The two casual sybles cracked like twin ps,nding first on Rowan''s cheek and then on every Wagner nsman who heard them.


    Color drained from Rowan''s face. The veins at his temples jumped, and the rigid line of his jaw said he had finally grasped just how far out of his depth he was—by a hundred-fold, by a thousand-fold.


    "I don''t believe it! I don''t believe it!" he roared, voice scraping.


    He clenched his teeth and lunged again.


    This time he held nothing back. Fist shadows and palm windsced together into a killing web, every step designed to carve Jared into scraps.


    The oue did not shift an inch.


    Jared never sidestepped, never raised a guard. He stood like a sea-fixing pir nted in bedrock.


    Each punchnded and vanished as though the man were a bottomlesske, waves utterly absent.


    Each palm struck his chest and slipped away like a spring breeze brushing a cliff face, unable to move the stone at all.


    After ten exchanges the storm of blows ended.


    Rowan bent at the waist, lungs pumping, sweat pouring down the ridge of his nose. The terror shining in his eyes was thick enough to read from across the room.


    His hands quivered without permission, knuckles aching as if he had been pounding raw flesh against millennia-old iron.


    Jared still looked down at him, calm and detached, eyes as t as standing water without a ripple.


    "Done yet?"


    He asked it softly, the gentle tone crawling under the skin like something that did not belong.


    Rowan''s mouth worked. No sound followed. His dried throat refused every threat he tried to form.


    A shudder rolled through him from tailbone to scalp, hollowing out whatever will to fight remained.


    Jared raised his hand. The movement was slow, almost considerate.


    Then the hand dropped.


    "Pff-"


    A muffled burst echoed.


    Rowan''s proud head exploded like a melon smashed by a sledge.


    Red and white sprayed across floor and table legs.


    The headless body wobbled once, then toppled with a thud.


    The Wagner Patriarch-Rowan of the True Immortal Realm Level One-was gone.


    So swift, so stifled, so absurd that the word ''death'' felt almost out of ce.


    Silence swallowed the hall.


    A pin striking the floor would have rung like a bell.


    Guests, Wagner disciples, and the few guards still breathing stood frozen, as though


    a binding spell had locked every joint.


    Rowan, a True Immortal Realm Level One, had just fallen?


    Cut down by a High Immortal Realm Level Three youth, as casually as someone swats a fly?


    What kind of world allowed that?


    Jared lowered his hand and swept his gaze over the hall, eyes unhurried and steady.


    Wherever that gaze passed, heads dropped; no one dared meet it.


    "Who else?"


    The three calm words detonated inside every chest like hidden thunder.


    No one took a step.


    No one opened a mouth.


    Even breathing came out in tiny, strangled wisps.


    Dominic sagged in his chair, warmth flooding down his legs and pooling beneath him, yet he seemed not to notice.


    He stared at his father''s headless corpse and the spreading blood, mind struck nk, left only with the ck tunnel of despair.


    Jared moved toward him, footsteps unhurried.


    Each soft impactnded on Dominic''s chest like a hammer, squeezing the air from his lungs, stalling his heartbeat.


    Atst Jared stopped directly in front of him.


    A damp shadow nketed the space, and Dominic felt as though an icy grip had closed around his throat, squeezing until no air could pass.


    "Dominic."


    Jared spoke, his voice t and even. "I already told you there are things in this world you have no right to touch."


    "And there are people you can never afford to provoke."


    Dominic''s jaw, worked soundlessly. He tried to drop to his knees, to smash his forehead against the floor and me everything on his father, yet the crushing pressure kept his throat locked. His muscles spasmed white snot and tears streamed down his face.


    Jared watched him the way a passer-by might nce at a trampled weed-no interest, no pity.


    He raised his right hand at an


    unhurried pace. The tip of his index


    finger pressed the air, and a shard of


    brilliant gold gathered there, bright as à falling star.


    "Pff..."


    The gold streak blinked across the space.


    A hole as wide as a thumb punched through Dominic''s brow, burst out the back of


    his skull, and sprayed a cloud of red.


    His body locked in ce; the expression on his face stayed frozen-eyes wide, lips parted, muscles still twitching.


    Whatever words he had clung to never made it out.


    "Thud..."


    The corpse copsed, eyes round and unclosing. Dominic was gone.


    Jared withdrew his hand as casually as if brushing away a buzzing gnat.


    He turned and fixed his gaze on Vivian, who had stood quietly to one side the entire


    time.


    She remained rooted, silent tears sliding down and soaking the front of her robe.


    Her stare drifted over Dominic''s


    body, over Rowan''s headless corpse, over the


    blood that smeared every


    gstone, and something wordless churned behind her eyes:


    Days spent swallowing back sobs collided with the sharp release of payback, and


    the sh beat against her ribs, light and heavy at once.


    For a fleeting breath she seemed to ask the fallen-Father, the Elders, every soul of


    The Janis Family-whether they could see this moment.


    The debt was settled.


    Settled so thoroughly that not a single strand remained.


    Jared moved closer and patted her narrow shoulder.


    Heat and strength flowed through that brief contact, scattering the chill that had


    crept into her bones.


    "Let''s go."


    The words came out mild, yet they carried a solidity a person could lean on.


    "The people from the Celestial Pce are still waiting."


    Tears still ssing hershes, Vivian looked up at him and nodded hard.


    *****


    One hourter.


    Cloudhaven City, Celestial Pce Branch.


    The hall that once embodied the Pce''s untouchable authority had been crushed


    into a field of smoking rubble.


    Broken walls jutted like jagged teeth, and the smell of ash still drifted through the


    cracks.


    Three Celestial Pce Elders sprawled in the pooled blood, their once-proud faces twisted into rigid masks.


    More than twenty elite soldiersy nearby, each felled by a single strike.


    Jared stood at the center of the wreckage, his gold robe stirring in the wind, as spotless as when he first put it on.


    Anyone arrivingte might have believed he had merely passed by and brushed away a speck of dust.


    Behind him, Vivian, Luther, and Grace stared at the scene, waves rolling unseen beneath otherwise steady faces.


    The wet tracks on Vivian''s cheeks had already dried.


    She studied the bodies of those who had destroyed her family, and the tightness in


    her gaze loosened as though a knot had finally slipped free.


    "Jared."


    The name came out softly, scraping her throat.


    Jared turned. She drew a breath, straightened her robe, stepped forward, and bent


    into a long, deep bow.


    "Thank you."


    The simple phrase dropped between them with the weight of stone.


    Jared shook his head and lifted her upright with an easy motion.


    "No need."


    His eyes drifted toward the horizon. "House Wagner and the Celestial Pce


    already owed me. Helping you was convenient-and helped me, too." Moisture gathered again at the corners of Vivian''s eyes.


    She searched for words, but beside his unshakable presence every phrase felt too


    thin to stand.


    Jared let the corners of his mouth tick upward.


    The light curve felt as easy as the first warm breeze after a long winter, a touch so


    gentle it could have turned drizzle into mist.


    Beneath that gentleness, though,y an unhurried certainty—an ease that treated everything beneath the sky as if it already belonged beneath his feet.