Shane's black eyes gazed with murderous intent toward the emperor, his sword's tip aimed at the emperor's throat.
But as expected, the emperor caught the blade with his bare hand with casual ease, and not a single drop of blood fell despite the force Shane had driven into the strike. By all rights, that force should have drawn blood the moment the blade met skin, yet the emperor had caught the blade without so much as a flinch.
Immediately, guards appeared around Shane, their swords unsheathed and leveled at his head.
With casual ease, the emperor rose from the sofa and with his free hand waved the knights away. Then, from the hand that still held the sword's blade, he pushed it aside and away from his throat toward the ground. Shane was stunned at how effortlessly it was done, for despite how tightly he had been gripping the hilt, the sword had slipped free from his hand as though it had never truly been his to hold, and it clattered to the ground at his feet.
The emperor took a step toward him. Shane readied himself to dodge at any moment. He knew he should not have pointed the sword at the emperor himself. It was an act of treason severe enough to strip him of his title and bring ruinous sanctions down upon his grand ducal house.
But the emperor had been too cocky. He had dared to tarnish Alex's name right in front of Shane, and as a father, Shane could not let that pass so easily as the emperor was adamant on mocking the child with no empathy or care. How could Shane keep himself in check? He wanted nothing more than to cut the tongue from the emperor's mouth.
The emperor stopped before Shane, and within a tenth of a blink the emperor placed his hand on Shane's shoulder before Shane could so much as shift his weight to dodge. The speed was something beyond natural, as though the emperor had manipulated time and space itself simply to close that small distance. Shane, despite being a paragon rank, found himself utterly unable to evade it.
And then something unthinkable happened. The world around Shane changed in an instant. Everything was swallowed into darkness, and the emperor stood before him wearing that same unreadable expression, yet Shane could feel with quiet certainty that the emperor was deeply amused by the shock written across Shane's face.
Then the emperor who had stood before him dissolved into the darkness, and when the darkness lifted, Shane saw him seated upon a vast white throne, its back jutting upward like a spear aimed at the sky, carved from a material Shane could not identify or name. Shane's eyes traveled to the emperor who sat lazily upon it, both hands draped over the armrests, his back pressed against the throne and his head tilted back as though he were merely resting after a long afternoon.
And, the emperor's black pupils had shifted into a swirling collision of white and black, two colors warring against each other for dominance, and his white moonlit hair had taken on that same divided shade, as though neither color was willing to surrender its claim.
Shane's eyes swept to the surrounding world and he drew in a sharp breath. He was no longer in the drawing room. He was somewhere else entirely. The sky above was a fractured blend of black and white with no sun, no moon, nothing, yet the sky itself seemed to bleed a pale and sourceless light down upon the land. Around him stretched a vast wasteland where weapons of every kind had been driven into the dark earth and sealed there, and scattered haphazardly across the ground were skulls and skeletons lying perfectly still, as though they had always been there and always would be.
"Where am I?" Shane called out, reaching inward to summon his sword, Darkred, the half-sentient blade bound to him through his own blood. But no matter how much he called for it, the sword did not stir, did not answer, did not come. That should not have been possible. The only explanations were that he was separated from it by an incomprehensible distance, or that he had been pulled into an entirely different dimension, something akin to the inside of a gate.
The emperor yawned and rested his chin on his right hand. "Don't you know? You should be able to tell by now exactly where you are trapped," he replied, his voice carrying the effortless weight of mockery.
Shane clenched his fist. He already had his suspicions, but no matter how much he tried to accept them, he found himself wholly unable to believe it even by a fraction.
"Why such hesitation on your face," the emperor said, not as a question, and then added with boastful and unhurried pride, "Can you truly not bring yourself to believe that you are standing inside my soul manifestation?"
Shane felt the hairs on his body rise as his suspicions were confirmed aloud. A soul manifestation marked one's entry into the quasi-demigod rank, something that only began at level 1000, a feat so rare that not a single member of the Drakethorne grand ducal house had achieved it in over two hundred years.
The blood drained from Shane's face. He himself stood at only level 720, and even that felt like a hollow achievement given that it had been nearly fourteen years since he had stepped into the paragon rank at level 700. Fourteen years, and he had advanced by only twenty levels. Yet the emperor, a man of around his own age, had already reached level 1000 and perhaps surpassed it by several levels beyond that.
Even Shane's father, Ragnar, had not managed to reach level 1000. So, how could this be possible?
Shane's finger rose and pointed at the emperor, trembling visibly. "You are using some skill to deceive me," he accused, which in itself amounted to yet another act of treason. He had long since lost count of how many times he had spoken to the emperor with open defiance and without reserve since their unannounced meeting began today.
Most men tread with painstaking caution around the emperor, but ever since the emperor had bound Shane's son to the princess through a marriage agreement when Alex was barely born, Shane had surrendered every last trace of respect he might have held for the man. His hatred ran deep, fed by years of quiet fatherly fury.
The emperor closed his right hand into a fist and drove it forward through the air in Shane's direction, and Shane, standing far across the wasteland, was hurled backward as though struck by a physical blow despite no physical contact from the emperor's fist.
Shane's body bent in a sharp arc as the force took him, and he hit the dark ground hard, skipping and tumbling across it before he could even process what had happened.
Shane drove his hands into the earth and forced his body to stop, leaning forward and lifting his eyes slowly back toward the throne.
"Now," the emperor said, with the same unhurried calm he had worn from the very beginning, "do you believe me?"
***
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