The air had grown thick, not with the smoke of the forge, but with the cloying, oily residue of shadow magic. Eon felt the weight of it pressing against his skin like a physical shroud. Every breath was a struggle, as if the very oxygen was being replaced by cold, lightless void. The shadow binds were more than just physical restraints; they were parasitic, feeding on his mana, gnawing at the edges of his consciousness.
Beside him, he could hear the ragged breathing of the other elves. Elsa was nearby, her head bowed, her silver hair matted with sweat and dust. The proud, resilient Elf who had stood by him through the founding of their small haven now looked fragile.
Eon's mind, the mind of Jin-ho trapped in the body of a High Elf, was racing. He was a man of logic, a man of engineering and structure, but here, logic seemed to be failing him. He had pushed his Matter Manipulation to its absolute limit, trying to vibrate the atoms of the binds, trying to find a structural weakness in the magic itself.
Then, a flicker of light appeared in his mind's eye, the familiar, ethereal glow of the System.
[MATTER MANIPULATION SKILL REACHED LEVEL 10]
-SKILL UNLOCKED- HEAT MANIPULATION LV-1
It was as if a dam had burst inside his soul. Matter Manipulation had always been about the what, the shape, the density, the arrangement of atoms. But Heat Manipulation was about the motion. It was the raw energy of vibration, the frantic dance of molecules pushed to their breaking point.
Eon didn't waste a second. He didn't have the luxury of testing the skill. He poured every remaining drop of his mana, the vast pool he had cultivated through months of grueling labor and combat, into the air immediately surrounding his body.
He didn't visualize a flame. He visualized the air itself burning.
A low hum began to resonate from his skin, a sound that bypassed the ears and vibrated directly in the bones. The shadow binds, which had been cold and immovable, began to smoke. Then, with a sudden, violent hiss, they began to waver.
The shadow mage, whose face was hidden behind a mask of swirling ink, stiffened. He felt the shift in his magic. The shadows, his absolute domain, were being pushed back by an invisible, searing force.
"What is this?" the mage hissed, his voice like the grinding of stones.
Light erupted from Eon. It wasn't the soft, golden light of the sun, but the harsh, blinding white-blue glow of a forge at peak temperature. The heat was instantaneous. The wooden crates nearby began to char and smolder without even touching a flame. The shadow binds didn't just break; they evaporated, turned into nothingness by the sheer intensity of the thermal energy.
The light flooded the area, stripping away the darkness that the shadow mages relied on. Their magic, which thrived in the grey areas of perception, became brittle and transparent. The mages recoiled, shielding their eyes, their control over the situation slipping like sand through their fingers.
Eon stood up, his body wreathed in a shimmering haze of distorted air. His blue eyes were no longer calm; they were incandescent, reflecting the primal power he had just tapped into. He felt like he was holding a sun within his chest, a dangerous, volatile thing that threatened to consume him even as it saved him.
He raised a hand, ready to unleash a wave of superheated air that would turn the mages into ash. But he was still new to this power. He was still just Eon, a man who thought in steps, and the shadow mage was a predator who lived in the moments between breaths.
As Eon began to channel his next magic, the shadow mage recovered. He didn't use the same binds this time. Instead, he reached into a deeper, more esoteric well of magic. He clapped his hands together, and the air in front of Eon didn't heat up, it folded.
A pulse of strange, gravity-distorting magic slammed into Eon's chest. It wasn't a physical blow, but a displacement of air itself. Eon felt a sickening lurch in his gut as he was propelled backward. He flew through the air, his feet leaving the ground, and crashed into a stone pillar five meters away. The impact was deafening. The stone cracked, and Eon fell to the ground, the wind completely knocked out of him, his new fire guttering out like a candle in a gale.
The shadow mage stood his ground, though he was visibly shaken. He looked around, his hidden eyes widening behind his mask.
The light Eon had created had served a secondary purpose: it had provided a spark of hope.
The other elves, those who had been watching in despair, saw their leader rise. They saw the shadows flee. The psychological hold the mages had over them snapped.
"Now! While they are blinded!" one of the younger elves shouted.
The resistance began in earnest. The elves who had no slave collars lurched forward. They didn't have weapons, but they had rage. They threw themselves at the mages, biting, scratching, and using their meager mana to cause minor distractions.
The white mages began chanting frantically. They raised barriers of shimmering light to protect themselves from the swarm of desperate elves.
In the center of the chaos, the sword-holding shadow mage, the one who had been taunting Elsa, sneered. He didn't care about the rabble. He wanted the prize. He stepped toward Elsa, his black blade raised high. Elsa looked up at him, her eyes wide but no longer weeping. She was waiting for the end.
"Die, little bird," the mage mocked, his sword beginning its downward arc.
Splash!
A concentrated ball of water, moving with the force of a cannonball, slammed into the mage's shoulder. The impact sent him stumbling sideways, his sword clattering against the stone floor.
Standing by the entrance to the inner forge was Elora. Her clothes were torn, her face was streaked with soot and tears, but her hands were gripped tightly around the hilt of a dagger. And the dagger was pressed against the throat of Darius.
Darius, the Marquess of War, stood there like a mindless statue. His eyes were vacant, his body limp, but his presence was still a symbol of power.
"Stop!" Elora screamed, her voice cracking with desperation. "Stay back! I have the your employer! If you move, I'll slit his throat!"
She looked at the mercenaries, her heart hammering against her ribs. In her mind, she was playing the only card she had left. She was a noblewoman; she understood the value of high-ranking hostages. She believed that Darius, who hired them in the first place, would be a sufficient hostage.
But She didn't understand the people she was dealing with. They didn't even look concerned. The lead shadow mage, the one who had sent Eon flying, turned his head slowly toward her. A chilling, dry chuckle escaped his mask.
"You think we care about that empty husk?" the mage asked.
Elora's grip tightened on the dagger. "He is a Nobleman of a Marquess house! The Crown will hunt you to the ends of the earth if he dies!"
"Do you think anyone here will be alive to tell the crown what happened here!," the mage said, his voice dropping to a whisper.
In a blur of motion that Elora's eyes couldn't even follow, the shadow mage vanished from his spot and reappeared directly in front of her. The transition was so seamless it felt like the world had simply shifted around him.
Elora gasped, trying to pull Darius back, trying to drive the blade into his neck to prove her resolve. But she was too slow.
The shadow mage didn't go for her dagger. Instead, he ignored her entirely and placed a flat, cold palm against Alaric's chest.
"He is no longer useful," the mage muttered. "And useless thing must be discarded."
A dark, violet light pulsed from the mage's palm.
Darius's eyes, previously dull and empty, suddenly snapped open. A horrific, gurgling sound rose from his throat. Before anyone could comprehend what was happening, Darius's body began to twist. It wasn't just a physical movement; it was as if the organs inside his skin was being rewritten.
There was a sound of wet tearing and snapping bone. Darius's shoulders lurched upward at impossible angles. His chest cavity seemed to cave in while his abdomen swelled. Blood, dark and thick, erupted from his mouth, splashing over Elora's face.
In front of his own sister, Darius was being turned inside out. The shadow mage's magic was twisting his internal organs, rearranging his anatomy into a gruesome, disfigured knot of meat and bone. The Marquess of War, once a man of status and pride, was reduced to a horrific display of biological carnage in a matter of seconds.
Elora stood frozen, the blood of her brother warm and metallic on her skin. Her mind simply stopped. The trauma was too great to process. The dagger fell from her hand, ringing with a Ting sound on the stone-soil below.
The shadow mage reached out with his other hand and grabbed Elora's jaw. His fingers dug into the bone with a strength that made her teeth ache. He looked into her hollow eyes with utter contempt.
"You are a nuisance too," he said.
With a casual, brutal flick of his wrist, he swung her sideways. Elora was thrown like a broken doll, her body slamming into a pile of iron scraps. She didn't move. She didn't scream. She simply lay there, staring at the sky with eyes that had seen too much.
The sword-holding shadow mage, having recovered his weapon, looked at the lead mage. He gestured toward Elsa, who was still kneeling, paralyzed by the sight of Alaric's end.
"Can I finish her now?" the mercenary asked, his voice thick with bloodlust.
He stepped toward Elsa again, the tip of his black sword trailing on the ground, making a screeching sound that set Eon's teeth on edge.
"Wait," the lead shadow mage commanded.
The mercenary stopped, his annoyance clear. "What now? You want to play with her too?"
The lead mage walked over, his boots clicking on the stone. He looked down at Elsa, studying the curve of her pointed ears, the purity of the mana still radiating from her despite her terror.
"Look at her," the lead mage said, his tone shifting to one of cold calculation. "A Elf girl of this quality? She isn't just a slave; she is a 'valuable product.' In the southern markets, the merchant's would pay a king's ransom for a specimen like this. To kill her here would be to burn a mountain of gold."
The mercenary grunted, looking at Elsa with a different kind of greed, one for coins rather than blood. "Fine. We take her."
The lead mage then turned his head. His masked gaze landed on the far corner of the area, where Eon was struggling to push himself up from the ground. His ribs were broken, his face was covered in blood, and his breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps.
The shadow mage pointed a long, bony finger at Eon.
"But him," the mage said, his voice filling the room with a sense of finality. "He is the one who holds most power. He is the one who leads them. If we left him alive then He might become a nuisance in the future. His existence is a variable we cannot afford."
The mercenary smiled, a jagged, yellow-toothed grin. He turned away from Elsa and began to walk toward Eon, his sword glowing with a faint, murderous aura.
"Kill the elf boy," the lead mage ordered. "Make it slow if you wish, but ensure he never draws another breath."
Eon looked up, his vision blurry. He saw the mercenary approaching. He saw Elsa being dragged away by the other mages. He saw the disfigured remains of Darius.
The heat he had summoned earlier was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity. He was at the end of his strength, his mana was nearly depleted, and a killer was seconds away.
'So this is the end', Eon thought, his mind flickering back to his life as Jin-ho. 'In the end I still was helpless even in this world.'
He gripped a shard of broken stone in his hand, his fingers twitching as he tried to find one last spark of Heat Manipulation. The mercenary raised his sword, the shadow on the blade lengthening, reaching out like a hungry spirit.
"Goodbye, little Elf," the mercenary said in a cruel voice as his sword was about to hit Eons head.
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