Incubus Living In A World Of Superpower Users

The glow from the token in Elowen's hand deepened until the jade light spilled over the courtyard table, and both their faces were painted green and silver.

The torches along the walls still burned, but for a moment even fire seemed to draw back, as if it knew what had just been brought into the open.

The wards carved into the stone shivered faintly, their hum deepening until the sound felt like strings being plucked just beyond hearing.

Lilith leaned back in her chair, her crimson eyes fixed on the token. Her nails tapped once against the armrest before falling still.

Her smile looked amused on the surface but sharp underneath, as if every word she said carried two edges.

"Always so ceremonial," she murmured, her tone light but carrying a teasing bite. "You elves and your tokens. My illusions don't need trinkets."

Elowen didn't flinch at the jab. Her long fingers brushed across the jade surface, and the faint river carved into its center pulsed with brighter light at her touch.

Silver-green veins spread outward like blood in living skin. When she answered, her voice was soft and calm as ever.

"And yet," she said, "your illusions bend reality until walls crumble and skies break. If we tested ourselves here, the mansion would not survive."

Lilith chuckled quietly at that, tipping her head as if to acknowledge the truth. "Perhaps," she said.

The air shifted heavier, settling over the courtyard like a cloak. Elowen pressed her thumb against the jade token.

Her lips moved, and though the words were whispered softer than breath, they carried the weight of stone.

The token stirred.

Light spilled outward, not as a violent eruption but in wide, smooth waves, curling around the courtyard like rivers of silk.

Green and silver threads spun upward, winding through the air until they brushed against the torches, the warded walls, even the stones underfoot.

The table blurred first, scrolls and cups dissolving into the light as if they had never existed. The torches wavered, their flames bending into sparks of silver before dissolving into the streams of light. The floor beneath their chairs rippled like water, then melted away entirely.

And in the next heartbeat, the courtyard was gone.

They stood instead in a suspended place that didn't belong to any world mortals could name. The void stretched in every direction, black but not empty.

Roots thicker than mountains fell downward, curling endlessly into the dark. Each root glowed faintly with veins of green, like rivers of light winding through living wood.

Across the void, streams of luminous water drifted freely, twisting and bending with no weight to hold them down, ignoring gravity as though it were nothing but a suggestion.

Above, the sky had fractured into shards of color, broken glass stitched together, each shard reflecting pieces of memory and illusion, too many truths and lies flashing all at once.

Elowen stood with her feet steady on the surface of one vast root.

Light pulsed through it in rhythm with her presence, branches sprouting faintly around her, weaving themselves into a denser lattice with each passing breath.

She hadn't commanded them directly, but the world answered her.

Lilith stood opposite, her figure already beginning to blur at the edges. Her outline split once and again until three versions of her flickered in and out of sight, each moving perfectly in step with the others. Their eyes glowed crimson, sharp and amused.

Her voice echoed from all three when she spoke, soft but cutting, heavy enough to be felt in the bones.

"Here, truth and falsehood are the same blade."

Elowen lifted her hand. The colossal root beneath her feet tightened as if bracing itself, and a green light flashed outward into the lattice of branches she had already drawn into existence.

The rivers of light drifting in the air bent closer, arcing in wide curves that hovered at her shoulders, waiting for command. Her words carried calm certainty.

"And here," she said, "life itself obeys."

They faced each other across the glowing span, neither rushing. The silence was long but not empty—it was the kind of silence the void itself seemed to respect, the quiet that came before storms.

Lilith's three reflections tilted their heads together, faint smiles spreading across each face, sharp and mocking yet edged with respect.

Elowen's eyes narrowed slightly, and in them was the quiet spark of challenge.

No declarations were needed. No boasts, no speeches. They had crossed hands before. They had ended it in a stalemate, but neither had ever forgotten how it felt.

Tonight was not for blood. It was not for victory. Tonight was for a reminder—for themselves, for each other, for the world that had begun to forget what names like theirs once meant.

The void seemed to lean closer as Elowen raised her hand higher. The branches around her thickened into walls of green light, roots stretching tighter beneath her, ready to strike.

On the other side, Lilith's illusions rippled outward.

The fractured sky above them bent into a thousand mirrored horizons, each reflection showing a different possibility, each one daring her opponent to pick the wrong one.

Both women carried faint smiles now. Not warm, not gentle, but the kind of smile that only existed between equals who had tested one another and still stood. Respect lived in it, sharp as steel.

The air around them grew heavy, pressing down with the weight of centuries. The wards back at the Nocturne mansion pulsed faintly in answer, the hum of their protections echoing across worlds, like a memory of where this began.

Elowen's voice cut through the silence, soft but certain. "No more waiting."

At once, the roots flared with green light, tightening like coils of living muscle, while the lattice of branches wove itself into a shield above her.

Lilith's illusions blurred sharply. Her three reflections stepped outward in unison, each splitting further into a hundred mirrored selves until the horizon was filled with crimson-eyed shadows.

The void trembled faintly under their power. The rivers of light bent and spun, water curling into shapes that looked almost alive.

The mirrored horizons shimmered like broken glass set aflame.