Liv could see it as Hakro's dozen years of experience kicked in as he assumed his usual composure and looked around, his uncaring eyes sliding from side to side. Then they landed back on Liv who stood on the skull with her back to its crown.

"Aomon really should've killed you in your sleep," he said as he hid a hand behind his back. Liv acted like she didn't notice. "You're fucking insane."

Liv cracked the back of her neck and saw Hakro tense up. "Right."

"I mean, really. Think of that young monk." Hakro shook his head with as empathetic an expression as he could manage. It made one almost forget that he was the one who put the spear through Fabian's heart. "First you take his virginity and then you take his life. In what? A week?"

Liv's eyes twitched involuntarily as her emotions stirred. Exactly what Hakro was looking for.

In merely a split second, Hakro's still body changed position with violence. Then all Liv saw was a dagger barely a forearm's length from her eye. There it stayed, suspended in air.

But Hakro had vanished from sight. Quickly other projectiles came flying in from the sides as well. Too fast for Hakro to move. There were Spaces assisting him, getting him from place to place. But he still wasn't escaping. Liv needed to get him before he realized she chose not to hypnotize him earlier and that he really should escape.

She looked around before teleporting. She did it again and again before she had gone over the skull and was hanging in the air in its face, too high to see the ground below. She looked into the skull's eyes looking into its empty sockets. But they weren't empty. They were dark red.

Before she could ponder it further, a spear flew at her and she caught a glimpse of Hakro inside the skull's open mouth. She clasped her hands and found herself staring into his eyes at arm's length.

Hakro grabbed her throat in an instant and squeezed hard enough to crush her spine. Or at least he tried. Once he realized he couldn't get through the invisible barrier no matter how hard he squeezed, he took another dagger and tried stabbing.

Liv's eyes glowed. "Don't move," she said flatly, freezing the man. Then she turned to the already frozen spatial manipulator on his side. "Jump." The woman did as told and hurled herself from the mouth.

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Liv then got an idea and grabbed Hakro before teleporting a few times. Once she made it inside the Skull's eye cavity, she threw the weighty bastard onto the ground. The soil, to be clear. To her surprise, the red in the eyes came from flower petals. Somehow there were hundreds of flowers planted inside the massive sphere. Even ones on the roof growing downwards.

There was some beauty in it. Nothing for Liv to acknowledge she put a foot on Hakro's chest and grabbed ahold of an invisible sword. She then drew a red line across his shocked face that grew all the more terrified as he realized he couldn't break the spell.

When Liv was done with the demonstration, she flicked her wrist, the blade returning to nonexistence.

It was only then that she bothered to answer the question Hakro's eyes begged to ask, "Insubstantial matter, courtesy of the Red King. I could never access outside the Empt before." Her face grew amused and she squatted to bring her face closer to Hakro's. "It's a paradox, you see. Can you fathom that? Your attempt to erase me in the fear of my power brought forth the power you so feared," she taunted with a jovial raise of her brows.

Hakro's face stayed frozen, but she could see his soul in his eyes. It didn't look good.

She stood up, using his chest as a pedestal. Before letting him respond. "You can talk."

Hakro sucked in a breath through his mouth. "Y— You... You—"

"Yes. Me. Mememe. You," Liv spoke fast just to further mess with Hakro's frenzied mind.

Hakro gritted his teeth in his last fight against the hypnosis. His face when he loosened his body in defeat was to die for. He took deep, shuddering breaths before trying to speak. "Go ahead. Kill me! What? You thought I was going to whine my way to the grave. Unlike you, I had a proper father who taught me the way of the world and the way out of it."

"Ah, yes." Liv crouched down to grab Hakro with a diabolical smile. "I heard your father died in battle," she said before throwing him onto his stomach and stepping on his neck. She grasped and aimed an invisible blade at him, her voice growing cold. "You will be executed."

At that moment, Hakro showed what he was really made of, trying his very best to wriggle in the dirt as sounds of desperation leaked from his very soul. Liv scoffed, then plunged the blade through the base of his skull and out of his mouth.

She felt her stomach sink a little with relief from the tension that had built there all this time. Then she withdrew the blade and nudged Hakro's head a little to see his still-open eyes and bloody mouth. An eye twitched in disgust at the sight. She shrugged it away, snorting and spitting into his eye before dragging him to the ledge of the cavity and kicking him down to splatter on the ground far below.

His body hurtled through the air before disappearing from sight. There wasn't much of a sound either when his body was pulverized. Liv didn't care much to listen.

She wiped her hands on her clothes and swept some hair from her gleaming eyes before looking to the horizon where the capital was awaiting its fate.

Awaiting her.