Chapter 470. The Man Underneath All That Terrifying Light

Chapter 470: 470. The Man Underneath All That Terrifying Light

"I’m fine," William ground out, though the words sounded like they were being dragged over broken glass.

His voice was thick, strained by a throat that felt like it was constricting around a live wire. Sweat was already pouring down his face in rivulets, beading fast along his hairline despite the cool evening air.

"Give me one more second. Just... one."

’Control it.’

’Don’t let it control you, or you’re dead before the fight even starts,’ his mind snarled.

The golden light beneath his skin wasn’t just energy; it felt like molten mercury coursing through his veins, threatening to burst through his pores.

He found it the way he had found his footing in a hundred desperate moments before this, not through raw, panicked willpower, but through the ancient, iron-clad discipline of his training.

He drew on decades of muscle memory, the kind that lived in the marrow of his bones, forcing his body to obey him even as his nervous system screamed warnings of imminent failure.

He planted both feet wide in a solid stance, feeling the cracked earth beneath his boots. He exhaled slowly through his nose in a long, controlled stream of vapor, imagining the golden fire being channeled into his core rather than allowed to spray outward.

Slowly, agonizingly, the chaos began to crystallize. The violent trembling in his limbs smoothed out into a terrifyingly precise stillness.

The tightness in his jaw eased, though his teeth remained clenched. The strange, doubled pulse hammering behind his eyes receded from a deafening roar to a controlled thrum.

Then came the shift in perception.

His vision didn’t just improve; it transformed. The entire yard seemed to rush forward, becoming hyperreal.

Every grain of dust suspended in the air became a distinct particle; every microscopic crack in the stone walls behind the dummy became as clear as a canyon.

He could hear the individual rustle of Lia’s cloak and the distant flutter of a bird’s wing outside the walls; everything was amplified, sharpened to a razor’s edge.

"That’s it," Lia called across the yard.

Her voice was tight with suppressed terror, but she kept it steady, knowing any crack in her tone might break his fragile focus. "Breathe through it, William."

"You’re not drowning... You’re steering."

William didn’t respond verbally. He couldn’t afford to waste the oxygen.

He turned toward the steel dummy, and his entire aura shifted. The air around him seemed to warp, distorted by the sheer heat and pressure rolling off his body.

He stepped into a strike, a simple, fundamental straight punch. It was a move he had thrown ten thousand times, a basic drill he had taught recruits in a lifetime that felt centuries away. No technique, no flourish.

Just raw, directed motion.

But this wasn’t the William who had practiced that punch yesterday.

As his fist traveled through the air, it not only cut through the wind but also created a localized sonic boom, CRACK BOOM, that echoed off the high walls. The golden light flared to a blinding crescendo at the moment of impact.

The dummy did not dent. It did not buckle.

The moment his fist connected with the reinforced steel plating, the laws of physics seemed to surrender. The thick metal didn’t just bend; it atomized.

With a sound like a lightning strike hitting a cathedral bell, KRA THOOM, the entire structure catastrophically failed. The thick steel plating tore away from its iron frame in jagged, glowing-edged shards that screamed as they sliced through the air.

The metal fragments skittered across the yard like shrapnel, sparking violently where they struck the stone walls.

The central frame of the dummy, designed to withstand battering rams and siege weapons, folded in on itself like wet paper crushed in a giant’s fist. The heavy steel base groaned and twisted, shrieking in protest before collapsing into a twisted heap of scrap.

The sound of a single, bone-deep metallic shriek followed by the thunderous, tumbling clatter of debris racked the enclosed space. Then, as the last fragment of steel skidded to a halt against the far wall, a ringing silence descended.

It was a heavy, suffocating silence that hung in the air, thick with the smell of burnt metal and ionized air, leaving the three women standing frozen, their hearts hammering against their ribs as they stared at the smoking wreckage of what had once been an immovable object.

For several heartbeats, the training yard was utterly silent, save for the distant, lonely echo of metal cooling against stone. The air still tasted of burnt copper and something sharp, like the static before a thunderstorm.

Nobody spoke.

Catherine’s hands had risen to cover her mouth entirely, her fingers pressed against her lips as if trying to physically contain the shock. Her eyes, usually so controlled and calculating, were blown wide with genuine terror and awe, fixed on the twisted, smoking crater where the dummy had stood only seconds before.

Kaela let out a long, low whistle that sounded more like a hiss of air leaving a punctured lung. She stared at the shredded remains of the steel the way the thick plating had been peeled back like orange skin with an expression caught between primal admiration and genuine alarm.

Lia was the first to break the paralysis. She didn’t walk; she moved with the desperate, controlled urgency of a soldier responding to a breach.

Before William had even fully exhaled the last of the golden energy, she was closing the distance at a near-dead sprint. Her eyes swept over him with the sharp, predatory concern of someone who had spent years dragging broken men off battlefields, someone who knew exactly how quickly a moment of triumph could turn into a moment of death.

"William!" Lia demanded as she reached him.

Her hands flew to his forearms, her grip iron tight as she physically anchored him. Her fingers searched for the telltale signs: the unnatural heat of fever, the wetness of blood, and the tremor of nerve damage.

"Are you hurt? Talk to me!"

"Are you bleeding? Did something snap?!"

Her voice cracked on the last word, revealing the raw fear beneath her warrior’s exterior. "Tell me you didn’t break something inside yourself."

William blinked, his vision slowly refocusing.

"I’m fine," he said, and this time the words came out steadier, though they lacked their usual conviction. "Winded. Just... winded."

The golden light had already retreated, vanishing beneath his skin like a tide pulled back by a lunar force. But as the power withdrew, it left behind a terrifying vacuum.

The surge had been an artificial inflation of his existence; now that it was gone, he felt hollowed out. A bone-deep, soul-crushing exhaustion rushed in to fill the space, a fatigue so profound it felt as though his very marrow had been drained away.

It was the kind of exhaustion that usually only came after forty-eight hours of relentless slaughter, not thirty seconds of training.

His legs suddenly felt like they were made of water. Without conscious decision, his knees gave way, and he sank onto the packed earth, the grit grinding beneath his palms.

He sat there, hunched forward with his forearms braced across his knees, his chest heaving as he fought to reclaim the simple dignity of a normal breath.

"Gods above..." Kaela whispered, finally finding her voice as she approached. "You didn’t just hit it, Instructor Wade."

"You erased it."

Catherine reached him first. She crossed the yard in quick, measured strides, her usual composure returning like armor being strapped on, though her eyes remained uncharacteristically bright.

Without needing to be asked, she knelt beside him in the dirt, her skirts pooling around her. Before he could even finish a ragged inhale, she was pressing a leather water skin into his hands.

"Drink... Slowly."

Kaela dropped down on his other side a moment later. She was still faintly damp with sweat from her own morning drills, and her shoulder pressed warm and solid against his side, a grounding presence in the aftermath of the supernatural violence.

"That was insane," she murmured, her voice hushed as if speaking too loudly might shatter the fragile peace. "I thought you were going to explode."

Lia didn’t sit. She stood over all three of them, her arms crossed tight against her chest, her stance defensive even though there was no enemy in sight.

Her gaze remained unblinking, sharp and wary, watching him drink with the same intensity she would give a bleeding wound that refused to clot.

She wasn’t just watching him recover; she was watching him to see if the man she knew was still underneath all that terrifying light.