"Earth—the one world where mankind clawed its way to supremacy. How tragic that you didn't embrace the truth sooner, that you didn't become Heretics from the beginning. If you had, perhaps you wouldn't be so feeble, so steeped in complacency."
Naaman's voice rang out, smooth yet laced with disdain.
The room, a sea of tense silence, quivered as he surveyed the crowd. Faces once filled with determination now wore expressions of shock .
"You are all a farce," he continued, eyes narrowing. "Your so-called first-class mages, with their pitiful illusions of mastery, barely comprehend the essence of true power."
Gasps rippled through the room as Naaman extended his left hand, fingers curling around the crystalline shard that hovered within the box.
The blue crystal responded, glowing with a fierce, otherworldly light that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He lifted it effortlessly, as though it were a trinket and not the artifact that had strained others just to bear its weight.
"Naaman, what are you doing?" Mrs. Chester's voice cut through the heavy air.
Naaman's expression didn't flicker.
He didn't turn to face her, didn't even acknowledge her by sight. Instead, he let the power coiling through his arm speak for him as the shard pulsed brighter, casting long, jagged shadows across the faces in the room.
"I considered using an alias for this task," he said, voice deepening into a chilling cadence, "but my name is not one that should be obscured, even for something so trivial. I'll grant you this one mercy, Doctor Chester, because ignorance is a defense. But know this: you are not to address me by name , we're not equals."
The silence that followed was suffocating, punctuated only by the ragged breathing of those closest to him.
"You will call me Enforcer from now on," he continued, each word heavy with finality. "And let this be your only warning—disrespect me again, and it will be your last."
The crowd shifted uneasily, eyes darting between Mrs. Chester and Naaman. The doctor's face was pale, her hands clenched into fists at her sides as she struggled to maintain composure.
Linzy's and Cynthia's gazes met briefly, both of them realizing that whatever thin veneer of safety they'd felt moments before had shattered.
Naaman finally looked out at the crowd, the shard's light illuminating the taut lines of his jaw and the cold resolve in his eyes.
The air crackled with a raw, suffocating power, and in that moment, the Heretics knew they were witnessing something far more profound than a simple power play.
" What is the meaning of this bro? Come on Naaman , if someone has done anything to offend you just tell us and we will fix it," one of the people present tried to de-escalate whatever was brewing.
He became the perfect example for Naaman to use as a demonstration .
" Arctic Hold ," Naaman emotionlessly chanted , wind rising through his white hair and his silver eyes glowing white at the round corners of his irises.
A buzz filled the room , followed by a bright white circle appearing on the floor beneath the man who had just spoken out.
It had multiple rotating polygon shapes layered upon one another, separated by fainter circles within the larger one.
" What is this , I can't feel my body !" the man panicked as those around him rushed out of the circle's range.
Ice started crystallising on his clothes , going from up from his legs. The skin on his face discoloured into a bluish grey long before the ice even got to his torso.
By the time his hair was caught up to , the man was already dead.
Naaman decided to maintain the Talent , letting it stay on the floor and act as a deterrence for any one trying to pull a smart one on him.
"Insubordination will never be forgiven , let this serve as warning to all of you here," he projected his voice.
He then turned to Mrs Chester , " What I hold in my hand is the body fragment of a great Titan of the past.
You have served your purpose well by locating wherever it had been buried, but I cannot allow you to produce more mages for this planet with it.
You were right in thinking that it could save your world. Perhaps , if we had delayed for a few more years as was the plan , then you may have succeeded ."
A similar circle with the spinning polygons appeared beneath her feet , " Blame the one who stole the Arc , he is the reason the apocalypse came early."
The ice encroached , just as it had with the other man , and the doctor barely had time to scream before her throat was frozen over.
" And this shard shall follow you to the after life ," Naaman turned to the crystal in his hand which had started accumulating the same ice formations.
Once its temperature was brought close to absolute zero , he slammed it on the ground . With how brittle the exposure had rendered it , it splashed instantly into millions of near grain particles.
Taking a step forward , Naaman then expanded the radius of the two circles he had created so that together they encompassed the entire office.
" Natural Selection ," he activated a second talent on top of his Arctic Hold.
The Arctic Hold talent was indiscriminate to its targets, just as Jack's Constricted Surface talent was . But since Naaman wanted to preserve Cynthia and Linzy's lives , he used the selection-based talent he had in his own System.
Natural Selection would be able to mask off selected targets from the damage output of any of his talents, Arctic Hold included.
Protected from the chilling effects ,the two women watched in horror as the room slowly turned into a white ice age with human popsicles littering the space like statues.
Everyone died instantly , everyone but the two women, and one mage who had been in the congregation.
The mage had wanted to act ,but restrained himself after sensing the power disparity between Naaman and himself. Now he had been forced to come out and was using his fire elemental powers at their maximum just to keep the ice from rising above his knees.
" You are exceptional , probably a first class mage am I right ?" Naaman smiled at him when he noticed the struggling mage.
This was the first individual he was encountering in quite a while able to keep the effects of Arctic Hold at bay.
" I will kill you for this !" the man started pushing beyond his limitations. Slowly but surely, the ice started receding off his legs.
" What is the point of thawing them out ? The ice has probably killed off every single cell inside of them already," Naaman started drawing closer.
" You know nothing about me nor what I am capable of! I am ranked top thirty in the world ,and no mere ice will hold me ," the man shouted as the last of the ice melted off.
He was , however , still struggling with restraining Arctic Hold from freezing him all over again so Naaman did him a favour and dismissed the talent all together.
It was time to play with his food.
" I promise not to use that attack on you again , so come at me with everything you got," he challenged the mage ,eager to see what he was capable of.
Linzy grabbed the spaced out Cynthia's hand and made a dash for the door , knocking over one of the frozen bodies in her haste.
As the body shattered , Naaman turned and smiled . If he had wanted , they'd have died right where they stood.
He instead turned back to the mage , more eager to see what fight the man would put up.
"You mages think being classified as first class means you're at the pinnacle of all else right? How about you try selling that idea to me , depending on your performance, I'll decide on whether or not your right,"
"For all these people you have killed without cause, I will burn you to ashes ten fold !" the mage literally breathed fire , aiming a streak of red flames at Naaman.
His feet had been massively damaged as he'd been warned , but he burned through the pain , sustaining them purely with his elemental power.
Naaman easily dodged , but in the midst of the attack decided to bring his face back into the passing fire. It was a mockery of the mages ability , and also an avenue for Naaman to gauge the man's damage potential.
" I didn't even get sunburn from that , do you want to try again?"
"Your arrogance will be your undoing !" the mage thundered.
He was not stupid though , from what he was seeing it was obvious that there'd be no way to win against Naaman. The power disparity was just too great .
Still , he had to try. Both for justice and his pride as a first class mage.
Linzy and Cynthia burst out of the administration block just as an explosion tore through the structure, an inferno erupting so fiercely that it seemed to lift the entire building off its foundation.
The force of the blast hurled them like ragdolls across the stone-littered ground. Linzy hit the earth with a sickening thud, pain searing through her shoulder as it dislocated.
She screamed, eyes watering, while Cynthia, spared any major injury aside from scratches, scrambled to her feet and ran to her friend.
"Cynthia, you have to put it back!" Linzy gasped, voice raw and splintered by pain. "Hurry!"
"How?" Cynthia's hands hovered, unsure, trembling.
"Rotate it! Now, hurry!" Linzy shouted, her face contorted in agony.
Before Cynthia could follow through, a deafening crack split the night air. The roof of the administration block exploded upward, fragments of wood and steel spinning into the sky.
The sight was surreal: two figures launched into the night like phantoms, Naaman holding the mage by the throat, his grip unyielding. The mage thrashed and summoned flames that licked at Naaman's arm, searing away the remnants of his sleeve, but the Enforcer remained unmoved.
"You've fought well, more than most," Naaman said, voice like ice. "Your reward is a swift death." With a vicious twist, he hurled the mage downward, headfirst toward the earth below.
"Arctic Hold,"
Naaman's command cut through the night as another white circle spun into existence on the ground where the mage hurtled. The icing effect surged up in thick mist, catching the mage mid-impact and freezing him instantly in a deathly tableau even before he hit the ground.
Naaman descended gracefully, his feet touching down with the fluidity of a leaf on water. He didn't even spare a glance at the frozen corpse, his silver eyes locked instead on Linzy.
Cynthia instinctively stepped in front of her friend, but Naaman raised his hand gently, disarming her without a word.
"Let me help," he said softly.
"Rejuvenation,"
A warm, green glow radiated from his fingertips as he touched Linzy's shoulder. She shuddered as a tingling warmth washed through her arm, mending torn tissue and snapping her dislocated joint back into place with miraculous ease.
"Is the pain gone?" Naaman's eyes were searching, sincere in a way that unsettled her more than his earlier cruelty.
Linzy, still in shock, managed to nod. "Why didn't you kill us?" Her voice quivered, hovering between defiance and terror. "Why spare us when you didn't spare them?"
Naaman's gaze softened. "Your body, your essence—it's different. Have you ever wondered why your mage powers expired so early?"
His hand gently helped her sit up, and for a brief moment, Linzy felt something unfamiliar: safety.
"No," Linzy said, barely above a whisper, her mind racing with confusion and fear.
Naaman turned to Cynthia, who stood motionless, eyes wide with panic. "You don't need to be afraid anymore," he assured her. "I'm done taking lives today."
Silence enveloped them as his words sank in, an uneasy calm stretching out in the chaos.
He faced Linzy again, the look in his eyes both unsettling and profound. "The two of you will come with me. Your destinies are entwined with something far greater than you know—glorious and terrible things."