Page 333 of Scarlet Wars
It was suffocating.
It clung to the ground, to the Chiefs, to the Offensives still stupid enough to stand in my way. Itdraggedthe air out of their lungs, made them stagger, made themchokeon their own fucking magic.
The High Chief recoiled as the blades of my Skindo slashed across his shoulder, the force of it knocking him back a step. His robes shredded at the contact, blood blooming dark and vivid against the white fabric.
He bared his teeth, raising a hand to counter, but my haze struck faster, faster than translation should have allowed. It wrapped around him, clawed at his power, pressed down with the weight of every broken law, every shattered rule of magic they thought they understood.
I didn’t stop. I wouldn’t stop.
Not until hefeltwhat he tried to turn me into.
Not until hebroke,exactly like he’d tried to break me.
The Chief stumbled back, eyes blazing with fury.
And then, he fucking triedagain. The haze around him surged, swirling upward in a wide arc, forming a dome of translucent power.
I felt it before I saw it. The shift in the air. The pressure-drop, as if the world was holding its breath.
Another bubble.
His last lifeline. His last weapon. A desperate bid to mute my powers, to take back control, to remind everyone here that he still ruled.
But not this time.
Caden’s explanation flashed through my mind:The bubble is like water. It extinguishes the fire that is translation.
I clenched my jaw, feeling the power coiling hot under my skin.Let’s see what kind of fuel I can bring.
My red haze ignited instantly, rising like fire through my veins, meeting his dome mid-formation, and thenI reached for the other.
The gold inside me flared, my healing haze pulsing out from my core and wrapping itself around the red.
Like a sweet fucking candy cane.
Not layered. Not separate.
Both hazes, working as one.
A single force. Mine.
The fusion of the two snapped into place like thunder cracking through silence, and ithithis haze mid-air,hard.
His bubble didn’t complete. It didn’t evenresist.
It shattered.
Glass-like shards of unstable magic cracked and collapsed in on themselves, a slow, glowing implosion that sucked the breath from the square. The Chief’s body jerked forward from the backlash, staggered by the sheer force of the failed construct.
He stared at me like he no longer recognized what I was, like he couldn’t even comprehend it.
“Not possible,” he hissed, his voice cracking under the strain. “Two hazes? You are anabomination!”
The smile that tore across my face was pure, feral, something wild and wicked I didn’t even try to hide.
“Yes,” I said, the syllable dripping with promise. “An abomination that’s about to fuck you up real good.”
Without waiting for him to recover, I reached deeper into the well of power inside me, ready to try something I’d only ever seen done once before.
