A new omen over Java.
A human silhouette appeared on the horizon, and a mocking voice cut through the heavy silence:
"Fine work… killing the ants I sent."
Shock hit Zis and Naz simultaneously. Naz raised his head slowly toward the peak and saw a ghost from a bitter past.
His voice shook with years of grievance:
"Your voice hasn't changed, you wretch! You were nothing in my eyes, and now you've become the lead puppet? Where is your real master?"
A hysterical laugh split through the fog:
"Hahaha! Who do you mean? I AM the master!"
Naz cut him off, screaming from somewhere deep inside him:
"I forgave you again and again! I barely even saw you as a threat! You enslaved me, ordered me to do things beyond human capacity. My mind crossed the limits of this programmed world — and what did I get in return? Nothing but ingratitude!"
The mysterious figure — Iver — looked at him with eyes that stripped the scene of its humanity:
"You were a slave and we bought you. You obey your masters. I freed you. I gave you a profession most people dream of — wealth, food, purpose."
Naz's rage ignited:
"Iver… I raised you, boy! But today I have to kill you. You weren't my blood, but I took pity on you in this brutal world. And still — sons never truly value their fathers. I will kill you and your master both!"
With horrifying calm, Iver snapped his fingers and whispered:
"Tick tock."
The mountain split as if a deep wound had opened in it. Keilia appeared — running with the kind of terror that breaks hearts — screaming toward Zeus:
"Protect my child! Stay with him!"
Then a massive crack tore through the earth.
Naz tried to summon whatever strength he had left:
"FREE—"
Iver cut him off with a sneer:
"No chance. Your dragons are useless now."
Amid the chaos, Zis began to fade.
Below the mountain, Zeus was running at the speed of lightning — his long white tail swaying with tremendous force, his golden eyes reflecting Java's dim lights. His golden-blonde hair streamed behind him like silk threads, each strand catching the light in the darkness. He vanished like lines of code, racing death to keep Ice from his fate.
Naz raised his index finger like the barrel of a gun and fired a beam of light through space and time.
But a cold voice — Nova — whispered through it:
"Tick tock… woe to you, not to me. Your child will grow up alone and orphaned, just as I did. What a loss. Hahaha."
The shot rebounded with brutal force toward Naz's unprotected head. He stood unable to move — a man held in place by the weight of age, bound like someone who never once fought with his full strength because his children might get hurt.
Crimson blood ran over Java's frozen ground, washing the white earth.
He fell.
The man who never fought at full strength. Not once. For fear of what that power might cost his children.
Iver looked at the scene with a poisoned bitterness:
"The great inventor's life ends. But the betrayer stays a betrayer. You were a parent, but work is work… isn't that right, mother? Goodbye. Go join your husband."
He raised his hand toward the mountain and waved — casually, coldly — his face wearing the expression of someone whose madness had long since replaced whatever feelings used to live there.
Suddenly, a massive explosion. A drop of blood flew through the air and landed on his face.
He licked it with chilling calm:
"Your blood tastes good… mother."