The air in the corridor didn't just feel heavy; it felt hostile. The violet haze surrounding Xerollion seemed to pulse in time with the grinding of teeth and the panicked breathing of the soldiers caught in his gravity well.
The suspended debris—shattered blades, jagged stone, and splintered bone—swirled in a lazy, hypnotic orbit that belied the lethal potential coiled within.
Then, the silence of the standoff shattered.
"For Aethelgard...! Strike now!" an officer screamed, his voice cracking with desperate bravado.
A squad of nine elite soldiers, veterans who had survived countless campaigns, made the attempt anyway.
They moved with the terrifying synchronization of a single organism, executing a coordinated collapse formation.
They hit him from four angles simultaneously, their shields overlapping, their weapons converging on the masked figure in a lethal pincer designed to overwhelm even the most powerful Apostle-ranked entities.
