Mahapadma! The miracle that froze spacetime stunned the entire planet

"Mahapadma."

Five cold, arcane syllables left Esdeath's thin lips.

Her voice was quiet, low and utterly even.

Yet it pierced the raging wind beneath Fort Qlipoth's dome like an invisible steel needle.

Centered on her white military boots,

an absolute domain beyond the naked eye expanded outward with a roar.

There was no explosion.

No blinding light.

This was an erasure more suffocating than Destruction itself—the stripping away of time's flow.

The madness on Cocolia's face froze completely.

Her mouth hung wide open.

Her vocal cords remained poised in rapid vibration, yet not a sound came out.

The dull yellow glow of the Stellaron in her chest, poised to destroy itself, suddenly contracted inward.

The raging Imaginary Energy was forcibly paused.

The jagged streams of energy along the halo's edge hung in midair like cheap plastic sculptures.

Wind blades capable of tearing through steel became visible, translucent solids, suspended lifelessly in place.

High 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 hung rigid in midair like a dead snake.

Its fibers no longer fluttered.

Drifting dust hung motionless, reflecting the hall's pallid light.

Time had stopped.

Bronya held her rifle.

Her index finger was locked on the trigger, halfway through pulling it.

The hammer inside the gun had stopped mid-strike.

A bead of cold sweat had slid down her chin and just broken contact with her skin.

There it hung.

The drop formed a perfect oval, refracting the faint light leaking through the dome.

The fear and desperation on her face looked like an old photograph frozen without warning.

Even her gray eyes could no longer move.

Behind a thick stone pillar,

Xingbao clung tightly to it.

The wind pressure had flattened her cheeks, and her mouth gaped open.

A drop of saliva had been blown from the corner of her mouth.

Drawn into a thin strand, it had broken into three beads of different sizes.

They hung motionless in the air.

The hem of her gray coat had flipped up and jutted from her back like a rigid sheet of iron, its folds sharp.

The law of freezing spread wildly outward from Fort Qlipoth.

It moved faster than light.

Color rapidly drained from the world.

In Belobog's Overworld,

the snow filling the sky lost its pull toward the ground.

Millions of hexagonal snowflakes hung still above the streets and rooftops, filling the air.

Like specimens sealed in Amber, they packed the entire field of view.

A Silvermane Guard patrolling a street corner had just let out a loud sneeze.

One eye was squeezed shut, his mouth open wide.

A cloud of white vapor burst from his mouth.

It did not dissipate.

It hardened beside the Iron Guard's lips into an irregular tuft of white cotton, even the wisps at its edges clearly visible.

The jets of water in the fountain square stopped midair like transparent glass rods turned upside down.

Pigeons in the square held their wings spread at the peak of a flap, every line of their feathers visible.

Deep underground, in the Underworld,

the abandoned mine's searchlight beams froze in space.

Dust motes caught in the beams looked like tiny suspended asteroids.

Seele held up her Quantum Scythe, the tips of her toes just leaving the ground.

The purple afterimage trailing behind her had broken into disconnected patches of color.

The scythe's blade was only an inch from a Fragmentum monster's back.

Natasha gripped an emergency injection, her eyelids halfway lowered.

The black smoke pouring from Svarog's chest became solid columns.

The wind had bent the smoke, and it remained forever in that curved shape.

A tear on Clara's face stopped at the tip of her eyelash, poised to fall.

The girl's small outstretched arms were as still as a statue's.

All of Jarilo-VI became a vast still-life sketch devoid of life.

The wind stopped.

The snow stopped.

The clouds overhead ceased to roll.

Even the planet's rotation was forcibly locked in that instant by the supreme law of ice.

The world was stripped of every sound and color.

Only black, white and gray remained.

Beyond the planet's orbit,

in the Astral Express's observation car,

Himeko held a freshly brewed coffee, her wrist tilted.

Black coffee spilled over the rim in a continuous stream suspended in midair.

Several stray droplets hung above the white carpet.

Welt's cane touched the floor, the muscles in his fingers pressing downward, the hem of his suit jacket floating at his waist.

Dan Heng's breath stopped midway through an exhale, his chest slightly sunken.

March 7th had just opened her mouth to speak, her tongue against the backs of her teeth and the shutter button on her camera half-pressed.

Before the Data Bank's damaged screen, a cloud of scorched black smoke was frozen in midair.

In this motionless world, stripped of every physical law,

only one person could move.

Su Chen let out a long breath.

White vapor spread from his lips, then soon dissolved into the still space and vanished.

"What a pain."

He muttered under his breath.

A low sigh came from this body's vocal cords.

Mahapadma's toll was absurdly high.

Su Chen felt a knife-like stab of pain in his temples.

It was as though someone were stirring his brain with a rusty awl.

He instinctively raised a hand and pressed his forehead.

The white leather glove brushed the loose hair at his brow with a faint rustle.

He staggered slightly.

His slender-heeled 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 a moment meant to look this impressive, he would never live it down.

The hall was unnervingly quiet.

No heartbeats.

No breathing.

Only the sound of Su Chen's own blood flowing through his veins, magnified beyond measure.

"Thump, thump, thump."

A military boot lifted and stepped forward.

"Tap."

The sole did not land on the shattered stone floor.

It landed on the motionless air.

The air molecules had frozen into a hard surface, 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 spurs on her boots struck the air.

Each strike made a dull sound.

In this 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, she admired the still life she had sculpted with her own hands.

A floating piece of rubble blocked her path.

She reached out a white-gloved finger and gave it a gentle flick.

The heavy marble drifted aside as though it were weightless foam.

Cocolia was trapped in midair.

Her face was severely contorted.

Blood vessels webbed the whites of her eyes, and veins bulged across her forehead like earthworms.

She had bitten through her own lip.

A drop of dark red blood hung from the tip of her chin, yet to fall.

Fervor and despair mingled on her wrinkled face.

The Stellaron's energy storm raged before her chest.

Stripped of time's flow, those violent, dull yellow beams had become clusters of jagged, dead light.

She could do nothing.

Even her thoughts had stopped completely.

She did not know she had been paused.

Su Chen walked up to Cocolia.

Standing on the icy steps 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 to its doom.

At this pitiful woman led astray by the Stellaron.

Open contempt showed in his ice-blue eyes.

For someone so weak, capable of nothing but impotent rage,

he could not even be bothered to mock her.

The thrill of killing rose within him, and he forced it back down.

Leaving her alive for the locals to deal with would bring in more Shock Points.

Su Chen slowly raised his right hand.

The slender saber in his grip gleamed with the black-and-white world's only flash of cold light.

There was not a single flaw in its blade.

Its chill cut to the bone.

He put a little force into his wrist.

The sword's tip moved forward.

Meeting no resistance, it came to rest against Cocolia's left breast, over her heart.

The sharp point pierced the thick fabric of Cocolia's coat.

It cut through a layer of skin.

It touched the cold flesh beneath.

No blood flowed.

Because even the flow of blood was frozen to death, there was only a withered white scar at the wound.

As long as it was pushed forward another half-inch, it could completely pierce that beating heart.

Su Chen stopped his movement.

His left hand lifted, pausing in mid-air.

His thumb and middle finger touched together.

The fingers wearing white gloves rubbed against each other.

The leather surface squeezed.

Snap.

He snapped his fingers.

He lifted the time freeze.