[Armed Eternals PoV]
I had already committed to the strike when I realized something was wrong.
My blade had cut cleanly through domains before. I had split worlds where filtration fields like this one were considered absolute. The horizontal arc of deathmist I released was not reckless, it was measured, layered, refined through centuries of combat. It should have shaved away that dome piece by piece, forcing collapse through attrition.
Instead, it stopped.
I saw everything unfold, and still I could not comprehend it.
This was a human, by every definition I knew, yet he stopped our attack as if it were nothing more than an inconvenience. Essence clung to him, threaded through every channel, every breath, every movement, and yet at the same time he wielded deathmist in quantities and purity that should have been impossible. The two forces did not clash within him. They did not repel each other. They coexisted.
That alone was unsettling.
I had noticed the sudden surge in his physical output when he activated whatever internal mechanism he relied on. His strength had spiked sharply, cleanly, as if a limiter had been lifted rather than a boost applied. That part, at least, I could analyze. Power surges were familiar.
But the deathmist...
That was the part I could not touch.
No matter how I extended my influence, no matter how I attempted to interfere at the conceptual level, the deathmist he commanded did not respond. It did not acknowledge me. It behaved as though it belonged to a closed system.
And that realization unsettled me far more than the blocked attack.
Because if I could not influence it, then neither could the domain.
And if the domain could not suppress him, then this battlefield was no longer under our control.
I narrowed my eyes.
I adjusted immediately, rotating my wrist and releasing a second strike, this one broader, reinforced with a secondary oscillation meant to destabilize layered defenses. The human answered by stacking shields, crude in shape, inefficient in design, but terrifying in effect. Each layer formed an answer to the last, not pre-prepared, but born in real time.
He was learning.
That realization sent a flicker of unease through me.
My partner moved then, stepping forward and throwing his punch. I felt the domain ripple as black deathmist lightning condensed around his fist, density climbing until space itself began to scream. That blow had cracked many before.
The human met it.
With a punch of his own.
Deathmist surged outward from his dome, coalescing into a massive fist that collided with my companion’s attack head-on. The shockwave tore across the base, ripping plating from the ground. I felt the feedback rattle my bones, felt the relay station strain to compensate.
And still, the dome held.
I stared.
This was no longer an anomaly. This was a problem.
His deathmist reserves hadn’t dipped in any meaningful way. I could feel it now, threading through the domain like a second bloodstream.
I saw the moment change before the human reacted.
The air around him tightened as if reality itself had braced, and that alone set my instincts screaming. I adjusted my stance, lowering my center of gravity, angling my blade just enough to draw every thread of deathmist toward it. Beside me, my partner straightened fully, the casual distance gone from his posture. We moved together without needing to speak.
Deathmist obeyed instantly, surging thicker, heavier, compressing until the surrounding domain bent under its weight. I felt the familiar pressure of a signature attack forming, the kind meant to end a battle, not prolong it.
I raised my sword, letting the deathmist spiral along its length, wrapping tighter and tighter until space itself warped near the edge.
"Oblivion Sever."
The beam erupted forward, vast and violently dense, tearing a line through space as it stabilized. I felt satisfaction then. This was a killing strike.
At the same instant, my partner stepped forward and raised his palm. Deathmist and black lightning condensed together, forging the shape of a colossal hand above him.
"Null Judgment."
The two attacks moved as one.
I expected resistance and struggle.
What I did not expect was the surge.
The human’s presence spiked violently, as if something inside him had been unshackled. I felt it through the domain, a sudden widening of pressure that made the deathmist around us hesitate for the briefest fraction of a second.
Two enormous palms formed in front of his dome, layered and reinforced, deathmist answering his will with terrifying obedience.
The beam struck.
Then the hand descended.
The collision was catastrophic.
The shockwave tore across the dead planet.
And when the light faded, the dome was still there.
Unbroken.
I stared, unable to hide my disbelief. That attack should have overwhelmed him. Should have torn through his defenses, destabilized his control, forced him into retreat.Instead, his deathmist hadn’t just resisted ours. It had refused to yield to my influence at all.
That was when the human spoke about time. Thirty seconds.
I understood then what he was doing.
Decoding.
My grip tightened on my weapon.
"We cannot allow this to continue," I said sharply.
He glanced at me. "You’re overreacting."
"No," I replied. "You are underestimating."
I felt it now, his will pressing outward, insistently. Testing the rules of the domain. Mapping them. If he found the flaw, this entire construct would become meaningless.
"Pull back," I ordered.
"What?" he snapped. "Why would we—"
"Because if he finishes decoding it, this base becomes his classroom," I said. "And we become examples."
That silenced him.
I turned and moved, retreating several kilometers in a single step. The others followed. Around us, the relay station began to respond, its deeper systems awakening as I authorised it.
This was no longer containment.
This was extermination.
I raised my hand and inscribed the runes myself. Not the shallow command rune the base used automatically, but the old ones. The ones etched into war-engines designed to kill Saints.
The massive ship behind us groaned.
Plates shifted. Seals broke. Ancient machinery screamed as it woke from dormancy. Above the base, the three deathmist spheres began to tremble, their rotation faltering as gravity inverted around them.
Concentric runes formed in the air before the ship, each one locking into the next with brutal finality.
The spheres responded.
Deathmist was ripped from them in catastrophic volume, streams converging into a single point above the weapon array. Space fractured as the beam formed, a line of annihilation dense enough to bore through a planet’s core and keep going.
I released it.
The beam screamed across the void, tearing toward the human’s dome with absolute certainty. I wanted him gone at once.
I watched closely.
At the last moment, something changed.
Behind the dome, a silhouette appeared.
A tablet.
Ancient. Vast. Its presence alone bent perception, its outline enough to make my instincts howl. The human raised his hand.
And the beam vanished.
Devoured.
A vortex formed, calm and merciless, swallowing the attack whole as if it had never existed. The deathmist that should have annihilated continents fed into it like a tributary into an endless sea.
That construct... that authority...
This was no experiment anymore.
This was a mistake.
We were no longer the hunters.
We were late.