ShadowBound: The Need For Power-Chapter 616: Nice Trick

After the initial assault by the first two clones, the pressure never truly eased. Liam was ambushed again—and again—by more of Percy’s ice replicas, each emergence seamless within the fog. For two unbroken minutes, he was forced into a relentless cycle of motion and reaction, contending with nearly a dozen of them in rapid succession. He destroyed every single one, his blades and fire carving through ice without mercy, yet victory came at a cost. Shrapnel wounds accumulated across his body as the clones detonated upon destruction, icy explosions that punished even perfect executions.

At first, Liam assumed there was a rule to it. He believed the detonations were triggered only when a clone suffered a lethal blow, some built-in failsafe meant to punish recklessness. That assumption shattered quickly.

The clones exploded whenever they wanted to.

Or rather—whenever Percy wanted them to.

’This is getting irritating,’ Liam thought grimly as he slipped under a downward slash, frost grazing the tips of his hair. He pivoted smoothly and drove an open palm into the clone’s chest. Fire Myst compressed at the point of contact before detonating outward in a focused burst, the heat flashing white-hot as it tore through the ice construct. The clone didn’t shatter—it vaporized, reduced to superheated mist in less than a second.

Liam didn’t linger. His attention shifted immediately to the next threat, then the next, three more silhouettes coalescing through the fog as if the mist itself were giving birth to them.

’It’s obvious Percy is trying to force my hand,’ Liam realized, his movements threading between the clones with sharp, economical precision. ’He wants me to rely more on my dark magic.’ His jaw tightened as he parried a strike and redirected another clone directly into the path of its ally. ’And inside his domain... that would be the optimal choice.’

The thought lingered.

Then doubt crept in.

’And yet,’ Liam continued inwardly, weaving through converging blades of ice, ’I don’t believe this is a real domain.’

Everything about the environment screamed otherwise. Percy’s presence was everywhere—an omnipresent pressure saturating the fog, clinging to every breath Liam took. The training hall itself felt distant, irrelevant, as though the real world had been cleanly severed and replaced by this frozen void. All the signs were there. By definition, this place behaved like a domain.

And still, something felt wrong.

That unease stemmed from a single, immovable fact: Percy was restricted to half of his power.

Drawing on the limited but invaluable experience he had gained within Lady Seraphina’s domain—and later, Mabel’s—Liam knew enough to recognize inconsistencies. His instincts told him that this situation didn’t align with what he had learned, and the longer the fight dragged on, the louder that instinct became.

Lady Seraphina’s domain had been absolute.

The memory rose unbidden, sharp and vivid. Within her domain, there had been no ambiguity, no doubt. Her authority had been overwhelming, crushing in its completeness. She had been everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, not as a sensation or illusion, but as an undeniable truth imposed upon reality itself. It was power unleashed without restraint, cast at full output, and Liam had felt every ounce of her mastery bearing down on him. The impression it left had been permanent. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

And now—now he was feeling echoes of that same suffocating omnipresence.

The difference was staggering.

Percy wasn’t at full strength. He wasn’t even close.

’Something isn’t adding up,’ Liam thought as he dodged a thrust, caught a clone by the wrist, and redirected its momentum into another, the two colliding in a spray of frost.

As his suspicion deepened, his mind turned to Mabel.

Their first battle resurfaced clearly. Mabel, like Percy now, had been restricted to fifty percent of her power. She, too, had manifested a domain—but hers had behaved differently. There had been no crushing omnipresent pressure, no illusion of absolute control. Her presence had been widespread, yes, but it still obeyed the laws of limitation.

Within Mabel’s domain, Shadow Sight had worked.

Liam had been able to read the rhythms of her Myst, track distortions in space, and pinpoint her warping exit points with effort and focus. The domain had rules. Boundaries. And weaknesses.

Percy’s did not.

Shadow Sight failed completely here, drowned beneath the uniform saturation of ice-aligned Myst. And that pressure—the same kind of pressure Liam had felt only once before, under Lady Seraphina—had no business existing under a fifty-percent restriction.

Yet it did.

Which meant either Percy was breaking the rules... or something else was at play.

’And if it’s the latter,’ Liam thought, eyes narrowing as another clone formed ahead of him, ’then this isn’t a true domain at all.’

The question lingered, heavy and unresolved.

What, exactly, was making Percy’s domain mimic the effects of Lady Seraphina’s?

’Is it possible his Myst output is higher than he let on earlier?’ Liam wondered as he slipped between shards of frost and drifting mist. ’No... that doesn’t add up. Mabel’s Myst output is absurdly high as well, yet her domain still obeyed its limits. And she’s tiers above Percy. There’s no way he’s brute-forcing omnipresence through raw output alone. That would be ridiculous.’

He created distance from two advancing clones, boots scraping against the frozen floor as he extended a hand toward them. Two miniature suns bloomed at his palm, dense and radiant, before streaking forward in twin arcs. The moment they collided with the ice constructs, the clones were erased in bursts of steam and light, their forms vaporized so completely that not even shards remained.

As the heat faded and the mist rushed back in, Liam drew in a sharp breath, chest rising and falling a little heavier than before. It struck him then just how easy it would be to lose this fight, not because he lacked power, but because he lacked understanding. Domain spells weren’t something you could simply overpower with instinct alone, and his experience with them was painfully limited. Even so, he refused to stop thinking, refused to stop dissecting what was happening around him.

And then, suddenly, a simple realization surfaced.

’Wait... assassin knight,’ he thought, eyes narrowing slightly as the pieces began to shift into place. ’We assassin knights thrive on subtlety. On misdirection. On disguise.’

The thought settled heavily, but cleanly. Disguise—that was the foundation of every assassin’s training, drilled into them from the very first lesson. And here he was, an assassin, facing another assassin. Percy Granger wasn’t just a knight with ice; he was someone who lived and breathed concealment. That realization alone confirmed what Liam had been feeling all along: his intuition was right. This domain wasn’t complete, no matter how convincing it felt. Percy was doing something to make his presence feel omnipresent, even though it wasn’t. Liam just couldn’t prove it yet.

But how?

How could something like that even be achieved?

’With Myst,’ Liam realized abruptly, his thoughts snapping into focus. ’With his Myst.’

It was the only explanation that made sense. Instead of achieving true omnipresence, Percy was saturating the space itself with his Myst, flooding the entire stage so uniformly that perception-based techniques became useless. Or worse—misleading. Shadow Sight wasn’t failing because it was weak; it was failing because there was no contrast to latch onto. If everything carried the same signature, then nothing stood out.

In other words, Percy wasn’t everywhere.

He was indistinguishable.

A quiet scoff escaped Liam as his thoughts finally aligned, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

’Tricky bastard,’ he thought with a mix of irritation and appreciation. ’That’s a damn good trick. I’ll definitely be asking Mabel about all this domain nonsense once this is over.’ His gaze hardened as he refocused. ’For now, I need a way to disable it. No—destabilize it. That’s the right word. I’m not arrogant enough to think I can just undo someone’s domain, whether it’s a full one or a pseudo one like this.’

He kept moving, eyes sharp as they scanned the thick ice fog while his mind raced through possibilities. Then, like before, something clicked again—cleaner this time, sharper.

’Of course,’ he thought, the realization sending a quiet thrill through him. ’This is even more advantageous to me than I first thought.’

His gaze lowered slightly, as if he could see the Myst itself clinging to the air.

’This entire place is saturated with Myst because of Percy’s trick,’ Liam continued inwardly. ’Which means I can absorb it.’ His heartbeat quickened, just a little. ’And if I play this right... I might just trigger an Ascension. Right here. Right now.’