Ethan didn’t answer.
He kept his head down, eyes on the shattered ground beneath their feet. Morvane still had his limbs locked—Ethan couldn’t even move a finger on his own—but the power inside him was nothing like it had been a moment ago.
Morvane waited.
No response.
The smile on his face slowly faded.
The blood sword lifted off Ethan’s shoulder and swept sideways for his head.
The blade cut the air.
When it was down to the last inch from Ethan’s neck, a hand snapped up.
Smack!
Ethan caught the sword barehanded.
The sharp crimson edge bit into his palm. Blood ran down between his fingers and dripped to the dirt, but the blade couldn’t advance another hair.
For the first time, Morvane’s expression truly changed.
Lily had finished merging.
The scattered forces inside Ethan went quiet—then restarted, stable and smooth, like a machine that had finally seated all its parts properly. The control Morvane had planted in him brushed against that change, tried to hold on... and got ground away completely, erased from Ethan’s limbs and will.
Morvane sensed it instantly and abandoned the blood sword without hesitation.
His body vanished from in front of Ethan and reappeared at a distance. That sliver of stolen control power pushed to its limit, he tried to clamp Ethan’s hands and feet down again.
It did nothing.
The moment that force entered Ethan’s space, the white lightning flowing over Ethan’s body tore it apart.
Morvane stared, stunned.
Ethan still hadn’t raised his head.
Blood slipped from his wounded palm, pattering onto the ground in tiny, steady taps.
Morvane lifted the blood sword, the tip slowly aligning with Ethan.
"You—"
Before the word could finish, Ethan disappeared.
Morvane only caught a streak of white flashing across his vision.
The next second, a hand locked around Morvane’s throat and yanked him into the air like he weighed nothing.
Ethan stood in front of him, eyes fixed, unblinking.
His other hand was already pressed to Morvane’s chest.
White lightning gathered in his palm, condensing into a tight energy sphere—so close it almost kissed that huge blood-red eye embedded in Morvane’s torso.
Morvane’s legs snapped and kicked at Ethan again and again.
Boot soles slammed into Ethan’s chest and stomach, but the arm around his throat didn’t loosen. He still clenched the blood sword in his hand—breathing restricted or not, he refused to drop it.
The giant eye on his chest didn’t look afraid, either.
Its pupil rolled, curious, watching the white sphere inch closer like it was inspecting food placed right in front of its mouth.
Ethan’s power finished charging.
The lightning on the sphere’s surface drew inward. The air around it compressed into tight ripples, one after another.
Morvane finally had to let the blood sword go.
The blade slipped from his fingers and fell.
He grabbed Ethan’s wrist with both hands, trying to peel the choking grip off his neck—but no matter how he strained, that hand didn’t budge.
Ethan watched him struggle.
"What?"
"Weren’t you pretty strong a second ago?"
He lifted Morvane higher.
"Why’re you so small now?"
"What—skipped dinner?"
Ethan shoved the white energy sphere straight into Morvane’s chest.
If that attack actually got inside, fixing the damage wouldn’t come easy.
The sphere touched the blood-red eye.
For a heartbeat, arcs of white and bloodlight collided—
—and then the entire sphere was pressed into Morvane’s chest cavity.
Ethan braced himself for the blast.
Seconds passed.
Morvane didn’t fly back.
He didn’t even look hurt.
He was still dangling in the air from Ethan’s one-handed grip.
They both went quiet for a beat.
Morvane lowered his eyes to his chest.
...He was fine?
The huge eye was gone.
Where the pupil had been, a horizontal slit had opened. Dense, jagged teeth grew from both edges—top and bottom—until it was unmistakably a mouth.
And the white energy sphere Ethan had forced in...
had been swallowed whole.
Morvane looked genuinely blank for a second.
Wasn’t that an eye?
When did it turn into a mouth?
While Ethan’s attention flicked to the change, Morvane drove a knee up and kicked him hard.
Bang!
Ethan was forced to release his grip, sliding back a short distance.
Morvane dropped to the ground, threw out a hand to recall the blood sword, and immediately shifted to the side.
Ethan steadied himself and stared at Morvane’s chest again.
Calling it a "big eye" didn’t make sense anymore.
It was a mouth.
Morvane lowered his head, studying the new organ, confusion deepening by the second.
But before he could figure anything out, Ethan was already there again.
A fist shot in on a straight line, aimed at Morvane’s chest.
Morvane slipped to the side. The blood sword rose close to his body, but he didn’t counter immediately. The blood-red power around him split rapidly—one sword after another condensing from the air—until dozens of blood blades formed an array that sealed off every direction.
"I really didn’t eat."
Morvane stood at the center of the sword formation. The mouth in his chest opened slowly.
The way he looked at Ethan was the way someone looked at a flawless gemstone.
"Did you bring me something to eat?"
Ethan didn’t answer.
He’d already understood.
That mouth could swallow energy constructs.
The white sphere hadn’t failed—it had been eaten.
Fine.
If it could only eat energy—
then Ethan just wouldn’t use energy.
Power exploded under Ethan’s feet.
He slipped through the gaps between the dozens of blood swords and arrived right in front of Morvane.
First punch—into the stomach.
Morvane folded forward.
Second punch—into the jaw, snapping his head back.
Then Ethan’s fists started landing from every angle. No white lightning. No energy flares. Just raw, heavy physical force.
Each hit knocked Morvane’s body off-line into the next one.
The mouth in Morvane’s chest opened and closed over and over, frantic, but there was nothing it could swallow.
The last punch came down from above.
Morvane dropped out of the air and smashed into the ground.
Boom!
His body sank into the earth. Mud rolled outward, and the blood swords scattered around the rim of the crater.
Morvane lay at the bottom, the cuts on his face slowly knitting closed.
He replayed Ethan’s combo rhythm in his head and quickly found the angle the next strike would likely come from.
The blood sword returned to his hand.
Morvane slashed forward in a horizontal cut—
—and at the same time, the dozens of blood swords scattered around him all lifted and swung from every direction toward his back.
A phantom of Ethan appeared right in front of Morvane.
But the real body had already looped behind him.
Morvane had guessed the position correctly.
The surrounding blood swords fell in unison.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
A chain of crisp impacts echoed through the crater.
Morvane’s mouth twitched up into a smile... then froze.
The blades had hit Ethan.
But they didn’t bite.
One sword after another snapped on Ethan’s skin and clothing like brittle glass, fragments raining down until the ground was littered with broken red steel.
Morvane had always known this outcome was possible.
He just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.
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