In that instant, time froze like frost on glass.

Fist and blade crossed like streaking meteors, then parted, and the result veered off the expected path.

The blade started like lightning yet arrived like distant thunder; the fist launched late yet struck first, a hawk stooping faster than sight. Compared to the girl’s absurd speed, that late-then-first punch felt more like a Titleholder’s weight.

Aphelia let out a breath; her cherry-pink lips had blanched like petals drained of dew.

No shockwave rolled, no spectacle bloomed—just one simple punch. Yet that lone punch painted the air with blood, and the girl staggered like a sapling in gale, the truth plain as daylight.

Only the girl who took it head‑on knew the weight inside it. In her bones tolling like a funeral bell, she heard a ruin only the bearer hears.

The knife that was about to fall slipped from numb fingers. Under Aphelia’s plain-looking punch, pain raked her body like shards of ice; she tried to catch Aphelia’s arm for balance, but her knees melted like wax, and she toppled like a cut kite.

“Don’t try to get up. I’d bet you don’t have an intact bone left.”

Her Bracer Gauntlets unraveled like mist and reformed into a longsword that stood by Aphelia’s side like a silent reed. She kneaded her faintly aching left fist and spoke to the girl crumpled like a broken doll.

That punch wasn’t ordinary. It was a kill move from the Ancient Martial Flow, a blade forged for ending lives, as clean and cold as winter steel.

Simple. Clean. No frills.

“Hey, Ophelius, this move’s called the Shattering Fist. It’s a razor‑sharp double‑edged sword—don’t toss it around. The stronger you are, the deeper it cuts you...”

Whenever the move rose in her mind, Aphelia saw the gentle woman who taught her that Flow, a spring breeze hiding a knife. Again and again, she’d said it: a killing move, a double‑edged sword that leaves a hidden wound.

Back then, Aphelia didn’t get it. She was only strong to mortal eyes, a traveler at the threshold peeking into a hall of power, mistaking shadows for the whole landscape.

So her Shattering Fist back then was only shape without spirit, a carved shell without a core.

Now, as a Titleholder, she threw it again and tasted its ruinous marrow. While it crashed into the girl like a falling peak, she felt the recoil come back like a black tide, a force almost equal to her own.

“Quite something...”

She knew the metacarpals of her left hand were gravel under skin; only Arcane Power held the shape like warm wax turning firm. She sighed at the sight of the girl, and a quiet rain of healing spells fell on them both.

At least get her to where she can speak, or the well stays covered.

“I ask. You answer. Clear?”

When the girl’s breath steadied like a candle sheltered by hands, Aphelia snapped her fingers. Four arrows of Arcane Power melted into shackles, pinning each limb to the earth like iron vines.

“P‑please... save us...”

The faint plea made Aphelia doubt her own ears, like hearing a bird sing underwater.

“What did you say? You just tried to kill me. Now you want me to save you?”

Questions crowded her like crows, but Aphelia still raised a barrier, a glass dome that cut off every prying wind. Her gut said the stream ran deeper here.

“I...”

The girl coughed blood like rust from a pipe. Even the Hydra Clan’s flesh couldn’t weather the Shattering Fist; only Aphelia’s healing kept the wick from guttering out.

Aphelia sighed again, thought for a heartbeat, then began to chant, words flowing like spring water through stone.

“O Goddess who guards nature and life, heed your child’s call. Bring the grace of the living, unbind what’s broken, turn away death...”

“Nature Spell—Flower of the Living.”

If a spell needed her to sing the whole verse, it grazed the Titleholder’s realm. This time she chose Nature over Light or Water, a grove she knew like her own shadow.

A gem-like blossom drifted down on the girl like a lantern on a lake. Skin‑deep wounds knit like silk, and life force thick enough to crystalize poured in like green tide, mending horrors beneath the bark.

The girl’s dim eyes brightened like coals catching, and the brighter they burned, the harder she fought, as if wrestling a serpent inside her ribs.

“Quick! Break my armor! Please!”

She thrashed like a netted fish. That struggle struck a spark in Aphelia’s mind, an old memory catching fire.

Without warning, at breath’s distance, Aphelia drove a lightning‑straight punch into the girl’s sternum, Arcane Power flooding it like molten gold. The heart stopped like a drum gone mute. Blood froze mid‑river. Consciousness blinked out like a snuffed wick.

In that razor‑thin window, Aphelia shattered the armor to powder and hurled her own Titleholder sigil into the girl’s sea of consciousness, a silver coin vanishing into deep water.

An instant later, the Arcane Power she’d forced in took over as a makeshift circulatory system. It spun up like wind in sails, kicked the heart back into beat, and sent the stopped blood surging again.

“Uwah!”

The girl snapped back to herself. In her memory, she’d taken that vicious, swift straight and fallen into night. She reached for resistance, found only empty air, and stared—bewildered as a deer in a quiet field.

Seeing that, Aphelia dismissed the shackles like dew at sunrise and let her stand. Why trust her so easily? Because of the sigil sunk in her mind‑sea.

A mark like that is an emblem, a stamp of identity. Low‑end, it’s slave to master. High‑end, it’s master to disciple—or a tool for opening tongues in the dark.

Aphelia had used a low‑end hand to do a high‑end deed. No consent, just knock the mind loose—cough—and plant the mark, then hold it down with raw power.

If the girl even twitched toward rebellion, Aphelia would feel it at once and turn her head into a split watermelon, pulp on stone.

“Thank you so much, my lady. Without you, I might’ve served our enemy for life...”

Under that pounding bloom of life force, the girl’s body mended by the breath, but Aphelia’s curiosity still pricked like a thorn. The price for that power hadn’t shown. Was it a burn of potential?

And the thing she’d sensed in the mind‑sea—her probe had caught it like a hooked eel and ground it to paste.

“Oh? Then tell me everything.”

“My lady, please save my kin. I beg you!”

Tears pooled like rain in the girl’s eyes. She knelt, bones still new and soft, pleading at Aphelia’s boots.

The sigil’s feedback came clear as a spring. No false notes, no shadowed influence. This was her true heart laid bare.

“Slow down. Start from the top. I serve... his house.”

Aphelia flashed the ring Nero had given her, an ink‑dark gem glinting like a night star, then tucked it away.

Hope burst in the girl’s gaze like dawn. She spoke in a rush.

“Please save my brother first. He’s like me. If you save us, we’ll serve you for life.”

She clutched Aphelia’s sleeve with trembling fingers, eyes wet as rain‑washed glass. Aphelia had always softened at that look—so long as the face wasn’t an enemy’s.

She used the same method to free the boy. Then the three of them stood inside Aphelia’s barrier, a quiet eye in the storm, while she waited for the tale to unspool.

“The Dark Dragon Clan came under the banner of trade,” the girl said, voice tight as a drawn bow. “In a blink, they hit our key tribes, seized several key figures, and forced us to work for them.”

“Plenty inside the Hydra Clan turned traitor,” the boy added, jaw tight as stone. “Maybe it was the same method they used to control us...”

Aphelia listened, thoughts circling like hawks. If the Dark Dragon Clan brought in that many soldiers under ‘trade,’ would Nero stay blind? Or... did he not tell her the whole weather?

“You know this is only the gateway to the plains,” the boy went on. “We’re mid‑to‑upper strength in the clan. Once they had us, they sent us here to intercept you...”

“Wait,” Aphelia cut in, a shard of ice sliding under her ribs. “Intercept me? Was the order to stop me by name, or just any enemy?”

If they’d aimed at her by name, then—

“You,” the girl said, voice hard as flint. “Hydra Temple’s theirs now. They can see the plains like a map. Those small tribes you wrecked these past days were all sacrificial lambs that bastard set out on purpose...”

The boy slammed a fist into the ground. Dust leapt like startled sparrows. His eyes burned with fury and shame, lanterns in a storm.

And then it all clicked for Aphelia, like beads sliding into place. No big reinforcements at those camps. The desperate eyes of the mage who begged through the air and died. Every thread pointed one way, and the tapestry was finally clear.