Aether Nexus: Curse of Love & Hatred

Dominitus's surprised look melted into a feral, approving grin. "Good!" He barked, and before Liam could react, the captain's free fist snapped up in a tight arc and landed squarely between Liam's forehead and the bridge of his nose.

The world exploded into a bright, hot flash of white for Liam. He staggered back, stunned, his legs skittering on the packed snow. The distinct smell of iron flooded his nose as blood welled and peeked out from both nostrils.

He almost toppled over onto his back, but he planted a boot and jammed his other foot into the snow, bracing himself. Pain hammered in his skull, but it lit something fierce and lucid in him instead of shutting him down.

He didn't hesitate. He didn't think. He only moved.

Liam drove forward like a man with a single engine: one clean step, one shoulder forward, one fist launched. Emotion—raw, hot, and unquestioned—propelled it. It wasn't a measured technique or strike anymore; it was instinct and will fused into motion.

Dominitus' hand rushed up to meet it, palm open as before. When this punch landed, the captain felt it in his bones as he was surprisingly pushed back. A wave of force different in quality and magnitude from anything Liam had shown so far traveled through Domitius.

Dominitus reeled, surprised, and reflexively brought his other hand up to reply with a gut check. The captain's strike, instinctively infused with soulura, drove toward its mark.

However, Liam reached forward and caught the incoming punch, his hand taking the force and answering back with an equalizing pressure. Domitius' soulura did not smash through like before; instead it was eased, absorbed and folded back, softened by Liam's own soulura.

For what felt like hours, Dominitus' surprise contrasted Liam's will as the two of them simply hung locked together: hand to hand, face to face, soul to soul, the snow at their boots scattering with the small tremor of exertion.

As Dominitus looked into Liam's face, something in his stern gaze met the captain's eyes and held: not fear, not confusion, but an absolute, burning resolve lead by instinctive anger. Beneath that resolve flickered an unfamiliar glint—not merely the raw bloom of soulura, but a smaller, sharper light beneath it all, like the first spark of a blue flare in the midst of red flames.

Dominitus' expression then hardened into a stunned, respectful seriousness. He could see what Okun spoke about clearly now: the first, bluntest shimmer of Liam's Soulful Technique.

Dominitus' laugh cracked across the air—a booming, delighted sound that shook the frozen breath from the world around them. His eyes glittered with that hard, fond light of a man who'd just watched steel temper in fire.

"You feel it, don't you?" He rumbled, voice still thick with amusement. Then his tone turned sharp, like a smith giving a final instruction. "Good. Now burn the memory. Not just remember—burn it. Take this feeling and keep it in you the same way I kept that damn bear's tearing of my side. Make this become a mark on you. Anchor it to your body. When you do that, you won't be searching for your soulura, it'll follow your will when you deem it necessary!"

Coming out of his minor blind rage, Liam stared at Domitius, confusion and the aftertaste of adrenaline making his face twist in contemplation. Rage and pain still buzzed in his limbs, but beneath that, a thinner thread of understanding twined itself through his thoughts.

He hadn't been searching for anything when he struck; he'd been answering a need. Dominitus's words gave a name to that process and a path forward: not to think about calling soulura, but to lock the feeling of calling it into his bones.

As Dominitus spoke, something in Liam's subconscious was already at work. The impact, the surge under the skin, the way his arm had felt when the current ran through—those impressions filed themselves away without thought, as if a clerk in Liam's mind were stamping them into a ledger.

Emotion braided to motion, motion braided to memory, memory braided to emotion. The training did what Dominitus promised: it began to become less a mystery and more something akin to an extra limb; just another natural instinct at the body's command.

While Liam processed the entire lesson, Dominitus moved. Swift as a practiced strike, he swept his leg low and hard at Liam's ankles. The captain's motion would have put the younger man to the snow out cold, save for the fact that Dominitus's other hand closed on the collar of Liam's shirt the instant he start to tip.

Dominitus hauled him upright in one practiced motion and steadied him at arm's length. His grin softened into something like pride as he patted Liam on the shoulder with a firm, approving hand.

"First one I've seen pass the second method ever lad! Hell, most tap out after the first punch." His chest swelled with that fierce, straightforward satisfaction of a trainer who'd watched someone finally leap the gap. "You stuck it. You didn't fold. You grasped your soulura. Good on you."

Looking off to the side for a moment, Domitius then gave a half-bow of the head. "By the way, sorry about the antagonizing back there. It was obvious you needed a little push, and it was the only way I knew how." He barked a laugh that had no malice in it. "All in the name of making sure your will took hold."

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Finally, as if remembering to be human as well as a mentor, he jabbed a thumb at Liam's still-snow-crusted chest and chuckled low. "The crazy things a woman's love will make you do, right? Did I ever tell you I'm seeing someone myself?"

Liam blinked thoughtlessly against the cold, his breath coming in sharp little pulls as his hands refused to stop shaking. Despite his mind still playing catch-up, he managed a thin, uncertain smile—the kind someone gives when they're proud of something they didn't fully understand.

The slow dawning that whatever had happened this morning definitely changed him finally finished. Liam's uncertain smile began to widen as he laughed breathlessly, his chest and ribs exploding in pain with each spasm. Domitius matched his laughter.

Their laughter—Liam's a little thin and Domitius' a full, rolling bellow—hung in the cold air, like one between two friends that respected each other.

Then, the moment snapped like a wire. From inside the training hall, a light detonated.

It didn't creep or glow; it burst. Golden light spilled from the seams of the building: a slit where the double doors met, the thin gaps beneath the shutters, even the crack around a pane of frost-splattered glass. The light pried itself into the day, bright as the sun and alive. For a heartbeat, it seemed to hum with a sound that was almost music under the roar of wind.

The earth tremored as if the light had stomping feet. Wind answered the flash as if the light had lungs. A gust tore outward in a violent sheet, snatching at the two men on the training lawn.

However, in the same moment, a scream could be heard, a child's scream—one filled not with pain, but with fear. Pure fear. Liam and Domitius both recognized that high-pitched voice's owner, Dama.

Before either of the two could react, the wind came roaring, causing them to jerk back, arms lifting to shield their faces as the cold current crashed into them and pushing them back.

Snow that had been sleeping in piles leapt into the air, a stinging flurry that whipped through the ranks of wooden training dummies and the six stone totems lining the path.

Loose hair and cloth was whipped around like mere playthings. Domitius' cloak and Liam's scarf bellied like a sail, both feeling the wind press into them as if the very atmosphere had been rearranged.

The light lasted less than a breath. As quickly as it had come, the golden bloom collapsed inward, drawing itself back through the cracks like a tide pulling from shore.

The gust that had answered lost its strength, folding back into ordinary wind that sighed away over the field. Snowflakes settled, the training ground's usual hush returned.

However, the fact that Dama screamed made the atmosphere feel way more tense than before.

Liam and Domitius looked at one another. While both faces were cut and covered by the whipped up snow, Liam's face showed nothing but fear hearing Dama, while Domitius just expressed pure confusion, having faith that Okun would never hurt Dama.

Neither spoke, words felt small against whatever had happened, but the same question sat between them: "What the hell?"

Without a word, Liam dashed toward the training-hall doors, Domitius in tow. Each step felt louder than it should have been in that sudden, brittle silence—that whatever light had flared inside the hall had come from where their allies were now, and that they would not wait to find out what it meant.

Unbeknownst to them, high in the Briarstone Mountains, a glacial cavern yawned beneath the peaks.

Icicles hang like glass teeth and curtained the ground like a self made fence. The cave seemed to breathe cold steam, the walls glittering with trapped shapes—the frozen silhouettes of Briarstone guards long since embedded into the ice, their faces frozen in whatever expression they had when they confronted their enemy. Some was of fear, some was of determination, and some was of acceptance—all met the same fate.

A shadow inhabited the deepest throat of the cave—a large presence that is more absence than form. It lifted its head when the mountain answered: a faint tremor crawling through the cave, the echo of the golden burst from the training hall below. The shadow felt it like the tug of a distant tide.

Nearby, a small sound cracked in the form of a tiny, keening cry. A little blue oni child—the same creature that antagonized the Enohayean men on their way to Briarstone—horned and raw-eyed, fangs glinting in the pale light as it blinked awake. It whimpered at the burst of soulura and slight tremor, not knowing what was going on. A thin, frightened sound that bounced and died against the glittering walls.

The large shadowy figure responded immediately. It rushed to the smaller figure, not with menace, but with a careful motion. Long, indistinct limbs scooped the child up like a parent; the cavern's chill almost shrinking away from the shadow's bulk.

Cradled in that great absence, the oni child began to quiet, the sobs dwindling to hiccups. The shadow rocks the little thing slowly, more guardian than beast.

Once the oni child settled down, the shadowy figure then looked to the entrance of the cave. As it moved towards it, its true shape was revealed. Where once there was only a dark silhouette, now stood a hulking oni in adult form: taller and broader than any human, fangs longer and horns grown heavy.

The ice around it chimed faintly as it squeezed through the narrow throat of the cave, light catching on its wet skin and on the glossy, exposed teeth.

From the cave's entrance, it looked down on the village below. Its eyes, that were nothing but a sea of blue, narrowed as it caught the fading glimpse of the golden burst from below. The muscles along its brow knit, and a low, resonant growl rose from its chest. It was the kind of sound that made even the snow at the highest peak shiver.

The adult oni's expression then hardened as a memory clawed its way to the surface: one of men in black cloaks. All the Oni could think about was how those men—those humans—hurt the one it looked down at in its arms.

The creature's growl deepened with something like offended hunger and a hot, possessive agitation. That sound, carried by the ridge and the teeth of the peaks, was enough to rattle loose a handful of ice and snow, sending it clattering down the rockface.

Baring its fangs, the Oni's agitation was fierce and immediate—ice, snow, and even the very mountain answering to its rising hatred.

It was a storm barely contained—a storm that was soon coming to Briarstone...

At the same time, a rather ghostly visitor had just made it over a hill, seeing Briarstone for the first time. The golden jewelry around his body chimed in unison from a gust, almost as if answering the question in his head.

With a dark-toned smirk, he began his last stretch towards his next destination: The Sin Incarnation of Sloth—Okun Yamanaka.

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Next: (Chapter 87) Miuson's Trial