[Name] Sszhar

[Path] Aether

[Rank] 4

[Ability] Dread Shackle / Rift Maw / Riftwalk / Mirror Body

Description: Sszhar are apex predators of a reptilian lineage, more widely known as Void Serpents. They are born in the void, where nothingness reigns, and they feed on that emptiness to sustain themselves. Silent by nature and devoted to stillness, they despise disturbance and respond with fierce aggression to any movement.

Ability — Dread Shackle / Rift Maw / Riftwalk / Mirror Body: Sszhar, being born in the void, possesses the ability to bend space itself, but their power is not limited to spatial control; they also touch certain cosmic secrets—fear among them.

With Dread Shackle, they unleash a primal terror into their prey, freezing every living cell and rendering the body immobile.

With Rift Maw, they create pocket dimensions entirely their own, shaping them into silent lairs, and using Riftwalk, they slip between these spaces with ease, entering and exiting wherever they please.

Their aggression does not make them mindless Sparks. Sszhar are also known to be patient and deceitful, often luring prey with Mirror Body, a false form used to draw targets out or test their strength, before revealing their true form.

—

After reading the description, Adyr finally understood the Serpent's last ability and why it had never revealed it until now.

In truth, it had never hidden anything. It had been using it from the very beginning.

"It is not a Spark we can take on anymore. Just run." He gave the warning one last time, beat his wings, and fell back from the Spark's broken body that had looked a breath from death.

Brakhtar and Thalira could not see the description, but they read the scene well enough. Without a word, they turned from the unknown and fled.

Even Adyr, who carried more than a few secrets in his own body, was running. It was obvious that whatever he had seen was something that could end all of their lives.

"Brakhtar, hold on to me." Realizing he was the slowest among them, Thalira caught Brakhtar's calloused hand and dragged him along while she flooded her limbs with silver electricity, the charge venting from her skin to drive her forward.

As for the Serpent, free of binds for only a few seconds, lay still. Then the first hairline faults spread across its length, thin cracks lacing over every scale.

Adyr kept beating his cloudy wings as the crackling behind him grew louder, a dry chorus that lengthened and multiplied, but he did not look back. Then it cut off at once; a single, final shattering crack rolled through the void, and the silence that followed made all 3 hearts sink.

"What is—" Thalira risked a quick look over her shoulder without slowing, and the instant it entered her sight, she regretted it.

Her body locked at once; her fingers would not answer, and her knees forgot how to bend. A primal terror flooded her like winter water, and even her voice failed to climb out of her throat.

This time, it wasn't the hiss that triggered the fear; a single look at the creature's true form wrote it into her nerves.

"Pull yourself together." Brakhtar understood immediately. He forced himself not to look back, then raised his bloodline talent and every supporting skill he could muster to break Dread Shackle's hold on Thalira.

He knew he could not outrun it, not with his weight and not in this collapsing place; his time was better spent freeing her.

Even so, time was already vanishing; in the next breath, he realized there was none left.

Sszhar was at his back, close enough for its heat to skim along his spine, a breath that was not breath but the subtraction of warmth.

"Believing we could hunt a Rank 4 Spark was carelessness." One of Brakhtar's faces spoke with the calm of an old man who knows death has arrived, while the other began to weep in silence, tears cutting down a jaw clenched against panic. "O Goddess Aetheris, grant me another chance."

He turned his head. If death was coming, he would at least face what carried it.

He looked into Sszhar's starless pits.

Depth leaned toward him, and distance began to lie. At first, he thought he saw his own reflection, but it was only the world folding: a corridor receding inside the Spark's eyes.

Brakhtar felt his thoughts shear, felt the pure fear taking control of his being.

The wrong-cathedral geometry of its scales matched nothing he knew. Each matte-black plate carried faint, etched sigils, like a forgotten language; even seeing them, trying to understand them, felt like sinning.

His mind insisted it was the same Serpent as before, yet his senses and instincts screamed that what stood before him now was something else entirely, something he had never encountered and never wished to.

While Brakhtar and Thalira stood frozen, Sszhar only watched them, showing no intent to attack.

Soon, they realized it was not idle at all; it had already triggered Rift Maw, shaping a new dimension around them and pulling them in.

This time, unlike before, when the pocket space formed slowly and they had time to collapse the passage, it happened almost at once. By the time they understood what was happening, Legacy Domain had already fallen away, and they were inside a new nothingness.

The Serpent watched them for another heartbeat, flicked its blood-red tongue with a low, grating hiss, then turned and slipped from sight, leaving them sealed inside like toys set aside for later.

"We are doomed." With the Serpent gone, the fear loosened its grip. One of Brakhtar's faces let out a long sigh, while the other stared in panic and wept in silence.

For them, there was no way out of this prison, not even with the help of a Titled Rank 4 Practitioner.

—

Seems they're caught, Adyr thought as he glided like a drifting cloud through the void.

He poured every skill and trick into speed, trying to use the time Sszhar spent with those two to buy his escape.

Losing Thalira and Brakhtar would be unfortunate; they could have been useful later. Even so, they had proved their worth by stalling the Serpent long enough for him to break away.

Or so he thought, until a cold pressure slid along his back.

"Hey, hey, how are you this fast?" He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw the giant Serpent closing in, its body slipping into pockets of darkness and reappearing meters ahead, as if it were stepping through hidden seams of the void.

Adyr was already at his limit, using every means and every skill he had to drive his flight faster.

For a moment, he wished he hadn't spent all his free stat points; if he could put more into [Will], the extra movement speed might change the outcome. But the thought was useless now—a regret with no use—so he let it go.

He ran the numbers and reached his conclusion: at this rate, the Rank 4 Spark would catch him before the exit, and in that instant, he understood there was only one path left for him.

He extended his hand, and a small crystal, clear as a drop of water, formed between his fingers.

"There were times I felt more desperate than this." He allowed himself a thin smile as he remembered the moments of his past life, then flicked the solution into his mouth.

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