Kael's body wasn't his own.
Not fully.
He could still see through his eyes, but it was like looking through thick glass—distorted, wrong, inhuman, Every muscle felt rewired, Every vein pulsed with something foreign. Lucius's voice bled through his throat in sickening syllables, thick with calm omnipotence.
Yami tried to move.
His arm twitched—then locked.
Time itself bit down.
He wasn't paralyzed in the traditional sense. He was preserved, like an insect in amber. His magic raged beneath his skin, but it had no exit, no ignition. He was a man holding a lit match underwater.
Lucius didn't even look at him.
"Observe," he said through Kael's lips. "Witness the miracle of correction."
Kael's hand rose without permission.
His own fingers.
But not his will.
Blood burst from the tips as Lucius's magic flared again—threads of white and gold, forming symbols that hissed like branded flesh. The runes embedded themselves into Kael's bones with sickening clicks, like teeth locking into place.
Kael screamed inside.
Not audibly. Not physically.
But deep in his soul.
And somehow—
Lucius heard it.
"Still resisting? How quaint."
"Don't worry. I'll preserve your memories. In my archive."
"You'll live on. Just… better."
And that was when it snapped.
The wall.
The last splinter of will Kael had wedged between his soul and Lucius's.
He remembered. Not words. Not lessons.
He remembered pain.
Cold, hard, back-alley survival.
Broken fingers still swinging. Starvation still running. Years of being nothing—until he made himself something.
Lucius hadn't earned this body.
And Kael wasn't about to let him keep it.
Kael's eyes twitched—barely—but enough.
Enough for Lucius to pause.
Kael spoke through gritted teeth.
"Get… the f***… out."
Then came the rupture.
Kael's magic—distorted, corrupted—spiked from within. It wasn't clean. It wasn't noble. It was raw and vicious. His mana exploded in chunks, ripping through his own body as if it no longer cared about the cost.
He lunged.
Lucius's smile finally faltered.
And Kael swung.
Not with magic. With a broken bone he'd torn from his own arm.
And he stabbed it into Lucius's neck.
---
The makeshift blade sank in with a wet, tearing crunch.
Kael didn't stop to think. He couldn't. His mind was still reeling, half-possessed, his body twitching with corrupted signals. But instinct—the kind born in gutters and graveyards—took over.
Lucius staggered backward, more in surprise than pain.
The wound healed instantly—but the damage had been done.
Kael had interrupted the spell. Not broken it. But staggered it. The glyphs floating around his body flickered like glitching stars, some of them collapsing into corrupted runes that dripped black ichor onto the floor.
Kael collapsed, retching blood. His fingers convulsed. His teeth cracked in his mouth.
Lucius turned to him, expression unreadable.
"I see," he said. "The animal in you runs deeper than I allowed for."
His next spell didn't come from his hands.
It came from the air itself.
A wave of radiant threads erupted like divine veins across the room—latching onto Kael's limbs, burrowing into flesh. Muscles tore. Skin split. Kael's back arched unnaturally as his own shadow turned against him, stitched into a tapestry of Lucius's magic.
Yami's throat tried to move. No sound escaped. His eyes burned.
Kael screamed now—out loud, animalistic, not from fear—
—from refusal.
Blood gushed from his nose. His eyes turned entirely white for a moment as Lucius attempted to invade again, this time deeper—going for the core of who he was.
Visions splintered across Kael's mind:
His childhood. Cold nights. Empty bellies.
His first spell—how it backfired and nearly killed him.
The day he joined the Black Eagles.
Yami's first words: "If you die, I'll drag your soul back just to chew your ass out."
Not Done Yet.
Kael clenched his jaw and bit through his own tongue.
The pain yanked him back from Lucius's grip—momentarily.
He slammed his hand into the ground.
"REJECTION—PHASE TWO!"
It wasn't a proper spell. It was a suicide move.
His mana exploded inward, frying half his nerves and purging the foreign glyphs inside him with acidic backlash. His skin blistered. His veins bulged. His left eye burst in his skull from the pressure.
But Lucius flinched.
Kael rose, smoking, one arm hanging uselessly, jaw trembling.
"That all you got, godboy?"
Lucius stared.
Then—for the first time—he looked… annoyed.
The next attack would not be elegant.
It would be execution.
Lucius vanished.
Kael barely ducked in time—Lucius's hand gouged into the wall behind where his head had been.
The fight truly began.
---
Kael's reflexes were broken.
Not slow. Not weak.
Broken.
Every movement sent screaming electricity through frayed nerves. His ribs grated like broken glass. His left leg lagged behind like it wasn't convinced it was still part of his body. Blood slicked every inch of him—his, Lucius's, something else's.
Lucius came again—faster than light, folding space like origami.
Kael felt the attack before he saw it. A wave of time-warped force that didn't just move toward him—it moved through every possible version of him, trying to erase every outcome except defeat.
Kael screamed, twisted, let the hit land—but shifted his weight just enough to keep his spine intact. It wasn't grace.
It was insanity.
His shoulder dislocated with a meaty pop. His chest caved slightly. He used the force of impact to slam himself into Lucius's arm—biting down with shattered teeth, ripping skin from the monster's forearm like a rabid dog.
"This body Is MINE!"
Lucius ripped free, bloodless and smiling.
"You misunderstand, Kael. You're not the victim here. You're the blueprint."
Then he twisted time again.
The world bent.
Suddenly, Kael's body snapped backward—reversed—to the position he'd been in five seconds ago. The dislocation reset. The wounds undid. And then—
Lucius made it happen again.
And again.
Kael was being looped, forced to relive the same trauma in a time-locked crucible. Ribs broken. Reset. Broken again. His sanity began to fray at the edges.
Yami's scream finally reached his throat.
"KAAAAEL!"
But the spell still held.
Time had gagged him with silence.
Inside the loop—Kael adapted.
He started predicting the exact millisecond the hit would land. His body, broken as it was, learned. He altered posture. Let the ribs give in a slightly different place. Let a burst of mana vent sideways just before impact.
Millimeter by millimeter, second by second—he became the enemy of the loop.
And finally—
He broke out.
Kael slammed his fists together, calling every last inch of cursed, corrupted magic in his body
"FORCE REJECT: INSTABILITY FORM!"
The explosion that followed wasn't clean.
It was vile.
A corrupted aura—half his own, half poisoned by Lucius—detonated in a sick bloom of reverse gravity and raw entropy. The floor peeled upward. The ceiling bled downward. The very rules of space spat in protest.
Kael stood in the middle, coughing foam, eye socket caved in, mouth trembling.
His voice, barely a whisper.
"Still… here…"
Lucius emerged from the black smoke.
Face half-burned.
Smile long gone.
"Then I will unmake you."
And he did.
Lucius stepped forward—and unleashed.
Time. Soul. Gravity. Bone-magic. A torrent of divine filth meant to grind Kael into raw spiritual ash.
It hit him full-force.
And Kael fell.
Convulsing.
Crying blood.
Something inside him cracked.
Possession neared completion.
And in the distance—
Yami's eyes ignited.
His teeth bared. His soul cracked open.
Magic boiled around him.
Darkness darker than the void.
And Yami broke free.
---
The moment the spell holding him shattered, it didn't feel like freedom.
It felt like detonation.
Yami didn't step forward.
He erupted.
A pillar of jet-black mana ripped through the room like a collapsing star. The stone under his feet vaporized. Walls peeled back as if the building itself feared what had been unleashed. The darkness clung to him—not like shadow—but like sentience.
Lucius paused.
His hand still hovered above Kael's chest, threads of soul magic inches from completing the overwrite.
But even he hesitated.
Because what he felt now wasn't mere power.
It was rage perfected into gravity.
Yami stepped forward slowly, each movement heavier than the last. Not because of exhaustion.
Because his magic was too dense for reality to comfortably contain.
Kael, half-unconscious, turned his head just enough to see—
—and began laughing.
A weak, blood-gurgled laugh.
"He's gonna kill you…"
Lucius rose to full height, regaining composure, adjusting his posture.
"Captain Yami," he said. "You're too late."
Yami didn't answer.
He just breathed—and the oxygen left the room.
His grimoire floated beside him, pages ripping themselves open under the sheer pressure of what was coming.
"I told you," Yami said low, teeth clenched, voice trembling not with fear—but with the weight of something new. "You erase my student—I erase everything else."
A new page turned.
A new spell.
Letters burned themselves into existence in pure black—not ink, not mana.
Hate.
"Dark Magic: Void Funeral - Cross of the Eighth Descent."
The spell ignited.
Darkness surged in an X—two titanic, spiraling beams that twisted upward like inverted scythes of a god's guillotine. They didn't rush at Lucius.
They folded toward him from every direction, as if space had been rewritten to obey Yami's fury.
Lucius countered instantly—dozens of time constructs, soul shields, light magic incantations—all slammed together to stop it.
And they held—
—for exactly two seconds.
Then the Cross cut.
Through light.
Through time.
Through Lucius.
He screamed—not in pain—
—but in surprise.
The impact blew out everything behind him for miles. The tower cratered. The sky split. The world staggered.
When the smoke cleared—
Lucius was still alive.
But his right arm was gone.
His robes burned away.
His eyes—wide. Disbelieving.
Yami stood over Kael, aura still emitting out of his body like a living storm. His skin cracked under the pressure. His muscles trembled. But his eyes—
Black.
Not hollow.
Full.
"You don't get to take him," he growled.
"Not while I still breathe."
---
Mannn yami became his personal bodygard, ahhhhh, I didn't want the story to go like this, mann where da faq did the course change? From the time I rejected plot armor? Wasn't yami enough, is thick af plot armor really necessary for the story to move as you wish? Life sucks )-(
Thank you for reading, please leave some comments or thoughts, it looks so empty.....I just feel sad to write another chapter when there is no comments in the previous ones...
Have a nice day.