The cold, creeping numbness began to ebb, replaced by something unfamiliar—a pulse, a surge of warmth, but also chaos.
It was as though the world around him shifted and buckled. His senses sharpened, but not with clarity, but with something far more profound—something wrong.
The spear that had impaled him began to hiss, its structure trembling under an unseen force, and then, to Aszer's astonishment, it disintegrated into nothing but dust, falling away from Aric's broken body—but the king swiftly materialized another in his hands.
Aric's eyes snapped open.
The battlefield around him felt off, as if it existed as a memory alone.
His body, though torn and bloodied, flowed with what should have been an impossible energy—mana and ki, blending, swirling, converging in ways that defied all natural order.
He stood, power raging, bending with intensity.