Mahapadma! The Time-Freezing Miracle That Shocked the Entire Planet
"Mahapadma."
Five cold, arcane syllables slipped from Esdeath's thin lips.
Her voice was low and soft, without the slightest ripple of emotion.
Yet it pierced the raging wind beneath Fort Qlipoth's dome like an invisible steel needle.
With her white military boots at its center,
an absolute domain beyond the naked eye surged outward.
There was no explosion.
No blinding light.
This was an erasure more suffocating than destruction itself—the theft of time's flow.
The madness on Cocolia's face froze completely.
Her mouth hung wide open.
Her vocal cords remained poised to vibrate at high frequency, yet not a single sound emerged.
At her chest, the Stellaron she was about to detonate abruptly drew its dark-yellow light inward.
The raging Imaginary Energy was forced to a halt.
Jagged streams of energy along the halo's edge hung motionless, like cheap plastic sculptures.
Wind blades capable of tearing steel had become visible, translucent solids, suspended lifelessly in the air.
Above the hall,
a fist-sized chunk of marble stopped ten centimeters from Cocolia's nose.
Its edges still bore the rough grooves carved by the storm.
A torn red tapestry stretched stiffly through the air like a dead snake.
Its fibers no longer fluttered.
Dust hung suspended, reflecting the hall's pallid light.
Time had stopped.
Bronya held her rifle.
Her index finger was locked around the trigger, halfway through pulling it.
The hammer inside the gun had stalled mid-strike.
A drop of cold sweat slid down her chin and had just broken free of her skin.
There it hung.
Perfectly oval, the droplet refracted the faint light leaking through the dome.
The anxiety and despair on her face looked like an old photograph abruptly frozen in place.
Even her gray eyes could no longer move.
Behind a thick stone pillar,
Xingbao clung to it for dear life.
Her cheeks were flattened by the wind pressure, her mouth wide open.
A drop of saliva had blown from the corner of her mouth.
It stretched into a thin strand, then broke into three droplets of different sizes.
The droplets lined up motionless in the air.
The hem of her gray coat was flipped up behind her, jutting out like a rigid sheet of iron, its folds sharp.
The freezing law spread wildly outward from Fort Qlipoth.
It moved faster than light.
Color rapidly drained from the world.
In Belobog's upper district,
the snow filling the sky lost its pull toward the ground.
Countless hexagonal snowflakes hung still above the streets and rooftops and in the open air.
Like specimens preserved in Amber, they crowded every inch of sight.
A Silvermane Guard patrolling a street corner had just let out a loud sneeze.
One eye was squeezed shut, his mouth stretched open.
A cloud of white breath had burst from his lips.
It did not dissipate.
It solidified beside his mouth into an irregular tuft of white cotton, even the wisps spreading from its edges clearly visible.
The fountain's jets broke off in midair, like transparent glass rods planted upside down.
Pigeons over the square held their wings spread at the top of a beat, every line of every feather distinct.
Deep underground, in the Underworld,
the Waste Mining Area's searchlight beams froze in space.
Dust motes within the beams hung like tiny planets.
Seele held her Quantum Scythe aloft, the tips of her toes just leaving the ground.
The purple afterimage trailing behind her had broken into several disconnected patches of color.
Her scythe blade was only an inch from a Fragmentum Monster's back.
Natasha gripped an emergency syringe, her eyelids halfway lowered.
Black smoke pouring from Svarog's chest had turned into solid black columns.
The wind had bent the smoke, and it remained bent in that moment forever.
Tears clung to the tips of Clara's lashes, poised to fall.
The girl's small outstretched arms made her look like a silent statue.
All of Jarilo-VI had become a vast still-life sketch, devoid of any sign of life.
The wind stopped.
The snow stopped.
The clouds overhead ceased their churning.
Even the planet's rotation was forcibly locked in that second by the supreme law of ice.
The world was stripped of all sound and color.
Only pure black, white, and gray remained.
Beyond the planet's orbit,
inside the Astral Express's observation car,
Himeko held a cup of freshly brewed coffee, her wrist in the midst of tilting.
Black coffee poured over the rim in an unbroken line through the air.
A few stray droplets hung above the white carpet.
Welt's cane touched the floor, the muscles in his fingers pressing down, the hem of his suit jacket floating beside his waist.
Dan Heng's breathing halted mid-exhale, his chest slightly sunken.
March 7th had just opened her mouth to speak, the tip of her tongue resting behind her teeth, the shutter button of the camera in her hand half-pressed.
Before the Data Bank's damaged screen, a cloud of scorched black smoke hung frozen too.
In this motionless world, where every physical law had been stripped away,
only one person could move.
Su Chen let out a long breath.
White mist spread from his lips, then quickly vanished into the frozen space.
"What a pain."
He muttered under his breath.
This body's vocal cords gave a low sigh.
Mahapadma's toll was absurdly high.
A knife-sharp pain stabbed through Su Chen's temples.
It felt as though someone were stirring his brains with a rusty awl.
He raised a hand without thinking and pressed his forehead.
His white leather glove brushed the stray hair over his brow with a faint rustle.
He staggered slightly.
The narrow heel of his military boot landed on the edge of a marble tile, nearly twisting his ankle.
Su Chen cursed inwardly.
He quickly tensed his calf and forced himself upright.
If he fell flat on his face at the height of this grand display, he would never live it down.
The hall was so quiet it was unnerving.
No heartbeats.
No breathing.
Only the sound of Su Chen's own blood flowing through his veins remained, magnified beyond measure.
Thump, thump, thump.
He lifted a boot and stepped forward.
Tap.
Its sole did not land on a cracked flagstone.
It landed on the motionless air.
The air molecules had frozen into a hard solid, forming a natural staircase.
Esdeath climbed the invisible steps.
Her white military coat hung behind her, unaffected by gravity, swaying stiffly with each step she took.
With every step, the metal spur on her boot struck the air.
A dull knock rang out.
In that world of absolute silence, it sounded like a blow against the soul.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Su Chen walked slowly.
Like a queen strolling through her own garden, he admired the still life he had carved by hand.
A floating chunk of rubble blocked his path.
He extended a white-gloved finger and gave it a light flick.
The heavy marble drifted aside as though it were weightless foam.
Cocolia was trapped in midair.
Her face was grotesquely twisted.
Blood vessels webbed the whites of her eyes, and veins bulged across her forehead like earthworms.
She had bitten through her own lip.
A dark-red drop of blood hung from the tip of her chin, not yet fallen.
Fervor and despair mingled on her wrinkled face.
The Stellaron's energy storm raged just before her chest.
Those violent dark-yellow beams had been severed from the flow of time, reduced to clusters of jagged, lifeless light.
She could do nothing.
Even her thoughts had stopped completely.
She did not even know she had been paused.
Su Chen walked up to Cocolia.
Standing on a frozen step in midair, he was less than half a meter from her.
He looked down at the Supreme Guardian who had tried to drag an entire planet into the grave with her.
At the wretch the Stellaron had led astray.
Unconcealed contempt shone in his ice-blue eyes.
For a weakling capable of nothing but impotent rage,
he could not even be bothered to mock her.
The thrill of killing stirred in his heart, but he forced it down.
Keeping her alive for the locals to deal with would bring him more shock points.
Su Chen slowly raised his right hand.
The slender saber in his grip gleamed with the only flash of cold light in the black-and-white world.
Not a single flaw marred its blade.
Its chill cut to the bone.
He put a little strength into his wrist
and pushed the tip forward.
It met no resistance as it came to rest against Cocolia's heart, on the left side of her chest.
The sharp point pierced the thick fabric of Cocolia's coat.
It cut through a layer of skin.
Then it touched cold flesh.
No blood flowed.
Even the blood had frozen in place, leaving only a dry white line at the wound.
Another half inch, and he would have pierced the beating heart clean through.
Su Chen stopped.
He raised his left hand and held it in midair.
His thumb met his middle finger.
The fingers of his white glove rubbed together.
The leather compressed.
Snap.
He snapped his fingers.
The time freeze ended.