[Jennifer Howling.]
It was swift, instant beyond all means.
I couldn't blink before every soldier besides Nicole and me had their heads severed, blood spraying upward and raining down until the earth itself turned red.
I stumbled back as Saint Satire tilted her head. "That's weird. Where did your allies go?"
I turned. The bodies were gone. No corpses, no blood. Only empty suits of armor clattered in the wind.
In just that moment, she had done this?
Absurd. Illogical. Unholy.
Nicole stood frozen, paralyzed. Satire raised her blade, but I pulled Nicole back with everything I had. "What the hell are you doing? Run!"
I dragged her, sprinting, but silver light flashed before us. My head split open. Blood poured down my face like a waterfall, thick and hot, drowning my vision in red.
I forced my mana to seal the wound, then drew my sword.
Nicole hissed under her breath. "Damn it. Was Nicholas right?"
Satire chuckled, her voice dripping with delight. "Oh… so you two are slightly above the others. Still weak, though."
She bit her finger, smiling widely. "I'll enjoy slaughtering you. I really, really will."
Her blade moved, but Nicole matched it.
Their clash shook the ground, their mana colliding like colliding storms.
Satire's swordplay was like a dance, fluid, unending, each step weaving through strikes that should have been impossible.
Every so often, she slipped through Nicole's defenses, her blade carving through her like waves against a shore.
Nicole held her ground, but then Satire smiled.
I flinched, sensing something wrong, and pulled Nicole back through time itself, dragging her into the present from the instant she was about to die.
But Satire's blade tore a hole in time. Her strike bypassed my rescue, tearing into my armor. Pain dragged me to my knees.
Nicole cursed. "Damn you! I'll take your head on a silver platter!"
Her blade sang, wrapped in a silver gale. The air bent around it like a black hole, warping the very fabric of space as it struck the Saint's armor.
But before it could leave a dent, Satire tilted aside, countering in one graceful swing.
I knew it then. She was a wielder of time.
And not like me. Not like anyone.
I cast a bubble of null-time around Nicole, forcing the world itself to halt between us.
But time magic is not the turning of hours or the halting of motion. It isn't the ticking of clocks or the slowing of seconds.
All magic has layers. Flames are not just fire, but destruction layered upon hunger, upon heat, upon will.
Earth is not just stone, but weight layered upon structure, upon binding.
And time, time has layers deeper than all.
The first layer is what most touch. The Historic Veil. The record of what was, what is, what will be. Rigid, linear, fixed.
To change it is to wound a memory, to bend a sequence, to rewrite the record of what's written.
Most who call themselves time mages scrape only here, tugging the threads of past, present, and future like children with frayed rope.
But beyond the Historic Veil lies the Sea of Time, a realm that goes beyond all material ideas and mortal limitations.
It is not memory. It is not a prediction. It is not a sequence. It is known. Every path, every possibility, every contradiction. Not stretched in a line, but all at once.
A true time mage does not simply slow or rewind. They reach into that Sea of Time and pull forth what should never have been possible, forcing the world to believe it always was.
That is what Satire did. She did not just alter what had happened. She imposed a different truth altogether.
Even entities that stand beyond chronology, immune to past and future, cannot escape. Not because they obey time, but because time itself does not need their permission.
Her time magic didn't care for resistance. It didn't care for destiny. It didn't even care for reality. It was sovereign.
My own magic could only edit the record, turning pages back or forward, redrawing margins.
Hers rewrote the book.
Just as space can transcend space, time can transcend time.
Satire's magic was not manipulation. It was dominion.
Nicole lunged again, her silver gale crashing like a storm. I staggered to her side, reinforcing her defense, but every strike Satire unleashed bent the rules that bound us.
Her blade clashed against my temporal barrier, yet in the same instant, she was beside me, lunging.
Nicole countered, cleaving into her side, sending Satire tumbling across the dirt. Her laughter twisted into a ragged rasp, unnatural and chilling.
She looked up, frowning faintly. "Two against one. That's not fair."
Nicole fired a wind blade. Satire slipped through it, reaching me in a blink. Her hand clamped my throat and slammed me down. My vision darkened as blood spilled from my lips.
I forced my body to rise. In the haze, I saw her laughing, driving Nicole back stroke by stroke.
It was madness. The Saints of the Golden Authority were meant to be neutral.
So why was she here? Why was her intent so murderous?
I summoned earth to my blade, but Satire turned Nicole into my weapon's path, forcing me to pull back too late.
Nicole fell hard, and rage filled me. I tore through the fabric of time with a slash. Satire caught it barehanded.
My mind faltered. What kind of monster can catch time?
I ran to heal Nicole, but she seized my arm, voice burning. "What the fuck are you doing, idiot? Run!"
But I couldn't. I rose again, teeth grit, channeling everything into towering earth pillars that rained upon her.
She walked through them as though they were mist.
"Nicole, she's not someone you can beat. You have to run."
Nicole only smiled, steadying herself. "I can't. It would be unbecoming of me, both as a commander and a princess."
She surged back into the fray, but Satire was faster. She slammed Nicole into the ground, crushing her momentum.
I bled into the spellwork, halting Satire's leap through time just long enough for Nicole's gust of wind to strike her fully.
Nicole laughed, summoning a blade of wind that grew until it darkened the air. I shackled Satire in jagged stone, holding her still.
The blade descended.
Then the world stopped.
All natural and unnatural phenomena were halted, the progression of space, the movements of time, the idea of fate, all locked in place, almost as if they were gone.
All of it ceased.
Silence devoured everything. Not absence of sound, but the erasure of what sound meant.
Perceiving that stillness nearly broke me. Holding awareness there drained me to nothing.
This was not a spell to bend the world. This was a spell where the world itself was remade.
Satire stepped casually through the frozen air and appeared before me. She smiled as though in awe. "Wait… can you perceive me? Truly? That's insane."
Her voice slipped through the silence as though it alone was allowed. She tapped my cheek. "While we're here, I'll tell you a little secret."
She leaned close, whispering as her blade pressed into me. "This spell is called Absolute Silence. I learned it from the Apostle."
The frozen air warped under her words. "Things like the material world? While this is active, they're just clay."
Her hand slid through my chest without breaking flesh. There was no pain.
"Concepts such as pain can be erased. However…"
She snapped her fingers. Agony tore through me so utterly it felt like my soul itself had been flayed.
"I can choose what remains."
Her laughter was soft, delighted. Her blade pierced my chest, my heart, my being.
"We Saints," she whispered, turning her gaze to Nicole, "were given a task. Prepare this world for His Holiness. And people like you…"
Her smile sharpened. "And her. He has no use for you in His kingdom."