Chapter 4:
Codex Wars: Judgment Of The Forsaken
"These damn things just won't end..." muttered Beatriz, leaning against the wall, breathless. Blood still dripped down her side, but her eyes held the fierce fire of someone who refused to give in.
"Don't speak. Don't move. You'll reopen the wound," said Mei Lin, never taking her eyes off the injury.
Sweat dripped from her brow, darkening the loose strands of hair clinging to her face. One hand pressed firmly against Beatriz's abdomen; the other rested on an open bamboo scroll atop a makeshift wooden board.
The design forming there was a stylized, broken Yin-Yang — its two halves circling around a central void, with lines pulsing in soft hues of blue and gold. It was Mei Lin's Codex.
Unlike ordinary healers who merely accelerated cell regeneration — wearing them down in the process — her Codex did more:
It induced the creation of new cells, balancing their growth and allowing the body to heal with greater precision and fewer aftereffects. An elegant process — almost divine… but demanding.
Even so, there were limits.
Mei Lin wasn't an Archon. She couldn't regrow a lost limb, nor could she stop massive bleeding in mere seconds.
And deep wounds like Beatriz's drained Vis like sand through a torn hourglass.
Ezra watched in silence, seated just a few feet away. He wasn't injured — at least, not physically.
The weight he carried was different.
It was the burden of watching everyone bleed, fight, fall… while he just stood by.
They had been there for hours already.
Dorian, though exhausted, had repositioned himself to manage the flow and allow the most wounded to rest in shifts — two at a time. Now it was Beatriz and Edward's turn.
Silence. Only the sound of labored breathing and distant metal scraping echoed around them.
Then, Edward, lying nearby with his shoulder bandaged, murmured:
"Don't be too hard on yourself, Ezra."
Ezra looked away.
"It's not your fault," Edward continued, voice low but steady. "Some things are just... beyond our control."
Ezra didn't answer.
He slowly clenched his fists, his fingers throbbing with pent-up tension. As if he wanted to say that wasn't enough. That watching without being able to act was a kind of wound that didn't bleed — but rotted from within.
But he said nothing.
He stayed quiet.
Still.
Empty inside.
Too whole on the outside.
Or at least, that's how it looked.
No one could be blamed for thinking that. After all, Ezra had always been the type who felt too much, demanded too much of himself. Sensitive, some would say. Fragile, others might whisper.
And now... the only one among them who couldn't fight. The one who had led them here — and the only one unable to protect anyone.
Yes, they might think he was frozen in place. But Edward was wrong. Or rather... late. That guilt had already been felt. Burned. Buried.
Ezra wasn't frozen. He was calculating.
While the others fought, he forced his mind to work, digging inside his own thoughts like a man clawing at the earth, desperate to unearth an escape with his bare hands.
'We've been here for hours, and this place doesn't change. And the enemies... they just don't stop.'
He looked around.
The room — or arena, or prison, or whatever it was — seemed to breathe through its walls. The architecture twisted into familiar shapes, but all wrong. Columns bent unnaturally, steps rose and descended at once. Like a broken memory of something real. As if the place were trying to imitate something… but forgot the details along the way.
The mannequins kept emerging from cracks and shadows. Their broken forms were visible even when silence reigned. Always there. Always watching.
'It doesn't make sense for the Law to try to eliminate us. The Gate was supposed to be a passage — not a death trap. The dangers were on the way… not inside. That's what the legends said.'
Ezra frowned. 'But… what if the legends were wrong? Or worse — incomplete?'
The smell of burnt iron and splintered wood filled the air. In the background, a rhythmic scraping against stone blended with the group's labored breathing.
Ezra kept his eyes on the floor — but his mind was searching.
Desperately.
The texture of the ceiling… repeated the same pattern every meter.
The mannequins' sounds… same interval between appearances?
"There's no way… I've checked a dozen times…" — he murmured, nearly entranced, rising slowly. "But there has to be a pattern… some rule I missed."
He began to walk.
Reliving each step in his mind:
Kael detecting the Vis flow.
The touch on the object atop the altar.
The displacement.
"But what rules…?" The answer was there. Slipping through the edges of his mind, like a memory choked by smoke.
Ezra kept walking.
He passed Edward without noticing.
Passed the dark stones that marked the front line.
And kept going — straight into the heart of the chaos.
"Is this how I die?" Edward murmured, confused. "Ezra…?"
Nothing.
Ezra didn't respond.
Didn't look back.
Edward turned just in time to see Ezra in the distance.
He took one more step —
And vanished.
Gone into the floor.
"EZRA! FUCK!"
Edward jumped to his feet, ignoring the bandages across his body and the fact that, because Beatriz had taken the worst of the wounds, he had received nothing more than the most basic medical care.
He drew his pistols. Heart racing. Mind blank.
He sprinted toward the frontlines, breaching the safe zone.
Beatriz and Mei Lin jolted at the shout. They looked toward the spot — Ezra was no longer there. And Edward was running like a madman.
Kael emerged from the rubble, twisting past a mannequin with a smooth spin. "What happened?"
Perfect — total formation breakdown, a cornered group, and a surge of action that demands clarity, tension, and a visually cohesive progression.
"Ezra… he lost it! Charged straight into the middle of the mannequins!" — Edward shouted, his voice laced with shock and desperation.
Dorian appeared in a blink, the air warping around him. He was carrying Nyra over his shoulders, his face twisted in pain.
Blood was pouring from her shoulder, forming a red trail down her torso. Her hood, once shielding her face, was now drenched in crimson — no longer hiding the severity of the injury.
"He did WHAT?" — Dorian couldn't believe it. His expression flickered between rage and disbelief.
And then —
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU ALL DOING!?"
Bastian's voice thundered above the clash of blades, metal shards, and mechanical snarls.
He and Rurik were at their limit — bodies covered in cuts, clothes torn, blood mixed with sweat. But still standing.
They were locked in brutal combat, not just against the surge of smaller mannequins, but also against a towering one — a monstrous puppetmaster-like figure, its arms long like cranes and a cracked porcelain head fixed at its center.
Bastian's metal gauntlets sparked with every punch, generating shockwaves that cracked the ground beneath his feet.
"DID YOU FORGET WHAT I SAID ABOUT QUICK ROTATIONS!?"
He spun, landing a heavy cross to the creature's chest — creating a brief opening to breathe. But at the mention of Ezra's name, he glanced away for a fraction of a second.
Fatal mistake.
The giant mannequin seized the moment.
It lunged with a hollow roar, raising its arm like a deformed sledgehammer, ready to smash down.
"SHIT — LOOK OUT!" Dorian shouted.
He flashed behind Bastian in a shimmer of warped light.
In his hands — a book inscribed with living runes.
With a sharp motion, he tore the center page — and blood immediately spilled from his mouth.
<"Distortion!"> he cried.
The air around the towering mannequin bent, warping like heated glass.
The creature quivered — its abdomen buckling with a brittle groan, cracking from the inside out.
It exploded into jagged shards.
Dorian staggered. Coughing blood.
"You were going to DIE, damn it! Focus!"
The dust from the blast spread out — and with it, chaos.
Lena, sharp-eyed, moved toward the weakening center line.
But it was too late. The formation was falling back. The flanks faltered.
"Why the hell are you retreating!?" Lena demanded.
But no one answered.
No one had the time.
Rurik, the last to hold the line, stepped forward.
He drew a deep breath.
Fell to his knees, slamming his massive axe into the ground.
<"Codex."> he murmured.
The earth trembled beneath him.
A slate-gray stone tablet appeared from nowhere, hovering before his chest. Runes carved into it lit up one by one — like embers stirred awake.
<"THUS STATES THE LAW : SO LONG AS THE VIS BURNS. NONE SHALL PASS.">
His words thundered.
The tablet blazed — and fused into the axe, which began to hum with energy. The Vis around Rurik spiraled into dense, golden currents, whirling like a contained storm.
A wall of energy rose before him — a towering shield of interwoven runes and solid light.
The mannequins slammed into it and were violently thrown back.
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