The witch floated high above the battlefield, her figure silhouetted against the drifting mass of the suspended boulder, the hem of her crimson dress billowing softly in the high-altitude wind as her gaze swept coldly across the scene below. Her eyes narrowed slightly, not with surprise or calculation, but rather the quiet, clinical patience of someone seeking something or someone specific in a landscape of noise. Her scan did not take long. Her eyes found him.

King Theodore.

Their eyes locked from across the air, two figures held aloft by the weight of their own power, and for a moment the battlefield seemed to quiet beneath their gaze. The flares of magic, the clashing of blades, even the screams of dying men faded into the distance, as if the world itself understood it was now an audience.

The silence stretched long, taut with familiarity, tension, and the sort of history that refused to die quietly. Then, with a suddenness that felt almost mocking, the witch smiled and raised a hand in a small, almost girlish wave.

"Theo," she called out, her voice light and teasing, "won't you say hello?"

King Theodore did not answer immediately. He exhaled through his nose, a sigh barely restrained, then allowed himself to ascend, drawing mana from the atmosphere with such effortless control that he barely seemed to move, yet steadily closed the distance between them. He rose slowly, as though every foot of elevation was a negotiation, until he came to a stop a short distance away from her, surrounded by a halo of golden runes that pulsed softly at his side.

His eyes flicked briefly toward the enormous boulder still suspended above them, its mass casting a long, oppressive shadow across the battlefield below. "I'd prefer it," he said at last, his voice even and measured, "if you didn't open our conversations with assassination attempts."

The witch's smile widened slightly, though there was no warmth in it. "Not like something that weak could've killed you," she replied, her gaze now drifting lazily downward toward the ground far below. "Seven out of eight… That's quite a selection."

Theodore's expression remained unchanged, but there was a moment's pause, barely perceptible before he responded, his voice tightening slightly. "What exactly do you mean by that, L—" he stopped himself mid-word, a fractional hesitation that did not escape her notice.

The witch's eyes sparkled with amusement. "Oh, Theo," she said softly, her tone like silk drawn across a blade, "you nearly said my name."

He raised a hand abruptly, golden light flashing around his fingertips, and his voice took on a sharper edge. "I asked what you meant by that. The part about the 'selection.'"

She tilted her head to the side, a mock-pensive gesture that looked oddly childlike on her otherwise ageless face. "Must we rush? You and I haven't spoken properly in so long. How have you been? How are the children? And Samuel, how is Samuel these days?"

His response was curt, immediate. "Enough." The light around his hand began to flare brighter, the golden runes pulsing with lethal intent. "Spare me the small talk. Tell me what you want."

The witch let out a long, theatrical sigh, folding her hands behind her back as if disappointed by his lack of patience. "You really are no fun anymore," she said, casting a glance toward the battlefield, where the six remaining Pillars still fought below.

"Well then. I'm under orders to kill one of them. Just one. A gesture, nothing more." She turned back toward him, her eyes gleaming. "But since I like you, I thought I'd let you choose. Anyone but yourself, of course." She laughed, light and lyrical. "I'd hate it if you died."

Theodore's expression sharpened, the golden energy around his arm twisting violently as if reacting to his mood. "You really think I'm going to let you kill one of my own?"

Her smile didn't fade. Instead, she floated a little closer, her voice softening, though the mockery in it remained. "Is this your way of saying you still care? That you don't want to see them die? It's kind of sweet, in its own twisted way." Her hand lifted, and faint red runes began to spiral lazily around her wrist, dissolving into her skin like ink into water. "Come now. Just pick the one you like least. You've always had favourites, haven't you?"

A shadow passed over Theodore's face, and his voice turned cold. "I've talked enough."

Without warning, he thrust his hand forward, and a volley of golden beams exploded outward from his palm, dozens of them, searing through the air in a crisscrossing storm of light, each one guided by intricate rune logic too complex for ordinary minds to comprehend. The speed was incomprehensible. No human should have been able to react.

And yet, she did.

With nothing more than minute shifts of her weight, the witch weaved between the beams like wind slipping through the cracks in a wall, her movements fluid, precise, and impossibly fast. She spun slowly in the air, her fingers dancing as she began composing a rune of her own, one not drawn in the air like Theodore's, but coaxed out of the mana itself, the symbols blooming around her like petals of crimson light.

She was smiling the entire time.

"Rudius!" King Theodore's voice echoed like a war horn across the chaotic battlefield, cutting cleanly through the clamour of combat, "Evacuate all the troops! Lazarus, you're with me!"

There was no time to explain further. The witch, still floating in the air like a crimson phantom, completed her rune with a flick of her wrist, its luminous structure hovering just above her palm, pulsing faintly, as if drawing breath. Though she was still dodging Theodore's relentless attacks with little more than casual twists of her body, it was clear that her focus was elsewhere, on the rune, on its weight, on its purpose.

And then she let it go.

The rune dropped through the air like a falling star, its structure shifting mid-flight, the curves and lines rearranging themselves into something darker, more arcane. A violent wave of mana surged out from it before it had even landed, cascading across the battlefield with a pressure so vast that many of the weaker warriors dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, unable to bear the force.

But before it could reach the ground, Lazarus appeared, moving faster than a blink, his robes snapping like whips behind him as he tossed a rune of his own, one glowing with an austere, pale-violet light. The two spells collided a few dozen feet above the soldiers, and the sheer magnitude of their clashing energies caused the air to ripple and the very earth to buckle beneath them.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

A deep rumble followed, like the sound of a mountain groaning under pressure. Chunks of ground cracked and gave way as the shockwave flung nearby warriors back through the air. But Lazarus stood unmoved, weathering the storm, his calm expression a stark contrast to the chaos around him. He waited until he was sure the witch's spell had fully dissipated before turning and rising to aid Theodore in the sky.

"I honestly thought that one would work," the witch murmured to herself, almost wistfully, before raising her hand again. Already, five new runes had formed, orbiting the tips of her fingers like obedient birds. "Hey, Theo, does this mean you're picking Lazarus to die?" she asked with a bright, cutting smile, and without waiting for an answer, she flicked her hand, sending all five runes streaking toward Lazarus just as he arrived near the two of them.

"Nobody is dying today!" Theodore barked, hurling a broad beam of golden light forward to meet the attack. The magic flared through the air with terrifying speed, a radiant spear colliding with the incoming runes mid-flight. The sky above them trembled at the impact, the clash of spells sending concussive ripples across the clouds, warping the very air.

But it wasn't enough. Theodore's attack dispersed the first wave, but three runes had survived, slipping through the chaos, twisting and burning toward Lazarus.

He moved to intercept again, preparing to fire another blast, but the witch had anticipated that.

She materialized directly in front of him, her form flickering forward like a shadow moving against light. Before he could react, she seized his wrist with one hand and wrenched his arm downward, redirecting the half-formed spell into the ground below. The resulting explosion tore a crater into the earth, sending dirt and flame bursting into the sky.

"Focus on me for once, Theo," she said with a laugh, pushing him backward before launching her own counterattack, a swarm of newly formed runes that spiralled mid-air, shifting from crimson to a deeper, more menacing red, twisting like blades in a storm.

Theodore didn't hesitate. With only a quick glance to confirm that Lazarus was already handling the remaining threat, he turned his full attention toward the incoming spells. Then, as if stepping away from the world entirely, he closed his eyes and dived inward, into his inner world.

It was not a place made of stone or sky, but one of memory and will, a luminous, boundless space of impossible geometry, where millions of runes floated freely, suspended in motion like constellations. Everything glowed with a golden brilliance so intense there were no shadows, no darkness, no doubt. This was the world of his soul, a realm created through the perfect fusion of his spirit and his mana, the place where spells were no longer constructed but remembered, instinctual, permanent.

Here, Theodore did not draw runes, he summoned them.

So, within the sanctuary of his inner world, King Theodore summoned one of the most powerful barrier runes he had ever engraved into his soul, a divine construct forged through years of mastery and refinement. As he returned to the battlefield, its effect took shape instantly: a golden halo blossomed around his form, radiant and absolute, expanding outward until it wrapped him entirely in a sphere of resplendent light that shimmered like the sun itself made manifest.

He had barely finished erecting the barrier when the witch's runes reached him, shrieking through the air like bloodstained daggers. They slammed into the golden shield with violent bursts of red energy, each detonation splashing crimson fire across the light, darkening it gradually, as though her magic were attempting to burn through the barrier by corrosion rather than force, eating away at its purity with a venomous persistence that spoke of a deeper, older magic.

But Theodore was not one to sit and wait for his defence to be worn down.

Before the barrier could fail, he exploded forward, his body vanishing in a streak of golden brilliance, leaving behind a halo that detached from his frame and hovered above his head like a celestial crown. In the next heartbeat, dozens of tightly woven runes flashed out from the halo, spreading like flares in a perfectly timed array, and the moment they locked into place, they all activated in unison.

A blinding white light erupted from the runes, pure, overwhelming, and impossible to endure with mortal eyes. The battlefield was drenched in that sudden radiance, and even the witch, powerful as she was, flinched against it, her vision momentarily robbed.

Theodore wasted no time.

In the silence of her blindness, he streaked forward, swift and silent as divine judgment, and placed a glowing palm against her stomach. A rune flared to life beneath his hand, and a pillar of searing light burst from the point of contact, hammering her midsection and hurling her backward through the sky.

But Theodore wasn't finished. Even as she flew, the beam contorted, reshaping itself with liquid grace into the form of an enormous spear, elegant, blinding, and sharp enough to pierce a mountain. He grabbed the shaft mid-air and hurled it with brutal precision, directing it straight toward her heart. It was not a fatal strike, he knew her resilience too well for that, but one that would damage her mana, disrupt her centre, and leave her weakened for years to come.

Yet in that final moment, his gaze narrowed, and his expression twisted, not in triumph, but in complex disapproval.

He hesitated, his grip tightening around the spear of light as the trajectory shifted by a mere fraction. With a heavy scowl etched across his face, Theodore wrenched the weapon off course just before impact, and instead of driving it through her heart, he clipped her right arm, severing it at the shoulder in a burst of blood and magical energy.

The force of the strike sent her body spinning violently through the air before it crashed toward the ground in a spiral of red fabric and smoke.

Lazarus appeared beside him in a ripple of space, his robes billowing faintly in the charged air, and spoke in his usual measured cadence, "Her power may have grown, that much is undeniable, but in terms of technique, you still far surpass her."

King Theodore didn't respond immediately; his gaze remained fixed on the distant crater where the witch had landed, and after a moment of silence, he murmured, "None of us have gone all out. If we did, this entire region would be nothing more than broken stone and scorched air." His voice was quiet, thoughtful, touched with something that resembled weariness more than restraint.

Lazarus inclined his head slightly, unbothered by the weight of the implication. "Still," he said plainly, "you missed her heart."

Theodore's expression didn't shift, but his eyes narrowed slightly as he watched the figure in the distance. The witch was already rising, pulling herself from the impact crater, her body smeared with dust and blood, though her severed arm had fully reformed, flesh knitting seamlessly together as though she had never been injured.

With a dry chuckle, the king exhaled through his nose. "Guess I couldn't kill her after all," he said, his voice carrying neither disappointment nor surprise, just a tired amusement. Then, his tone darkened slightly, and he added, "I'm growing tired of this fight. Activate it."

Lazarus responded with a simple nod and lifted both hands slowly, fingers spread as though conducting the air itself. At once, the mana in the atmosphere began to churn like invisible threads pulled taut and then it surged downward, flowing into the network of runes Lazarus had embedded discreetly across the battlefield throughout the course of the battle. The ground pulsed, and a faint hum rang out, growing denser by the second.

Before the witch had a chance to react, before her body could register the shift, the world around her simply stopped.

Time fractured.

She froze mid-motion, her eyes wide, lips parting to speak, a fresh spell glowing faintly in her hand, then everything halted, suspended as if the air had been turned to glass. Not just her, but the battlefield itself obeyed the rune's command: ash hung still in the air, blood remained suspended mid-drip, even the distant echoes of crumbling debris ceased to echo. Only Lazarus and Theodore remained untouched, their presence cutting sharply against the silence of frozen time.

It was a spell Lazarus had been weaving since the moment they arrived, a delicate and impossibly intricate formation hidden beneath the dust and violence of the battle, a time-lock, one of his newest and most ambitious works, capable of stopping the world within its perimeter with a precision that defied conventional magic.

Theodore stared at the witch for a moment longer, his gaze unreadable, his thoughts layered and silent. Then, almost to himself, he whispered, "Can I…"

But Lazarus was already shaking his head before the thought could fully leave the king's lips. "If you strike her now, she will move again. The freeze will collapse. I recommend you don't."

Theodore turned his eyes away, expression hardening as he exhaled sharply. "Then we're done here," he said simply. "Let's return. Hopefully Olivia dealt with the problem on her end."

Lazarus gave no reply. A rune blossomed beneath their feet, glowing faintly but intensely, and in the next instant, the two of them vanished leaving behind a battlefield littered with broken bodies, a massive boulder still suspended high above the blood-soaked ground, and the witch of Whisper, locked in a single breath of time, her spell unfinished.

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