The familiar pressure of the laws, a cold like sleet under his skin, screamed inside the super mecha: that woman really meant to erase him.

Stilled Time Domain...

When had he last seen that silent, ash-gray field where time holds its breath, that muffled weight like a lid on a coffin?

Five years, ten, or longer—sand slipping through a buried hourglass?

Years of ease and hibernation had made him forget the iron-blood in Nana Shi, steel and winter behind her smile.

Fear engraved in bone, faded like weathered ink, flared back in one cruel stroke.

Move. Move. Move now—ants racing under his skin, panic pounding like drums.

He jerked the mecha’s handles in rough arcs; his face twisted, veins bulged like black vines near his crown.

“Scared?” Her voice drifted from above like drifting ice dust; his heart hammered the bars of his ribcage.

His limbs went soft, blood surged the wrong way; terror bloomed because his pride—this super mecha—had stepped into her time-stop field, a swamp that ate motion.

If she hadn’t unfurled Lawforce and drowned his mecha in that domain, how could he be this trapped, a beast caught in tar?

“Go on—try piloting it.” Nana snapped her fingers; the connection snapped back like a taut bowstring, nerves lighting up like wire.

What... what do you mean? He lifted his head like a struck hound. “City Lord Nana, what’s the meaning of this?”

Was it pity, or contempt, that chill wind under her words? He was the second soul alive, besides Nana Shi, who could command this super mecha—iron crown on his brow.

How dare she treat him like this; pride worn like a mask would one day trip her into the gutter, rainwater and filth in her mouth.

Her Stilled Time Domain was strong, sure, but after one stop the super mecha would adapt; the next freeze wouldn’t bite as hard, winter thawed by habit.

This monster machine learned like a demon, never falling twice into the same pit-shadow.

He and his invincible super mecha were the strongest, mountains under storm.

“What, you think standing there and letting me cut you fixes the ruin you brought—nearly eighty percent of Chronos City—and your attempt on Nesting Phoenix?” She pulled her signature Colossal Axe—Heavens Sunder—from hidden space, its edge drinking moonlight; her eyes narrowed, mouth tilted like a crescent.

“Dream on.”

“I’m no saint who lets you die easy. I want your flesh and deepest soul to remember: my throne, and what’s mine, aren’t for rabble hands.”

As for this so-called super mecha—if Nana left it standing, she had ways to end it, knives hidden in silk.

Her voice slid from mockery to quiet; her ink-black, hollow eyes were dead water in a shadowed forest, making anyone before her feel a winter draft.

“Perfect timing. Let me teach you what true Lawforce is.”

“Time-Eater!”

A cold word dropped; black light surged around him like a night tide; instinct screamed, a hawk stooping for his throat.

Boom!

Rip! A razor-black line flashed like a cutting wire; a metal shriek detonated; his gut spasmed with fire; then he flew like a cut kite over ruins.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Torn muscles and mecha feedback hammered him; darkness rimmed his sight; the machine tumbled near a hundred meters, smashing roofs like cards, and skidded to a stop on a giant suspension bridge over the river.

“Hey, hey—done already?” He spat a slash of crimson; he forced the toppled mecha to raise its head; the woman stood by his helm now, Colossal Axe in hand, grinning like a festival devil.

What just happened—stars blinking out and back?

In less than a heartbeat, she dropped from thirty meters up to his side and sent him flying, a thunderclap made flesh.

And she chased through the gap while he was mid-flight, a shadow stitched to his fall.

Even if she could steer every second in the Stilled Time Domain, this was too eerie, a ghost walking between frames.

The display replayed in slow frames: Nana in the air vanished the instant she named her Lawforce, candle snuffed by fingers.

Impossible—like the sky tearing and sewing itself.

He was inside her time-stop field, yes, distorting time; but crossing space like that wasn’t in the time-stop’s rulebook, an extra blade under the table.

“Mm? Still struggling? Good—be more of a man, show some grit. I’m itching to praise you.” Her voice was velvet mockery; her smile bent wide, nakedly cruel; the flame of her urge to torment climbed in her eyes like dry grass catching, sending a chill through him inside the mecha.

Heaven and earth, only me—her pressure rolled down like a mountain, squeezing the breath from his chest, ribs creaking like old wood.

Demon, night-winged, perched on his skull.

He fought to rise, a drowned man clawing toward air.

Without warning, a harsher force stamped down from above, exploding pain in his skull, bells ringing behind his eyes.

She was stepping on his head—brazen, unrestrained, heel like ice.

“Come on, show me your man’s pride; you can last a bit longer, right?” She spoke as she stomped, each blow a drumbeat on steel.

Strike after strike, hammer-blows like thunderheads rolling.

Her ecstatic violence made the bridge groan and sway; steel tendons sang of collapse, a whale-song of ruin.

With her final stomp, the suspension bridge hit its limit; it gave with a roar, caving around his mecha’s crushed center like ice giving way.

“Die!”

He caught the opening as the bridge failed; in a flash, he lunged the mecha, grasping for her ankle to deliver a killing blow, a wolf’s snap at tendon.

But—like a curtain torn mid-scene—

“Even a mecha gets clumsy without an arm, right?”

Unaffected by the falling bridge, Nana sat cross-legged on a massive slab dropping away, casual as moonlight on water; beside her lay his mecha’s severed arm—the one he’d thrown to grab her, fingers still twitching.

Pain from the amputation roared through him like lightning; his face twisted beneath the tide, muscles knotted like ropes.

His clenched teeth sang a broken, animal note, a bone flute of agony.

“Ah... aaah—!”

“Hahahahahaha!”

The air filled with his shrill, shaking scream and Nana’s cathartic, giddy laugh, jagged and chilling in the silent gray domain like crows over snow.

The whole bridge plunged; the wails and laughter fell with it into the moat and cut off, water swallowing sound.

“Come on, Strongest, push your toy a little harder—you’re this close to touching me.” On the riverbank, Nana held Heavens Sunder; she craned her neck, watching the super mecha thrash up from the moat toward shore; her white teeth flashed in jeer, frost-bitten smile.

“Good boy. Do you need me to praise you?”

...

Inside the mecha, Klesint didn’t answer; his ribs were near all broken, right arm nerves frayed; only the black sigil’s Lawforce kept his light from going out, a lantern in storm.

No time for her taunts, not with blood ticking like rain.

But the super mecha’s monstrous learning let him map her burst speed and strength, lines drawn in breath and blade.

If she repeated a trick, he could take it clean and counter, mirror to mirror.

“Huh... even inside a stopped-time field, its self-repair holds, huh?” Nana squinted at the mecha reattaching its arm, parts knitting like lizards regrowing tails.

Looks like you can’t be totaled in one go. That charged shield plating is a real hassle, a shell that drinks strikes.

But what are those black veins seeping from the chassis—the sigil’s handiwork, ink bleeding through paper?

The white mecha was bleeding black tracery from its core, strange lines spreading to sheath its frame like creeping ivy; Klesint, piloting, didn’t notice the stain.

“City Lord... I told you you’ll pay for your arrogance and overconfidence.” Klesint flexed the reattached arm and strode toward Nana along the bank, footprints biting mud.

His aura had shifted, storm pooling, but the curl at Nana’s mouth said she still didn’t put him in her eyes, a queen looking past a pawn.

Whoosh— A scything wind kissed her ear; before she could speak, Klesint mirrored her earlier dance—he was at her side in a blink and drove a fist into her gut, a hammer into a bell.

Lightning-fast, blade-peel speed.

Even she failed to see and react in that first instant, eyelids too slow for the strike.

“What’s wrong, City Lord? Where’s that easy look, like everything sits in your palm?” She was still mid-flight when he blurred behind her and smashed her up into the air, a geyser of force.

That burst of speed and force rivaled her own, two storms colliding.

“Die!”

High above, every weak point exposed to the moon, Nana saw the super mecha flash up again; her composed mask finally cracked, lacquer splintering.

Astonishment, strangeness, confusion—the last emotions Klesint saw before he hurled her down like a missile into the ground, iron rain.

A ring of earth near a hundred meters split and shattered from her impact; dust billowed inside the Stilled Time Domain, a ghost-breath veil.

I... won? The thought rose like steam.

Years hunched in humiliation—today, he finally beat that woman, chains falling like shed skins.

He relaxed like falling into clouds; the hovering mecha lifted its face to the moon, ready for the wash of victory, silver baptism.

Only then—a chill ripple at his back.

“Who said you could stand over my head?” Her voice, cold and playful, dropped behind him like a pebble into a silent pond, ripples touching every nerve.