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Mid-leap, Gideon Wolfe collided with something soft—but unyielding.His instincts screamed. He twisted midair, shoulder snapping sideways on reflex.
Beside him, Griffin froze—half a second too long.
That was all it took.
Something slick and wet brushed the back of Griffin's neck.Before he could react, it slithered into his ear canal—alive, pulsing.
A lightning bolt of paralysis shot down his spine.His limbs went slack. His mouth opened, but no sound came.
Through the flicker of tactical light, Gideon saw him—retreating fast, eyes blank, mouth open in silent shock.
Then everything fuzzed. Griffin's world faded to static.And black.
Behind him, Gideon caught a glimpse of something truly wrong:
Half of Ezekiel Grimm's face—charred beyond recognition.The other half? Smooth, intact… smiling.
A scorched arm and a flawless hand wrapped across Griffin's chest.A blood-slick, half-severed tongue slid from Gideon's own nape—reaching, burrowing into Griffin's skull.
Ezekiel's pale blue eye fixed on Gideon.
"Griffin, run!" Gideon roared—but no sound left his lips.
Griffin convulsed.The tongue pierced through, bursting from his opposite ear in a fountain of blood.
His eyes rolled back.His body went still.
Dead.
Rage detonated inside Gideon like a grenade.He poured everything he had into his Elemental command.
The forest exploded into motion.
Trees soared skyward. Roots twisted like serpents. Vines lashed through the air like blades.This was his domain. He should've been untouchable.
But legends didn't follow rules.
Obsidian Fiend shards flared at his collar, dampening the mental blowback—barely.Only 50% resistance. Not nearly enough.
What had he been thinking?
A mid-tier Elementalist, challenging Ezekiel Grimm without Soren?
He should've walked away the moment that plane exploded.
Instead, Griffin was gone. And he was next.
Gideon bolted.The jungle warped behind him—plants growing into barricades at his back, layer after layer of green steel.
Then—
Darkness.
His tactical terminal fizzled out. His surroundings blinked—once, twice.When they settled, the forest was gone.
Ezekiel stood ahead.
Half-charred. Half-whole. Tongue tasting the air.One glowing blue eye locked onto him.
Gideon triggered another sinkhole beneath the monster.He spun to run—
CRACK!
He hit something—hard.
Not stone. Not wood.Ezekiel's body.
It gave way like brittle charcoal—but it had already served its purpose.
Gideon staggered. Hesitated.
A perfect hand seized his ribs.
The vines didn't react. The trees didn't strike.None of it mattered.
His body was frozen.
That smile came closer.The tongue slithered into his nose, worming upward—
—and tore out through his eye socket.
His heart punched his ribs.Once. Twice.
Stopped.
Ezekiel's body vanished into a haze of pale gray mist.
The Fear Domain expanded. Doubled. Amplified by the Luminite crystals embedded across the forest.
So long as Ezekiel didn't move, no one could see the real him.They weren't fighting a man.
They were trapped in a nightmare.
The jungle—supercharged by desperation and flame—had become a graveyard.
One body lay nailed to a tree, skull split open like an overripe fruit.The other dangled from vines, bones shattered, skin draped like cloth.
And at the center of it all—
Ezekiel Grimm smiled.Half corpse. Half shadow.
And nowhere near finished.