Chapter 1043. So, Funny Story About That Wall...

Chapter 1043: 1043. So, Funny Story About That Wall...

Rex stood motionless before the stone monolith, his silhouette cutting a sharp, unforgiving line against the amber haze of the frozen city. His mind was not on the pain in his jaw or the blood coating his knuckles; it was deep within the architecture of the moment.

Through [Divine Perception], he was reading the residual echoes of Theo’s soul the way the temporal designation hadn’t just been given but had been grafted onto a wound.

He connected the dots. The investment pattern of the divine authority, the specific harmonic frequency of the power, and the raw, desperate state of the vessel it inhabited.

All roads led to one location.

"You went there to jump," Rex said.

His voice wasn’t accusatory; it was the terrifyingly calm observation of a predator who had just discovered why the prey was so eager to die.

Theo’s jaw set with enough force that Rex could hear the grinding of bone against bone. His teeth clenched so hard the muscles in his neck stood out like steel cables.

He didn’t deny it. He couldn’t.

The truth was written in the way his aura flickered, not with divine pride, but with the exhausted residue of someone who had sought oblivion and found only a different kind of torment.

Rex studied him for several long seconds, measuring the boy’s breaking point.

Then, with a flick of his fingers, he released the telekinetic hold.

The Earthen Authority construct relaxed its grip, but Theo didn’t fall forward. He remained pressed against the stone, not out of defiance, but because his body had reached its absolute physiological limit.

The temporal designation’s recovery enhancement was working overtime, forcing his muscles to knit and his blood to flow, but it couldn’t mask the profound, bone-deep fatigue of someone who had burned their entire life force in a few desperate minutes.

Slowly, agonizingly, Theo slid down the face of the granite wall. His boots scraped against the stone before he collapsed into a seated position at its base, his head hanging low.

He lifted his hands, staring at them as if they belonged to a stranger. His fingers trembled with the aftershocks of the divine energy.

A thick stream of crimson blood traced a path from his brow, where the impact with the wall had split the skin down across his cheekbone, and dripped steadily onto his lap. The wound was fresh, angry, and pulsing with each ragged breath he took.

Rex stepped closer, looming over him like a monument to inevitable consequence. He said nothing.

Silence was more oppressive than any threat he could have hurled.

The atmosphere began to shift. The unnatural stillness of the city started to fray at the edges.

The golden glow of the temporal stop was losing its coherence, its radius contracting as Theo’s reserves drained into nothingness. The divine authority was exhausted, its grip on reality slipping.

Above them, the Nightwing household’s outer wall stood as a testament to the violence that had unfolded in the silence.

The original jagged wound from Rex’s initial impact remained stark against the masonry, now joined by a web of secondary fractures where Theo’s momentum had been redirected into the stone.

Then, the snap happened.

Time didn’t flow back in; it simply reasserted itself. There was no gradual acceleration, no warning.

One moment there was a vacuum of existence, and the next, reality rushed back in with the deafening violence of a dam breaking.

The pigeons mid-flight suddenly completed their arc with a flurry of wings. The fountain’s water, suspended in crystal midair, crashed into its basin with a sudden, chaotic splash.

In the northern district, the distant sounds of construction equipment hummed back to life as if they had never stopped.

But the most immediate sound came from above.

The structural damage to the Nightwing manor finally registered with the physics of the real world.

The weakened masonry groaned, the ancient wood settled with a series of sharp, pistol-like cracks, and from inside the house, the startled shouts of inhabitants erupted alarms beginning to wail as the household realized their fortress had been violated while they slept.

From two hundred meters away, toward the direction of the Academy, a different kind of violence registered. Through the passive geological read of his [Earthen Authority], Rex felt it before he heard it: a seismic shudder traveling through the city’s foundation.

It was the specific, bone-deep vibration of a massive object his own body slamming into stone. The data stream in his mind painted a clear picture: the academy’s outer teaching hall had taken a direct hit, its structural integrity compromised at the exact coordinates where he had been hurled during the earlier escalation.

The city didn’t wake up gently. It tore itself awake.

The silence of the temporal freeze was replaced by a cacophony of normalcy that felt violently wrong: the grinding of gears, distant car alarms, the chatter of morning pedestrians, and the low hum of a world that had forgotten it was supposed to be frozen.

But beneath that veneer of normalcy lay the unmistakable tension of a city that had just been struck by an invisible hammer.

People were stopping in their tracks, heads turning toward the damage, eyes widening at the fractured masonry and the unnatural stillness that still clung to the air like smoke.

Approximately forty-five seconds after reality reasserted itself, the Academy’s outer gates burst open.

Valentina emerged. She didn’t run, which implied panic, and Valentina was beyond panic.

She moved with a terrifying, deliberate speed, each stride measured and lethal, the gait of a predator who had already processed the variables and was now moving to neutralize the threat.

Close behind her came Morwenna. Rex’s mind briefly catalogued the error in his tactical assessment: he hadn’t predicted Morwenna would be the immediate second responder, but as his [Divine Perception] analyzed the scene, the logic became undeniable.

The Nightwing household’s outer wall was shattered; the damage was visible even from the Academy’s gates. It was impossible for her to ignore.

The two women skidded to a halt at the edge of the street, their eyes scanning the wreckage with deadly precision.

Their gaze first locked onto Rex. He stood twenty meters from the Nightwing wall, his breathing steady despite the carnage.

His jacket was displaced, hanging crookedly from the shoulder where the initial impact had nearly torn it free, and his knuckles were stained dark with dried blood. He looked less like a student and more like the epicenter of a disaster.

Then, their eyes shifted to the Academy building. The outer teaching hall bore the ugly, indented scar of Rex’s impact, a crater in the stone that spoke of inhuman force.

Finally, their eyes traveled upward, following the line of the crumbling Nightwing wall to the base of the Earthen construct.

There, slumped against the stone like a broken marionette, was Theo. His face was a mask of blood and exhaustion, his golden aura flickering like a dying candle, his eyes hollowed out by the weight of what he had just discovered about himself.

The three of them stood frozen in a triangle of unspoken violence: the hunter, the witnesses, and the broken instrument.