The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss-Chapter 169 - 170: Was

[Healing Litigated ... process... healing continued... 15%]

Each breath was shallow. Each beat of his heart came with a whisper of pain. But pain was familiar now. Pain was just another tool, like memory. Like hatred. Like the cold silence he had learned to wrap himself in when the nights had grown too loud and Claire’s arms weren’t there to silence the screams.

A memory flashed through him—blood in the snow, Lara’s voice screaming, and his hands too slow to stop it. "Too slow, too kind," she had whispered once. And yet now, he was neither.

He faced Number Five and Seven across the crater, their armor glinting, their mana humming like a storm held at bay. Ten was still down, his body stirring faintly, a broken tool not yet discarded. Atlas’s hand gripped a crimson vial, his thumb brushing the trigger of another scroll—a bluff, a spark to keep their eyes on him.

"What do you say, Primes?" he taunted, his voice a low growl, dripping with venom. "Can you take ten more hits like this? I know your bodies won’t hold. You’ll die, Five, Seven... your brother’s weeping for revenge, and here you are, doing nothing."

Seven’s red eyes flared, her fists clenching, but something held her back—not rage, but a faith, a blind devotion that smothered her vengeance. Atlas saw it, his Truth Eyes catching the flicker in her aura, the way her gaze darted to Five. She was a dog on a leash, and Five held the chain...or someone else?

The wind shifted, carrying the metallic tang of mana discharge and the scent of blood-soaked soil. Around them, the sky bruised into purple and gray, the last gasp of sunlight painting the ash in sickly golds. The empire’s banners flapped behind the Primes like black wings of a vulture.

Five stepped closer, his golden hair catching the fading light, his slim sword resting lightly in his hand. "Why don’t we discuss this like civilized men?" he said, his voice smooth, a blade wrapped in silk. "You’re a prince, aren’t you? The lands we took... we could return them. Anything can happen."

His smile was a lie, his blue eyes cold, calculating. Atlas knew it instantly—they were stalling, waiting for their Empress, Eli, to descend like a guillotine. She’d ordered them to keep him here, to trap him until her shadow swallowed them all.

I’ll play your game, Atlas thought, his lips curling into a jagged smile. The red sun was sinking fast—thirty minutes, maybe less, until darkness cloaked the battlefield. He needed their attention, their fear, their eyes on him until then.

"Got any wine?" he said, his voice casual, mocking. "Berkshire, 708. I’m already fifteen in this world—old enough to drink."

Five’s smile widened, a predator’s grin, and he nodded. "Our tastes align, as it happens. This way." He gestured toward the imperial camp, a makeshift tent glowing faintly in the dusk, soldiers bowing as he passed.

Atlas followed, his boots crunching ash, his Truth Eyes burning orange, mapping every soldier, every knight, every thread of mana in the air. The healer trailed behind, her green eyes wary, her staff tapping the ground—a rhythm like a heartbeat counting down to ruin.

Claire was gone, rallying their forces, her reckless explosion a ghost in the air. Atlas’s body ached, the virus and Yggdrasil tearing at his core, but the crimson vial in his hand was a promise, its mana a wildfire waiting to burn.

Inside the tent, the air was thick with mana and incense. Five poured wine, the Berkshire 708’s deep red glinting like blood in the lantern light. The wooden table was etched with old imperial runes—commands of war, of silence, of power. Seven stood rigid, her sheet replaced by armor, her red eyes locked on Atlas, her rage a furnace barely contained.

Ten stirred on a cot, his breathing shallow, his second heart pulsing faintly. Sweat glistened on his brow, and every inhale sounded like a blade dragged across gravel.

Atlas stood there like a shadow pressed into the light. His mind raced.

"To peace," Five said, raising his glass, his voice dripping with mockery.

Atlas smirked, lifting his own. "To your funeral." He drank, the wine bitter on his tongue, his Truth Eyes catching the faint shimmer of Five’s mana, probing, testing. They were stalling, but so was he. The sun would be gone soon, the sky bruising purple, shadows creeping like thieves.

He remembered the old scroll tucked beneath his belt—a smuggled fragment of Berkimhum’s last arcanist king. If timed right, it could distort a fifteen-meter radius in dimensional feedback. Enough to create a breach. Maybe.

Seven’s hand twitched, her spear nearby, her voice a low hiss. "You killed my brother," she said, her words trembling, not with grief but with that strange, suffocating faith. "You’ll pay."

Atlas leaned back, his smile sharp enough to cut glass. "Your brother was a worthy punching bag.....but you, you are a total failure. I mean literally, you were not even a good thrashing bag.."

The words were a blade, but they didn’t land—her faith in the Empress, in Five, was a shield, deflecting his taunts. Still, Atlas filed it away. Faith was still a kind of blindness. Blindness could be turned.

Five’s eyes narrowed, his glass pausing at his lips. "Careful, prince," he said, his voice soft, a blade sliding into flesh. "You’re playing a dangerous game...."

Atlas laughed, a raw, guttural sound that shook the tent. "Good. I’d hate to bore you before I break you in the end." His hand tightened on the vial, his Truth Eyes flaring, the darkness outside deepening. The airship’s hum grew louder.

Time was running out. But Atlas wasn’t done yet.

The shadows thickened, curling along the seams of the tent like ink in water. The mana in the air shifted—no longer imperial. Wilder. Older. Watching.

Then came the sound—a low, distant thrum. Not mechanical. Organic. Rhythmic. Like a heart too big to belong to anything human.

Five looked up.

Seven turned, her spear halfway to her hand.

Atlas smiled slowly.

"And so it begins," he whispered.

Outside, unseen above the hills, the dark shape of a forgotten beast passed through the clouds. One of the old ones. One of the things Claire had set loose with her mad gamble. The ground didn’t shake, but something deeper did—the bones of the earth itself.

A scream echoed from outside the tent. Then another. Something was coming.

Not Eli.

Something else.

And Atlas’s golden eyes gleamed in the dark, the red flicker of his Truth Eyes catching the first tear in the veil.

He didn’t move.

He just waited.

And smiled.

"....the air was your domain....was..."