Papercut

SHWK!

Within a flicker of a second, a transparent blur seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, piercing through the air at unfathomable speeds before slamming into Olivia.

A crash.

A rumble.

A pop.

Time began to flow once again as Carter dropped to the floor, holding his throat and gasping for air while coughing.

"melia-Amel," he muttered with his recovering breaths.

The invisible object began to shimmer, flickering to and from the boundaries of visibility, slowing its flicker as it became more visible to the nȧkėd eye. It was Amelia. Everything happened so quickly that Olivia had not time to process. She had been hit by something she couldn't see, to her, it felt like the strength of a thousand whales.

And There, Amelia stood in front of her brother, crouching to his level to ensure that he was fine. Still coughing from Olivia's monstrous grip on his trachea, he tried talking to her, "fire...blue head...body throw up."

"It's okay," she said, "I'm here."

As she told her brother this, the two of them could hear the sounds of small rocks, breaking as they tumbled from atop Olivia's body while she began to stand. She flicked the dust and dirt off of her shoulders, being astonished by the amount of strength behind Amelia's attack.

Olivia looked down near the area where she was previously performing the ritual before the two of them arrived, realizing that she was wasting time toying with them.

"Amelia," Olivia says, "you really came all of this way to stop me? Did you finally master your Divine Energy or is that another thing you've failed to accomplish?"

"Olivia! I-"

An abrupt scream tore through the air.

"AHHHHH!"

Carter was still on the ground, clenching his throat which appeared to be fine, however, his expressions contrasted this. His cries of pain echoed the halls, causing the bunker to shake slightly as if it were a small earthquake. Accompanied with his cries, was a pain no human had ever experienced before, a pain so great it would make grown men whimper.

Amelia quickly turned her head in his direction, trying to diagnose what was happening.

"Carter! You-your neck!"

Olivia turned towards the body of The First One's corpse as if nothing had happened, readying herself to re-enter the position she had been in initially to perform the ritual, and held her hand above his ċhėst.

"Your brother, Amelia. I embedded the flames into his neck. You've read the Book of Gods, and you know of them, the inextinguishable flames that my father regrets creating. Kinetic Freeze? Is that what you called it when you battled sucrose? Yes, that battle, I saw its vision and how you claim it as the strongest tool in your arsenal. It indeed is an impressive ability, the power to control something so minute, so small, so...significant to our world; it's truly remarkable. However, this is my most powerful tool; Ẇ̴̝i̷̻͗t̶͉̊h̷̻̋e̶͙̎r̴͉͝i̷̤̚n̴̫͒ǧ̶̻ ̶̥͗B̸̠̈́ḽ̴́a̷̫͊z̶͈̏ë̷̖́ is what I've come to know it as. Only being perceptible to those who have met the face of death, these flames act as a limbo of sorts. The actual flame hovers between the edges of existence and non-existence, bending the surrounding space to such a magnitude where everything near it is devoured into nothingness. They cannot be extinguished by your ice, so I'll ask you what I asked your sibling. Do you think you have what it takes to kill a hellish fiend of my stature? " .

Amelia's person began to violently gravitate towards the center of the flame, as did the surrounding area, while the flame began to devour Carter's body.

The girl found herself in an impossible situation, unable to decide what to do. What could she do? Would she attempt to disable the effects of the Withering Blaze to save her brother or would she attempt to escape the flame's grip on her and stop Olivia from completing the ritual?

Olivia began chanting a language Amelia couldn't decipher as she continued the ritual, it was near its completion.

Looking at Olivia and then back at her brother, Amelia saw herself faced with limited choices.

She thought to herself, "I didn't think she'd have this flame after Hades had sealed it away for nobody to find. I can't extinguish it, but what if I use almost all of my Energia to push Kinetic Freeze further. If it bends space to devour then I'll just freeze that space so that it can't bend it at all! Kinetic Freeze, Second Grade."

Amelia grabbed the surrounding area, looking as if she were trying to grasp the air, but was holding onto something, gripping the space itself and violently pushing outwards before releasing it.

Fwap!

She had stopped being absorbed into the flame, and her brother's neck was still on fire, however, it was not actively burning. The surrounding space had been frozen, not letting anything move through it almost like everything was suspended in ice. This caused the flames to devour themselves, resulting in the fire dissipating into nothingness.

Amelia slowly approached Carter as she unfroze the space, checking to see if he was fine once more. Everything seemed normal from a few meters away, just as before, except this time around his cries of pain did not follow.

"Carter?"

No response.

"C-Carter?!"

THD!

THD!

Amelia's knees stuck to the ground, as she had fallen, feeling defeated upon the sight she experienced while approaching her sibling.

A soft, wet, rolling sound reverberated through the bunker as his separated head rolled across the floor, bumping into her leg before stopping, leaving his lifeless eyes to stare into hers.