Chapter 103: "You haven’t seen dangerous."
Karl’s wings tore the air apart as he closed the distance, a molten blur of muscle, scale, and heat.
The ground shook under each stride, talons carving into stone like it was wet clay. His roar was a rolling quake, a sound that made even the shattered walls tremble.
Lucian didn’t flinch. His eyes tracked the dragon’s every move, the edges of his vision already warping.
Karl’s claw came first—a sweeping hook that would have ripped a lesser man in half. Lucian’s outline flickered, and the strike passed through the afterimage he left behind. But he wasn’t simply moving fast. Space between them folded in on itself, bending his path so that Karl’s strike couldn’t even land in the right universe.
Karl spun with the miss, tail whipping toward Lucian with enough force to shatter a fortress wall. Lucian’s hand snapped up, two fingers extended, and the space around the tail collapsed into a thin, impossible line. The tail passed through it—emerging meters away, cutting into empty air.
Karl’s eyes flashed molten fury. He leapt high, wings snapping once to launch him above the ruins. His body twisted midair, and then he came down in a killing dive, jaws wide, white-gold fire flooding his throat.
Lucian raised a single hand, palm up.
Time around Karl stuttered, his dive dragging like someone had slowed a film reel. The fire in his throat flickered at a crawl, spilling out in slow, thick streams.
Lucian stepped forward into that slowed world. He was no longer walking on the ground—his boots touched thin, silver threads stretched across the air itself, a bridge of folded space only he could see. He walked right up to Karl’s side mid-dive and slammed his fist into the dragon’s ribs.
The sound came after the impact—a deep, delayed boom as time caught up. Karl’s body jolted sideways in the air, crashing into a half-toppled building, pulverizing it in a burst of dust and flame.
But the dragon wasn’t done.
Karl rolled to his feet, wings spreading to their full monstrous span. He exhaled, and the air shimmered under a wave of pure heat. His claws dug deep into the ground before he lunged again, zig-zagging so fast the air itself screamed from the pressure.
Lucian lifted his right hand, twisting his fingers slightly. Reality ahead of Karl fractured—multiple planes of space layering over each other like shards of glass.
Karl’s charge smashed through the first layer and instantly reappeared behind Lucian, but Lucian was already gone. Space shifted like a curtain pulled sideways, putting Karl back where he started without him realizing the path had looped.
Karl’s eyes widened. "You—"
Lucian cut him off by snapping his fingers. A black sphere bloomed in the space between them, small and dense, dragging everything toward it. Chunks of street, debris, even the heat waves themselves bent into its pull. Karl dug his claws in, resisting, but Lucian’s palm turned upward and the sphere inverted, spitting the gathered mass out in a concentrated blast.
The explosion caught Karl across the chest, staggering him back a full ten meters.
The dragon snarled and leapt high again. This time, he didn’t dive—he twisted midair, wings beating with brutal precision, and spat a storm of molten fireballs the size of carriages. They rained down in dozens, each one an inferno.
Lucian didn’t move to dodge. The air around him rippled as invisible threads of time bent in a web. Each fireball that entered it froze midair, locked in suspended moments like a cluster of suns hanging in place.
Karl landed and charged again. Lucian flicked his wrist, and all the frozen fireballs reversed their paths, streaking back toward Karl in a swarm of his own attack.
Karl threw his wings around himself, molten feathers shielding him as the impacts rattled the battlefield. Each explosion sent a wave of force in all directions, carving deeper craters into the already broken ground.
When the smoke cleared, Karl’s scales glowed with heat, his breathing heavier. "You’re dangerous," he rumbled, voice vibrating through the air.
Lucian’s expression didn’t change. He stepped forward, the ground folding in small ripples under his boots. "You haven’t seen dangerous."
Karl’s roar split the sky. He surged forward on all fours now, pure animal fury driving his speed. His claws gouged trenches as he slashed, each strike paired with bursts of burning wind.
Lucian’s left hand cut the air, and a rectangular tear opened—a dimensional mirror. Karl’s claw slammed into it, but emerged from a second tear above his own head, nearly impaling himself. The dragon pulled back with a snarl, but Lucian was already inside his guard.
Lucian’s palm pressed to Karl’s chest again, this time twisting twice. The world buckled inward—the street, the buildings, even the air compressed into a crushing point. For a second, there was no sound, no light, nothing but the implosion. Then it snapped back outward, throwing Karl across the district like a comet.
Karl smashed through three structures before his claws dug deep enough to halt his slide. His head lifted, molten eyes locked on Lucian. "You’re toying with me."
Lucian said nothing.
Karl’s wings snapped once, and suddenly he was above Lucian. His jaws opened wide, fire gathering in a dense, concentrated beam—his breath attack at full power.
Lucian turned his palm upward and twisted. The beam shot down... and vanished into a spiraling rift in the air, reappearing behind Karl, slamming into his own back. The blast drove him toward the ground, smashing him into the cracked earth hard enough to send a mushroom cloud of dust and stone skyward.
When it settled, Karl lay in a deep crater, his chest rising heavy. But the dragon’s grin was still there. "Not bad," he rasped, forcing himself up. "But if you’re not going to finish me—"
His claw shot forward, and this time Lucian didn’t dodge in space.
He stepped into time.
The world around him froze. Dust hung motionless, the heat waves still, Karl’s claw suspended mid-strike. Lucian walked around him, each step echoing softly in the silence of stopped time. He reached Karl’s side, placed two fingers to the dragon’s temple, and bent space just enough to blur the edges of reality there.
When he let time flow again, the delayed shock hit Karl like a hammer to the skull. He stumbled, balance thrown, and Lucian’s kick drove into his jaw, snapping his head back.
Karl’s body reeled but didn’t fall. His molten eyes glared down at Lucian, the heat of his aura still enough to make the air shiver. "You’re holding something back," he growled.
Lucian’s eyes flickered green and silver. "You could say that."
The space between them folded in on itself again—this time so tightly that the distance was reduced to nothing. Lucian’s fist was at Karl’s throat in an instant, the impact twisting through both space and time. The dragon choked, body jerking, but Lucian let him drop to one knee rather than end it.
"You’re still breathing," Lucian said quietly, stepping back. "That’s enough for now."
Karl wiped blood from his jaw with the back of his claw and grinned, even in defeat. "You’ll regret not killing me."
Lucian didn’t reply—just turned, the ripples in space closing around him as if the fight had never happened.