Chapter 95: Defended Herself...
Zen didn’t waste a single second running for the obsidian stairs.
Drawing immediately on the icy, dense power he had just siphoned from Nyx not long ago, he bypassed physical movement entirely.
He activated his newly enhanced ’Shadow’ abilities, feeling the massive, immediate 400% boost to his spatial processing kick in. The heavy shadows cast by the vault’s burning runes rose up and swallowed him whole.
He melted through the spatial layers of the palace, bypassing thick marble walls, and vaulted ceilings in a blur of motion. The physical world outside the shadows became nothing but a muted, gray smear.
In less than three seconds, he traversed a distance that would have taken a normal person ten minutes to sprint, materializing seamlessly from the darkness of a secluded alcove in the eastern guest wing.
"Maya!"
He found her instantly.
She was huddled in the deepest corner of the lavishly decorated alcove, collapsed on her knees and pressed hard against the gold-lined wall.
She was completely unharmed physically, but she was weeping hysterically, her shoulders heaving with violent tremors while her hands were clamped tightly over her mouth to stifle her own screams.
Lying on the thickly carpeted floor right in front of her was a guard... or what was left of him.
Zen’s eyes darted down the long, empty hallway to ensure there were no other immediate threats approaching before he crouched beside the fallen man.
At first glance, Zen expected to see a broken neck, a crushed windpipe, or perhaps a fatal stab wound from a hidden dagger. But there was no blood pooling on the pristine carpet. There were no signs of blunt force trauma or a physical struggle.
The guard wasn’t just dead; he had been completely hollowed out.
His skin was pulled tight against his skull, completely drained of moisture. His eyes were sunken, dull and gray, and his flesh was completely dried out, as if he had aged eighty years in mere seconds.
Even the leather straps of his armor were brittle, ready to crumble at the slightest touch.
"I... I didn’t mean to!" Maya sobbed, her whole body shaking violently as she pulled her hands away from her face, staring down at her own trembling palms in sheer horror. "He grabbed me, Zen! And I... I-I just wanted to get away. I panicked! I tried to use my Vitality mana to push him back, to just brace myself, but it felt wrong. It felt completely backwards!"
Zen stared at the grottesque corpse, his mind racing to process what had happened. Vitality magic was meant to restore life, not take it. But under the suffocating pressure of the Crown Domain, Maya’s mana had twisted and completely inverted.
Instead of restoring life or mending wounds, her panicked aura had forcefully hyper-accelerated the guard’s cellular structure.
She had literally forced his cells to grow and replicate to the point of immediate, catastrophic failure, burning through his lifespan and overloading his biological system until his body simply shut down and his mana core collapsed under the strain.
This was a staggering revelation.
Maya wasn’t just a fragile medic meant for the backlines. She possessed a terrifying biological potential she couldn’t yet control. If she mastered this inversion, she would become a lethal force of nature rather than just a healer.
"It’s okay," Zen said, forcing his voice to remain steady as he shifted his focus back to the immediate danger.
He quickly inspected the guard’s body to identify the threat. But the intense, uncontrolled burst of inverted mana had completely scorched the man’s heavy golden armor. The metallic insignia on his chest plate, which would have denoted his exact rank and division, was now just a melted lump of iron and gold.
There was no way to tell who the man was. Was he a rogue guard? An assassin sent by a noble jealous of the Emperor’s engagement? Or was this a calculated test by Aurelia to see how Zen’s ’entourage’ would react under severe pressure?
There was no time to investigate. The politics here were a minefield, and they were standing on an active explosive.
If Aurelia’s loyalists found a dead, desiccated guard at Maya’s feet, the situation would spiral out of control. The Empress would have Maya executed before Zen could even try to use his authority.
"Look at me, Maya," Zen commanded softly, cutting through her spiraling panic.
He stepped closer, kneeling in front of her, and gently placed his hands firmly on her shaking shoulders.
He didn’t use the crushing, dominant weight of the Emperor’s aura that he used to subjugate his enemies; instead, he projected a concentrated, warm wave of his refined mana.
Maya gasped, her wide, tear-filled eyes locking onto his. She leaned into the protective warmth of his mana, letting out a shaky breath as her residual panic slowly began to wash away, replaced by a desperate trust.
"You defended yourself. You survived. That is the only thing that matters right now," Zen told her firmly, making sure she heard every single word. "I will handle the rest. You are safe."
Zen stood up and turned his attention back to the problem on the floor. He extended his right hand toward the desiccated corpse.
Tapping into the digital, flawless precision of the Spymaster’s spatial magic that now hummed in his veins, he gripped the invisible fabric of the surrounding shadows.
With a twist of his wrist, he tore open a temporary, localized pocket dimension. The physical space directly beneath the guard warped and distorted, folding inward into a dark, bottomless sinkhole of pure void.
The hollowed-out body dropped silently into the artificial abyss, consumed by the darkness without a single sound.
Zen snapped his fingers, and the spatial tear zipped shut instantly, leaving the plush, expensive carpet completely spotless. The smell of scorched mana faded. The evidence was entirely, permanently erased.
"Come on," Zen said, reaching down and pulling Maya gently to her feet. He kept a firm, protective grip on her arm, guiding her quickly and quietly out of the shadowy alcove.
He didn’t let go of her arm or loosen his vigilance until he had successfully escorted her back into her massive guest suite and heard the heavy mahogany doors click shut.
He immediately engaged the mechanical locks and layered his own mana over the room’s wards.
"Stay in here. Do not open the door for anyone but me, Val or Nyx," Zen instructed in a tone that left no room for argument.
"Okay," Maya whispered. She was still looking incredibly pale, her arms wrapped around herself, but she nodded in understanding. "Thank you, Zen."
Zen gave her a reassuring nod, verifying that the immediate crisis was averted, and turned to leave the suite to prepare for whatever Aurelia had planned next.
But just as his hand touched the cold brass doorknob, a massive, utterly silent shockwave violently rippled through the entire Crown Domain.
The shockwave didn’t rattle furniture or shatter glass like a typical earthquake; instead, it shook the very fabric of existence. The sensation was a nauseating, existential vertigo that caused Zen’s vision to double as his inner ear lost all sense of gravity.
He released the doorknob instantly. He turned and strode quickly toward the large, floor-to-ceiling window of Maya’s suite, looking out over the illuminated capital.
The sky above was breaking, glitching like a corrupted holographic monitor. Jagged streaks of static tore across the clouds, violently disrupting the ambient magic of the Domain.
And then, for a fraction of a second, the sky tore completely open, revealing the swirling, abyssal purple chaos of the Void lurking right beneath the fragile atmosphere.
[CRITICAL WARNING: World structural integrity heavily degraded.]
[CRITICAL WARNING: Foundation pillars buckling.]
[Anomaly detected: Accelerated extraction of ’Body’ and ’Shadow’ fragments has further destabilized the planetary anchor.]
[Reality collapse imminent.]
