Solflare: The Painter's Secret-Chapter 82: The Return

Nearly three hundred miles north of Alchemania, in a frozen forest, the air seemed cold enough to blast the lungs.

Pam.

A loud sound like a giant’s bone snapping echoed through the snow-laden silence. In a small clearing, the air itself shimmered.

Tiny motes of light, some dark as void, others glowing bloody red, spiraled out of nowhere and swirled with a condensed stance.

In the blink of an eye, they snapped together in a silent shunk.

From it, a naked human form materialized and hovered six inches above the thick ice that covered the forest floor.

The skin glowed faintly with residual energy, eyes screwed shut, and muscles corded, tensed as its feet lowered, making contact.

Crack.

The ice splintered in a jagged web from the point of contact. The figure stood tall and powerfully built, steam rising from its skin in the chilled air.

Tiger Kang opened his eyes, which blazed with an electric blue light, mirroring the freezing sky above.

His chest heaved with fury as he took a shuddering breath. Memories of the golden light, the sensation of being unmade, atom by atom, and the silent scream that had been his last.

"LEOOOOOOOOON!"

A guttural roar tore from his throat and shredded the frozen silence, echoed through the trees, and shook snow from branches.

He threw his head back, tendons standing out on his neck, and screamed the name at the star-flecked sky.

Great plumes of vapor exploded into the air as Tiger panted heavily. His blazing gaze swept through the trees as he lowered his head.

He locked his gaze onto a massive redwood, its mighty trunk wider than a car, its canopy heavily laden with tons of white snow.

He stretched out his right palm, fingers splayed toward the tree.

With a sound like a mountainside sliding, every ounce of snow on the canopy of the tree fell and collapsed in a simultaneous avalanche and crashed to the ground with a ground-shaking whump.

When his breathing evened, a crackling sound, like electricity over ice, emanated from his right fist as he clenched it.

He took one step forward, then drove the clenched fist into the exposed bark of the redwood.

CRUNCH-THWOOM.

The impact point vaporized as a shockwave of pure kinetic energy traveled up the trunk in an instant.

The entire top of the tree sheared off cleanly and smashed through the canopy of other trees.

It snapped century-old trunks like twigs, carved a fifty-meter path of destruction before vanishing into the dark woods with a distant series of crashes.

Tiger unclenched his fist, looked at it, then at the path of annihilation he had just carved. An icy smile touched his lips as the buried energy within him, the stolen and absorbed once, all got awakened and hummed in his veins.

As he closed his eyes, the ice around him began to melt. Then, the meltwater swirled up, wrapped around his right fist and forearm.

Simultaneously, a ghostly, toxic green light flickered over his left arm. From his back, two vast feathered wings flared for a microsecond, shedding spectral light, before folding and sinking into his skin.

When he cracked his eyes open, the blue light dulled to a calculated beam. The hydraulic gauntlet dissipated, and the ghost-lights vanished into his body as he began moving toward the north.

As the sky began to clear, he stopped at the front of a large wall that ran east and west in a far distance where no eye could see.

At the top of a sunken gateway were two characters wrought in italic steel: Kang Clan.

Tiger stared at the emblem with an emotionless expression. As he focused his gaze on the massive, reinforced door within the wall, it simply exploded inward.

It shredded into shrapnel that hissed into the courtyard beyond it. Tiger stepped into the smoking wreckage.

Inside, dozens of men in sleek, black suits emerged from surrounding structures and arranged themselves in a swift arc.

At their center, an old man with white hair strode forward, holding a heavy robe of royal blue silk.

The steward’s face shifted to confusion, and without hesitation, he fell to one knee on the frost-cobbled stones.

He bowed his head and presented the robe in a traditional greeting of an emperor returning from war.

Tiger stopped just an inch from the man, looked down at his kneeling posture, and at the robe being offered to him.

His hand shot out and grabbed the neck of the man, leaving the robe untouched.

With a single pull, the man’s eyes bulged as his head got detached from his body. Blood sprayed and hung in the cold morning air like rain before pattering onto the blue silk and the white stone.

Tiger held the head for a moment, then threw it like a stone. It landed with a soft thud and rolled.

He crunched his foot over the kneeling, headless body and left without glancing at the robe puddling in the blood.

A frozen wave of horror passed through the spines of the remaining stewards. Swallowed sounds, clenched jaws, and pale faces, but not a single soul moved forward to stop Tiger.

As if pulled by a single string, they all turned and followed Tiger’s direction.

Stopping at the front of a black door, four men dashed past him and opened it. Tiger swung his hand, letting the blood slide off, then entered.

The door slid shut, closing him in the dark room. In a flash, blue flames popped from the edges of the wall, one after another, and lit the room.

The flames of the blue fire directed to the center, where a man in a lotus posture was suspended freely, his arms clapped together, his eyes closed.

A strange blue light exploded, shaking the walls of the room as the man cracked his eyes open. Flickers of lightning reeled in his dark-blue pupils as he focused his gaze on Tiger.

"Son," he said without opening his mouth.

A loud crash echoed from outside as the impact of his words shook the building, sending its snow cascading to the ground.

"Father," Tiger responded, knelt on one knee, then lowered his head.