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——————————————Author Note———————————————
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Oh, I'm so sorry—I totally forgot about you guys. I uploaded the chapter days ago... but completely forgot to share it. I'm really sorry, everyone. Here's the chapter, packed and loaded with action. Small playlist I recommend for reading the chapter:
At the Beginning:
"We Fall Apart" – Anguish, Ambvsh, ily
"Murder in My Mind" – Kordhell
At the Middle:
"Live Another Day" – Kordhell
At the End:
"Last Resort" – Papa Roach
"Get Jinxed" – Djerv / League of Legends
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The creature stood back up as if nothing had happened, its deformed muscles tensing with an efficiency almost unnatural for its size. The previous damage had barely grazed its body… but something in its gaze had changed.
It was no longer focused on Twilight.
It was focused on me.
Now wasn't the time to pay attention to Nightmare Moon.
I began to move sideways—slow, calculated, without breaking eye contact. The beast did the same. Step by step, mirroring my pace. Any wrong move would be a death sentence.
The silence between us wasn't empty. It was the echo of something about to shatter.
The walk turned into a trot. The trot into a sprint. And without warning… the monster lunged.
A black shadow surged upward, tearing through a pillar like it was paper. The crash shook the air, and my body reacted before my mind did.
I had already channeled magic into my legs, enhancing my reflexes. I pushed off the ground with force, feeling the world slow for a fraction of a second. The floor cracked beneath me, and the leap carried me out of its path.
But the beast didn't pause. As soon as it touched the ground, it jumped again. Its acceleration was absurd—like inertia didn't exist.
That wasn't real.
I couldn't trust my spatial sense—it wasn't there. Not like with others.
But the air, the dust, the vibration of the ground... That I could feel. And it was enough to react.
I activated Flash without thinking, and the world shifted in an instant. The wind struck my face as I reappeared several meters away. I landed firmly, holding my ground.
But it wasn't enough.
The creature was already coming again. It gave me no time to breathe.
I anticipated its trajectory. I didn't retreat. I gathered magic in my core and projected it swiftly, aiming for its flank in a precise shot.
The spell hit.
And then… it was absorbed.
It didn't explode. It didn't deflect. It simply vanished into its body like a black hole had swallowed it.
"Tch..."
I had no other choice.
I activated my internal magic flow, channeling it into my muscles. Not to cast—but to move. To strike. I launched myself toward it, feeling the air distort around me. The world blurred with speed, but my mind remained clear.
Prediction. Movement. Strike.
My hoof slammed into its neck with force. I felt the texture of its skin—tough like scales, but with soft zones underneath. It hadn't expected that. It made it recoil. Its head twisted from the impact...
And yet, it didn't look away from me.
It didn't roar. It didn't screech. It seemed to enjoy the pain.
Its claws came down violently, trying to pierce me before I could retreat. But I was no longer there.
I used Flash at the exact moment, vanishing in a bright spark that left only emptiness behind.
I reappeared farther away this time, once again taking a firm stance.
Distance was mine again. For a few seconds.
I took the breath I'd been holding. Just one. Then the chase resumed.
The beast launched at me again, its mouth open, teeth ready to tear me from the air.
But this time, I understood.
My space. My rhythm. My advantage.
I leapt to the side, feeling the wind scrape my skin from how close it came. I used the wall for momentum, climbing upward with force and changing the axis of the fight. I dove down at it with a descending kick, channeling sacred power into my body.
Boom!
My hoof crashed into its skull, slamming it down with all my weight onto the tile floor. The sound was blunt. Hard. Like breaking one rock with another, denser one.
Flash! I vanished before its counterattack arrived. I reappeared on the other side, steady.
I watched it.
It shook off the dust slowly, as if savoring the hit. A trail of smoke rose from the spot I had struck.
It had felt it. Its regeneration… was slower this time.
"Aha…"
To test my theory, I gathered more sacred energy in my horn and fired a direct beam at its chest.
The spell struck hard.
The monster's body arched. The beam burned it. And at the same time… was absorbed. Only partially.
It was half effective. Enough to hurt it. Enough to understand.
It was absorbing the pure magical properties of my element.
"Interesting…"
A low hiss emerged from its blackened chest. Its legs scraped the floor, tensing once more.
Flash! I shifted position just before its claw tore through the air where my head had been.
I couldn't stay still. This wasn't a battle of endurance. It was a dance of death.
And we were only at the opening steps.
Wherever we passed, destruction followed.
Stone. Wood. Iron. The material didn't matter. Everything was crushed, torn apart, or reduced to dust under the creature's force or my evasive impacts.
My vision was chaos.
Each use of Flash moved me like a violent heartbeat, slicing my awareness of the surroundings. The world jumped frame by frame, disjointed, like a broken sequence. But even then, between each jump, between each fragment, my eyes remained fixed on the only thing that mattered:
Him.
The monster.
I couldn't sense him with magic, couldn't track him with seals... But I didn't need that. I just needed to see him.
And I never looked away.
He changed too.
He was no longer just brute force. Now he crushed the ground on purpose with his heavy limbs, kicking up clouds of dust and sharp debris. Improvised smokescreens. Visual traps. Tools for deception.
Once, I nearly lost sight of him in the rubble.
Nearly.
Because he reappeared from the side, charging in from a low angle, trying to catch me off guard.
But I was already in the air.
The beast was learning. But so was I.
My eyes burned. Not from the dust. Not from the shredded air.
From focus.
My mind never stopped. It calculated trajectories, timing windows, spaces between his attacks. And even then… I didn't come out unscathed.
The wounds were adding up. Cuts on my legs, gashes on my side, even a ragged mark across my left shoulder. The blood wasn't much, but it was enough to remind me:
He was adapting too.
And fast.
Soon we left the shattered ground behind and burst into a wide clearing, cracked stone and moss covering the area.
I didn't hesitate.
Flash.
I appeared as far as I could, at the opposite edge of the clearing, and landed hard, hooves digging into the ground to stop my momentum. I exhaled.
My magic reacted before I did.
A golden mist began to rise from my body—gentle, warm—wrapping around my wounds and closing the more superficial ones. A healing pulse of light wove its threads as I regained control.
The monster wasn't far behind.
It landed in the center of the clearing with a shockwave that rattled the ground, dust and debris flying in all directions. It snorted. Slow. Deep.
Its muzzle curled. A smile?
And then... it howled.
It wasn't a roar of rage or an animal's cry. It was something ritualistic. Intentional.
Its shadow stretched outward, distorting, opening like a living rift across the stone. From within... figures began to emerge.
Small shadows at first. But they crawled, rose, warped. Took shape. Arms. Jaws. Claws.
Lesser versions of itself.
"What...?"
*Tch!*
"The bastard... was absorbing magic for this."
It wasn't just for defense. It wasn't just feeding.
It was charging.
Using every one of my spells as fuel for something worse.
A summoning.
And now… he wasn't alone.
A chill ran down my spine.
No hesitation.
I leapt to the side, channeling sacred power into one of my hind legs. I spun in the air and delivered a descending kick to one of the freshly formed creatures. The blow connected hard, purifying its body in a flash of white. It disintegrated like ash.
But it wasn't alone.
Another creature—faster, lower—bit into my back. Its jaws clamped down with savage precision.
"AGH—!"
It wasn't the pain that alarmed me. It was the sensation.
My magic distorted the instant it made contact. As if a switch had flipped inside me. My internal energy link turned murky, heavy… blocked.
And then I recognized it.
That pattern. That effect.
Absorption. Nullification. Suppression.
"No way…"
A documented case. A theorized substance. One that a WARDS agent recorded nearly a decade ago, back when [void spaces] began appearing uncontrollably.
An ethereal compound that could not be produced in Equestria.
What had latched onto my back wasn't just a monster. It was a collector. An essence devourer.
And if it stayed there... it could break me from the inside.
Without thinking, I channeled all the sacred power I could into the center of my chest. I compressed it. Turned it into an unstable sphere of light.
And detonated it.
BOOM!
A white explosion—raw, formless—swept across the space around me. Both creatures were erased from existence in an instant.
I rolled along the ground, gasping once before stopping, while a layer of golden light closed the gashes on my back and shoulder.
I stood. Healing magic still flowed from me like warm mist. But my eyes kept searching.
I couldn't sense them. None of them.
They didn't exist to my magical senses.
They were ghosts in the weave.
And they were everywhere.
Though desperation dropped like a weight on my chest, something stopped it.
Hope.
Not a cry. Not a promise. But a cold, sharp fact. My sacred magic... had negated the effect of their saliva.
The substance that had blocked my inner flow had been purged. Deactivated. Neutralized.
And that alone kept fear from snapping shut around my mind like a trap.
"Aha..." I muttered to myself.
It was possible. It was reversible.
My body still burned from the impact. But my thoughts were already moving faster than my wounds.
Flash!
I blinked to another position in the clearing, higher up. From there, I raised my horn and conjured several magic circles in rapid succession. They formed around me, spinning like satellites.
One for each creature I could see.
One for every shadow I couldn't sense—but I could still see.
The circles opened like magical irises, charged with compressed sacred power. They were ready to fire.
My gaze returned to the center of the clearing.
The greater monster was still there.
Motionless.
Watching.
Its chest rose and fell slowly. The shadow at its feet kept spreading.
It was still summoning.
"Damn it!"
I shouted, no longer holding back.
"I have to find a way to stop it!"
My eyes scanned the terrain. Its blind spots. The summoning network. The cracks in the ground where the shadow seeped through.
I had to act, and fast.
With few options, I took my magic circle… and spun it. Not like before. Not as a channel. I turned it into a vortex.
It spun faster and faster until my vision blurred with two opposing spirals: Its own, absorbing, draining magic from the environment. And mine…
releasing, sharpening, resonating.
With every breath, more magic from the forest entered my lungs. Not mine. Not refined. Raw. Unnatural. Thick as a storm.
I redirected it to my magical core. There, I transmuted it.
Sacred. Pure. Mine.
"This is gonna hurt…"
I knew what I was doing. This would burn through my reserves like fire on paper if I tried it anywhere else.
But we weren't just anywhere.
We were in the Everfree.
The forest with the highest concentration of natural magic in all of Equestria. Chaotic. Overflowing.
An endless spring for those who could endure it.
I chose to do it.
To saturate my magical system.
To become a living conduit of sacred energy.
An unstable node. An equivalent threat.
It all began with a heartbeat.
Thump.
My circle vibrated with the speed it reached.
Magic went wild.
Pain exploded through my body.
My muscles clenched. My bones cracked. My nerves screamed. But every wound healed before it could bleed, bathed in my own golden mist.
Across the clearing, the monster tensed. Its posture was no longer calm.
Its back arched. Its legs braced.It felt it.
My magic circuits were being torn apart and rebuilt in real time. Heartbeat by heartbeat. As if my body was just a container…and my soul, the forge.
Every second made me more stable. Every breath, more lethal. My body… faster. Stronger. More awake.
And it was still there. Still. Static.
"Not gonna move?"
My voice came out firm. Cold.
"Then don't."
I lowered my head slightly, taking position.
"Better...Easier for me."
My eyes gleamed.
[Cero.]
In the span of a heartbeat… the magic took shape.
There was no spell.
No invocation, no mental command.
Just a reaction.
Pure instinct.
The same magic that had burst forth years ago, unnamed, uncontrolled… It returned, not as a memory, but as an explosion.
A blast of pure energy erupted from my core, channeled through the vortex still spinning above me, It had no defined shape, only direction and a target.
KA-THOOM!
The spot where the monster had stood was obliterated.
Everything was incinerated on contact—rock, roots, mist, shadow.
A burning line scorched across the clearing, leaving behind a black crater, still vibrating from magical saturation.
And yet…
There was no monster.
Not because I had destroyed it, but because it was no longer there.
It had jumped.
'Up.'
My gaze lifted just in time to see it—suspended midair, limbs spread, body poised to descend with its usual ferocity, but now, it wasn't alone.
Its summons had reacted.
Some had been incinerated by the blast, others, farther away, survived.
And now they were coming for me.
*Tch!*
I moved into position instantly.
Pain in every nerve.
Pressure in every muscle.
But also…speed.
They came as a swarm. A pack.
And I wasn't going to retreat.
Now I could see them.
Clearly.
The summons... they were slow, clumsy... predictable.
I had changed and they… hadn't had time to adapt.
The magical circles spinning around me responded without commands. They weren't isolated spells. They were extensions of me.
One by one, sacred shots fired like needles of light, piercing through each shadow before it could get close. The bodies disintegrated in the air—no screams, no resistance... just ash.
I didn't stop.
My steps carried me straight to the center of the clearing.
Toward him.
The monster twisted midair, dodging beams, waves, even the residual energy from the vortex, It was fast, too fast for its size.
And it lunged at me.
A head-on clash, It against me.
Its jaws opened, not to bite… but to consume.
It tried to devour my energy on contact, to drain my core, to suck the sacred magic that now lived in every cell of my body.
But it didn't work.
"It's mine!" I roared, forcing the flow at will.
"Mine to control… and mine to use!"
The sacred energy roared through my body like divine fire.
Its skin burned.
Whatever it used to absorb my magic began to unravel, bubbling, cracking, falling away in smoking black chunks.
The contact was the perfect conduit.
[Cero!]
I launched the second blast.
Point blank.
The explosion was brutal, a line of light tore through its torso, illuminating its deformed structure from the inside, for a moment, I saw every bone. Every dark vein. Every fracture in its internal spellwork.
The blast hurled its body backward with violence.
And this time…it didn't land on its feet.
But the monster… didn't stay down.
Its body—scorched, twisted, with light-scorched marks still smoldering—moved.
Slow... Slower than before, But it rose.
Every motion crackled. Every joint sounded like a broken echo.
And then I saw it.
Its absorption had changed.
The air around it was no longer clear. Colors began to twist, as if the world itself was decaying just by being near. Everything turned gray... pale... artificial.
The remaining summons… collapsed. Not because of my attacks, but because of him.
They were absorbed... Canceled, as if their very existence couldn't survive near the anomaly forming in his body.
Then it happened.
It released an explosion.
Dark. Dense... not magical… something else.
And from it, a dome emerged.
It sealed over the two of us, locking the clearing inside a total prison.
I felt the change instantly.
My magical sense collapsed, as if every signal had been swallowed, corrupted, or denied.
I tried to feel the outside.
Nothing.
It wasn't that it was invisible, it was that it didn't exist.
Anything that touched the edge of that dome… simply ceased to be, as if space itself were being consumed by a different law.
And then—
Something that should never happen, happened.
In front of me, in the middle of this artificial prison...
The veil tore.
It wasn't a physical crack... It wasn't a portal.
It was a wound.
A tear in the structure of the world, thin as a hair at first… but impossible to ignore.
And it came from within.
My stomach tightened, not from fear, but from recognition.
"No... not here…"
The tear before me pulsed.
It emitted no light... No shadow.
Only emptiness, real and absolute.
And then… I knew.
I felt it more than understood it.
That monster… wasn't from here.
It all made sense in a single heartbeat.
Why it absorbed magic from the environment.
Why its saliva nullified magical circuits like it was designed to.
Why I couldn't sense it—or its summons.
Why its movements and mutations didn't align with any physical pattern of this reality.
It was an invader.
An interdimensional aberration.
Not from another nation.
Not from another realm.
From another weave.
One that should never have touched Equestria.
My chest tightened. The golden mist around me trembled, as if something deeper inside had also understood.
Celestia's words came back. Cold. Heavy.
Warnings disguised as advice.
Precautions hidden in smiles and warm tea.
"Not everything that crosses the veil can or should be understood."
"If you see it… run. But if you can't run… make sure no one else sees it."
"Damn it…" I whispered.
This monster…
This monster… had been holding back. With Nightmare Moon watching him, he had refrained from doing anything. But now, in a moment of opportunity...
It was the first symptom.
And if that veil had torn from within...
then something else was pushing.
I had to kill it.
Before the other thing arrived.
Before it was too late.
Before that tear in the world became a gate.
I couldn't allow it.
I had to destroy it.
And the magic…responded.
Or maybe it wasn't magic anymore.
Maybe it was the world itself.
I ran. But I didn't feel my hooves.
The momentum was so total, so absolute… that I became light.
It wasn't Flash.
It was like the first time I used it.
Pure instinct. Pure leap. Pure direction.
I crossed the space like a contained lightning bolt, and when I struck—
The world exploded.
The dome warped.
The sacred blast collapsed on him with all my overflowing energy, golden and white light, furious and dense, rebounded off the dark walls of that prison and fell inward again in a spiral.
The monster didn't die.
It was still regenerating.
Its bones cracked. Its skin boiled.
Its body trembled.
But it was ruined from within.
Miserable.
Defeated.
Clinging to consciousness just to see one more second.
And it did.
It let out a broken laugh.
A cackle that sounded like dirty water through a rusted pipe.
And it looked at me.
Its eyes… were memorizing me.
As if it wanted to take my image with it.
To remember my shape.
My face.
My existence.
In its final seconds.
But the only thing its eyes saw…
Was my horn alight.
My energy at the limit.
My final judgment.
—[Cero].
The word was a trigger.
The world vanished in a white flare.
Silence came with the smoke.
No roar. No groan.
Just the distant sound of my own magic still crackling in the air.
The monster's body was gone.
Only fragments remained. Charred remnants.
Carbon and ash suspended by broken gravity.
But the tear… was still there.
Ripped.
But healing.
Slow. Uneven.
Like a wound the world was trying to close—without knowing how.
And then… I felt it.
A presence.
Not in front of me.
Not behind me.
On the other side.
Something was there.
Watching.
No eyes. No face.
But its attention was as clear as a dagger pressed to my throat.
I felt its gaze on me.
Direct.
Immense.
Cold as death.
But alive.
The kind of awareness that can't be explained.
One that didn't need to speak.
One that… shouldn't know you exist.
But it did.
It was watching me through the tear.
And then it happened.
My magical sense—distorted by the fragmented space—received a signal.
It wasn't clear.
It wasn't gentle.
It was like a reversed electric shock.
Direct feedback from the other side.
I saw…
the indescribable.
A sea... endless.
An ocean of creatures.
All like the one I had just fought.
Asleep.
Some smaller.
Others… far larger. Far more deformed.
Some reptilian, others amorphous.
None stable.
An army.
And at the center of it all—one.
One colossal entity.
So immense that the weave around it collapsed from its mere existence.
I didn't see it with my eyes.
But my magic understood.
It had awoken.
Just barely.
Curious about the tear.
And then… it had gone back to sleep.
Not because it wanted to.
Because it couldn't stay awake.
There wasn't enough magic to sustain it.
Its body was a parasite of reality itself.
Just its conscious heartbeat had killed the smaller creatures near it.
The magical weave around it…
Did not exist.
It wasn't damaged.
It had been eaten.
Erased.
Eradicated.
As if magic had never existed there at all.
I didn't see it completely.
I couldn't.
I wasn't meant to.
But the feeling remained.
It wasn't a future threat.
It was a countdown.
A pause.
A cycle.
And they were waiting.
"This…" I swallowed, feeling the magic crackle in my chest.
"This is not good."
I stored it as a mental note.
There was no time to dwell on the weight of what I had just discovered.
The day hadn't returned yet.
And the girls… they could still be in danger.
I gritted my teeth, reinforced my legs with what energy I had left, and ran.
My body no longer ached.
It only burned.
Like a living bonfire refusing to go out.
It took me no time to arrive.
The vortex had turned me into something else.
Light. Precise.
Urgent.
I emerged from the trees just in time to see her.
Twilight.
Standing before Nightmare Moon, her gaze steady.
The other five behind her, floating, glowing—each a distinct beacon in the darkness.
She was giving her speech.
Talking about friendship. About connection. About the invisible bonds between them.
Meanwhile, I…
I had just sealed a hole in the veil between worlds.
All I could think was: "What a difference in situations."
I remained off to the side, in the shadow of the trees.
My breathing was stabilizing.
My magic was starting to calm…
Or so I thought.
Then I noticed it.
The vortex.
It was still spinning.
It hadn't stopped.
I hadn't shut it down.
And right in that moment…
The girls activated the Elements.
A wave of multicolored light burst into the air.
And I…
Still had my vortex unleashed.
"Oh no…" I whispered.