"We did it!" Emory exclaimed, his voice cracking with a mixture of shock, adrenaline, and victorious relief as he stared at what looked unmistakably like Orion's impaled, motionless body slumped at the head of the obsidian table.
But that fragile moment was short-lived.
"Come on, Emory," Simon said, his tone calm but burdened with certainty. "Don't be so quick to celebrate"
"What?" Emory replied.
"Look at the body again." Simon insisted.
Emory blinked and glanced back at the supposedly lifeless figure, confusion etched onto his expression.
"It looks stiff, which means he's very much dead—just like we all wanted. Am I supposed to be seeing something—" Emory stopped mid-sentence, his eyes widening with realization.
"You've finally noticed," Simon said, leaning forward. "Even an instant death wouldn't freeze a body like that that quickly—not for a regular human, and definitely not for someone like him." Simon narrowed his eyes. "Isn't that right… Orion?"
Simon's gaze lifted just a fraction above the impaled form, and an instant later, a low scoff drifted from that very direction.
A ripple of dark smoke suddenly materialized behind the impaled body. The haze curled and twisted like a living shadow, swelling until the outline of a figure appeared inside it. Within seconds, the silhouette sharpened—and Orion emerged, wearing a calm, amused smile that sent a chill down the spines of everyone watching.
"Not only can you glimpse into the future," Orion said, his voice smooth and disturbingly collected, "but you can also notice me when I'm in my vanished state. You really are a worthy opponent, Simon Graves"
Emory and Henry jolted, the shock slamming into them like a tidal wave. Orion stood before them alive and unharmed, yet the other Orion—impaled and broken—remained seated in the chair.
"There's… two of him?" Henry sputtered, disbelief twisting his tone.
"Incorrect," Anna Louise snapped, her face tightening with anger. "There's only one."
She glared at Orion, because she alone understood exactly what had happened.
Orion had already possessed the ability to disappear which was how he escaped harm but he had also used Anna Louise's shared power to create a copy of himself and left it where he used to sit which then got impaled with Anna Louise's barrage of conjured spikes.
It was meant to serve as a distraction—so he could kill everyone in the room while they celebrated his death—but unfortunately, Simon had seen right through it. And apparently, so did Anna Louise.
"I knew the moment my spikes broke skin that the thing on that chair wasn't human, but a construct created from my ability—the very ability I gave to you," she sneered.
"Told you I was a fast learner," Orion replied with a smirk. As he spoke, the fake body on the chair lost all color, fading to a pale chalky white. Then it began to melt—slowly dripping off the chair like hot candle wax until all that remained was a puddle of malformed residue on the floor.
Orion inhaled sharply, then exhaled, and in that simple gesture, his entire demeanor shifted. His playful smugness evaporated, replaced by a cold, dangerous calm.
"So," he said quietly, "this was a setup from the very beginning—one you hoped would take me off the board." His eyes hardened. "That means you five were never on my side, and the invitation was nothing more than a ploy to lure me here—to lower my guard with your shared abilities disguised as gifts to build trust. How conniving you handful of geezers are"
Orion chuckled, his hand covering his face as he stepped beside the impaled chair.
Then, just as suddenly, the humor drained from him. He lowered his hand, and the look he fixed on them was cold and unyielding.
"And I'm certain I've already made it clear what happens to those who choose to oppose me. So you knew the risk and still decided to make an enemy of me. Not very smart."
A suffocating aura unfurled from him, thick and heavy, as though the air itself recoiled from his presence.
Emory glanced at Simon desperately. "I thought you said we would be victorious," he whispered, panic swelling in his chest.
At that moment, Orion began powering up. His energy flared violently, and the room trembled under the intensity of his rising aura. The air crackled, distorting slightly as power gathered in his palm—a deep, luminant purple accompanied by a vibrating hum that rattled through the floor.
"Victorious, huh?" Orion taunted. "That's the best joke I've heard all day."
The glow in his hand intensified as he prepared to unleash a devastating blast—an attack that could erase everything in the realm.
Seeing the imminent assault, Emory and Henry scrambled away from their seats, sprinting toward Simon. Emory kept looking from the attack to the calm faces of Simon, Anna Louise, and Martha. Their eerily unbothered expressions baffled him.
How could they remain calm?
This attack was powerful enough to kill them all.
Why weren't they running?
Why weren't they terrified?
"I did," Simon said softly, responding to Emory's earlier outburst about their expected victory.
And at that exact moment, Orion fired.
The purple blast shot across the room with explosive velocity, illuminating the realm in a harsh violet glow. Emory and Henry screamed for Anna Louise to deactivate her realm—begging her to release them so they could escape—but she did not flinch.
Their eyes widened in horror as the attack raced toward them—
"Seal!"
Anna Louise's voice boomed, echoing unnaturally as if spoken by multiple overlapping versions of herself.
Instantly, ghostly chains erupted around Orion's body, coiling around every limb like an anaconda and constricting him for a brief moment before flickering and disappearing, not lasting long enough for him to think about breaking through.
Meanwhile, the energy blast that had reached the center of the table—mere inches from Anna Louise and Martha—evaporated into nothingness, as though it had never existed at all.
Orion's expression shifted from arrogance to disbelief.
"What… just happened?" he demanded, dropping into a guarded stance and trying to process what he had just witnessed.
"I think," Simon said, rising slowly from his seat, "that you underestimated us, Orion."
He stepped forward, posture poised and confident. "Did you really think that I—someone who saw the future of this day—would not prepare a way to defeat you and would depend on simply stabbing you in the back with spikes?"
Orion frowned and getting pissed attempted to fire another blast. Energy formed in his hand again, crackling with lethal potential. But when he tried to release it, the power fizzled out—dissipating like harmless smoke.
Confusion, then fear, flickered across his face.
"What the hell is this?" he asked, staring at his fist, trying to gather energy—but nothing came. It was as if his channels were completely blocked.
"What did you do to me?" Orion growled.
"Your fate was sealed the moment you destroyed the entrance to this realm," Simon said, getting closer to Orion with each step. "A feat that should have been impossible for anyone else." He continued. "But you did it by the sheer magnitude of your power. And by doing so, you triggered consequences you didn't understand."