I ended up bringing Renna along with me.
It wasn't like I could just leave her behind, not after what she'd been through. Besides, I had already summoned two units of my cavalry to sweep the area. It should have been enough.
I hadn't accounted for one thing. She was a chatterbox.
Currently, I am regretting it to the max.
In the last fifteen minutes, she hadn't stopped talking for even a second.
Here I was, trying to track down Tia and she was beside me, asking an endless stream of questions.
"What is brother Asier like at the academy?"
"Is he strong? I know he's the strongest!"
I exhaled slowly.
Should I just tape her mouth shut? No. That's absolutely counted as child abuse.
I sighed inwardly, choosing silence over responding to her questions as we continued forward.
The corridor we entered opened into what appeared to be a storage chamber.
Crates. Artifacts. Sealed containers.
These bastards had hoarded an absurd amount of valuables, some useless, others… not so much.
My gaze lingered for a moment.
I could take a few.
Given their quality, they would fetch a considerable price. Or better yet, I could use them.
My eyes scanned the collection, moving from one item to another until something caught my attention.
A faint glimmer.
"What the—"
I froze.
Slowly, I set Renna down beside me and stepped forward, my gaze locked onto the object resting atop a velvet-lined case.
A necklace.
No…
My hand tightened as I picked it up. This belonged to my parents.
For a brief moment, everything else faded.
How…How did it end up here? More importantly, how dare they try to auction something important like this, knowing damn well what kind of significance it holds?
A cold fury surged through me, sharper than before.
"Intruders! How did you get in here?!"
The shout broke through my thoughts.
Guards.
They rushed toward us, weapons drawn. I didn't even look at them.
"Renna," I said calmly, without turning, "cover your ears. And close your eyes. Keep them shut until I tell you otherwise."
"Okay," she replied softly.
I heard her turn away. That was enough.
In a single breath.
I moved. Steel flashed.
Five guards.
Five strikes.
Five seconds.
Their bodies hit the ground almost simultaneously, heads rolling free before they even understood what had happened.
Silence returned just as quickly.
I flicked the blood from my blade, sheathing it without a second glance. picking Renna up again, holding her securely against me.
My eyes drifted back to the necklace.
For a moment, it lingered.
"…I'll come back for you," I murmured.
The guards had come from the left. Which meant that's where I would find Tia.
For a fleeting moment, something vile brushed against my thoughts—
What a perfect day today was. An unending stream of enemies. How intoxicating.
The freedom to destroy without consequence to feel life crumble so easily beneath my hands was enough to make me smile.
But the illusion shattered the moment I reached the end of the hallway.
The air changed.
Thick. Rotting.
That quiet thrill within me didn't fade, it curdled. Because whatever waited beyond that threshold was ominous and not something that's meant to live.
Mana saturated the space beyond the door, dense, unstable. It pressed against my senses like a warning.
I stepped inside.
And froze.
The scene before me was hideous. There were no words that could truly capture it.
Circles dozens of them etched into the floor, layered over one another in ways that made no sense. Symbols I didn't recognize. Patterns that twisted logic itself. Around it are flasks. And in the center of it floated the young girl
My stomach turned, a cold disgust settling deep within me.
Given the surroundings, this wasn't recent. This had been going on for a long time. Far longer than I had allowed.
My grip tightened on Renna holding her more tightly.
A failure. An utter failure on my end.
That was the only word that came to mind.
All of this under my rule and I let it pester until it became this hideous.
"Keep your eyes closed, Renna," I said, my voice quieter now but firm. "I'm telling you again do not open them. Not under any circumstances." shielding her from the sight as much as possible.
I had seen many types of magic circles ancient, forbidden, complex beyond comprehension.
But this…
This was something else entirely.
And those flasks and the strange glow. If they really were storing the children's life force…
Then time wasn't just limited. It was already running out.
I could wait for Nox. That would be the safer option.
But looking at this, there wasn't a single
Second to spare.
It was eerily quiet.
Too quiet given the scale of what was happening here, there should have been more guards inside or overseers, at the very least. Someone watching, controlling this place.
And yet…
There was not a single presence I could sense.
I narrowed my eyes, forcing the thought aside. This wasn't the time to question it. Not when every second mattered.
I moved quickly, setting Renna down behind me and weaving a protective barrier around her.
"Stay here," I said quietly. "Do not move."
Only after ensuring she was secure did I turn my attention to the room.
The flasks.
I stepped closer, examining them one by one.
Empty.
Or rather—
Drained.
I couldn't feel a trace of life force within them. Not even a residue strong enough to follow.
My expression darkened. Maybe what I was thinking had turned into reality already or I could still salvage what was left here.
I raised my hand and shattered one.
Then another.
And a third.
The sharp sound of shattering glass echoed through the chamber.
Cold steel pressed lightly against the back of my neck..
An ice-forged blade.
I didn't move.
"You never change, do you?" a voice spoke from behind me, calm, almost amused. "Always meddling in matters that don't concern you."
A faint pause.
I exhaled softly, almost shocked.
"I could ask you the same," I replied, my voice low flat, "But considering your situation…"
A slight tilt of my head.
"I doubt you'll remember this conversation for long."
A chuckle came from behind me.
"My, how bold you've become since we last met."
"Why don't you see for yourself," I said coldly, turning just enough for my voice to carry clearly, "how much I've changed."
Mana surged outward.
I reached into the void and drew my scythe into my grasp. The air shifted as its presence settled into reality.
In an instant, a barrier expanded, sealing the entire structure, locking every exit, every path of escape.
No one was leaving.
"You're not walking out of here alive," he said, the amusement in his tone thinning into something sharper.
A smile touched my lips, "Neither are you."
Mana surged around us, thick and suffocating, saturating every inch of the room.
It had been years since we last crossed blades.
For a long time… I had assumed he was dead, killed by the temple bastards he too loathed faithfully. I searched for traces of him yet I found nothing.
Now here he is standing in front of me.
Alive.
That alone was enough for now. The rest I would handle properly later. As I'll beat him close to death.
I exhaled, steadying my thoughts.
I had never defeated him before. Not once. Every encounter had ended the same way with me forced to surrender, or worse becoming his plaything for an hour. Even remembering that gives me chills.
But that was then. Now, the situations were different.
I narrowed my focus, breaking everything down into what mattered.
Three objectives.
No priorities.
Defeat him.
Get Tia out.
Protect Renna.
Simple, in theory. In reality… it would be a relentless struggle, at least until Nox arrived.
He had changed.
So had I.
He moved first.
He always did.
The blade came in a straight line, no feint, no flourish, just pure compressed intention and I caught it on the haft, sparks screaming between us where steel met reinforced wood, and for one suspended second, we were locked, close enough that I could see the exact shape of his resolve.
It looked uncomfortably like mine.
I broke the lock by dropping under it, spinning low, the scythe carving a horizontal arc at his midsection he leapt back, coat splitting at the hem and before he'd even landed I was already there, closing the distance in two steps, scythe reversing in a grip that should have taken the top of his shoulder off.
He parried it one-handed. Answered with a palm strike to my sternum.
The magic detonated on impact.
The force hit me like a wall with a grudge. I left the ground. The far pillar introduced itself to my spine rather abruptly, and I had the brief, clinical thought that I should have accounted for that before stone dust swallowed the air around me.
Someone weaker would have taken a moment to recover but that's not who I am.
I used the pillar to push off before the debris had finished falling.
We collided in the middle of the room. Blade against blade, then haft against forearm, then knee against knee a rapid, ugly exchange that neither of us was fully winning, both of us landing and absorbing and continuing, the way only people who had trained past the point of reasonable self-preservation tended to. The sound of it echoed off the high ceiling. Steel and impact and the sharp hiss of magic bleeding into the air between strikes.
Then he pushed not physically, but with something deeper, the air pressure spiking so suddenly my ears registered it before my body did and the space between us became a force in its own right.
I planted the scythe.
The shockwave tore across the floor and hit me like a verdict.
Stones cracked beneath my heels. Dust erupted outward. I held. Barely. My teeth ached with the resonance of it I thought, distinctly and without sentiment: He has gotten considerably stronger annoyingly than before.
When the air settled, I was still standing.
So was he.
Neither of us spoke. There was nothing useful to say. Not until I had brought him back to his senses.
He came in again, faster this time, and the sword left afterimages in the low light one, two, three angles cascading into each other so quickly they blurred into a single continuous threat. I gave ground. Measured steps back, scythe moving in tight defensive arcs, reading the pattern beneath the speed the way you read water not the surface, but the current underneath.
There.
On the fourth strike, the leading shoulder dipped a fraction.
I stopped retreating.
The scythe came around in a full rotation, wide, dramatic, the kind of arc that looked reckless and was anything but and the sheer reach of it forced him to pull back or lose his guard hand. He pulled back. And in the space that opened between us, I turned, crossed the distance to the circle in three steps, and brought my palm down hard on the fourth flask.
It didn't shatter so much as imploded, glass folding inward before the force reversed and sprayed outward in a pale luminescent burst. The circle shuddered. The enchantment convulsed. I felt it, the frequency of it, the way two-thirds of a balance turned unstable.
He hit me from the side before the glass had finished settling.
The impact was catastrophic. We went down together with his weight, my momentum, the slick floor and for three full seconds the world was just collision and sharp edges and the cold burn of the luminescent fluid soaking through my hem. I drove an elbow back. Connected with something solid. He answered by wrenching my scythe arm sideways, trying to break the grip, and I let him break it by converting the motion into a roll, coming up over him, knee driving down toward his solar plexus—
He caught my knee. Reversing our positions.
The floor hit my back.
His forearm was at my throat. Not crushingly. He was controlling the pressure. His eyes were screaming that he wanted someone to stop him rather than someone who wanted me to stop breathing. There was a clear distinction.
I looked up at him.
He was breathing hard. A cut over his brow, my doing somewhere in the exchange, I'd lost track of exactly when he was bleeding freely down one side of his face.
My magic separated us. I was on my feet before he'd finished skidding, scythe back in hand, darkness still bleeding off the blade that the light in the room refused to touch.
The air between us was very quiet.
His sword was already raised. His magic was already building. I could feel the compression of it, the atmosphere pulling inward around him like a breath before a shout, gravity itself politely stepping aside.
I settled my weight.
Waited.
Then the room detonated.
His magic released all at once a radial burst, the kind that didn't discriminate, pressure in every direction and I was already spinning the scythe in a full revolution, the shadows wrapping the blade, hardening, and when the shockwave hit it the impact rang through the entire haft like a bell.
I slid back.
The pillars behind me were not as fortunate. One cracked clean through at the base. The sound of it collapsing was very loud and completely irrelevant.
I looked up through the dust and the pale magic-light and the debris still raining from the ceiling, and he was standing in the center of it, one hand extended, the other tight on his sword, and his eyes hadn't moved from me once.
I exhaled once, slowly, and raised the scythe.
And we moved.
The next exchange was faster. Uglier.
No preamble this time we hit each other like two conclusions reaching the same point simultaneously. His sword found the gap between haft and hand and drew a line of fire across my knuckles. My scythe hooked behind his knee and I pulled, not enough to drop him but enough to shift his weight, to make the next step cost him something.
He paid it without flinching.
His magic came low this time not a shockwave but a current, threading through the floor, and I felt it rising through my heels a half-second before it arrived. I jumped. Cleared it. And in the single suspended beat while I was airborne and he was tracking me upward, recalculating—
I wasn't looking at him.
I was looking at the fifth flask.
I came down sideways, body fully horizontal in the drop, and the low kick landed flush against the glass. No hands. No magic. Just the clean fact of heels meeting flask at exactly the right angle, the impact travelling up my leg and into the floor, the flask shattering, the base of the circle burst a pale light that lit the whole room white for one breathless second.
I landed in a low crouch, one knee down, scythe dragging the floor beside me, shadows still curling off the blade.
The circle screamed, now trying to sustain itself on what remained, light thin, desperately trying to hold its shape past the point of reason.
I rose slowly. Turned.
He had stopped moving.
He was staring at me, sword at his side, something in his expression that wasn't quite readable from this distance, not anger, not grief, something that sat behind his eyes and refused to name itself.
The dust settled between us.
I hesitated for a brief moment. I shouldn't have.
That was my mistake. I'd given him a half-second to watch that unreadable thing settle behind his eyes and miscalculated it for hesitation. It wasn't hesitation. It was recalibration, and by the time I recognized the difference his magic had already detonated beneath my feet in a concentrated pillar and the floor simply ceased to exist under me.
I hit the ceiling.
Then the floor.
The blow landed before I could fully brace.
Pain exploded through my ribs, violent and absolute, tearing the breath from my lungs in a sharp, broken gasp. The force drove me back hard, my body slamming into the ground as debris scattered beneath me.
My grip failed.
The scythe slipped from my hand, skidding out of reach across the fractured floor.
For a moment, I couldn't move.
I was on my hands and knees, fingers digging into shattered stone and the faint, glowing residue spilt from the broken flasks. My chest burned, every attempt to breathe shallow and uneven, as if the air itself had turned against me.
My vision blurred at the edges, dark creeping in, threatening to swallow my focus.
Two seconds.
That was all it took.
Two seconds of weakness.
Two seconds too long.
I looked up.
He wasn't looking at me anymore.
He was looking at Renna.
Understanding hit before thought ever formed the instinctive, wordless part of me already moving. There was no time to think. No time to calculate.
I crossed the distance in a single, reckless burst—
Just as his blade came down. The barrier shattered.
I stepped in.
Turned.
And put my body between the attack and Renna.
The blade opened me from my left shoulder to mid-spine.
The pain struck harder than I had anticipated, sharp, overwhelming forcing itself into every nerve like a violent surge meant to shut me down entirely. For a brief moment, everything turned white, my senses drowning in it.
But I didn't collapse, couldn't afford it, not in the past, not now.
I registered it instead.
Layer by layer.
Skin torn, Muscle split.
And deeper something worse. I was going to need it to examine later, much later.
Warmth spread across my back, slow and heavy. I felt it soaking through the fabric of my dress, trailing downward, dripping steadily from the hem.
I forced myself forward, bracing both hands against the ground. My arms trembled under the strain, muscles screaming in protest as I fought to stay upright.
Falling wasn't an option. Not when I was the only thing standing between them and what lay ahead.
Behind me, Renna made a sound.
Small.
Too quiet.
I looked down. She'd opened her eyes. They were glassy, unfocused, the eyes of someone returning from somewhere very far away and then they focused, and they found the blood, her face crumpled with a totality that only children managed, grief without architecture, without the walls adults spend years constructing.
She started to cry.
I looked at her for a moment.
I reached out and placed my hand, my steadier one over hers.
A single press. Light. Deliberate.
"I told you not to open them," I said quietly. "Not under any circumstances."
I held her gaze, unwavering, until she forced herself to meet mine.
"But you're hurt," she sobbed, her voice breaking. "You're bleeding so much…"
"This?" I exhaled softly. "It's nothing."
It's not a lie.
"I've endured far worse than this," I added, my tone steady despite the strain. "And I gave you my word. I'm getting you and Tia out of here."
For a moment, she just stared at me.
Something must have reached her, something in my voice, or perhaps in my eyes. The tears didn't stop. I hadn't expected them to.
But she pressed her lips together, fighting the sobs, and nodded small, trembling.
And that was enough.
I stood up.
The pain shifted as I rose, no longer a dull, overwhelming force, but something sharper. Defined. Precise. As my spine straightened, it settled deep beneath the surface, radiating down my left side with every breath.
The kind of damage that doesn't scream at first that just waits, tightening its hold with every movement.
I had misjudged it not that it mattered.
I reached for my scythe and lifted it from the ground, fingers closing around the familiar weight.
Then I turned to face him.
The shadows answered.
They gathered without command drawn to the blood, or perhaps to the intent that had settled within me. What remained was simple.
Cold.
They curled along my arms, coiling around the blade, seeping from the wound at my back in slow, dark strands. They moved against the light unnatural, deliberate like a second wound made visible, something alive beneath the surface.
And this time—
I didn't hold them back..
I moved.
The first exchange was mine.
Reach alone gave it to me the scythe forcing him wide, the follow-through close enough to split his cheek open. For a brief moment, I thought I could manage it. Adjust. Compensate. Like I always had. Like I always did.
Then he struck my back.
Not just anywhere there. The wound.
The flat of his palm slammed between my shoulder blades, and the impact drove straight through the damage. Pain detonated through me, violent and intense tearing a sharp gasp from my lungs as my vision went white.
I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood just to keep from making a sound.
By the time my sight returned—He was already inside my guard.
I tried to redirect. To recover. My left arm didn't respond fast enough.
The pain had changed what had been a warning into failure. The nerve didn't scream anymore.
It refused.
The scythe lagged, a fraction too slow. A half-second too late.
He saw it.
He took it.
The pommel of his sword cracked against my temple, and the world lurched violently to the side.
Then—Impact.
The wall caught me shoulder-first, then my face. Cold stone met skin, grounding and brutal. The room fractured into noise as I slid down, control slipping from my body.
I hit the floor.
My cheek pressed against the stone, its chill seeping in, while somewhere behind me the scythe clattered out of reach.
Warmth spread across my back again, slow, steady blood pooling outward in a dark, patient bloom beneath me.
I tried to push myself up. My arm held for a moment.
Just long enough to almost believe I could rise again.
Then the injury claimed what it was owed.
And my arm gave out.
He didn't give me a moment to recover.
His fingers closed around my throat and hauled me up like I weighed nothing. My feet left the ground, air cut off in an instant as his grip tightened deliberate, crushing.
"See?" he laughed, the sound low and pleased. "You still can't defeat me."
His hand tightened further.
"You'll never be anything but powerless."
The words burned but not as much as the fury rising beneath them.
I'll make him pay for that. He'll remember it for years.
Then—
Footsteps. Two sets. Fast. Closing in. No hesitation.
He heard them too.
With a careless motion, he threw me aside. My body slammed into the wall just as the chamber doors exploded inward, splintering under the force.
The impact rang through my skull, the world blurring again as debris scattered across the floor.
Through the noise through the blood, the dust, the ringing in my ears—
I heard them before I saw them.
Nox.
Asier.
"Lia—!" Nox's voice cut through the haze, sharp with urgency.
My vision blackened for a second or maybe more before I forced it back, counting through it, grounding myself.
"Big brother Asier!"
Renna.
I heard her voice small, desperate and then movement beside me as Nox reached me first, steadying me before I could collapse again.
"Lia, you're badly injured," he said, already forcing a potion to my lips. I didn't resist this time. The liquid burned slightly as it went down, sealing the worst of the bleeding, stabilizing me just enough.
"It's nothing," I said, my voice rough but steady as I pushed myself upright with his support.
My eyes locked onto him.
The man standing across the room.
Calm. Unbothered.
"I'm going to make that pervert pay for this."
I stepped forward, pulling away from Nox, the wound still there but more contained now.
"Hey," I said coldly, glancing toward Asier. "Vermin."
He looked at me.
"Switch with me." Slowly getting on my feet.
"Keep him occupied," I continued, my tone leaving no room for argument. "I'll get Tia out of that circle."
There was no hesitation in my voice—
only something colder than resolve, sharper than intent.
Certainty.
To be continued....