Chapter 40: Verdict in Absentia
Chapter 40: Verdict in Absentia
The last monster went down.
Laira stood amid the purple ash, panting. Monster corpses lay piled on top of one another all across the mountain crevice, the shards of purple-black crystal on their backs slowly going dark, dissolving into smoke. The red flame around her body also died down, exposing the full extent of her wounds: the torn wing in tatters, the cracked and shattered scales, dried blood caked in patches on her dress.
But she was alive.
All three of them were alive.
Inside the cave, Ethan released [Resonance]. The very moment his eye stopped locking targets, the pain pent up throughout the whole battle came rushing back, and he slumped backward, leaning against the stone wall. The red veins on his skin faded, only flickering faintly in time with his heartbeat.
Mira hurriedly steadied him. "You did it. Ethan, you did it."
Ethan didn’t have time to answer.
Because the ground began to shake.
Not the footsteps of monsters.
This time, space itself was shaking.
Ethan raised his head and activated the [Eye of Truth] through his exhaustion. What he saw made the blood in his body run cold. The boundary lines of the Anomalous Coordinate, already unstable, were now twisting. The gray sky was cracking apart in patches. The distant ruins began drifting, colliding, dissolving, then reappearing in different positions.
And above all of it, at the highest point his sight could reach, a colossal pupil was opening.
The Void Eye was no longer releasing monsters.
It was bending this coordinate itself with its own hand.
"It wants to crush us along with the whole space." Ethan said, his voice thick and hoarse. "Laira!"
She was already at the mouth of the cave.
She didn’t need him to finish. Laira rushed in, one arm hauling up Ethan, the other pulling Mira, her wings, both the healthy one and the broken one, spreading open together despite the pain.
"Hold on tight." She growled.
Then she shot straight out of the cave, into the middle of the collapsing storm of space, chasing after the single faint stable point that Ethan’s [Eye of Truth] could still make out on the shattering horizon.
Behind them, the cave, the crevice, the entire mountain, were swallowed into nothingness by that pupil.
On a plane higher than every coordinate, every world, the Void Eye did not give chase.
It had turned its attention elsewhere.
Before its "eye," a river flowed. A river with no water. It was woven from countless threads of light, each thread a life, a choice, a future taking shape. The river of fate flowed forward according to its own order, an order that even the Void, all this time, had only stood outside and observed.
In the middle of the current, one red thread of light was burning brighter than all the others.
Ethan’s thread.
It should have gone out. It should have gone out long ago, a cast-off child, a Black Iron left behind in an Anomalous Coordinate with fatal wounds. The order of the river had already decreed that ending.
But the red thread still burned. And it was beginning to pull the other threads toward itself.
The Void Eye watched this for a long time.
Then, for the first time, it did something it had never done.
It intervened.
A tendril of purple-black, thin as silk, endlessly long, reached out from the darkness. It didn’t touch Ethan’s red thread, that thread burned too hot to touch. Instead, it slipped down to the upstream, into the threads of light surrounding it, and gave a faint stir.
Just one stir.
The river of fate instantly fell into chaos. The threads of light that had flowed smoothly began to tangle into one another, snap, braid together in the wrong places. Futures that should never have met now slammed into each other. Choices that should never have happened were now pushed forward.
The Void Eye withdrew its tendril.
It didn’t need to kill Ethan with its own hand.
It only needed to throw the current around him into chaos, and let his own kind finish the rest of the work.
Safe Zone No. 7. Headquarters of the Earth Shield Council.
The broadcast lenses lit up.
Gerald Greaves sat straight-backed before the camera, his black coat crisply pressed, his face grave and composed. This was the face of a Tier 5 Elite, a longtime Council member, a man the public had grown used to trusting.
No one noticed that, when he blinked, deep in his pupils a flicker of purple light briefly gleamed.
Very small. Very fast. Like something looking out at the world through his eyes.
"Councilor Greaves," the host spoke up, "the public is very anxious about the incident at the transfer anchor point. Can you confirm what happened?"
Gerald nodded, slowly.
"I’ll speak plainly, because the people deserve to know the truth." His voice was low, clear, without a trace of agitation. "My son, Nolan, along with two other elite trainees, was attacked in an Anomalous Coordinate. The attacker’s name is Ethan Ashford."
The screen behind him displayed a name, and beside it, lines of data.
"I know many of you have heard this name." Gerald continued. "A few days ago, Aurora Academy recorded a stunning event: a trainee opened a Partner Blind Box that reached Mythical rank. That was Ethan Ashford."
He paused a beat, letting that figure sink into the viewers.
"A Mythical rank Partner. Something all of human history has recorded only six times. Plus a special rank S item that he obtained. One individual, at the age of twenty, suddenly holding in his hands a power far beyond any framework of control."
The host swallowed. "But sir, great power doesn’t necessarily mean..."
"Correct. Power is not a crime." Gerald cut in, mildly. "I agree. The problem does not lie in his power. The problem lies in what he uses it for."
The screen changed. Footage of Nolan and Victor being brought out of the transfer gate, covered in wounds, arms broken, armor cracked.
"These are two outstanding trainees from two great clans. Gravely wounded and left behind by Ethan Ashford. And there is a third trainee, Miss Mira Vale, a young healer, who is still being held captive by him in the Anomalous Coordinate."
This was where the absurdity reached its perfection. Because every figure Gerald put forward was true. Ethan did have a Mythical Partner. Ethan did have a rank S item. Nolan and Victor did return covered in wounds. Mira was indeed staying in the Anomalous Coordinate.
All of it was the truth.
Only the connection between them was a lie.
And not a single person in the studio, not a single viewer in front of the screen, had been present in the Anomalous Coordinate to know that Nolan’s arm was broken because he fired first, that Victor’s arm was broken because Ethan blocked a bullet for Mira, that Mira stayed behind because she refused to be complicit in a murder.
The truth wasn’t present here to defend itself.
There was only Gerald, and his numbers.
"We have analyzed the subject’s psychological and behavioral profile." Gerald said, his voice growing heavier. "Ethan Ashford grew up in resentment. He resents the clan that bore him. He resents those more successful than him. And now, upon suddenly gaining power, that resentment has erupted. He no longer regards himself as a part of human society."
A flicker of purple gleamed across the depths of his eyes again.
"I have to use a word I don’t want to use. But my responsibility to the people compels me to say it." He looked straight into the lens. "Ethan Ashford harbors ideology against humanity. He is a latent threat, and that threat is growing day by day in the Anomalous Coordinate, where he can absorb power with no one watching."
"So... what does the Council intend to do, sir?"
Gerald placed both hands on the table, interlacing them.
"This very day, I have signed the decision to form a special task force. Their mission is to enter the Anomalous Coordinate, locate Ethan Ashford, rescue Miss Mira Vale, and deal with the threat before it becomes impossible to stop."
"Deal with... meaning?"
For a moment, Gerald was silent.
Then he spoke, in the most composed, most mild tone, the tone of a father worried for an entire city:
"Meaning we cannot wait until he matures. Once he fully masters that Mythical power, no task force will be able to stop him. Our chance is now, while he is still weak."
He lifted his head.
"I know some will say this is a verdict in absentia. That we haven’t heard him defend himself. I understand that worry. But let me ask in return: if you had a child in that person’s hands, would you want us to wait any longer?"
The studio went silent.
And in the millions of homes across Safe Zone No. 7, people nodded.
Because the story was so easy to understand. A lowly, cast-off wretch suddenly gains heaven-sent power, then turns to tear apart his own kind. A brave father steps forward to protect the community. An innocent girl who needs rescuing.
No one wanted to hear a more complicated story.
No one wanted to know the truth, if the truth demanded they doubt what was easy to believe.
This was exactly what Marcus had told Cole weeks ago. The truth matters less than the perception of the majority. And the majority had already made their choice.
Military transfer anchor point. Three hours later.
The spatial vortex opened, blue and stable.
Before it, the task force stood in orderly ranks. Eight Gold-tier Awakened, heavy combat armor, next-generation energy weapons. Behind them were fifteen Silver-tier personnel, the support and containment formation. This was not a rescue team. This was a machine built to hunt and kill one single target.
At the end of the Silver ranks, a young man gripped the weapon in his hands tightly.
Ryan Ashford.
The rank S flame emblem was still pinned on his chest, but now beside it was a brand-new Silver insignia, something he had achieved after his own ceremony. He had caught up. He had stepped onto the Awakened path, exactly as the clan expected.
But no one mentioned that anymore.
Because the name on everyone’s lips now was not Ryan Ashford, the fire-element genius.
It was Ethan Ashford, the one who opened a Mythical Partner.
Ryan looked into the blue vortex, and in his heart, the emotion churning was not justice, not the duty to protect humanity like the flowery words on television.
It was envy.
His whole life he had been raised to become the brightest jewel of the Ashford clan. His whole life he had looked down on his half-brother, the one who had to work extra shifts in a warehouse to pay tuition. He had grown used to standing above. He had grown used to Ethan standing below.
Then in a single day, everything reversed.
Ethan opened something only six people in all of human history had ever had. Ethan became the name the entire Safe Zone spoke of. And the rank S emblem on Ryan’s chest, once his source of pride, suddenly became laughably small.
He couldn’t bear it.
"Don’t worry." A Gold-tier standing nearby patted Ryan’s shoulder, misreading the tension on his face. "I know he’s your brother. This is hard for you. But you did the right thing volunteering to join. For humanity."
Ryan nodded, lowering his face to hide his eyes.
"Yes." He said softly. "For humanity."
But in his head there was only one thought, repeating over and over, dark and clear.
Before he can get any stronger. Before he becomes something I can never reach.
I have to be the one to end him.
If Ethan died in the Anomalous Coordinate, at the hands of the task force, laden with the full charges of crimes against humanity, then history would record that the Ashford clan had once given birth to a monster, and that it was the younger brother himself who personally eliminated it. That Mythical Partner would be reduced to nothing more than a footnote. And Ryan would be the hero.
The name Ethan Ashford would be wiped clean.
And Ryan would once again be the only jewel.
"Task force." The lead Gold-level commander gave the order. "Target: Ethan Ashford. Charges: seizure of resources, assault on elite trainees, unlawful detention of a citizen, and threatening the security of humanity. Prioritize rescuing the hostage. For the primary subject, maximum use of force is authorized."
He paused, then added one sentence, the kind of sentence that turned the entire operation from "containment" into something else entirely.
"If the subject resists, taking him alive is not necessary."
No one objected.
No one asked why a target "in need of trial" was permitted to be killed on the spot.
No one remembered that standing on the other side of this vortex was a twenty-year-old young man, missing one arm, carrying within him a Void wound that would never heal, who had only just crawled up from the brink of death.
Twenty-three people stepped into the vortex.
The blue light swallowed them.
And on the other side, in an Anomalous Coordinate that was falling apart, Ethan Ashford, who didn’t yet even know the whole world had just sentenced him to death, was being carried in flight from the eye of a god by a dragon with a broken wing.
Two currents of fate, that should never have met, were now hurtling straight toward each other.
Exactly as a purple-black tendril had arranged.