong enough, enough.
The wave radiated outward in a perfect circle, strong enough to push back the dawn itself. Everything within fifty meters was destroyed—flattened, shattered, scattered. Trees uprooted. Boulders reduced to gravel. The mountain cracked and groaned, fissures spreading up from the impact point, descending down into the valley like lightning frozen in stone.
When the wave passed, the seal of the lesser vessel was gone. Its aura-suppressing effect shattered like glass.
The chains around Rowan's own pathways were gone too.
The night had faded into dawn. The early sun rose over the horizon, casting long shadows across the wreckage of Blackstone Mountain. Golden light spilled over the cracked stone, the uprooted trees, the scattered debris—and across the two figures standing at the center of it all.
Silas stood across from Rowan, his green crown still pulsing, his tentacles still writhing. But his expression had changed. The frustration was gone. In its place was something like caution. Maybe even fear.
Rowan's eyes were no longer grey. They burned with something else. Something that had been sleeping for a very long time and was now very, very awake.
They stood across from each other within the wreckage, the rising sun
casting their shadows long and sharp across the broken mountain.
Ready to duke it out once more.