The betrayal hurt a thousand times more than the poison burning her insides. It wasn't just a fracture, Andini's world shattered into countless pieces. Ice surged through her veins, colder than any poison. It was the ice of betrayal. Physical pain, the creeping fire that burned through every fiber of her muscles, she could endure. But the sight before her eyes, that cold, soul-piercing truth, was a dagger plunging straight into her heart.
Mahesa.
The boy she had pulled from the edge of despair. The one whose wounds she had patiently tended, whose hand she had guided with the sincerity of a mother.Now he stood there, not with the gleam of admiration or respect in his eyes, but with the lifeless chill of a frozen wasteland. No trace of remorse. Just glacial disdain.
He was the one behind the poison that now burned through her gut, corrosive and cruel.
"Mahesa..." Her voice came out hoarse, barely more than a whisper. It trembled with rage, sorrow, and searing pain."Why...? After everything... everything I gave to you?"The word "Mother" caught in her throat like a thorn. Once a title of love, now a cruel reminder drenched in irony.
For a brief second, the frost on Mahesa's face cracked, but not with guilt. There was something else there: a twisted spark of self-righteousness, a flicker of obsession long festering beneath the surface.
"Gave me?" he scoffed, voice like a blade. "You gave me food, a roof, and the basics of cultivation, knowledge anyone can learn! But you hid the real core!"
His gaze locked on her chest, as though his eyes could pierce through cloth and flesh to the sacred parchment hidden beneath."That scroll! Your true source of power! The one that should be mine! Why were you so stingy, Master?! Why did you hide it from me?! Why haven't you taught me a single word from it?! Was I never good enough for you?!"
Andini gasped. The air was sucked from her lungs, not just from the poison coursing through her, but from the horror of what she now saw: the innocent curiosity of her student had warped into the towering tree of greed.
"That... That's not mere knowledge, Mahesa!" Her voice trembled. Each word was a battle against the venom eating away at her consciousness."It's wild power! A fire that consumes the soul if your understanding isn't ready. I was waiting... waiting for the right time, when you were truly prepared."
"The right time?!" Mahesa laughed, and it was a laugh she had never heard before—ragged, mad, and terrible. It echoed through the small cottage, erasing every warm memory that once lingered in its walls.
"Or were you just afraid? Afraid I'd surpass you? Afraid that the throne of your knowledge would fall into the hands of someone more talented than you?!"
The years of festering resentment and deep-seated insecurity now erupted in a lava flow of cruel accusations."I felt it, Master! I sensed its power every time you trained near it! That energy calls to me! I... not you... was meant to wield it!"
There was no longer any doubt. The mask of respect, the illusion of loyalty, was gone. In its place stood a twisted face scorched by ambition and blind greed. His conscience had burned to ash.
He stepped forward, a frigid aura emanating from his body. His hand reached out—not in a plea, but in arrogant demand."Give me the scroll. Now."
No negotiation. No respect. Even the word "Master" had disappeared from his tongue.
Staring into the eyes of the child she had raised as her own, now transformed into a monster, Andini felt her soul truly break. The crack deepened into a chasm.A storm of grief, regret, and righteous fury boiled inside her.
She had failed.
Failed to see the darkness lurking behind that obedient smile. Failed to notice the poison of ambition thriving in her disciple's heart.
"No!"Her voice rang with the last threads of dignity she still clung to, even as her body swayed from the growing poison."Never!"
Mahesa's eyes narrowed, dark lightning dancing within them."Then don't blame me when I take it… with blood."
There was no more hesitation. No more pauses.
With terrifying speed, ironically the result of Andini's own teachings, Mahesa lunged. His body shot forward like an arrow, his hand cloaked in Earth energy, raw and violent, aimed directly at her chest. This was no longer a blow to incapacitate. It was meant to kill.
Even as the poison gnawed at her meridians and made every motion feel like dragging boulders through molasses, decades of combat instinct and elemental mastery could not be erased.With a strained cry of pain and heartbreak, Andini summoned every ounce of remaining strength. Her body spun with a swirling gust of Wind, sluggish, but just enough to dodge the fatal strike. At the same time, she twisted her form and drove her Earth-imbued palm—calm and refined, unlike Mahesa's brute force, into his exposed back.
THUD!!
The sound of flesh and bone colliding echoed through the room. Mahesa was flung back, coughing violently, blood dripping from the corner of his lips.
But his eyes burned brighter. With hatred. With pain. With fury.
He recovered quickly. Too quickly. That hatred now fully unleashed.
The battle had begun.
In the tight, suffocating space of their once-peaceful cottage, a hellish arena unfolded.Driven by greed and adrenaline, Mahesa attacked without mercy. Every technique of Wind and Earth that Andini had once lovingly taught him, he now used to try and kill her. Some had even been twisted... brutalized... by his own dark interpretation.
His strikes tore through the air, smashing walls, splintering furniture.Andini fought on two fronts, against Mahesa's savage assault, and against the poison slowly unraveling her from within. Her movements slowed, her breath ragged, vision blurred. Her flow of energy was chaotic.
She danced on the edge of a killing blade, evading death by hairbreadths, retaliating only when absolutely necessary. Each counter was a work of desperate precision, using her deepest knowledge to find the slivers of opportunity amid Mahesa's frenzied offense.
It was a clash between raw savagery and forced precision.
At last, in the chaos, a moment, a flicker of an opening.
With sharpened battle instinct, Andini executed a feint, a Wind maneuver designed to mislead Mahesa's vision. In that fleeting instant, she channeled the last reserves of her Earth energy into a single point on her palm, then struck with pinpoint accuracy at the weakness in his chest she knew too well.
CRACK!
A soft, sickening sound of ribs breaking.
Mahesa's eyes widened, then rolled back. His body lifted off the ground for a second before collapsing onto the wooden floor, unconscious.
Andini stood over him, breath ragged, her body shaking uncontrollably. Not just from the poison, or the exhaustion threatening to crush her from within, but from the emotional maelstrom she could no longer suppress.
Her mouth tasted of iron and bitterness. She stared at Mahesa's now-pale face, his features... finally at peace in unconsciousness.
But her own heart?
It was anything but.