Boiling crimson Qi flared through the blade caught between Kaelen’s fingers.
The four faces embedded in the titan’s chest snarled in ragged, four-part harmony. Marshal Tie-Zhen’s jaw stretched wide, his yellowed teeth grating against bone plates as the titan strained to wrench the weapon free.
The thirty-foot blade did not move a fraction of an inch.
It remained pinned between Kaelen Vance’s thumb and forefinger as if embedded in solid mountain granite.
“Tear his arm off!” Marshal Xue-Ren’s voice shrieked from the left shoulder. “He is an unranked boy! He has no domain!”
The Colossus fired its auxiliary muscle bundles. Tendons thick as ships’ hawsers tightened across its back, groaning under eighty tons of pure mechanical torque.
Kaelen did not flinch. His feet remained resting comfortably on the cedar floorboards of the broken wagon.
Deep inside his mind, the Fallow Slate spun with silent, frightening speed.
