The agony didn’t recede; it intensified, reaching a crescendo that made the previous explosion feel like a dull ache. My left eye suddenly felt as if a branding iron had been thrust directly into the socket.
My hands flew to my face, fingers clawing at the skin around my eye, trying to tear away the source of the heat. My body curled tighter.
It wasn’t a growth; it was a purging. My arms and legs began to twitch and stretch, the bone marrow boiling as the old, brittle frame was liquidated to make room for the new.
The sensation was so alien, so sickeningly deep, that my mind fractured. In a blind, white-hot haze of pain, I dug my fingers into my own forearm, my nails slicing through the fabric of my shirt and sinking deep into the meat of my arm.
"ARRRRGGGG!"
I wasn’t trying to hurt myself—I was trying to find a different pain, any pain, to distract from the tectonic shift happening inside my cells.
"Rio! Rio! Rio!"
Elena’s voice felt so distant, like a distorted echo. She lunged for me, her hands grappling with mine, trying to pry my fingers out of my own flesh before I could do permanent damage. But the strength surging through me was no longer human. Even in my convulsing state, my grip was a vice.
"What is... what is happening?!"
Tears streamed down her face, splashing onto my skin as she threw her entire weight onto my chest, desperate to pin me down, to stop the self-destruction. Her hands were slick with the blood now seeping from my arm.
My nails, now reinforced by the evolving physique, dragged upward. I wasn’t just scratching; I was flaying. I began to tear at my left arm, the skin parting like wet paper under the sheer force of my agony.
"STOP! RIO, STOP IT!" Elena screamed, her voice breaking.
She abandoned her grip on my hands and instead wrapped herself around me, shielding my limbs with her own body, letting my flailing nails catch her shoulders instead.
She took the blows, her blood mingling with mine on the white quartz. She didn’t even flinch when my nails tore into her shoulder. She just held on tighter.
"Please... Please... Please..." she sobbed. "If someone has trapped him in an illusion, then please... just stop!"
In her desperation, her mind had jumped to the only logical conclusion a powerhouse of her caliber could reach. This couldn’t be natural. No one’s body simply came apart like this. She thought of Laila—whose mastery over illusions and mental pressure was legendary.
She looked left and right, her eyes wild, searching the shadows of the weeping willows and the rose trellises for a hidden foe. "Please, Laila... I beg of you! If this is a lesson, it’s enough!"
But no answer came. Only the sound of my ragged breathing and the wet thud of my heart.
The silence drove her over the edge. Her crimson mana began to burn up from her body, turning the air into a shimmering heat haze. It wasn’t a controlled technique; it was a violent, externalized scream of her frustration.
The mana shot outward in a massive, horizontal wave. The force of it whipped the ground clear—the manicured grass was scorched to ash, the moon-lilies and snapdragons were obliterated in an instant, and even the ancient, gnarled trees were snapped like dry twigs, wiped out completely by her sheer, unbridled power.
She stood in the center of a barren, smoking circle, clutching me to her chest as if she could shield me from the world itself.
"ARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!"
I let out one final, world-shaking shout. And then, just as suddenly as the nightmare had begun, it stopped.
The muscle tearing, the boiling marrow, the agonizing burn in my eyes—every ounce of pain subdued in an instant. The silence that followed was deafening. My hands, which had been buried in my own flesh fell limp.
I lay there, draped over Elena’s lap in the middle of a wasteland she had created.
"Urg," I let out.
My chest felt lighter, yet every nerve ending was still buzzing with the aftershocks of the reconstruction. The heavy, oppressive pressure of the transition had vanished, leaving a cold, hollow stillness in its wake.
"Rio...?" Her voice was barely a whisper, trembling with a mix of terror and a hope so fragile it felt like it would shatter.
She leaned over me, her tears falling cold against my heated skin. I felt her hand move toward my face, her palm calloused from years of swordplay but touchingly gentle as she caressed my cheek. Her fingers were shaking, tracing the line of my jaw as if checking to see if I was still made of flesh and bone.
"Rio, are you okay? Please, tell me you’re okay," she pleaded.
My eyes slightly opened, the world a distorted mess of colors. The vivid color of her hair was the only thing I could fixate on. I saw her face for a fleeting second, eyes wide and bloodshot, before the weight of the transformation pulled at my consciousness again.
"Elena?"
Her name was the only word I could find. It felt like a heavy stone in my mouth.
As soon as the word left my lips, the last of my strength drained away. My vision swirled into a deep, violet-tinted black, and my head slumped back against her lap.
Then, I went unconscious.
In the silence of the scorched garden, Elena remained motionless, her hands clutching my unconscious body. The charred remains of the trees hissed as the last of her mana dissipated into the night air, but she didn’t hear it. All she heard was the sudden, terrifying quiet of my breathing.
"No. No! NO!"
She let out a ragged, choked cry, pulling me closer until my head was tucked under her chin. Her blood-stained tunic pressed against the fresh, jagged wounds I had carved into my own arm.
"You can’t do this," she whispered, her voice hitching. "You don’t get to say my name and then leave. Open your eyes, Rio! That’s an order!"