Chapter 1407: Towards a Two Minutes-Days Hell!

White hair fell loosely around the Young Dragon’s face.

Black-white cold breathed through the darkness surrounding him.

For the first time since tempering his body into the monstrous physical might of a Sky Sovereign body cultivator, Phei almost hated how powerful he had become. He had spent far too many years being weaker than the monsters surrounding him to regret finally becoming one himself; finally having Marcus at his mercy made restraint feel unbearable for Phei.

Every instinct inside him wanted to stop measuring his power, close the distance and beat the bastard until the forest floor became unrecognizable beneath what remained.

He could not.

Marcus had to survive what came afterward.

If Phei struck him the way he truly wanted to, there would be no Marcus Heavenchild left to punish. There would be flesh hanging from bark, blood splashed across the frost and Eira listening while Phei explained why their carefully planned hunt for another Original Progenitor had ended with the required vessel becoming fertilizer beneath some unfortunate tree.

So Phei held back, and every restrained blow only fed the cold fury sitting beneath his ribs.

Marcus spat another mouthful of blood into the snowy forest ground and tried dragging himself upright. Phei watched without moving, his expression was so empty that the absence of rage became far more frightening than rage itself. The shameless grin normally living somewhere near his mouth was gone and even the easy arrogance with which he had started facing enemies stronger than himself had disappeared with it, and even the colder amusement the Primordial Frozen Zone had carved into him had been swallowed beneath something uglier.

’Selene.’

Selene had remained beneath his mind since the day Phei learned the truth.

Her name had followed him through training, battle, pain and every endless stretch of frozen wilderness while he reminded himself he had to give hell to the one that did that to her. It remained with him while his body broke and strengthened, while he laughed with Dragon Lady, while he slaughtered beasts across the Primordial Frozen Zone and while whole weeks passed without Marcus standing anywhere near him.

The bastard only had to enter his thoughts for Selene to appear somewhere behind his face, bringing back the same sick coldness every time Phei remembered what had been done to her.

Marcus finally dragged enough air through his ruined mouth to force out the beginning of a scream.

Darkness closed across his jaw causing the sound to die immediately.

Void wrapped around the lower half of his face and forced his mouth shut so violently that his remaining teeth ground together. Marcus jerked in panic and tried again, forcing whatever sound he could through his nose and throat, but nothing travelled beyond the clearing.

Phei had sealed the surrounding space beneath his power so completely that the forest seemed to have forgotten sound could escape it.

He began walking toward Marcus.

Primordial Blood rose from the frost around the Heavenchild heir in thick crimson strands, warm and alive against the frozen earth. One coil snapped around Marcus’s wrist and dragged his arm against the ancient trunk behind him. Another caught the opposite arm, winding higher until both limbs were pinned against rough bark with enough force to leave Marcus twisting helplessly beneath them.

He fought the bindings anyway.

His shoulders strained; his fingers clawed uselessly against the blood wrapped around his wrists. His boots scraped through the frost while he tried wrenching himself away from the tree, but the crimson strands only tightened whenever he pulled.

Snow continued drifting lazily between the ancient branches.

The forest remained indifferent.

The heir of one of Earth’s most feared families could thrash beneath a tree until his body failed him, and nothing within the Endless Forest cared enough to answer.

Phei stopped several paces away.

When he finally spoke, the words were quiet enough that Marcus should have needed to strain to hear them. Instead, Phei’s voice reached him with unnatural clarity, passing through the sealed darkness and settling against his senses without needing volume.

"You killed my Selene!"

Marcus’s eyes widened.

Phei stepped closer until the black-white mist shifted aside and revealed his face completely.

"You did that her," he said unable to say the word itself.

Whatever movement remained in Marcus’s expression faltered beneath the terror that entered it.

Phei took another measured step.

"And then you killed her you bastard!"

The Void closed around Marcus’s throat.

Phei still had not touched him.

Invisible pressure tightened beneath his jaw and slowly lifted his body along the trunk. The bark scraped down Marcus’s back as his boots left the ground, kicking uselessly beneath him while the Primordial Blood around his wrists loosened just enough to let his hands tear free.

Marcus immediately clawed at his neck.

His fingers dug into his own skin, searching desperately for something he could seize, but there was nothing there except the pressure crushing deeper every second. His legs thrashed beneath him while his body twisted against the tree, every frantic movement making the scene uglier without bringing him any closer to freedom.

Phei watched.

The realization that finally entered Marcus’s face had very little to do with pain.

Phei did not even want to touch him.

That humiliation reached somewhere pride had protected until now.

The Young Dragon who once threw himself into confrontation with every emotion written plainly across his face now stood beneath Marcus and looked upward with such naked disgust that physical contact itself seemed beneath him. Marcus’s instincts understood before his arrogance did that Phei had not abducted him to establish superiority or settle some rivalry between two men who still existed upon comparable ground.

There was no contest left.

Marcus had already lost.

"I’ve thought about what I would do to you for a very long time," Phei said, his voice retaining the same terrible calm despite Marcus struggling above him. "Funny thing is, every version seemed too quick and you’d die so easily, in essence, granting you a quicker mercy and come back even more powerful after which I dont care about really; but granting you a quicker mercy? Please!"

Marcus searched his face.

Whatever he hoped to find was not there.

Death would have been easier.

Rage would have been easier too; rage could exhaust itself, and hatred sometimes became careless enough to leave openings. Phei’s expression carried neither weakness. The anger inside him had been sitting too long, frozen too deeply and fed by too many memories to burn itself empty tonight.

Phei stopped directly beneath Marcus and tilted his head slightly looking at his own fingers. "I could tear you apart. I could break every bone in your body and heal you every time until I got bored. I could let the Queen kill you, wake you again and keep repeating it until death itself starts wondering why you refused to stay dead."

Several metres away, the Undead Queen’s violet eyes brightened immediately.

She stood partly concealed among the ancient trees with her hair resting over one shoulder while black-violet Death Essence curling lazily around her body. A small smile touched her lips at the suggestion, carrying enough genuine interest that Marcus’s eyes flickered toward her before snapping back to Phei.

Phei ignored the Queen.

"But none of those are enough."

Marcus’s struggling became frantic.

His fingers scraped harder across his throat while veins rose beneath the reddening skin of his face. The pressure around his neck loosened just enough for a broken gasp to enter his lungs, only to tighten again when he tried turning it into sound.

Phei stepped closer.

"You gave Selene worst horror you can ever give a woman, Marcus. You took something from her she never gave you, then murdered her when you were finished."

The calm finally cracked around the edges of his voice, though the volume never changed. His jaw tightened, and the Void answered the anger before anything else did, contracting just enough to make Marcus’s entire body jerk.

"So I’m going to give you that horror."

There was no roar behind the promise or eruption of Essence tore apart the forest, and Phei made no grand declaration to the heavens.

He simply told Marcus what was going to happen.

The certainty inside those words turned the fear upon Marcus’s face almost animal.

"I’ve only got a couple of minutes before your family realizes something is wrong," Phei continued, glancing toward the distant darkness as though the Heavenchild estate far beyond the forest were merely an inconvenient clock ticking somewhere outside the enclosure they had created. "Unfortunately for me and fortunately for you, two minutes isn’t nearly enough for everything I’ve wanted to do."

His eyes darkened further.

"But I know somewhere else."

Marcus stopped struggling for the smallest fraction of a heartbeat.

Phei saw understanding beginning to gather behind the terror.

Then he smiled.

It was the first smile Marcus had received from Phei that night.

Nothing about it offered comfort: "Somewhere two minutes can become days for us."

Marcus’s eyes widened until fine red veins became visible around them.

"Days where nobody interrupts," Phei continued as the Void slowly lowered him, stopping only when the tips of his boots barely brushed the frost. "Days where you don’t get to die no matter what hell I bestow upon your rotten soul."

Phei lifted one hand.

Until now, he had refused to place so much as a fingertip against Marcus directly, even the slap as not his hand; holding him Phei had only held Marcus by his shirt too.

That changed; disgusting as it was for Phei.

His one finger extended toward Marcus’s forehead.