The golden light pressed against his skin like a second layer, warm and suffocating all at once. The Domain hummed around them, that low constant vibration that made his teeth ache and his thoughts feel slightly loose, like screws that needed tightening. He stood across from the robed figure, Fenwick frozen between them, and the tension in the air was thick enough to taste.
Acts of violence within the Domain were prohibited. The rules had been clear about that. Transaction required consent. Harm required agreement. But he had already proven those rules could be bent, because of his enlightened stage. What he had done to Celeste before throwing up a heap of blood had demonstrated that much. Brief damage. Limited violence.
He doubted it would be different this time.
The cultist's hand rested on Fenwick's throat, fingers curled, nails pressing into skin that had turned white beneath the pressure. Fenwick's eyes were wide, wet, pleading. His mouth moved but no sound came out. Just the shape of words he could not force past the fear lodged in his windpipe.
'He is not worth dying for. He is not worth risking everything for. He lied to me, wore masks, manipulated me from the moment we met.'
But Lucid could not exactly do nothing either. He did not care for Fenwick. Not really. The nobleman was a means to an end, a tool that had already served its purpose and was now just baggage weighing him down. Yet the thought of walking away, of hearing the wet sound of a crushed throat and continuing on like nothing had happened, brought a different kind of sickness.
'Guilt. I do not want to feel guilt. Not again. Not more than I already carry.'
The robed figure tilted her head. The hood shifted, revealing a slice of jaw, pale and sharp, and the corner of a mouth curved in a smile that had no warmth.
"You are thinking very loudly," she said. Her voice was soft, almost kind, which made it worse. "I can hear your hesitation from here. Feel your calculations. You are trying to decide if he matters enough to fight for."
"He does not."
"Then walk away. I will not stop you. This one is nothing to me either. Just leverage. Just a body to squeeze until it breaks." Her fingers tightened. Fenwick made a sound like a punctured lung. "But you will hear that sound for the rest of your life. Every time you close your eyes. Every time you try to sleep. That wet, desperate little noise. Can you live with that?"
He moved.
Not consciously. Not with planning or strategy. His body simply decided before his mind could catch up, the chains surging from his palms, gold-white light erupting in a pulse that made the air ripple. He crossed the distance in less than a heartbeat, his hand closing around the cultist's wrist, his other hand driving toward her face.
She clamped down on Fenwick's throat. A reflexive spasm, muscle memory trained into violence. Fenwick stirred, choked, his legs buckling, but Lucid was already there, already moving, already too fast for her to complete the killing motion.
He slammed his palm into her face. Felt cartilage shift beneath his hand. Felt the wet give of flesh meeting force. She tore away from Fenwick, her grip breaking, her body spinning sideways from the impact.
'There!'
The momentum brought them both down. As her back was falling twords the ground, he did not stop. Could not stop. The light in his hands solidified, lengthened, formed a spear of dark light that felt solid and sharp.
He drove it down.
The spear pierced through her abdomen. Through cloth and skin and muscle and whatever lay beneath. It pinned her to the dusty ground, the point burying itself in the packed earth with a sound like a shovel breaking dry soil.
He held onto the spear with both hands, supporitng himself from falling forward, his fingers wrapped around the shaft, his knuckles white. He breathed. Great heaving gasps that tasted of copper.
'Pierced Spine. That is what the trait is called. The attribute of Weak Resolve Manifestation. Makes me faster. Stronger. Just for a moment. Just enough. That is if I sustain damage. Self inflicted counts.'
But the nausea came anyway. A wave of it, dark and rolling, rising from his stomach to his throat. He swallowed it down. Forced it to pass. The spear began to flicker at the edges, gold-white light bleeding into the golden air, the weapon struggling to maintain coherence.
He looked down.
Nothing.
There was a purple robe on the ground. A heap of cloth spread across the dust, arranged roughly in the shape of a body, the hood still pulled forward, the sleeves still spread wide. But there was no one beneath it. No flesh. No blood. No wound from where the spear had pierced through.
"What the hell?"
He pulled the spear back. The robe collapsed further, folding in on itself like a tent whose poles had been removed. He stabbed at it. The spear passed through cloth and hit dirt. Nothing else.
'She is gone. Like she was never here at all.'
He looked back. Fenwick lay on the ground, both hands clutching his neck, his chest rising and falling in short ragged bursts. His face was red, then white, then red again as blood rushed back to places it had been forced from. He was alive. Trembling. But alive.
Lucid allowed himself a moment of relief. What he had done there was a gamble. The Domain could have frozen him mid-strike. Could have judged the violence unacceptable and turned him to stone where he stood. But it had not. Either because the cultist had initiated the threat first or because the Domain recognized something in her that made her a legitimate target.
'Or because I am a primordial. Already claimed. Already beyond the Domain's full authority.'
The spear dissolved. Gold-white light scattered like ashes in wind, fading into the golden air until nothing remained except the ache in his chest and the blood taste in his mouth.
He stood. His legs shook. The nausea returned, weaker this time, a ghost of the wave that had hit him before. The Pierced Spine trait took only two or three seconds to finish this confrontation. For someone who was an experienced enlightened, it would have backfired. They would be too quick to act.
But he had held it. Had used it. Had won.
'That should not have worked. Either she was awakened with little time to react, which made no sense given her confidence, or she was enlightened and that saw through my movement and let me win.'
'Which makes no sense at all...'
He cursed under his breath. The sound was swallowed by the Domain's hum, lost in the golden weight of the air.
Fenwick scrambled forward on his hands and knees. His face was tear-streaked, his lips cracked, his eyes wild. He grabbed at Lucid's leg. Held on. Made a sound that might have been thank you or might have been why or might have been nothing at all, just noise from a throat that had nearly been crushed.
"Get off." Lucid shook his leg. Fenwick held tighter. "Get off. We need to move. She could come back. Or others could come. We cannot stay here."
Fenwick released him. Stood on shaking legs. His hands stayed at his throat, pressing against the bruises that were already forming, purple crescents where fingernails had dug in.
They walked.
Lucid led. Fenwick followed. The golden streets twisted and turned, buildings rising and falling, the architecture of the Domain shifting like sand beneath their feet. He found an alleyway, narrow and dark, and pulled Fenwick into its shadow. They stood there for a moment, breathing, existing, not speaking.
People walked past the alley's entrance. Wealthy individuals in fine clothes, their faces blank, their eyes fixed on some distant point that only they could see. Nobles. Traders. The kinds of people who thrived in spaces like this, where value was the only morality and everything had a price.
He did not want to cross them. Did not want to draw their attention or invite their judgment. The Domain was dangerous enough without adding powerful enemies to the equation. He saw people holding these so called binding contracts, transactions, some won some lost and froze.
But he also discovered something else. Robed figures in purple, moving through the crowds in small groups, their hoods drawn, their faces hidden. Cultists. Congregation members. The same kind of people who had just tried to take him and Fenwick, who had known about his illness.
They were everywhere. Scattered through the golden streets like drops of blood on white cloth.
'They are hunting. Not me specifically. Not yet. But someone. Something. They are looking for something in this Domain.'
His hands clenched at his sides. The chains wanted to manifest. Wanted to strike. He wanted to crush one of them, just one, to see if they were as insubstantial as the woman in the purple robe, to test if violence was truly as prohibited as the Domain claimed.
He could not wait for an opportunity. But he also could not afford to make a mistake.
'Patience. I need patience. The auction comes first. The relic comes first. Then, if I survive and get it, I can hunt them.'
He looked up. Above the buildings, above the golden haze, above the impossible sky, the tree stretched toward the horizon. Its branches were dark against the golden light, its leaves the size of ships, its trunk so wide it seemed to hold up the world.
That was where the auction lied. He could feel it. The tree radiated faith and fate essence, pulsing with each beat of the Domain's invisible heart. He felt drawn to it, pulled by something deeper than logic, something that recognized the power in those branches and wanted to be closer to it.
'Follow the tree. That is the path. That is where the relic waits.'
He stepped out of the alley. Fenwick followed. They walked through the golden streets, past nobles and traders and purple-robed figures, toward the tree that grew larger with each step, toward the auction that would decide everything.