A beam as black as the darkest part of night shot from Zis's fingertips. Not just energy — a sharp tear in the fabric of reality, branching through the air like dark roots reaching into the chests of all three.
The three screamed in one voice, a sound that shook the void:
"Halt Momentum!"
And in that moment — something unbelievable happened. The beam didn't slow down. It stopped completely. Frozen like a line of black ink on glass.
While the enemies thought they'd taken control, Zis's quiet, cold voice shattered the silence:
"Fair enough… but my reaction speed is faster."
Suddenly, absolute silence. Time stopped. Thought itself seemed to pause. The pulse of existence faded in that forbidden area where the three stood.
And yet — within that eternal stillness — the black beam began to move again. Impossibly slowly. A strange blue substance, like star-ice, began to peel away from the beam's surface, exploding outward and scattering in every direction like shards of shattered mirrors.
On the surface of those flying fragments, a reflection could be seen — a beam the color of the surrounding darkness, visible only to eyes sharp enough to recognize death.
In a fraction of a second, before time returned to its course, the beam struck their heads directly.
Zis whispered one word:
"One."
Time snapped back with violent force.
Zis stood for a moment, eyes glowing with a question:
"How did your minds not freeze? Doesn't matter."
One of them — known as Axis — stepped forward and clapped slowly, deliberately provocative. The wounds on their bodies were freezing in a strange way, the bleeding stopping as if sealed by a massive act of will.
Zis let out a short, dark laugh:
"Alright… seems I need to bring out my blade to finish off these stubborn sheep."
The three tried to shout: "Freeze!" — but their words were cut off before they could act.
Zis spoke with absolute authority:
"Halt Movement."
Their bodies became stone statues.
Zis raised one finger slowly, and in that moment every particle of light in the vicinity was drawn toward him with magnetic force. The world drowned in complete darkness — revealing, for just an instant, Zis's terrifying eyes.
Then the light went out entirely, and Zis whispered in the darkness:
"A victim shouldn't see the knife coming… so they don't have time to feel afraid. Hahaha."
A sphere of light launched — literally at the speed of light — and before it even left his palm, he had already spoken his final judgment:
"Law of Flaying."
Midway through its path, gravity disappeared and logic collapsed. At a speed beyond imagination, three heads rolled across the hard ground. The cut was so clean that the blood had nowhere to rush to.
The darkness dissolved, and the scene returned from that hollow void to the frozen lands of Java.
Zis stood over the still bodies with something that looked almost like pity:
"You made your ending truly tragic… I almost feel sorry for you."
Naz caught his breath with difficulty, looking at his companion:
"Well done… it seems we survived by a miracle."
"We haven't survived yet," Zis replied, eyes fixed hard on the mountain peak.
There, on the heights — two hands raised toward the sky, a dark cloak rippling in the wind above the mountain.