Helar's breath caught in her throat, her eyes widening with unadulterated shock. Before her stood Vrax—the legendary explorer whose name was whispered with equal parts reverence and dread across the realms, the very catalyst who had granted her the overwhelming powers she now wielded. Yet, the expression on his sharp, angular face remained chillingly detached.
"Do I know you?" Vrax asked, his voice flat and devoid of recognition. He tilted his head slightly, inspecting her as if she were a mere stone along a forgotten path.
The silence that followed felt heavy and suffocating. Helar took an instinctive step back, her fingers trembling before she tightly clenched them into fists. "You... you truly don't remember?" she stammered, the surreal terror of the moment crashing over her. "You are Vrax! You unlocked the arcana within me. What are you doing here?"
Vrax took a slow, deliberate step forward. The subtle pressure of his aura caused the ambient temperature to drop drastically, freezing the dust suspended in the air. "I am here to take back what is mine," he replied casually, as though discussing a trivial debt.
A wave of cold realization flooded Helar's veins. He intended to strip her of her essence. "You granted me this power!" she snapped, her shock instantly hardening into defiance. "It belongs to me now!"
"Does it?" Vrax's gaze remained vacant, almost bored. "I do not recall your face, girl. I only remember scattering fragments of my essence across various hosts when I had no immediate use for them. But times change, and my circumstances have evolved. I require those fragments back for a far grander undertaking. You were merely a vessel holding it in trust."
He didn't care who she was. To him, her life, her identity, and her struggles meant nothing—she was just a container holding a missing piece for his next grand scheme.
"Over my dead body," Helar hissed.
Before Vrax could complete his stride, Helar unleashed her energy. A violent torrent of searing crimson force erupted from her hands, tearing through the air directly toward him. The shockwave shattered the stone ground beneath their feet, blasting debris in every direction.
Yet, through the dense haze of her own attack, Vrax flickered out of sight.
He moved with terrifying, unnatural speed. In a fraction of a heartbeat, his towering silhouette materialized mere inches from her side, his outstretched hand reaching directly for her chest to harvest her light.
Helar's survival instincts screamed. She detonated a localized pulse of force beneath her boots, blasting herself backward through the air to open the gap. She hit the ground sliding, instantly summoning a barrage of kinetic lances and hurling them toward him to stall his advance.
Vrax sliced through her projectile barrage effortlessly, stepping forward with relentless precision. Every time he closed the distance with terrifying haste, Helar manipulated her powers to propel herself backward, weaving a labyrinth of barriers and explosive blasts to force him to stay away. She knew that if his bare hand made contact with her skin, it would be the end. She was fighting a titan, but she refused to let him reclaim what had become her very soul.