The cold, creeping numbness began to ebb, replaced by something unfamiliar—a pulse, a surge of warmth, but also chaos.
It was as though the world around him shifted and buckled. His senses sharpened, but not with clarity, but with something far more profound—something wrong.
The spear that had impaled him began to hiss, its structure trembling under an unseen force, and then, to Aszer's astonishment, it disintegrated into nothing but dust, falling away from Aric's broken body—but the king swiftly materialized another in his hands.
Aric's eyes snapped open.
The battlefield around him felt off, as if it existed as a memory alone.
His body, though torn and bloodied, flowed with what should have been an impossible energy—mana and ki, blending, swirling, converging in ways that defied all natural order.
He stood, power raging, bending with intensity.
Aszer recoiled, momentarily caught off guard, his eyes narrowing in confusion. "What... is this?" he mumbled, his voice less certain than before.
Aric didn't answer. He didn't need to.
With a slow, deliberate breath, he extended his hands, palms facing out toward Aszer.
The air between them roared violently, as though it were a storm about to break, and then in an instant, a sphere of energy formed around them, trapping both Aric and the king inside.
The world outside the sphere seemed to flicker and slow.
The crackle of flames, the panic of krigers—everything dulled, as though they had stepped into a separate reality. Inside this isolated pocket, time no longer flowed as it should. It twisted and bent.
Aric could see them—threads of light, hundreds, no, thousands of them. They flickered, danced, and intertwined around Aszer.
Each thread represented a possibility, a future, a potential movement or strike Aszer might take. The threads pulsed in and out of focus, but Aric, with each breath, began to see them more clearly.
No.
With a surge of desperate energy, Aric altered the thread, twisting fate just enough to shift the spear's trajectory. Aszer's strike missed by mere inches, crashing into the ground with an explosion of debris and energy.
But the act of altering that future came at a cost.
The sphere flickered, the energy within it spiraling out of control. The ground beneath them rippled, fiery distortions warping the air as the ki and mana began to destabilize. Aric staggered, his vision blurring from the effort of holding it together.
He could feel the backlash of the chaotic energies—pushing, pulling at him, threatening to tear him apart.
"Argh!" Aric gritted his teeth, his muscles screaming under the strain.
Aszer, despite his confusion at Aric's strange ability, was not a man to be underestimated. He was a Martial King, and his experience ran deep. He recognized the signs of strain in Aric, and though his frustration simmered beneath the surface, he saw an opportunity.
"You're playing with powers beyond your reach," Aszer spat, his spear twirling in his grip as he prepared another assault. "You can't control it. It's going to kill you before you kill me."
Aric's breath came in ragged gasps, his body trembling from the immense toll. But even as his energy waned, even as the chaotic fusion threatened to consume him, he held onto one thing: the threads. The futures. He could see them, even now.
With one final push, Aric concentrated on the flickering afterimages around Aszer. He didn't need to fully control them—just enough to create an opening.
As Aszer charged, Aric altered a single thread.
The Martial King's foot caught an invisible snag in the earth, just enough to throw off his momentum. His spear faltered, the strike losing its deadly precision for just a heartbeat.
And in that heartbeat, Aric struck.
His sword, forgotten until now, flashed forward with blinding speed. It wasn't a powerful strike—it didn't need to be. The tip of the blade found its mark, slipping through the tiniest gap in Aszer's defenses, stabbing into his arm.
In that moment, aric poured the chaotic mix of energy into Aszer.