Bloodweaver-Chapter 196: What’s Going On?

Chapter 196: What’s Going On?
Isaac made eye contact with Seraphina’s piercing blue eyes and froze, but nothing happened.
No illusions.
No spiral of fractured reality.
No voice crawling into his skull.
Just silence. Stillness. The world holding its breath around them.
For a heartbeat, maybe two, they simply stared at each other.
Isaac’s stance was low and cautious, knees slightly bent, his lone right arm half-raised in defence. His chest heaved from the earlier beating. Sweat dripped from his chin and hit the concrete floor with a faint tick.
Seraphina, two metres away, stood poised like a dancer in the middle of a stage. Elegant posture. Chin lifted. One foot subtly angled back - ready to strike again.
He gambled.
He had to.
’There’s no victory waiting for me if I keep playing dead with my eyes shut,’ he reasoned internally. ’I know I’ll get beaten blind. But opening them? That’s uncertain. Could be death... could be a chance.’
Uncertainty was better than certainty when certainty meant losing.
He exhaled, wincing, ribs grinding like stone under strain, then sighed aloud.
The sigh turned into a small, pained chuckle. One that shook his ribcage like a bag of loose nails. He flinched at his own laughter, but damn if it didn’t feel good.
’Kai must have been wrong,’ Isaac thought, relief spreading warm in his chest. ’It’s just fearmongering. She spreads that rumour to spook people into avoiding eye contact. But then... what the hell is her ability?’
He rolled his shoulder, settling into the fight properly now.
And for the first time, Seraphina’s expression shifted. Not much - just a tiny arch of the brow, a flicker of curiosity.
"Oh?" she said softly, amused. "So you do have teeth after all."
Isaac grinned, thin and sharp. "More than enough for you, love."
The fight began again, and this time, it was real.
She moved first. She always did.
Seraphina shot in with a blur of motion, snapping a front kick toward his sternum. Her body twisted like a whip - hips sharp, knee chambered high, foot a blur as it cut forward.
’Taekwondo base.’
He saw it instantly.
Not just street brawling. Not sloppy mutant arrogance. This woman trained.
Her kick landed - but Isaac skidded back just in time, bracing with his boots, absorbing the impact with a grunt that rattled his teeth.
"Fast," he muttered. "And loud."
She pivoted into a spinning back kick. Isaac ducked low, hair swishing as the heel sliced past his temple and crashed into the wall behind him.
Concrete spider-cracked from the force.
’Bloody hell,’ he thought, stomach dropping. ’She’s good.’
He jabbed forward with a straight punch. She blocked it with a raised forearm, then followed up with a side kick aimed at his midsection again.
Isaac twisted, barely avoiding it, then retaliated with an elbow—she dodged that too, slipping around him like water around rock.
It was close. Brutal. Balanced. A proper exchange now.
Each attack, each dodge, each counter, felt like a rhythm they were building together.
He could keep up now.
Not fully - one arm made him lopsided, predictable. But still...
He sparred with monsters. With geniuses. With murderers who calculated every move.
Seraphina was dangerous - but she wasn’t Kai, Nadya, Sven, or Takeshi dangerous.
’Used to sparring with lunatics,’ Isaac thought with a crooked smirk. ’This is practically foreplay at this point.’
She lashed another kick - Isaac dodged, then jammed a palm into her shoulder, shoving her back. She stumbled a step, recovered instantly, and snapped another punch toward his jaw.
Isaac blocked, just barely.
Their eyes met again.
This time, Seraphina smiled wider. Slow. Hungry. The kind of smile that said she was having fun.
"You hit harder than I expected," she said, rolling her shoulder, stretching her neck side to side.
Isaac scoffed. "You fight better than everyone else so far in this stadium, I’ll give you that."
"Oh, honey," she replied, "you haven’t even seen the half of it."
However, just as she was about to spark back into action, a miracle occurred.
Not for her.
For him.
The lights flickered.
Not dramatic. Not symbolic. Just the dull, dying blink of failing electricity. Once. Twice. Then-
Orange. Dim. Sickly.
The pristine white floodlights overhead dulled into a simmering amber glow, bathing the arena in a sunset hue. Shadows stretched long and grotesque, twisting up the walls like grasping hands.
The vibration stopped.
Isaac blinked.
Then blinked again.
The nausea that had been clinging to him like a parasite since he emerged in this chamber was gone.
It vanished in a single breath of still air.
He staggered slightly from the sudden absence of sensory overload, then straightened, pupils dilating as his body recalibrated.
’No way,’ he thought, pulse spiking. ’No. Bloody. Way.’
Seraphina’s next punch came straight for his face, but it never landed.
It passed through him.
Clean through his cheek. Her fist met nothing but shimmering air, slipping past his skull like he was smoke wearing human skin.
His powers were back.
The anti-phaser field Nyx had provided her with had stopped.
The stadium’s main power had been cut - coincidence or sabotage, he didn’t know.
Maybe it was Sven or maybe Takeshi’s battle in the sky had taken out the power.
Either way, it was perfect for Isaac since it seemed like the backup generator wasn’t hooked to Nyx’s frequency device.
He smiled.
Not small. Not pained.
But big. Confident. Victorious.
"Right then," Isaac said, rolling his neck. "Now we can have a proper scrap."
She kicked again - Isaac leaned forward, letting the attack slide through his abdomen like a phantom handshake.
He jabbed a straight punch - this time, it connected.
Her head snapped aside from the impact.
Sven would’ve whistled if he’d seen it.
Isaac followed up immediately, closing distance, phasing through her wild counter-swings before unphasing to land clean, targeted blows.
One hit to the ribs.
One to the chin.
Then a sharp hook that sent her skidding sideways across the floor.
’It’s a shame to hit such a pretty face,’ Isaac thought with a wince as he delivered another strike. ’But she’s a total bitch. And she beat me up way more.’
He phased beneath her next kick.
He then reappeared in her blind spot, then slammed the metal pole, picked up from the ground, into the back of her skull.
The impact was dull, but solid.
Her body crumpled forward.
Isaac exhaled, heart thudding like a battering ram. "Lights out, darling," he muttered.
He nudged her limp body with his boot, then allowed himself one more deep breath of relief.
He’d done it.
Even with one arm.
Even with a handicap.
He’d actually succeeded.
He looked over the shattered remains of the dart gun that he planned to rely on.
No suppressant. No Plan B. Didn’t matter. He’d won.
’Now to rendezvous with Sven and Takeshi,’ he thought, already preparing to phase away with Seraphina in tow. ’And then we get out of this blasted city. My father can help with that. We can then contact the others and gloat that we-’
The world twisted.
Not the stadium.
Not the lights.
His mind.
The room dissolved.
The concrete floor turned to polished marble.
He was sitting in the old place he used to sit in the manor, hiding away, reading books alone. Small body. Short legs swinging off the seat.
WHAT’S GOING ON?
He shot to his feet - but his limbs were tiny now. Child-like. Weak. Soft.
A towering shadow loomed over him.
His father.
Face contorted in rage.
A hand struck him across the face - the force sent him spinning.
"Boys don’t hide in corners," his father yelled.
Then the scenery warped again.
Nyx’s lab.
His left arm being slashed by the grotesque monster he called his wife.
Slash!
Pain. Red. Wet. Real.
He cycled through every traumatic event in his life - one after another.
From being rejected in high school, to being beaten by his father, to getting his arm cut off.
’So that was all an illusion,’ Isaac thought, stomach plummeting. ’Damn it, I’m such a fucking idiot.’
Then again, what else could he have done?
But he couldn’t dwell.
Because every nightmare felt real.
He thrashed. He clawed. He suffocated inside himself...
-
Meanwhile, Seraphina just smiled as she watched the smile on Isaac’s unconscious face. A minute later, he started writhing on the ground.
False hope was her favourite flavour.
She let them taste victory in their minds before she fed them their own worst hells.
She calmly took out her phone and called Nyx.
"These are the guys you warned me about," she said, stepping onto Isaac’s limp body. "They’re pathetic. Even with his ability, he wouldn’t have been able to do much."
Her voice was smooth, cold, unbothered, as Isaac remained trapped in his own mind.
Things weren’t looking good for Team Sexy Kidnappers.
But somewhere across the world, their counterpart team was about to discover that the trap lay for them by Nyx had already snapped shut...