CHAPTER 526: PREDICTABLE

The air ignited once more—two blurs collided, flame and shadow clashing in a storm that shook the battlefield to its core. Every strike was a sonic boom, every movement a flash of light and darkness merging in violent harmony.

Liam’s daggers met the illusion’s blades mid-swing, sparks cascading like molten rain. The impact sent ripples of force through the cracked earth, fissures glowing with the heat of their power. The illusion pressed down, muscles coiling as it snarled, but Liam’s expression didn’t waver—his eyes were cold, precise, and calculating.

Then, just before the illusion could twist its blade to counter, Liam dropped his stance an inch lower—inverted the flow.

The illusion mimicked.

And in that sliver of a second it took for the mimicry to occur, Liam’s hand flicked upward, his palm igniting in blinding light. A miniature sun burst to life, compressed to the size of his fist—a deadly sphere of condensed flame that shimmered with unstable energy. He slammed it into the illusion’s abdomen.

BOOM!

The explosion hurled the illusion backward, the detonation carving a crater into the ground as molten rock sprayed outward like liquid glass. But Liam wasn’t done. He appeared above the rising smoke in an instant, both daggers drawn.

"Umbra Star."

He whispered the name like a death sentence. In the same motion, he spun midair, shadows swirling into twin orbs of dark fire along the edges of his blades. He hurled them downward—two black stars cutting through the smoke. They collided into the crater with cataclysmic force, detonating in twin bursts of compressed flame and darkness that tore through the terrain.

The illusion appeared through the blast, cloak of shadow shielding its frame, but not unscathed—its left arm burned, cracked with light seeping through the wounds. Liam landed behind it, pivoting sharply and slashing upward. The illusion parried, but Liam’s motion was already reversed—he twisted in the opposite direction, using the inversion law once more.

Each move, each strike—he mirrored, then inverted. The illusion fell a fraction behind each time, unable to recover before another blow landed. Liam exploited every delay with brutal precision.

He ducked under a horizontal slash, countering with an upward kick engulfed in fire. The impact shattered the illusion’s guard, forcing it to retreat. Before it could stabilize, Liam clapped his hands together—two spheres of flame compressed into a tight spiral between his palms, shadow veins lacing through it.

The sphere condensed until it vibrated violently, the glow too intense to look at. Liam thrust his hand forward, sending the sphere hurtling straight into the illusion’s chest.

Another explosion. The ground split apart like a ruptured wound. The illusion was sent skidding across the earth, smoke rising from its charred torso.

Liam appeared before it before the dust settled, his left hand enveloped in black fire. He swung—solidifying the flame into a blade mid-motion. The illusion blocked, barely, but Liam’s momentum overpowered it, forcing it backward again.

Then another strike—an inverted slash.

Then a stab—followed by a half-spin reversal.

Then a feint—masking a compressed burst of flame that detonated point-blank.

Liam’s movements were no longer reactions—they were predictions against the reflection itself. The rhythm was brutal, sharp, and unpredictable. Every second, he bent the rules of mirroring, using the law of inversion against the being born from it.

The illusion tried to retaliate, slashing through the smoke, summoning countless blood-forged blades midair, firing them like arrows. Liam raised a single hand—shadows erupted from beneath his feet, solidifying into a dome of black flame that absorbed every impact before collapsing inward like smoke.

He was winning—bit by bit, strike by strike, he was pushing the illusion into a corner.

But then, somewhere deep within that moment, something stirred in Liam’s chest—a flicker of unease.

His strikes landed too smoothly. The illusion’s guard faltered too conveniently. Each of his calculated blows struck precisely where it needed to, almost too perfectly.

Liam’s eyes narrowed. ’No... this doesn’t feel right.’

He parried another strike and countered with a burning elbow to the illusion’s jaw, forcing it backward once more. Yet as he followed through, a thought echoed in the back of his mind, sharp and uncomfortable.

’This thing’s supposed to be my perfect self... yet it’s losing ground too easily.’

Flame licked across his forearm as he deflected another shadow slash. The illusion stumbled back, smoke rising from its body. But even as Liam pressed his advantage, the doubt grew.

’Aesmirius said this illusion was meant to show me my "potential." But if I beat it like this—by exploiting its delay—then what am I actually learning? Nothing. There’s no growth here. No evolution. Just... repetition.’

He twisted his body, narrowly dodging a spear of that grazed his shoulder. His heart pounded, not from exhaustion—but from the gnawing sense that he was missing something.

The fight wasn’t supposed to feel this empty.

Before he could process the thought further, a voice cut through the noise.

"Pathetic."

The illusion’s tone had changed—calm, almost disdainful. It stood amidst the dust, scorched and battered, but grinning.

"You’re getting weaker, not stronger. You’ve stopped evolving."

Liam’s grip tightened on his daggers. "What are you talking about?"

The illusion tilted its head, its grin twisting. "This is boring."

Then it moved.

A storm of shadowfire erupted from beneath its feet, propelling it forward with impossible speed. The ground shattered in its wake. Liam tried to block, but the first impact hit like a meteor—dagger meeting blade in a shower of sparks before the illusion’s knee drove into his abdomen. The breath left Liam’s lungs.

Before he could recover, the illusion spun, striking him across the face with a backhand wrapped in flame. Then another slash—then another—each faster and heavier.

CRACK!

A blade of solid shadow cut across Liam’s chest, sending him flying through several ridges of molten stone. The explosion that followed consumed everything in fire and debris.

Liam’s knees trembled as he forced himself upright, every breath sharp and heavy with dust. His body screamed in pain, and his vision blurred around the edges, but he refused to stay down. Across the shattered ground, the illusion emerged through the thick smoke, calm and composed, faint embers flickering off its shoulders. It was bruised too—scorched across one arm, a faint cut running along its jaw—but nowhere near as damaged as Liam.

It stopped a few paces away, its expression somewhere between amusement and pity. "You really thought I wouldn’t catch on?" it said, voice steady and eerily familiar. "The moment you discovered the inversion principle of the Reflection Law, I already knew what you’d do with it. I knew the exact moment you’d turn it on me."

Liam’s eyes lifted slowly, his chest rising and falling in quiet exhaustion. The illusion tilted its head slightly, lips curling. "You’re predictable, Liam. Always have been."

That word—predictable—hit harder than any blow before it. Predictable. It lingered in his head like an echo bouncing in a hollow room. His breathing slowed. He replayed the fight in fragments—every movement, every counter, every decision. Every time he thought he’d gained an advantage, the illusion had already adapted. Every move he considered clever, it had seen coming. It wasn’t luck. It wasn’t coincidence. It was knowledge.

But not of his fighting style. Of him.

His mind began to churn, breaking down the puzzle in real time. Why did it always know what came next? Why could it react before he even acted? It wasn’t reading his myst flow, and it wasn’t copying his energy patterns—it was anticipating him. Anticipating the very process behind his choices.

Because that’s what he was—a thinker. A planner. A tactician who didn’t take a single step without evaluating the path first. He’d spent years refining how he fought, how he observed, how he calculated risk and outcome. He was the master of control—always in command, always with an answer.

But standing before his own reflection, he finally saw it for what it truly was. His control didn’t make him invincible. It made him transparent.

His lips parted, the words spilling before he realized he was speaking. "So... that’s it. I’m predictable because I’m trying to be perfect."

The illusion didn’t answer. It just stared, watching him closely.

Liam’s mind spiraled further, digging deeper into the truth unfolding before him. He had always believed that Reason was his sharpest edge—his clarity, his discipline, his ability to see every possibility and cut through chaos with precision. Through the memories revealed to him, he figured out that was his mother’s legacy to him: her mind for battle. But that same mind, right now, was betraying him. It was keeping him confined to logic, to predictability, to patterns that this reflection could trace and exploit.

For a second, his chest tightened—not in fear, but in a strange kind of grief. He was realizing that the very foundation of his strength was also his weakness.

His gaze hardened as he muttered quietly, "Reason is the reason I lose."

The irony stung. He almost laughed. But the humor faded quickly, replaced by stillness. In that moment of acknowledgment, something inside him began to unravel.

It wasn’t despair—it was quiet. A strange, unnerving silence began to take over his thoughts. The overanalyzing stopped. The tension in his shoulders loosened. The weight of having to know every outcome fell away. For the first time in years, his mind wasn’t racing ahead. It was simply still.

And beneath that stillness, something raw and feral stirred. Something that had always been there, buried deep under layers of logic and control.

Instinct.

The illusion’s expression shifted, its smugness faltering. It felt it immediately—the subtle shift in the air, the eerie calm radiating from Liam. His aura no longer pulsed in predictable waves. It was fluid, unreadable, shifting like a shadow caught between light and dark.

"What are you doing?" the illusion murmured, narrowing its eyes. "What just changed?"

Liam didn’t respond. He didn’t need to.

His crimson eyes lifted slowly, faintly glowing. There was nothing behind them now—no frustration, no calculation, no thought. They were hollow, endless, untethered from Reason.

The illusion took a step forward, unease crawling across its face. Before, it could feel Liam—his thought process, his intent, his anger. Now there was nothing. Just void.

And in that void, there was something terrifyingly pure.

The illusion’s jaw tightened. "No..." it muttered under its breath, realization dawning. "You—"

But it never finished.

It moved, fast—immediately drawing a long sword, flames erupting from its edge. It lunged forward, aiming to finish it before Liam’s transformation solidified. But in the moment before impact, the world seemed to shift.

The illusion’s blade met empty air.

Liam was gone.

Its pupils dilated, its head snapping left, right—scanning for any distortion of myst, any sign of teleportation or energy manipulation.

"Impossible."

Then it felt it—a killing intent colder than shadow, heavy enough to make its skin crawl. The illusion turned sharply just as a flare of heat whispered past its head. The attack barely missed, searing through the space where it stood. It leapt back, vanishing into a burst of flame and reappearing several meters away, landing hard.

The moment it looked up, its breath caught.

Liam stood where it had been moments ago, motionless, his aura faint but suffocating. His crimson eyes glowed faintly through the smoke, stripped of all human emotion. There was no hesitation in him anymore, no thought. Just movement waiting to happen.

And in that instant, the illusion understood—this was no longer the strategist who fought through reason and order. This was something else. Something primal and instinctive.

This wasn’t the same Liam Hunter it had been fighting moments ago.