CHAPTER 157: LEFT

Meanwhile, deep within the broken core of Old Haven Tower, a place once regal and mighty—now crumbled by time and battles—Keith and the others prepared in utter silence.

The tower stood like a decayed monument to a forgotten age, stripped bare of its past glory, only bones of steel and concrete left to echo the whispers of what once was.

Its ruined spiral halls and cracked foundation now served as their fortress. They had chosen this battleground deliberately.

It was the only place left where they thought they might stand a chance against Elius.

"We’ll engage in Zone V, northeast wing," Keith muttered, crouched over a glowing console embedded into the remains of a rusted pillar. His fingers tapped across a holographic keyboard connected to their AI assistant—codenamed Naraka. "Lay a magnetic dispersion field around the upper levels and reinforce all structural weak points. We’re going to bottleneck him."

"Yes, Master Keith," Naraka’s digital voice replied, echoing slightly with a synthetic charm, calm and emotionless. "Engaging power dampening algorithms. Deploying Phase Three barriers around quadrants V, X, and Z. Updating threat level on Elius from Class-B to Class-Sigma. Is that appropriate?"

Keith didn’t answer immediately. His jaw tightened.

"Change the threat level to Black Omega," he finally said. "He’s not a hero. He’s a monster dressed like one."

Beside him, Fraven tilted his head, fingers twitching as he psychically manipulated clusters of heavy debris. Each chunk of metal floated like paper, swirling gently in place before snapping into specific formations—bladed wedges, kinetic traps, pressure pods—all designed for one thing:

To slow Elius down.

Even a second’s delay could mean survival.

"Zhark," Fraven called without looking. "Your orbs ready?"

"Of course they are," Zhark growled, leaning against a cracked pillar, his white hair twitching with electric energy. Orbs of flickering lightning floated around him like sentient ghosts. "This time I’ll fry that smug face of his. Ghost walk my ass."

Keith ignored the boastful comment, his eyes locked on Naraka’s interface.

He was laying down wavefield emitters, ghost-veil disruptors, spectral-tracking mines, mana suppressors, thermal illusions, and dozens of decoys. Every possible tactic he’d learned from the Hero Academy, from Radiant Man himself, and from his own desperate fights against Elius, was being compressed into a single plan.

And yet it still didn’t feel enough.

"Shania," he said quietly.

A soft voice answered from the shadows. "Here."

The girl appeared like smoke—her violet cloak curled around her slender frame, dark eyes unreadable.

"Create phantom doubles of yourself, Fraven, and me. Anchor them to the fifth floor and let them rotate between pillars."

"Already doing it," she whispered. "I’ve made fifteen variants. They’ll bleed magic signatures. Enough to keep him guessing."

Keith exhaled.

We’ll only get one shot.

They weren’t trying to win.

They were trying to survive long enough to escape again.

The magician—Rajvi, the one who had saved them before—had promised to pull them out again if needed, but not until the trap was sprung. They had to keep Elius occupied. No one said how long.

Five minutes? Ten?

Each second would be a century.

"All shields ready," Naraka chirped. "Reinforcement units primed. Environmental manipulation active. Ghost-lure field initialized. Would you like to play music?"

"No," Keith said through gritted teeth.

Minutes passed.

The building groaned like an ancient beast. Wind howled through shattered windows. Sparks occasionally flickered from the exposed guts of long-dead machines.

No one spoke.

They could all feel it. The crawl of pressure in the air. The subtle charge in the atmosphere.

Elius was coming.

Shania sat cross-legged atop a beam, muttering under her breath, her fingers dancing with illusion glyphs.

Zhark stopped talking.

Fraven’s head was tilted to the side. His eyes were blank. He was using deep psionic sight to stretch his senses across the city.

Nothing.

Then... something.

A ripple.

"Wait," Fraven whispered, a bead of sweat forming on his forehead.

Another minute passed.

Then two.

"Closer now..." he muttered. "He’s two districts away... I can feel him cutting through the alleys. Fast. Controlled."

Keith clenched his fists.

The AI chirped, "Unidentified energy flux detected at thirty-two degrees northeast. Speed: 280 km/h. Mass distortion signature matches target Elius."

"Everyone, be ready," Keith said, his voice calm now. Focused. "Once we confirm he’s entered the perimeter, activate full lockdown."

Zhark grunted and raised his hand. Electricity danced up his arm, glowing like chained comets.

Shania dissolved into mist.

Fraven stood very still.

The minutes crawled like dying insects.

Then Fraven’s eyes twitched. "He’s closer. I can feel his emotions now... Calm. Focused. He’s not angry. That makes him more dangerous."

Keith swallowed but didn’t say a word.

The wind fell silent.

A whisper. A breath.

A heartbeat.

Fraven’s eyes widened. "He’s here—!"

Then... nothing.

No impact. No movement. No sudden clash.

Just... stillness.

Fraven’s eyebrows furrowed.

"What?" Keith asked sharply. "Talk to me."

"I... I don’t sense him anymore."

"What?"

Fraven’s eyes darted back and forth.

"He’s gone."

"What do you mean gone?" Zhark shouted.

Fraven’s voice turned brittle.

"I mean—he was right outside the perimeter. Five meters from breaching the illusion wall. I was tracking his heartbeat. His aura. His cultivation pressure. It was right there—then—just vanished."

Keith’s face twisted in confusion.

"You’re saying he left?"

Fraven’s face paled.

"Yes. I don’t know how or why but... he left."

Shania’s form flickered back into visibility, her tone confused. "Is this some trick?"

Zhark spun his orbs. "He’s not the type to run."

Keith slowly turned toward the entrance, every part of him expecting a blade to strike through it at any moment. He raised his fists.

Silence.

Naraka spoke softly. "Scanning perimeter... No trace of subject Elius. Tracking signature terminated."

They waited.

One minute.

Two.

Three.

No movement.

No pulse.

Only the wind.

Fraven finally said it aloud.

"...Huh? He left?"

A heavy silence fell over the decaying tower floor like a suffocating fog. Dust hovered motionless in the air. The only sound was the soft humming of old technology—half-dead machines trying their best to keep up with the commands poured into them. All four stood still, shoulders tense, breaths held, the kind of stillness that comes not from peace but from anticipation of something inevitable.

Keith turned his head sharply toward Fraven, eyes narrowing. "Say it again."

Fraven slowly nodded, his hand pressed against the side of his temple. Veins along his neck were throbbing slightly from the immense strain he was placing on his senses. His lips parted.

"He’s gone."

Keith didn’t move.

Fraven added, "I double-checked my psionic lattice three times. He’s not masking. He’s not cloaking. He’s not here. The moment he crossed the inner veil of our illusion field—he pivoted. Ghost Walk activated. Then, nothing. I didn’t feel an echo. I didn’t feel a recoil. I didn’t feel a trace of hostility." He exhaled sharply, as though frustrated. "His psychic footprint is clean. He was here. And now he’s not."

Zhark looked to Shania, then back to Keith. "This doesn’t make sense," he growled. "He saw through everything before. He chased us like a bloodhound. And now, what, he just decides to go home?"

Keith’s jaw locked, a tendon twitching in his cheek. "No," he said quietly. "He doesn’t go home. He plots."

Fraven backed away from the center of the room and sat down on a cracked support beam. His forehead glistened with sweat.

Shania, still wreathed in illusory haze, turned to the edge of the tower, eyes scanning the skyline. "Maybe it’s a bluff. Maybe he’s here, cloaked in some higher-level illusion even I can’t decipher."

"Or maybe he went to get something worse," Zhark muttered.

That was when a voice rasped from the darker side of the chamber.

"He left," said the magician.

All heads turned.

The Indian man—Rajvi—was leaning against a broken pillar, his breathing shallow, face pale with exhaustion. His robe was torn at the shoulder, and a deep line of dried blood painted one side of his face. His arcane staff was embedded into the concrete beside him, cracks spreading from the base like a spider’s web. He hadn’t moved in several minutes. No one even noticed he was conscious.

"Rajvi?" Shania blinked. "You’re awake?"

He nodded slowly. "I felt the vacuum. When a cultivator of his level changes direction, his spiritual pressure bends reality. The wind follows him like a shadow. He’s not nearby. He’s gone."

Keith stepped forward. "You sure?"

Rajvi’s eyes were sunken, but sharp. "Positive."

Zhark, still unconvinced, pointed at Fraven. "You said your powers are stronger here. We’re in your telekinetic territory, right? So if he’s anywhere nearby, you’d know."

Fraven wiped his brow and nodded. "Exactly. My field range is amplified in this zone. It would be impossible for him to just hide. My senses don’t just detect presence, they read emotion signatures. Aura density. Even heartbeat patterns. There’s nothing."

"Then he really did leave..." Shania murmured, glancing out through a jagged hole in the wall where a broken steel beam jutted into the skyline like a gnarled finger.

Keith stared hard at the cracked floor. "Why would he come all the way here... just to leave?"

Rajvi forced himself to stand, gripping his staff. "Perhaps he changed the battlefield. Or maybe he decided this confrontation was premature."

"Or he’s laying a bigger trap," Keith muttered.

A moment passed.

"Drone recon," Keith said suddenly, snapping his fingers. "Naraka, engage full-field surveillance. Radius: 3 kilometers. Heat signatures, spectral residue, mana traces, shadow displacement—scan it all. Include underground paths and dimensional bleed points."

"Yes, Master Keith," Naraka responded politely. "Deploying eight surveillance units. Flight mode: silent. Disruption shielding activated. Estimating scan completion in five minutes."

The ceiling opened slightly with a metallic hiss, and a series of sleek, obsidian-black drones buzzed into the sky, moving like predatory birds.

They waited.

Two minutes passed.

Zhark walked to the far edge and tapped his foot impatiently. "Feels wrong. Too easy. Maybe he found a weak spot in the illusion and is circling around."

"No," Fraven said again, voice firmer. "I’d know. He’s not here."

Shania leaned against a wall, arms crossed tightly. "Maybe he’s trying to rattle us. Make us wait. Make us paranoid."

"Or he wants us to think he gave up," Zhark added. "So we drop our guard."

Another minute passed.

A soft ping echoed in the chamber as the drones began reporting back one by one.

Naraka’s voice followed. "All sectors clear. No activity detected. No spectral distortions. No mana residue linked to target Elius. No fluctuation of spiritual energy matching known cultivator signature. Target has not returned to this zone."

A long, slow silence followed.

Even the sound of the city far below—the distant sirens, the muffled noise of traffic, the hum of neon—felt muted now.

Keith remained still, his arms crossed, the light from the holographic map playing across his cheekbones. He looked calm. But everyone could see the storm inside him.

"He’s not coming," Rajvi said softly.

Zhark let out a loud exhale and dragged a hand down his face. "So what now?"

Keith didn’t answer.

Fraven leaned back on the beam, staring at the ceiling. "Maybe he figured out something we didn’t."

"He’s a strategist," Shania whispered. "He plays long games."

Keith finally spoke.

"He left because he knows something we don’t. Something big."

No one said anything.

The shadows felt heavier now.

And the minutes stretched longer.

As the last drone returned and docked silently into the ceiling, the AI’s voice softly concluded, "Area clear. Subject Elius is confirmed not present."

A long silence.

No footsteps.

No tremors.

No mocking voice from behind the pillar.

Elius, indeed, did not come.