The circular opening was a perfect ring of destruction. Flames burned higher now, climbing the shelves that formed the arena's walls. Orange and red danced together, casting writhing shadows across scorched stone. The heat was suffocating, thick enough to choke on. Ash fell like snow, coating everything in grey.
Fredrick fought with everything he had. Every trick. Every technique. Every ounce of strength his body could muster. But as an unawakened, there was only so much you could do in the face of something that required an Enlightened or multiple Awakened working in tandem.
The A rank Unfaithful towered before him, its shadowy form shifting and writhing like smoke given terrible purpose. Inside that darkness, Miguel's body moved. A puppet. Dismembered limbs floated within the shadow, held together by tendrils of black energy that knit bone to bone, flesh to flesh in a grotesque mockery of life.
The man in black watched from behind, his face indifferent. Observing. Arms crossed. He might have been watching a play, for all the emotion he showed.
Fredrick swung his sword in a desperate arc. The blade connected with a shadowy tendril. The impact reverberated up his arms, through his shoulders, into his teeth. The sword shattered. Metal fragments scattered across the ground like falling stars, each piece ringing as it struck stone.
He looked down at the hilt in his hand. Just the hilt. Nothing else remained.
The shadow moved. Miguel's dismembered body parts began to realign. The shadow placed each limb back with careful precision, reconnecting them as though assembling a doll. The arms snapped into place. The legs followed. The torso knit together.
Then it spoke.
Miguel's voice. Or what remained of it. Raspy. Broken. Wrong.
"Fredrick. Fredrick."
The sound made his skin crawl. This was not Miguel. This was something wearing Miguel like a coat, speaking through his throat, mocking the memory of who he had been.
Fredrick looked back at the princess. She hung suspended above the corruption, spikes pierced through her wrists and ankles. The dark energy had climbed higher now, almost reaching her chest. Her skin where it touched was turning black, veins standing out like ink beneath paper.
Things looked hopeless.
A shadowy tendril shot forward and pierced his upper shoulder. The pain was immediate, searing. He swayed left, balance failing. He fell to one knee directly beneath the princess, blood running down his arm in warm streams.
She looked down at him, eyes drowsy and unfocused. Her lips moved. She muttered his name.
He heard it. Low, barely audible over the crackling flames, but it was there.
Something shattered inside him. Guilt. The crushing sense of not being enough. Of failing at the one thing that mattered.
He remembered why he was here.
He had met that mysterious boy, Lucid. The one who seemed to be involved in an incident with the very organization Fredrick was hunting. The ones who had caused all of this. The ones responsible for the deaths, the corruption, the nightmares that plagued the kingdom.
He looked up at the man in black. Fredrick had thought Lucid would lead him to them. That the boy was conspiring with them, working as their agent. But no. Lucid had proven himself believable. Trustworthy, even.
And Fredrick had judged him wrong.
He had thrown Lucid into a fate far worse than any prison. Dragged him into this rift, into this hell. And now he had doomed Her Highness to the same end.
'I am a fool. A damned fool.'
"Fredrick!"
A voice yelled from across the arena.
He looked up.
It was him. Lucid. Emerging from the smoke and flames.
Fredrick looked down at himself. At his battered state. Blood soaked through his clothes. His arm hung useless. His sword was gone. He was broken.
'No. I cannot let him see this side of me.'
He stood. His face was bloodied, cut in a dozen places, but he forced his lips into a wide grin. He waved with his good hand.
"Partner!"
A tendril shot toward him as he spoke. He dodged with swift efficiency, muscle memory overriding pain.
Lucid shot him a disbelieving look. The boy was staring at the A rank Unfaithful that had overtaken someone, using them as a host. His eyes moved from the shadow to Miguel's reconstructed body, to Fredrick's grin.
Ayame followed behind Lucid. She stopped dead in her tracks, feet frozen to the ground. Her eyes locked onto something. Someone.
She reached out and grabbed Lucid's wrist with such force he winced.
The man in black saw Ayame. Saw her face. Her state. Recognition flickered across his otherwise indifferent expression.
"Very well," he said, his voice formal and plagued with false courtesy. "I see that you have chosen another path."
He tilted his head slightly, regarding her like a teacher disappointed in a student.
"I cannot judge you. This individual I have been searching for seems capable enough. But I suppose it is a trade that you are willing to make for your clan."
Ayame shook more than she usually did. Her hand trembled on Lucid's wrist.
"Well, your failure was imminent anyways," the man in black added, dismissing her with a wave.
Fredrick blocked another attack with his good hand, stepped to the side with practiced efficiency. But it was not enough. It was barely enough. Each movement slower than the last. Each dodge closer to failure.
'I could awaken. I could embrace Mother Fate's gift right now. Draw in the essence. Ascend.'
His jaw clenched.
'But if I do that, I prove them right. Prove that it is necessary. That there is no other way.'
'I vowed to show them otherwise. To show them otherwise.'
A shadowy tendril wrapped around his neck, constricting. It lifted him off the ground. His feet kicked uselessly at empty air. His good hand clawed at the tendril, fingers scraping against something that felt like ice and smoke combined.
'Even if it kills me.'
Lucid saw it.
He ran.
A dark orb, an energy-like substance dense enough to warp the air around it, crashed into his side. The impact sent him flying across the arena, body tumbling through the air until he crashed into shelves a great distance away. Wood splintered. Debris rained down.
"No!" Ayame yelled, voice cracking.
Just as the debris began to settle, two professors emerged from the shadows. One had pink hair, red eyes, and pale skin that seemed to glow in the firelight. The other was bruised, her robes tattered and burned. They walked with purpose, with confidence.
The man in black shot them an acknowledging nod.
"Proceed with it," he commanded.
The pink-haired professor, Anya, planted her staff into the ground. The impact resonated through the stone, a deep thrum that made the air vibrate.
She began to chant. Words in a language that seemed. Ancient.
Fate essence flowed from the staff. But it was not the familiar blue. This essence was purple, dark and corrupted. It poured into the marionette of a ghost, into the noble man's shadow that the A rank Unfaithful used as its vessel.
The shadow intensified. Grew larger. Darker. More solid. Miguel's body convulsed within it, limbs twitching as more power flooded through the connection.
Its form expanded, tendrils multiplying, each one tipped with barbs made of solidified darkness. Purple eyes opened across its surface, dozens of them, all focusing on different targets. The pressure it radiated became crushing, suffocating.
Fredrick knelt below it, the tendril still wrapped around his throat, slowly squeezing the life from him. His vision darkened at the edges. His lungs burned.
Ayame stood frozen where she was, torn between running to Lucid buried in debris and helping Fredrick being strangled.
The man in black was amused. A small smile played at the corners of his mouth as he watched everything unfold.
The corrupted fate essence continued to pour into the A rank Unfaithful. The creature's form solidified further. The purple eyes blinked in unison. Miguel's mouth opened impossibly wide, jaw unhinging like a serpent.
"Fredrick. Fredrick. Fredrick."
The voice echoed now, layered with something inhuman beneath Miguel's rasp.
Fredrick's hand fell away from the tendril. His strength was gone. His vision narrowed to a tunnel. The princess above him blurred into shadow.
'This is how it ends. Unable to save anyone. Unable to do anything.'
His eyes began to close.
Just as he did, hands shot out from the debris, clawing upward. A bright light overtook his darkening vision. A chain so luminescent and white wrapped around the tendril, severing it immediately. Air rushed back into his lungs.
Professor Anya, the pink-haired woman, conjured another spell toward Lucid. It hit him. She laughed, thinking she had struck true. But the spell was immediately dissipated with a golden white glow.
Lucid desperately crawled away, running from the debris. The man in black saw Lucid's desperate attempt. Lucid saw him. Their eyes crossed each other in recognition.
Lucid manifested chains, wrapped them around a tendril, and launched himself toward Fredrick. He knocked him out of the way immediately. Six strikes that were aimed at Fredrick's stomach, a killing blow, pierced Lucid's torso instead.
Fredrick's face immediately shot up in shock.
The strikes had pierced Lucid through. But normally, they would have regenerated, deflected the attack.
No. Something was wrong.
"It's an A rank Unfaithful, Lucid!" Fredrick yelled.
Alice's power was relatively strong, but why had it failed? Lucid threw up blood as he gripped his injuries. Ayame immediately cut a tendril aimed at his head for a killing blow. She threw Fredrick his dagger and used her blood sword.
Standing side by side with Lucid, she withstood the onslaught.
A dark red glow intensified around Lucid's stomach. The pressure could be felt building.
"Divine."
Fredrick looked to his side. It was his reflexes, dagger sense honed from years of combat.
Lucid dashed forward and punched the shadow's head where Miguel was.
"Wrath."
A dark substance of purple blood colored the ground. The man in black pushed beside the monster and cut Lucid with a dark blade that made him fall back, gasping.
"Interesting," the man muttered.
Lucid had dealt a fatal amount of damage to the A rank Unfaithful, but it was not enough.
As Lucid started to fall back, he started to say something.
"Manifest—"
It was too late. The man in black, sensing his words, stabbed through his throat. Ayame yelled at the brutality. It shocked Fredrick.
"A binding contract?" the man muttered, kicking Lucid's body aside.
'How did he stab me?' Lucid thought, looking at the blade. It was black, dark as midnight. The hilt resembled something like a snake's jaw. It had to have been that.
He fell back, the white glow working desperately to heal the throat wound. Fredrick supported him. The A rank Unfaithful's shadow loomed over them. Ayame worked to deflect and attack, her movements growing slower, more desperate.
Things seemed grim.
They seemed dark.