Chapter 57: The Two Hunters Meet

Aden’s head tilted back. His eyes were no longer silver-ringed; they were solid, obsidian voids with a single, rotating silver spark in the center.

“So this is the ’Sun’s’ bite?” Aden—or the thing wearing him—spoke. The voice was layered, a thousand whispers beneath a single, mocking tone. “It tastes like stagnant water.”

“You—” the Saintess began, her voice trembling for the first time.

“Don’t speak,” the Entity-Aden interrupted. “Your frequency is a headache.”

He didn’t lunge. He simply flicked his wrist.

The Saintess, a warrior of the highest order, was sent cartwheeling through the air as if hit by a freight train. She slammed into a pile of rubble, her golden armor shattering like cheap porcelain.

The Entity looked down at Lorelei, who was still slumped against his chest. With a casual, almost bored motion, he touched her shattered shoulder. The silver fluid flowed into her wound, not healing it, but restructuring it.

’It’d be a shame if I lost such a useful tool,’ he thought.

“Stay,” he commanded, then turned his gaze back to the Saintess as she struggled to stand.

The Saintess roared, her divinity exploding in a desperate, final flare. She abandoned her blade, conjuring a massive spear of solid, white-hot light.

“Abomination! Return to the Void!”

She threw the spear. It moved at the speed of a lightning strike.

“I still use Resonance though. Doesn’t that make me like all of you?” He replied amusedly.

The Entity didn’t dodge. He didn’t even blink.

[Adaptive Resonance: Perfect Phase]

He stepped forward. The spear hit his chest and simply… passed through. He hadn’t turned intangible; he had manually adjusted his body’s frequency to exist in the exact ’gap’ between the spear’s light waves.

“You use your power like a club,” the Entity mocked, closing the distance in a blur of motion that left after-images of black smoke.

“A Tuning Fork is meant to be played, little lamb. Let me show you the symphony of your own destruction.”

He appeared in front of her. He didn’t punch. He placed a single finger on her breastplate.

“First movement: Dissonance.”

He released a micro-vibration. The Saintess’s internal organs didn’t rupture, they liquefied.

She coughed up a spray of gold-tinted blood, her eyes wide with a horror that went beyond physical pain.

She could feel her very Holy essence being turned against her, her own cells vibrating at a frequency that tore them apart.

“Second movement,” the Entity whispered, his grin widening until it looked physically impossible for a human face. “Silence.”

He grabbed her helmeted head. The liquid mercury on his hands flooded into her visor. He wasn’t killing her yet. He was Syncing her to the Sinking District.

“Aden was too kind,” the Entity chuckled. “He wanted to filter the pain away from people and himself. I prefer to show them the full weight of the world they built.”

With a violent shove, he didn’t throw her away, he pinned her frequency to the earth.

The Saintess collapsed, the weight of the entire district’s gravity suddenly centering on her body. The ground beneath her cracked into a crater as she was crushed by the literal weight of the atmosphere.

He stood over her, looking down at the Sun’s warrior who was now nothing more than a broken doll in a golden tin can.

“Other me couldn’t finish off such a weak girl? Quite disheartening.”

Up in the sky, the golden carriage began to descend. The Princess had seen enough.

The Entity looked up at the sun-shaped vessel, a chilling, melodic laugh echoing through the ruins.

“Finally,” he rasped, his hand twitching with a hunger that made Aden’s dormant soul shiver. “The main course.”

****

Elara had watched the entire scene.

“Is this what you wanted, Princess?” Vane asked in the driving seat, his tone clearly dissatisfied. “The entire Grey–Rock border would’ve been decimated if not for the barrier you deployed.”

Elara’s expression remained unreadable. Her eyes fixed on the body of the bleeding girl and the man she laid upon.

She couldn’t tell what exactly it was, but there was an overwhelming sense of familiarity yet looming presence of doom that oozed from him.

“Void energy… Do you know how rare it is to find one who uses it?” Elara mumbled.

Annoyance flashed in his eyes, but he managed to keep his anger in check. “There are logs of such warriors in the records, Princess, and you’ve gone through them—”

“But have you seen one?” Elara interrupted with a dangerous glint in her eyes.

A glint Vane was all too familiar with.

“This is not the time for this Princess. This exploration requires resources you’re not capable of affording.”

Elara looked out the window with a feverish gaze. “My Father would understand.”

Her eyes were watching carefully and then it happened.

Vane was still talking about the royal code and the punishments when the world outside the carriage window simply… broke.

“Princess!” Vane snarled, his hand already yanking the black-iron hilt from its sheath.

Elara ignored him. She pressed her palm against the glass. Below, in the center of the smoking crater, was the man.

“Void,” she whispered.

Then she watched the Saintess descend.

It was supposed to be a standard execution.

The Saintess was a high-tier harmonic, a master of the “Sun” frequency. Her blade should have turned that mess of a man into a quiet pile of ash.

But the man—Aden—wasn’t fighting back with skill. He was fighting back with rot.

Elara watched as Aden’s hand closed around the Saintess’s ankle. Through the carriage’s sensory enchantments, she felt the “Holy” divinity of the armor get eaten. It wasn’t a clash of powers; it was a parasite devouring a host. The gold turned to grey, then to nothing.

“He’s eating her,” Vane rasped, his eyes wide. “He’s not just resonating, Princess. He’s consuming the Law itself.”

The Saintess’s blade came down, but then a girl threw herself into the path. The wet thud of the blade hitting her shoulder echoed through the carriage’s acoustic crystals.

Elara didn’t flinch at the blood, but she felt the shift in the air. The man beneath the girl didn’t just scream. He inverted.

The silver sparks in his eyes vanished, replaced by a hollow, black depth that seemed to pull the light from the sky. The way he moved changed instantly. The desperation was gone. The jagged, clumsy pain was gone.

The Saintess’s blade passed through him.

“Vane,” Elara said, her voice steady despite the feverish glint in her eyes. “Look at his hands.”

The man flicked his wrist, and the Saintess—one of the Kingdom’s finest—was tossed aside like a broken doll. It was effortless. It was insulting.

“That’s not the same person…” Vane said, his voice dropping an octave as he moved to the door.

The man below stood over the Saintess. He didn’t finish her. He began to tune her.

Elara watched with a morbid, scientific fascination as the Saintess’s own golden divinity began to vibrate at a frequency that turned her internal organs into soup.

Elara watched as the Saintess dissolved from the inside out, her body unable to handle the dissonance the man was pumping into her.

“He’s using her as a tuning fork,” Elara mumbled, her breath fogging the glass. “He’s using a Saintess of the Second Stage of Harmonic Realm… to calibrate himself.”

The man looked up.

His eyes locked onto the golden carriage. In that split second, Elara felt a wave of cold, absolute doom wash over her. It wasn’t the fear of death; it was the fear of a predator that had finally spotted its real meal.

He laughed. A jagged, metallic sound that bypassed her ears and rattled her very soul.

“Open the door, Vane,” Elara commanded.

“Princess, you can’t be serious. That thing—”

“I said open the door,” she snapped, the glint in her eyes turning sharp and dangerous.

Vane’s hand remained fixed on the handle with a hesitant expression.

“You’re the one always harping about taking responsibility for my actions. If your words had even an ounce of sincerity, then open the damn door.”

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