The forest of Beacon Hills wasn't just a cluster of trees; it was a living entity, and tonight, it seemed to be conspiring to break me.
Branches whipped against my face, tearing skin, but I felt nothing. The cold fog entered my lungs like ground glass, but I didn't slow down.
The piiiii ringing in my head had transformed into a war drum, pulsing in sync with every beat of my heart, drowning out the distant sound of screams from the lacrosse field.
I had left them behind.
Lydia. Stiles. Scott.
Guilt tried to crawl up my throat, but rage swallowed it whole. They have the Alpha, I tried to convince myself. They have the plot armor. They survive. But Elias... Elias is my variable. If I don't stop him now, there won't be a season two for me.
I leaped over a fallen log, using a pulse of telekinesis to clear the path without losing momentum.
His gray suit was a beacon in the darkness, always thirty meters ahead, moving with an irritating elegance, as if he were strolling through a park rather than fleeing from an enraged mage.
"STOP RUNNING!" I roared, launching a sloppy Wind Blade in his direction.
The spell sliced through the air, hissing, but Elias didn't even turn around. He simply raised his left hand, casually, and the blade of air unraveled into a harmless breeze before it could touch him.
He was toying with me. Leading me exactly where he wanted.
And I, like an idiot, was following.
Finally, the trees opened up.
We arrived at an ancient clearing. The ground was packed dirt and exposed roots, illuminated only by the full moon fighting to pierce through the fog. In the center lay a large, flat stone, resembling a forgotten druidic altar.
Elias stopped.
He turned slowly, adjusting his cufflinks, brushing nonexistent dust from his shoulder. His smile was there, intact.
I stopped ten meters away, panting. Sweat ran down my back, soaking the expensive suit my mother had prepared with such care.
I took a deep breath, forcing oxygen to my brain, and invoked the mental HUD for the first time that night. I needed to know what I was dealing with.
[MP: 5,050 / 5,500]
Five thousand points.
It was a lot. More than any mage my age should have. It was enough mana to level a small building if I were stupid, or to win a war if I were smart.
But looking at the man in front of me, it felt like too little.
"Man..." Elias let out a long sigh, shaking his head in theatrical disappointment. He uncrossed his arms and took a slow step toward me.
"As the son of Marcus Salt, I thought this would be harder. I thought there would be resistance. Strategy. Some glimmer of inherited genius."
He paused, the smug smile widening to reveal teeth that were too perfect.
"But you are very dumb, Nathan. Truly. You fell for the most obvious trap possible. A low-frequency hum and a trail of crumbs? Seriously? I didn't even have to try."
Blood rushed to my head. The humiliation stung more than the forest cold.
"Shut up!" I roared.
I didn't wait another second. The 5,000 points of mana exploded in my right hand.
Kinetic Blast!
The ball of blue force left my hand like a cannon shot. It crossed the ten meters in a fraction of a second, tearing through the air with a high-pitched whistle, aiming straight for the chest of that impeccable gray suit.
The impact was brutal.
VOOOM!
Elias didn't dodge. The spell hit him square on.
I saw his body get thrown backward, folding unnaturally, and slam against the trunk of a centuries-old oak with a crack of broken bones that echoed through the clearing.
He slid to the ground, motionless.
I gasped, hand still extended, smoke rising from my fingers.
"You're the dumb one..." I muttered, feeling the adrenaline dip slightly. "For not raising a shield."
I took a step forward to check the body.
But then... the body shook.
Not like someone trying to get up. It vibrated.
The "Elias" lying on the ground began to glitch, the image distorting like bad television static. The broken arm shook violently and emitted a high-pitched sound, a screech of distorted frequency.
Zzzzzzt.
I stopped, confused.
Suddenly, the body came undone. Not into blood and flesh, but into sonic dust and echo. He simply evaporated into a wave of bass sound that made the ground tremble beneath my feet.
"Do you have any idea how long it takes to calibrate a Solid Resonance like that?"
The voice came from my left. Icy.
I spun around too fast, almost losing my balance.
Another Elias was stepping out from behind a thick tree, about fifteen meters away. He wasn't smiling anymore. The suit was spotless, but his face was twisted into a scowl of genuine irritation.
He looked at the spot where the "body" had disappeared and then locked eyes with me. There was hatred there now.
"That construct was a work of art," he hissed, his voice vibrating with dangerous intensity. "It was perfect. The cadence, the timbre, the density... and you blew it up with that... that primate brute force."
He adjusted his cufflinks with a sharp, aggressive movement.
"I was going to play with you a little longer, Nathan. Let you run, let you tire out, let you get scared..."
His aura flared up. Purple. Dark. Violent. The shadows around him began to tremble, reacting to the frequency of his anger.
"But you broke my construct," he said, taking a step forward, the fog retreating before him. "And I hate it when children break my toys."
He raised a hand, and the air in the clearing began to hum, heavy and suffocating.
"Now it's my turn," Elias whispered.
The sound didn't travel through the air. It traveled through the earth.
I felt the vibration rise through the soles of my shoes before I heard anything. The floor of the clearing behaved like the skin of a drum being struck by a giant.
"Seismic Resonance: Liquefaction."
The solid ground beneath my feet lost cohesion. The earth vibrated at such a specific frequency that it behaved like a liquid. My feet sank to the ankles, trapped in vibrating quicksand.
"Shit!" I growled, trying to pull my leg free.
Elias smiled, twisting his right hand as if turning up the volume on an old radio.
"Allegro."
The trees around me exploded into motion. They weren't ents or monsters; it was pure physics. He was using sound to whip the branches with sonic force. Dozens of branches as thick as human arms descended upon me at a speed that broke the sound barrier, cracking like whips.
I was trapped and about to be crushed.
"Vision Level 5: Activate."
The world slowed down. I saw purple sound waves traveling through the trunks, commanding the movement. I saw the frequency of the earth trapping my feet.
I couldn't block. Rigid shields would shatter under the vibration. I needed fluidity.
I squeezed the grimoire in my soul. Counter-Magic: Absorption Principle.
"Damping Vector!"
I didn't create a wall. I created a "cushion" of mana around me, a sphere of super-compressed, elastic air.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
The branches hit my sphere. Instead of breaking the barrier, they sank into it and were repelled with equal elastic force, ricocheting back violently.
I used the recoil. I injected mana into my legs, inverting local gravity for a microsecond.
"Ejection!"
I was spat out of the liquid earth like a bullet, rising five meters into the air.
"You jump high for a rat," Elias commented, his calm voice coming from everywhere at once. He was no longer in front of the tree.
He was moving. Or rather, he was vibrating through space. To my naked eye, he was a gray blur. To my Magic Vision, he was a human sound wave bouncing between the trees.
He appeared in the air, behind me, at the apex of my jump.
"But what happens when you lose the ground?"
He opened his mouth. There was no scream. There was a pressure cannon.
A sphere of solid sound, visible like heat distortion in the air, was fired point-blank at my back.
I had nothing to brace against to dodge. I was in freefall.
Think fast. Physics. Action and Reaction.
I twisted my body in the air, extending my right hand backward, toward his attack, and my left hand forward.
"Flux: Double Propulsion!"
I fired a blast of pure kinetic force against his attack.
My magic collided with his in mid-air.
KA-BOOOM!
The shockwave was devastating. The explosion created a momentary vacuum in the clearing. I was thrown forward like a ragdoll, but I used the momentum to spin and land on my feet, skidding on the dirt (now solid again) and leaving two deep furrows with my shoes.
Elias was thrown backward, but he used sound to "bounce" off the air, landing elegantly atop a high rock.
He wiped a trickle of blood from his nose. His smile was manic.
"Kinetic Force against Sonic Pressure," he laughed, eyes glowing neon violet. "Are we playing on equal footing, Salt? Your mana against my perfect technique?"
"Your technique is noisy," I retorted, shaking my hands to get rid of the numbness. The impact had made my bones vibrate. "And you talk too much."
"I am a Maestro," he spread his arms. His purple aura expanded, taking the shape of a ghostly pipe organ behind him. "And every symphony needs a crescendo."
He began to conduct the air.
The fallen leaves on the ground began to levitate. Thousands of them.
"Razor Dance: Cutting Frequency."
He infused every leaf with high-frequency vibration. The edges of the leaves blurred, transforming each one into a micro-circular saw capable of cutting steel.
He pointed at me.
The swarm of thousands of living saws shot toward me, a tornado of green and purple buzzing like a million wasps.
I swallowed hard. If that touched me, I'd be diced into cubes. Shields were useless; too many projectiles, coming from too many angles.
Analyze. Deconstruct.
I looked at the swarm. Each leaf vibrated individually, but they all obeyed a "master wave" that Elias was emitting.
I couldn't stop the leaves. But I could cut the Wi-Fi signal.
"Let's see if you like interference," I muttered.
I clasped my hands together, concentrating my mana into a tiny, dense point between my palms.
"Counter-Magic: Mana Electromagnetic Pulse."
It wasn't real electricity. It was pure pattern disruption.
I clapped my hands.
A pale blue shockwave, silent and fast, swept through the clearing.
When the wave hit the swarm of leaves, Elias's connection was severed. The sonic vibration died instantly.
The thousands of "razors" went back to being just dead leaves. The tornado collapsed in the air, and a harmless rain of dry leaves fell over me, covering my shoulders and hair.
Elias widened his eyes, the magic baton trembling in his hand.
"You cut my control frequency..." he whispered, incredulous. "You didn't block. You turned off the spell."
"I told you," I took a step forward, crunching the leaves. My mana began to swirl around me, aggressive, forming spears of blue light. "I see the structure, Elias. I see the strings you pull."
He snarled, frustration breaking the mask of the misunderstood genius.
"Then I'll just have to scream so loud you won't be able to think to cut anything!"
He leaped from the rock, coming at me with a solid sound dagger materialized in each hand.
I conjured a blade of pure flux in my right hand.
"Come on!"
We ran at each other. The clash between the Flux Blade and the Sonic Dagger in the center of the clearing lit up the forest with a blinding white flash, and the shockwave knocked down the nearest trees.
[...]
The lacrosse field was steeped in a damp, oppressive silence, broken only by the ragged, terrified breathing of Stiles Stilinski.
Low-lying mist covered the grass like a shroud, hiding the blood that was already beginning to stain the green turf.
Stiles was alone. His feet felt like lead, rooted to the earth, while his eyes went wide, unable to process the brutality of the image before him. The aluminum bat he held—a pathetic weapon against what he was facing—shook violently in his hands.
Ten meters away, Peter Hale stood.
The Alpha wasn't in his full monstrous form. He was in an intermediate form, much more disturbing. Human face, but with lupine contours, serrated teeth exposed in a calm smile, and eyes glowing a crimson red that pierced the darkness.
And in his arms, dangling like a broken ragdoll, was Lydia Martin.
Her expensive prom dress was torn at the side. Dark blood ran down her torso, dripping rhythmically onto the ground. Her pale neck was exposed, vulnerable, pulsing weakly under Peter's clawed hand.
"Let her go..." Stiles whispered, his voice failing, choked by panic. "Please... she has nothing to do with this."
Peter tilted his head, as if considering the request. He stroked Lydia's strawberry-blonde hair with the tip of a claw, a grotesque gesture of affection.
"Nothing to do with this?" Peter repeated, voice raspy and velvety, echoing with sadistic amusement. "Stiles, Stiles... you're the smart one of the group, aren't you? The detective. You should know that in this town, innocence is just a matter of time."
Stiles looked sideways, toward the dark forest, waiting. Praying.
"He's not here," Peter said, reading Stiles' body language with bored ease.
Stiles' heart skipped a beat.
"What?"
"Your savior. Scott." Peter let out a low, guttural laugh. "You're standing there with that ridiculous aluminum bat, waiting for the hero to show up at the last second to save the damsel and the best friend. But he's not coming, Stiles."
Peter squeezed Lydia's wound slightly. She let out an unconscious moan of pain.
"Do you know where he is right now?" Peter continued, voice dripping with venom. "He's in the parking lot. Or maybe in an empty classroom. He's too busy holding that teenage hunter's hand, swearing eternal love, ignoring phones, ignoring the world. His instinct is blinded by hormones and denial."
Stiles swallowed hard. He knew it was true. He had called Scott ten times. No answer.
"So..." Stiles tried to keep his voice steady, though he was crying with frustration. "If you know he's not coming... why hurt her? Why bring me here?"
Peter smiled.
"Ah, Stiles. You're still thinking linearly. You think I attacked Lydia to lure Scott."
With a dismissive motion, Peter threw Lydia's body to the side. He discarded her on the wet grass as if she were a trash bag that had served its purpose.
"LYDIA!" Stiles screamed, taking a step forward, but stopped when Peter growled.
"I didn't attack Lydia to lure Scott," Peter explained, walking slowly toward Stiles, wiping the blood from his claws on his own shirt. "Scott is a defective Beta. He runs from me. He runs from his own nature. He'd ignore the scent of blood from a girl he barely knows to stay with his girlfriend."
Peter stopped two meters from Stiles. The Alpha's shadow swallowed the human boy.
"I attacked Lydia... to lure you."
Stiles froze.
"Me?"
"You are the key, Stiles," Peter said, red eyes glowing with a cold, terrible logic. "You are his crutch. The human anchor. The only thing keeping Scott from losing himself completely or ignoring me forever."
Peter reached out, grabbing the aluminum baseball bat. With a light squeeze, he crumpled the metal like paper, ripping the weapon from Stiles' hands and tossing it away.
"Scott wouldn't come for her. But if he hears you scream? If he smells your fear and your blood?" Peter smiled, showing his fangs. "He'll come running. He'll run straight into my mouth."
Stiles backed away, tripping over his own feet.
"You want to kill him..." Stiles whispered, realization finally dawning. "You don't want to recruit. You want to kill him."
"Recruitment is for Alphas who need help," Peter snarled, voice deepening, becoming monstrous. "I have the Maestro now. I have magic. I don't need a whiny teenager. I need my spark back. I need to correct my mistake."
Peter lunged, grabbing Stiles by the shirt collar and lifting him off the ground with terrifying ease.
"And you, Stiles... you are the phone."
Peter opened his mouth, fangs glinting in the moonlight.
"Let's make a call. SCREAM!"
Stiles screamed.
It wasn't a scream of courage. It was a primal sound, torn from the bottom of his throat, driven by the absolute fear of seeing a monster's fangs inches from his face. The sound echoed across the empty lacrosse field, cutting through the fog and losing itself in the night.
Peter waited a second. Two.
He tilted his head, listening with supernatural hearing. Nothing. No answering howl. No sound of paws running on asphalt.
The Alpha let out a bored sigh and dropped Stiles.
The boy hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, coughing and clutching his throat, dragging himself backward in the mud until he bumped into Lydia's motionless body.
"Disappointing," Peter muttered, brushing imaginary dirt from his jacket. "Seems the bond of friendship isn't as strong as teenage hormones after all. Scott isn't coming."
He looked at Stiles and Lydia with the disdain one reserves for food scraps.
"Well... if the bait doesn't work, there's no reason to keep it fresh."
Peter cracked his neck. His claws grew a few more inches, gleaming in the moonlight.
"I'll do you both a favor. I'll start with the throat. It's faster."
He raised his hand for the final blow. Stiles closed his eyes, covering Lydia's body with his own, shaking.
But the claw never descended.
The air on the lacrosse field changed.
It didn't get cold like when Elias used death magic. It got heavy.
So heavy that Stiles felt the air being squeezed out of his lungs. The fog, which had been drifting softly, was crushed against the ground by an invisible, crushing pressure.
Peter froze. His wolf instinct, which had been screaming "alpha predator," suddenly switched to a low whimper of "prey."
"I made a promise to Chris Argent," a male voice, deep and calm, emerged from the shadows of the bleachers. "I promised I wouldn't interfere in the internal affairs of the werewolves in this town. Politics, territory, packs... none of that interests me."
Heavy footsteps echoed on the grass.
THUD.
THUD.
THUD.
Every step seemed to make the ground vibrate.
A man stepped out of the darkness. Impeccable suit, military posture, eyes glowing with an icy blue light that made the red of Peter's eyes look like a dim candle.
Marcus Salt.
He stopped five meters from the werewolf, hands in his pockets, exuding an aura of authority so dense it seemed to distort the light around him.
"However," Marcus continued, his tone dropping an octave, becoming dangerously soft. "I don't recall promising to let a mangy dog kill the only friends my son has in this miserable town."
Peter snarled, trying to fight the pressure holding him in place, but his knees shook.
"Salt..." the Alpha hissed, recognizing the scent of ozone and ancient danger. "The War Mage."
"Kneel," Marcus ordered.
It wasn't a request.
He took a hand out of his pocket and made a simple downward motion with his index finger.
CRACK.
Gravity multiplied tenfold over Peter.
The ground beneath the werewolf's feet gave way. Peter, with all his supernatural strength, couldn't resist. He was forced to his knees, hands clawing into the dirt to keep his face from being smashed into the mud. He roared with effort, veins bulging in his neck, but it was like trying to lift a mountain.
Stiles, eyes wide, watched the scene slack-jawed. Nate's dad wasn't fighting. He was dominating.
Peter, panting, looked up, hatred burning in his red eyes. He forced a bloody smile.
"Impressive..." Peter grunted, voice straining under the weight of the atmosphere. "You are strong, Marcus. I admit it. But you made a miscalculation."
The werewolf laughed, a choked sound.
"You're here. Playing babysitter to useless humans. Do you know where Elias is right now? Do you know what the Maestro is doing?"
Peter's smile widened, sadistic.
"He must be ripping your son's heart out at this very moment. Elias is a prodigy, Marcus. And you... unfortunately for you, Mr. Sorcerer Supreme... you can't be in two places at once. You chose to save the friends and condemned the son."
There was a deadly silence.
Marcus didn't blink. His expression didn't change. Not a muscle of worry, not a tremor of fear.
Slowly, a smile curved the War Mage's lips.
"Who said I can't?" Marcus asked, softly.
Peter's smile faltered.
"What...?"
"Nathan is safe," Marcus said, the certainty in his voice more terrifying than any scream. "I look after what's mine, Hale. Always."
Marcus took a step forward, the pressure increasing until Peter felt his ribs start to crack.
"Now, let's negotiate. I could kill you right now. Turn your bones to dust and scatter them in the wind. The world would be a better place. But... that would bring the Argents to my doorstep, and I hate visitors."
Marcus leaned in, face-to-face with the kneeling werewolf.
"I'm going to give you something you want. In exchange, you tuck your tail between your legs and get out of my sight before I change my mind."
Peter snarled, suspicious but interested.
"What could you possibly give me?"
"Derek."
Peter's eyes went wide.
"Where is he?" Peter demanded, the hunger for power returning.
"Kate Argent," Marcus replied. "She has him. Trapped in a basement under the old Hale house. She's torturing him right now, trying to extract information about the Alpha."
Peter absorbed the information. The chance for revenge against Kate and the chance to recover his nephew in a single move.
"You're giving me my nephew's location... to save these kids?"
"I'm giving you a target, Peter. Because if you're busy killing Kate, you're not bothering my son."
Marcus straightened up, withdrawing the gravitational pressure suddenly.
Peter took a deep breath, air rushing back into his lungs. He stood up slowly, wiping mud from his knees, his gaze flickering between fear of the mage and greed for the information.
"It was a pleasure doing business, Salt," Peter said, backing into the shadows, eyes fixed on Marcus.
"It wasn't business," Marcus corrected, voice cold as ice. "It was a warning. If I see you near Nathan or his friends again... there won't be enough gravity to hold back what I'll do to you."
Peter didn't reply.
He turned and ran, disappearing into the fog toward the Hale mansion, leaving behind only the scent of blood and fear.
Marcus stood still, watching the werewolf leave.
Only then did he turn to Stiles.
The boy was shaking, holding Lydia's hand, looking at Marcus as if he were a god or the devil himself.
"Mr. Salt...?" Stiles stuttered. "Sir... Nathan..."
Marcus looked at Lydia, then at Stiles. The coldness in his eyes softened a fraction.
"He's alive, Stilinski," Marcus said, turning his back. "Take care of the girl."
And with a crack of air that sounded like thunder, Marcus Salt vanished, leaving the field empty once again.
[...]
"Come on," I whispered, steadying my feet in the dirt, ignoring the pain in my ankle and the blood already soaking my shirt. "Spend it all."
Elias didn't answer with words. He answered with speed.
He shot forward.
The speed of sound at sea level is approximately 343 meters per second. The human brain, in situations of extreme stress, processes a visual image in about 13 milliseconds.
The math of that fight had just become a death sentence. I wasn't fighting a mage; I was fighting the barrier of human perception itself.
Before my brain could send the electrical command for my arm to raise a Flux shield, the world spun.
There was no sound of impact. The shockwave traveled faster than the noise it produced.
I felt my left shoulder explode.
It wasn't a sharp initial pain; it was a sudden, terrifying absence. The kinetic force of an invisible "Sonic Needle" punched through my clavicle, pulverizing the bone and disconnecting the nerves before the pain had time to reach my brain. The force of the impact spun me in the air like a discarded ragdoll and slammed me face-first into the cold, packed dirt of the clearing.
"Aaaargh!"
The scream came out ragged, mixed with dirt and bile.
I tried to roll over. Tried to focus. Desperately tried to summon the only advantage I had over him: information.
HUD. Status. Mana Report.
But the mental screen didn't obey.
The blue, comforting interface flickered violently, distorted into painful red static, and went black. Mental darkness descended. I was blind. I didn't know how much he had spent on that attack. Didn't know how much I had left to defend myself.
I tried to get up, putting weight on my right hand, the only one still working.
But Elias was already there.
He didn't run. He didn't need the vulgarity of physical effort. He floated on the residual vibration, gliding over the dead grass, appearing in front of me without making a single sound, like a ghost in a silent film.
The black wood baton descended in a lazy, almost elegant arc.
A blade of compressed vacuum tore the air.
It hit my right thigh. The cut was surgical, deep, severing the quadriceps muscle and grazing the femur with a vibration that made my teeth chatter.
My leg gave way instantly. I collapsed back into the mud, unable to stand.
Panic, cold, viscous, and real, took over. This wasn't a wizard's duel anymore. It was a slaughter. It was a butcher cleaning a piece of meat.
I rolled onto my back, gasping, the taste of copper and iron flooding my mouth. With a shaking hand, I conjured a desperate Flux sphere, fueled by pure fear, a thin barrier of compressed air between me and the monster.
Elias didn't even stop to analyze the defense. He just reached out with his free hand and slowly closed his fist.
The atmospheric pressure around me collapsed.
CRACK.
My shield broke like cheap glass under a hydraulic hammer. The pressure continued, ignoring the magic barrier, and squeezed my thorax. I felt a rib crack inward. The air was forced out of my lungs, leaving me suffocating, gaping like a fish out of water.
I was being crushed against the ground by a giant, invisible hand.
I looked at him.
Elias's face was a mask of absolute boredom. No anger. No sadistic pleasure. Just the bureaucratic efficiency of someone sweeping trash off the sidewalk.
He stopped a step away from me. His shadow covered my face.
I tried to speak. Tried to beg, curse, conjure, anything. Only blood bubbled on my lips.
And then, the atmosphere changed.
The air around Elias stopped vibrating with the clean kinetic energy of physical sound. The temperature plummeted ten degrees in a second. The smell of ozone and wet earth was replaced by something sweet, sickly, and rotten. The smell of old flowers in a closed coffin.
Elias raised the baton above his head. But he wasn't going to strike.
He opened his mouth, and his jaw unhinged slightly, unnaturally.
The purple mana around him darkened. Black veins, pulsing like necrotic arteries, began to climb up his arm, infecting the wood of the baton, turning it into a lightning rod for corruption.
He was going to use Forbidden Magic. The legacy of the Dark Maestros that made the Halloway family try to kill him.
"Whisper of the Abyss: Soul Frequency."
The sound didn't come from his mouth.
It came from inside my head.
It didn't enter through my ears. The sound was born directly in my cerebral cortex, a horrible dissonance, scratching like fingernails tearing silk, mixed with the distant weeping of a thousand agonizing voices.
It wasn't physical pain. It was existential violation.
I felt my soul vibrate. I felt my mana core, that sphere of blue light inside my chest, begin to crack. The frequency was tuned to undo the glue holding my vital essence to my body.
My vision darkened at the edges. Cold spread from my chest to my limbs. I couldn't move a finger. I was paralyzed, watching my own execution as the necrotic vibration ate my life, second by second.
I'm going to die, the thought floated in my numbed mind. This is how it ends. He's going to separate my soul from my body and leave me as an empty husk in this forest.
Elias saw the fear in my eyes. He saw the light of life begin to fade.
For him, that was the end. The Grand Finale.
He decided to wrap it up in a hurry.
He channeled everything. Absolutely everything that remained into that cursed frequency. The tip of the baton began to glow with a violet light so intense it looked like a black hole of energy, hissing and screaming, ready to deliver the mercy blow that would crush my skull and dissipate my soul once and for all.
A Fortissimo to end the symphony.
I closed my eyes. The HUD remained dead. Hope had died with it.
I felt the vibration reach its peak. The universe seemed to hold its breath.
Elias brought the baton down with full force.
I opened my eyes in the last millisecond, a useless biological reflex of one refusing to accept the end.
I saw the black wood descend. I saw the murderous, empty intent in his eyes. I saw death coming.
But halfway down... the hissing purple light at the tip of the baton flickered.
Stuttered.
Choked.
And went out.
The baton hit my forehead.
But there was no sonic explosion. No crushed skull. No rupture of the soul.
There was only the dry, hollow, pathetic, and insultingly mundane sound of wood hitting bone.
THOCK.
A normal hit. From a normal stick.
The wood cut the skin of my forehead. The impact made my head bounce against the mud. Warm blood flowed immediately, blinding my left eye.
But I didn't die.
Silence fell over the clearing. Absolute. Heavy. Suffocating.
The necrotic ringing in my head stopped instantly. The chill of death retreated.
Elias froze, locked in the pose of the final blow, the baton still pressed against my bleeding forehead.
His expression of boredom crumbled, fragmenting in slow motion. For the first time that night, the Maestro's mask fell. His eyes went wide in genuine, childish, terrified confusion.
He pulled the baton back, trembling.
He tried to conjure again. Flicked his wrist quickly, the gesture that should have evoked a blade of air.
Nothing. Not even a breeze. Not even a sigh.
He tried again. And again. Panic began to rise up his neck, visible in the veins that bulged. He looked at his own hands, turning palms up, shaking violently, not understanding why the music had stopped. Not understanding why the abyss no longer answered.
In that moment of absolute silence, the static in my mind cleared.
The system rebooted with a soft, digital ping that sounded like the most beautiful music in the world.
The HUD came back to life, floating in blood red, sharp and cruel, above the mute Maestro's head.
[MP: 0 / 3,000]
Zero.
The tank was dry. He had burned the last drop of vital essence on that blow that failed halfway.
I was broken. My shoulder was ground meat. My leg was sliced open. My ribs were broken. I was lying in my own mud and blood.
But my HUD, blinking in the corner of my vision, showed a critical, tiny, precious reserve.
[MP: 150 / 5,500]
Elias took a step back, tripping over his own leg, the useless baton hanging in his hand like a dead twig. He opened his mouth to speak, to scream, to command, but no sound came out. The magic was gone.
A slow, painful, grotesque, and bloody smile spread across my face, exposing my red teeth.
"The music is over," I whispered.
My knees shook, threatening to give way under the weight of my own broken body. My left shoulder was a mass of throbbing pain, and blood flowed freely from the cut on my forehead, blinding my eye.
But then, muscle memory, implanted not by training but by survival instinct, made my right hand go up to the nape of my neck.
My fingers, filthy with mud and blood, brushed the cold skin behind my neck.
It was there.
A small bump on the skin. A scar I had never noticed in the mirror, perfectly camouflaged.
Marcus. The paranoid old bastard.
He hadn't just placed a teleport anchor on my core. He had marked my physical body too.
I injected a tiny spark of mana into the scar.
The skin on my neck burned as if I had touched a hot iron.
"Argh!"
I screamed, arching my back, as the Rune of Physical Restoration activated. It wasn't a soft, divine healing light. It was violent. It was mechanical.
I felt my left shoulder pop loudly, the bone being forced back into place by raw magic. The muscle fibers in my thigh knit together and closed the deep cut in seconds. The broken ribs realigned with dry, painful cracks inside my chest.
I fell to all fours, breathing hard, cold sweat dripping from my nose.
The pain vanished, leaving only a phantom tingle. My body was whole again.
I looked at the HUD.
[MP: 150 / 5,500]
The rune healed flesh, not spirit. I was still on the reserve tank. But my body... my body was a functional weapon again.
I stood up slowly, rolling my newly healed left shoulder.
I looked at Elias.
He was still there, standing, looking at his own empty hands, trying to comprehend how a god had become mortal in a second.
I clenched my fists.
I pulled the last 150 mana points. Not for a spell. Not for a shield.
I wrapped my hands in a dense, vibrating layer of Flux. Gloves of pure kinetic force.
I advanced.
Elias tried to raise his arms to defend himself. A pathetic, human, slow gesture.
My first punch hit his stomach.
The sound was muffled and wet. The air left him in a groan. He doubled over.
The second punch, a right hook charged with mana, caught him on the chin.
I heard his jaw crack. Elias was thrown backward, landing on his back in the mud.
I didn't stop.
I mounted him. Pinned his arms with my knees.
And I started punching.
One.
Two.
Three.
Every punch was accompanied by a blue flash on my hands. With every impact, the arrogant face of the Dark Maestro came undone a little more. His nose broke. His lip split. His eye swelled instantly.
He tried to struggle, tried to scratch, but without magic, he was weak. He was just a skinny boy who had never been in a real fight in his life.
I hit with rage. Rage for attacking the school. Rage for hurting Stiles. Rage for making me feel fear.
His blood splattered on my face, hot and metallic.
I stopped with my fist raised for the tenth blow.
My breathing was the only audible thing in the destroyed clearing.
Was Elias unconscious? Dead? No, he was still breathing. A gurgling breath, choked on his own blood. His face was an unrecognizable ruin.
I stayed there, paralyzed, fist trembling in the air, blue mana flickering on my red-stained knuckles.
"Are you going to kill him?"
The voice came from behind. It wasn't loud. It wasn't aggressive. It was calm, deep, and solid like a mountain.
I didn't turn around. I knew that voice.
I lowered my arm slowly, but I didn't get off Elias.
"Did you come to stop me?" I asked, without looking back, my voice hoarse and failing. "Did you come to give me the hero speech? Say that 'we aren't like them'?"
I heard the sound of footsteps approaching on the soft earth. Expensive shoes. Military rhythm.
Marcus Salt stopped beside me, entering my peripheral vision. He looked down at the pitiful state of Elias Halloway with an indifference that froze my spine.
"No," Marcus replied. "I didn't come to stop you."
He put his hands in his pants pockets, observing the scene like someone evaluating a training session.
"If you want to survive in the Society of Magic, Nathan... if you want the name Salt to mean anything other than a target on your back... you're going to need to kill. Many times."
Marcus finally looked into my eyes. His icy blue met mine.
"Elias is a threat. He crossed the line. He tried to devour your soul. By ancient law, his life is yours."
He paused, letting the weight of the words settle.
"But I came to give you a choice. A real choice."
I looked at my clenched fist, at Elias's exposed neck. It would be so easy. A pulse of Flux to the carotid. The end.
"What choice?" I whispered.
"Do you want to do this now?" Marcus asked, in a tone almost soft. "Today?"
He crouched down, getting to my eye level, ignoring the wrecked body between us.
"Killing a man changes you, Nate. It's not a question of morality, it's a question of chemistry. Something breaks in here," he touched his own chest. "And it never gets fixed. The world loses color. Your friends... Stiles, Scott... they'll look at you and see the shadow. They'll know, even if you don't tell them."
Marcus looked at Elias, who let out a weak moan of pain.
"You can kill him. No one will judge you. I certainly won't. I'd actually be proud of the efficiency." Marcus turned his gaze back to me, intense. "But are you ready to stop being the Nathan who reads comics and become the Nathan who has blood on his hands? Because after that step, there's no going back. It changes you. It changes everyone around you."
I fell silent, feeling Elias's weak pulse against my leg. The mana in my hands began to dissipate.
Marcus stood up, his shadow covering us both.
"The decision is yours, son. His neck is right there. And no one is watching."
He stepped back, crossing his arms, and waited.
I looked at Elias's disfigured face. At the blood covering my own hands.
I felt the weight of Marcus's question. It changes you. It changes everyone.
The image of Allison smiling came to my mind. The image of Scott, with that unshakable moral code of "we don't kill." If I crossed that line now... I wouldn't be able to sit at the same table as them anymore. I would be just another monster in Beacon Hills, just with a different grimoire.
But I couldn't let him go either. He was too dangerous. He was a prodigy. Even without magic, his mind was a weapon.
I took a deep breath, the cold night air clearing the red mist from my vision.
"You're right, Dad," I said, my voice low and hoarse. "Death is a definitive change."
Marcus nodded, crossing his arms, waiting for the final blow that would break the boy's neck. He thought I had accepted his military logic.
But I opened my fist.
The blue mana in my hands dissipated, transforming into something more surgical.
"But death is also too easy a silence," I completed, kneeling over Elias's chest again. "And I don't want to give him the rest of silence. I want him to live in silence."
Marcus frowned, curiosity shining in his icy gaze.
I looked at Elias. He was semiconscious, trying to focus his swollen eyes on me, not understanding why he was still breathing.
I grabbed his right wrist. The wrist that held the baton. The wrist he used to conduct death.
"A maestro needs hands, Elias," I whispered, looking deep into his eyes.
I invoked a needle of pure mana at the tip of my index finger.
"Nerve Collapse: Terminal Cauterization."
I pressed down.
I didn't break the bone. I burned the nerves. I sent a discharge of surgical mana straight into the tendons and neural pathways connecting his hands to his brain and the flow of motor magic.
Elias screamed. It was a high-pitched scream, full of horror, not from physical pain, but from absolute functional loss.
I did the same with the left hand.
I let go of his arms. They fell into the mud, useless. Dead. The flesh was intact, but the connection was cut forever. He would never conduct a symphony again. He would never draw a rune again.
But I didn't stop there.
Elias was still whimpering, staring at his paralyzed hands, when I placed my open palm directly over his sternum. Over his heart.
Over the Core.
Marcus took a step forward, realizing what I was going to do. His smile grew.
"And a mage..." I continued, feeling the weak pulsation of Elias's corrupt purple mana under my hand. "A mage needs a soul."
Elias widened his eyes. Real fear, the fear of the abyss, took hold of him.
"No..." he choked out, blood bubbling on his lips. "Please... kill me. Kill me, but don't do this!"
"Too late to ask for favors," I replied coldly.
I closed my eyes and focused.
"Core Rupture: Total Dissipation."
I didn't use brute force. I used Flux. I inverted the rotation of his mana. I forced his core to spin backward, against its own nature, until the structure could no longer withstand the centrifugal pressure.
I felt something crack inside his chest. Not a bone. Something deeper. Like thin glass shattering inside a steel box.
CRACK.
Elias arched his back, mouth open in a silent scream.
The purple light in his eyes flickered one last time and went out. His aura, that heavy and corrupt pressure, evaporated instantly, leaving only the cold void of a common human.
I removed my hand.
Elias collapsed in the mud, gasping, empty. He was a husk. A human. A "muggle." The music was gone forever.
I stood up, wiping the blood on my pants. My bones ached, but I felt strangely light.
"He's alive," I said, turning to my father. "But he'll never hurt anyone again."
Marcus looked at Elias, who was trembling in a fetal position, hugging his own empty chest. Then, the War Mage looked at me.
For a second, silence hung between us.
Then, Marcus smiled. Not the smile of a father proud of a good son. But the smile of a predator recognizing another.
"Worse than death," Marcus murmured, approving with a slow nod. "Stripping the magic from a Halloway is condemning him to a life of psychological torture. Cruel. Creative. Very... Salt."
He walked over to Elias's body and grabbed him by the collar of his torn suit, lifting him off the ground with humiliating ease, like a trash bag. Elias didn't even react; he was catatonic.
"What are you going to do with him?" I asked.
"I'm taking him," Marcus replied, voice casual. "The Argents would kill him. The Society would imprison him. But I... I have some questions about where he got those Eastern European grimoires. And now that he has no magic to protect himself, he's going to be very communicative."
Marcus held Elias firmly and looked at me. The teleport aura began to distort the air around him, bending the light.
"Coming along?" he offered. "Dinner's going to get cold. And your mother will want to know if you still have all your limbs."
I looked at the dark forest, in the direction of the lacrosse field. In the direction where I knew Stiles, Scott, and Lydia were.
I was exhausted. I wanted to go home. Wanted to sleep for a week.
But I had left them behind. I had abandoned the script. And now, I needed to see what was left.
"Not yet," I replied, shaking my head. "I have business to attend to here."
Marcus held my gaze for a moment. He saw there was no point arguing.
"Don't be long, Nathan," he said, voice turning serious. "The night is over, but the war has just begun."
With a crack of air that sounded like muffled thunder, space folded in on itself.
Marcus Salt and the empty husk of Elias Halloway vanished, leaving behind only the smell of ozone and burnt earth.
I stood alone in the destroyed clearing.
The silence of the forest returned, but it was different now. It wasn't threatening. It was respectful.
I looked at my hands. They were still trembling slightly.
I breathed in the cold night air, feeling the pain of being who I was, and started walking back to the field. Back to my friends. Back to the consequences.