True power lies in the casual extermination of insects. The strong have always fed upon the weak—a natural law that usually ends in spilled blood.
High amid the craggy ridges of the Kavla Woods, Setu drove his spear cleanly through Maya's heart. A grotesque, ear-to-ear grin stretched across his face. It was the look of a man who had just ripped out a festering thorn he'd endured for years.
He yanked the shaft free with a wet squelch, planting a heavy boot on her shoulder to shove her lifeless corpse into the dirt.
Crimson pooled beneath her, staining the dry earth. Her eyes stared up at the sky, utterly hollow.
Setu gripped his bloodied spear and methodically wiped the blade clean.
Finally, he thought, a dark thrill coursing through him. After all these years, the obstacle is gone. He took a long, savory breath. "Now, I just need to deliver her head to the master."
Glancing over his shoulder at his subordinates, he barked, "Move out. We don't have time to waste. The master has waited years for this prize, and I intend to deliver it swiftly."
Stretching his stiff shoulders, he willed his spear into the golden spatial ring on his right index finger. The weapon vanished in a brief shimmer of light.
But just as his thoughts turned toward returning to the sect, the air shifted. A creeping unease crawled up his spine. The environment around him was slowly drowning in a thin, crimson mist.
The fog thickened fast, swallowing the terrain. Within seconds, his men—and Maya's corpse—were obscured from view. Setu instantly dropped into a defensive stance. He flared his Origin Energy, trying to map his surroundings, but the red mist acted like a dense shroud, scrambling his senses entirely.
Without warning, a dark silhouette plunged from the bloody fog above. A glowing crimson blade descended in a vicious, two-handed vertical cleave aimed right at Setu's skull. It was a strike meant to halve him. But Setu was no second-rate assassin. His survival instincts kicked in; with a flash from his ring, his spear reappeared. He hoisted the shaft horizontally with both hands just in time to catch the blow.
CLANG!
The collision of the crimson blade and the spear shaft triggered a shockwave. The sheer kinetic force drove Setu's boots deep into the earth, sending a spiderweb of violent cracks through the bedrock.
Gritting his teeth, Setu channeled every ounce of strength in his shoulders and shoved outward. The shadowy assailant vaulted backward, landing a few yards away in a flawless combat stance.
When the mist parted enough to reveal the attacker's face, Setu froze. A cold sweat broke out across his forehead. He gripped his weapon tighter, his knuckles turning white. "You..." he stammered, panic leaking into his voice. "I killed you. I drove my spear through you with my own two hands! How the hell are you standing here?"
The figure holding the crimson blade was none other than Maya. Unscathed. Ready for blood.
Her lips curled into a mocking smile. "How does it feel, Setu? Staring a ghost in the eyes?"
He stood entirely paralyzed, as if trapped in a nightmare. "What kind of array is this?" he hissed. "You're dead. I—"
"Killed me with your own hands, yes," Maya interrupted, her tone dripping with venom. "Let me enlighten you. The thing you just gutted was nothing more than a phantom—a projection meant to give you the fleeting satisfaction of victory. Tragic, isn't it? To realize I'm standing right here."
Fury replaced his shock. Setu leveled his spear point at her chest. "Then I'll just kill you again! Once, twice—it doesn't matter. You're leaving here in pieces!"
Setu's rabid hatred only deepened Maya's amusement. There was a twisted joy in her eyes. She lived for this—the psychological dismantling of her enemies, tearing down their sanity piece by piece.
"By all means, try," she taunted. "Let's see just how many of my reflections you can slaughter."
Setu didn't hesitate. He launched himself forward, thrusting the spear with explosive force. The weapon became a blur, tearing straight through Maya's abdomen and embedding itself deep into a massive boulder behind her.
The Maya before him slowly looked down at her ruined torso. She had been practically eviscerated. Hot blood poured from the catastrophic wound like a ruptured dam, her innards spilling out to wetly slap against her own boots. And yet, she just smiled. Blood bubbled past her lips as she collapsed in a heap.
Setu scoffed at the mangled corpse. He cupped a hand to his ear in mock concentration. "Did you say something? I couldn't quite hear you over the sound of your guts hitting the floor."
"Having fun, Setu?" a familiar voice echoed from his right. It was Maya. Completely unharmed. "How do you like my little domain?"
Setu's stomach dropped. Since when? he screamed internally. How long have I been trapped in this technique? Where the hell did reality end and the illusion begin?
He couldn't pinpoint the transition. He had been so utterly convinced of his victory. But the truth was far more terrifying. The real Maya had been lurking in his blind spot the entire time, waiting like a patient reaper.
"When it comes to sheer barbarism and treachery, you're unmatched, Setu," she spat, her voice laced with disgust. "Just look at how you butchered our Sect Leader. Let's see if a pathetic traitor like you has actually cultivated enough power to survive my blade."
Scowling, Setu extended his palm and channeled his intent. A distance away, the spear embedded in the boulder vibrated violently before ripping itself free, flying backward to smack firmly into his waiting grip.
He leveled the weapon, settling into a rigid stance. "Watch closely. I'm going to shatter this pathetic parlor trick."
"Let's see you try," she challenged, unbothered by his arrogance. Maya simply snapped her fingers.
In an instant, the crimson mist churned, and dozens of identical Mayas materialized, forming a tightening circle around him.
Setu's confidence wavered as he scanned the suffocating ring of clones. "I'll admit," he muttered, "this formation of yours is far more intricate than I gave it credit for."
Without another word, the horde of avatars converged on him, crimson swords raised. Setu roared, twirling his spear as he met the onslaught.
The clash was a chaotic grinder of flesh and steel. For what felt like hours, Setu fought like a cornered beast, enduring grueling punishment as he waded through the relentless tide of reflections.
Hours later, the battlefield was a charnel house. Setu, battered, bleeding, and half-dead, stood atop a mound of corpses. He had the final remaining avatar hoisted into the air by her throat, his single functioning right hand acting as a vice. The clone thrashed, clawing desperately at his iron grip as she suffocated. With a brutal, jagged twist, he snapped her neck. He tossed the limp body onto the pile of her 'sisters' and painfully stumbled his way down the mountain of flesh.
He was a ragged mess. His body was a canvas of deep lacerations, and worse—the blades had been laced with a necrotic poison. His cultivation base felt brittle, and his vision was swimming with dark spots.
Squinting through the haze, he spotted a solitary figure standing just beyond the carnage. The original Maya.
Extending a trembling hand, Setu recalled his spear. It violently tore free from the gut of a corpse in the pile and snapped into his palm. He leveled it at her, his voice ragged. "I know it's a trick. This whole thing is an illusion. You... you can't actually hurt me."
If I kill the caster, he rationalized in a feverish internal chant, the domain shatters. Just one more strike, and I'm out of this nightmare.
Maya took a slow, measured step forward. "You fundamentally misunderstand how my technique works, Setu. It's nothing like you think."
"I know exactly what it is," he hacked, spitting a wad of bloody phlegm. "It's a mind prison. You invade the psyche and project false realities. None of this is real."
"You've only grasped half the truth," she replied, her voice eerily calm. "My technique was never designed to attack your mind. I simply threw a veil over reality. You convinced yourself that I had dragged your consciousness into an illusion."
Setu faltered. "What? If you weren't casting Chitta Bhrama... then what the hell kind of array is this?"
Taking in his pale, bewildered face, Maya threw her head back and laughed—a dark, melodic sound that chilled him to the bone. "You really thought I was playing with your head? No, Setu, you know nothing of my Dao. I merely cast a shadow over reality and injected a sliver of my Origin Energy into your own men. My aura corrupted your perception."
Setu's breath hitched. He slowly turned his head to look at the mountain of butchered corpses. His brain outright refused to process it; to his poisoned eyes, they still looked like dead Mayas.
Then, Maya snapped her fingers.
The world shattered like frail glass. The crimson mist disintegrated into the wind. Reality snapped back into sharp, horrific focus. Maya stood exactly where she had been. Just behind her, resting casually against the rocky crags, were her two companions, Takshak and Vishakha.
Setu slowly turned back to the corpse mound. The illusion had fallen. The faces staring blankly back at him from severed heads and mutilated torsos weren't clones.
They were his subordinates.
He had spent the last several hours slaughtering his own elite unit. Setu stumbled back, his mind fracturing. "How...?" he whimpered, pointing a trembling finger. "How is this possible?! I killed you! I drove my spear through you! And my men were right behind me!"
"It gets worse, Setu," Maya crooned, stepping closer. "I marked you with my Origin Energy as well. Why do you think your men fought you with such desperate ferocity? They thought they were fighting me." She tilted her head, her smile turning predatory. "Isn't it poetic? Slaughtering your own loyal brethren with your bare hands. But then again, you've always had a talent for betraying your own family, haven't you?"
The revelation snapped whatever sanity Setu had left. With a feral, blood-curdling roar, he lunged. He poured every remaining drop of his Qi into a devastating thrust aimed right between her eyes.
Maya didn't even draw her sword. She casually raised her hand and pinched the razor-sharp tip of the incoming spear between two bare fingers.
A violent shockwave erupted from the point of impact, kicking up a massive cloud of dust and debris, but Maya stood rooted to the earth, entirely immovable.
Setu's eyes practically bulged out of his skull in sheer disbelief.
"Is that really all the power you possess?" she whispered.
Before he could comprehend her words, an invisible force lashed out. Without Maya even twitching a muscle, Setu's body ruptured. Two massive, intersecting lacerations carved through his flesh, as if he had been struck by an imperceptible, X-shaped cross-slash.
A thick torrent of blood surged up Setu's throat. He staggered, looking down at his ruined lower torso in absolute horror. "How..." he gasped. "How did you cut me... without drawing a blade?"
"The dead have no need for secrets," Maya replied coldly. "Just die."
But before she could finish him, the heavens directly above them violently tore open. The sky literally fractured, revealing a swirling spatial gate. A massive, heavily muscled man stepped through the rift, plummeting straight down toward the battlefield like a meteor.
Setu looked up at the falling titan, and a manic, bloody laugh erupted from his lungs. "Look at that!" he wheezed, ecstatic. "Let's see how you survive this apocalypse, Maya—!"
He never finished the sentence. With a negligent flick of her wrist, Maya's unseen blade sheared through both the steel shaft of his spear and his neck in a single, flawless motion.
Setu's severed head hit the dirt with a dull thud, his manic smile forever frozen on his face.