The sun rose weakly behind a curtain of mist, its light thinning into pale ribbons that bled across the scorched fields. Smoke still curled from blackened beams; dew gathered on ash and turned it to a paste that stuck to boots. The survivors shifted under Nia's dim wards—no real sleep, only the fragile stillness of people who had run out of tears.
Andy stood at the edge of the square, hands resting on the hilts of Ember-Edge and Tide-Singer. He'd watched the horizon all night. The ember inside his chest had paced like a caged animal, each throb a hot knock against bone. When he closed his eyes he saw feathers burning and heard a cry that wasn't his.
"Your hands are shaking," Nia said quietly, stepping beside him. Morning damp braided her hair into finer silver. Her staff pulsed—soft, steady, alive.
"It's not fear," he answered, curling and uncurling his fingers. "The ember doesn't like silence."
"It'll like order," she murmured, angling herself so her shoulder brushed his. "We'll give it that."
Before he could answer, the air turned colder. A hush fell—no birdsong, no settling timbers, only the thin hiss of fog. The survivors stiffened as a figure walked out of the mist. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Every step he took left the ground a shade darker, like light refused to stand too near him.
Andy knew the aura first. He felt it in his bones, in the old scar of rivalry that had never fully faded. The man lowered his hood, and crimson eyes cut through the haze.
"Andrew," Andy said, and the name came out like a bruise pressed too hard.
Nia lifted her staff, breath catching. "You're… alive?"
"Alive?" Andrew's mouth hooked into a grin that didn't reach his eyes. "I'm corrected." He let the words hang, savoring them. "While you chased applause, I learned truth. Strength isn't given. It's taken."
"You didn't take it," Nia said, voice steady despite the tremor in her fingers. "It hollowed you out and moved in."
Andrew's glance flicked to her, sharp. "Still speaking for him? Still pretending your 'bond' is anything but a chain?"
Andy stepped forward until heat rolled off his skin into the damp. "If you came to talk, you wasted the morning."
Andrew's laugh was metal dragged over stone. He reached behind his shoulder and drew the blade. The Blade of Ruin shrieked as it cleared its sheath, corrupted mana pouring into the square like smoke under pressure. Several survivors dropped to their knees, hands clapped over their ears.
[Quest Triggered: Duel of Fangs]
[Primary Objective: Survive Andrew's Assault]
[Danger Level: High]
Andy exhaled. His aura rose, hot and tidal.
[Bond Activation Check…]
[Current Bond: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 25%]
[Dragon Warrior Form – Tier I Enhanced Available]
"Activate."
Flame and water braided up his arms in counter-spirals, scales rippling faintly across his forearms and collarbones. Ember-Edge and Tide-Singer hissed free, one sweating heat, the other mist.
Andrew rolled his shoulders, corrupted light skittering over his armor. "Show me what the chosen looks like without luck."
They met in the center of the square with a sound like a bell hammered until it cracked. Andy stepped offline and cut a tight diagonal with Ember-Edge. Andrew parried, angling his black blade to bite, not just block. The impact jarred down Andy's arm; he let the force spill through his hips and bled it into a riposte with Tide-Singer, the edge skimming Andrew's vambrace and throwing off a spray of hissing shadow.
Andrew came back savage and quick, blade arcing in a red-black crescent. Andy caught it close, hilts locked, their faces a breath apart.
"You always had the eyes of a stray," Andrew said softly, smile not moving. "Hungry. As if you knew something would be taken from you."
"Projection's a bad look," Andy replied, teeth bared in something not quite a smile. He broke the bind with a twist and crashed his shoulder into Andrew's chest, opening an instant of air; Ember-Edge slid for ribs, but Andrew rolled his wrist and shaved the strike aside by a thumb's width, answering with a downward chop that thudded through Andy's guard and bit sparks off the flagstones.
Nia backed toward the cluster of villagers, planting the butt of her staff.
"Wards—expand," she commanded under her breath. A dome of soft light unfolded, swallowing sobbing children and the bent-backed elder who couldn't stop whispering prayers.
"Keep your eyes open," Nia told them, voice low, measured. "If he falls, you run on my count."
Andy feinted high, cut low with Tide-Singer. Andrew read it—he always had good eyes—and slid away, countering with a thrust that would have taken a slower man through the lung. Andy turned, barely, and felt the wind of it burn cold.
"Twin Surge!" he called, blades crossing.
Fire and water collided, twisted, and ruptured outward in a helical blast. The explosion tore fog into ribbons and launched scorched earth into the air.
[Skill Used: Elemental Flow – Twin Surge]
[Efficiency: 81%]
Andrew split it. He stepped into the blast with the reckless certainty of a zealot, and the Blade of Ruin screamed. Purple-black fissures raced through the Surge and collapsed it into two boiling wakes that hissed past him on either side.
"Pathetic," Andrew said, shoulders lifting with the sigh of his breath. "You're still trying to drown me."
"You're still trying to be me," Andy shot back, and closed again.
The fight narrowed. They moved too fast for gasps to keep up with. Andy accepted the first binding on purpose, let Andrew think he'd won it, then slipped out and slashed at the outside line; when Andrew bit for the counter, Andy stole center with Tide-Singer and drove a cut that would have opened his thigh if the corrupted edge hadn't slid in to foul it at the last instant. Sparks showered. Shadow spat.
[Micro-Trigger: Dragonlight Footwork]
[Precision ↑ | Stamina Cost: Moderate]
Andrew's blade work was uglier than it used to be, but harder to read—angles that didn't belong to human joints, power that spiked without warning. He let the corruption do some of the thinking and it made him unpredictable: a step that wasn't there, a lunge with reach beyond his arm, weight that arrived late and then all at once. Twice Andy escaped by a glove's thickness, once by the hilt's quillon taking a kiss that would have split his cheekbone.
"Still dancing," Andrew panted, eyes bright with the chemical joy of near harm. "Still pretending there's grace in survival."
Andy broke the rhythm with a short, brutal beat to Andrew's blade, then snapped Tide-Singer up in a rising cut that kissed cloth and bit skin. Blood striped Andrew's chest.
The survivors' breath left them in one collective sound.
Andrew looked down at the red, then up with a smile like a cut. "You dare—"
The Blade of Ruin howled. Corrupted mana detonated off its spine, shadow flaring like a reversed flame. The pressure of it pressed on eyes and eardrums; several villagers cried out and clutched their heads.
Nia's wards thickened. "Hold!" she called, and her voice threaded panic with resolve. Light pulled tighter around the dome, a second skin against the pressure.
The ember inside Andy surged at the taste of that dark. It slammed against his ribs like a fist from inside. He felt feathers rise in him, saw a sky that wasn't here.
[Warning: Aura Instability Detected]
[Phoenix Residue—Agitated]
[Suppression Protocol—Engage]
He forced his breath lower, slower. Grounded in the feel of the leather around his hilts. In the weight of his boots. In the warmth of Nia's presence like a star behind him. The surge receded an inch.
Andrew came on. He hammered a vertical cut that Andy had to meet with both blades; it shoved him a step and scored a line in stone that smoked. Andrew reversed grips, twisted, and tried to wrench Ember-Edge out of Andy's hand in a bind. Andy let go half a beat early, rolled the loss into motion, and punished the attempt with a backhand from Tide-Singer that split flesh at Andrew's ear.
Blood beaded. Andrew laughed, breath fogging in the cold. "You can make me bleed. But the blade drinks. It always drinks."
He shifted. The corrupted aura thickened; the next series of cuts didn't look human. Andy slipped two, caught one—or rather, it caught him. The flat of the black blade smashed against his ribs. Pain flared hot-white. He rode it down and out, turned it into a stumble that hid the draw of his second blade back into line.
[Blazing Aegis – Partial Deploy]
[Integrity: 56% | Absorbed Impact: 41%]
[Stamina: 68% → 59%]
He didn't like that number, but he liked the alternative less. Andrew pressed. Andy let him for three beats, which was two beats longer than good sense, then crushed a counter in on the fourth that shocked Andrew's arms and drove him three steps back.
Steam lifted off both of them. The square smelled of iron and hot stone; the mist had burned away in a ragged ring around the fight. On the far side of the ward, a little boy had climbed onto a cart to see, only to be hauled down by a woman whose hands shook so hard she could barely hold him.
"Andy!" Nia's voice braided prayer and command. "Left!"
He moved without thinking—the trust lived in muscle now—and Andrew's feint to the right-handed line became a real strike to the left that kissed where his throat had been. Ember-Edge punished the overreach with a slash across Andrew's forearm. The corrupted blade wobbled, for a heartbeat. The howl hiccuped. Andy took the opening and drove forward, not wild but clean.
"Dragonlight Slash," he breathed, and cut.
The flame along Ember-Edge condensed into a ribbon so hot the air screamed. It traced a shallow S across Andrew's cuirass and burned a line in flesh beneath. Andrew staggered, breath hitching.
[Skill Used: Dragonlight Slash]
[Penetration ↑ | Efficiency: 77%]
"Enough," Andrew snarled, and his aura broke into spikes. For a second the world wheeled: not from fear, but from pressure. The blade came down, and Andy knew if he met it wrong it would cleave him to the navel.
He didn't meet it. He stepped in and under, body folding into a shape that felt like it had been practiced for years because it had, even if never against this edge. The cut passed over his shoulder. He came up inside Andrew's guard and slammed the pommel of Tide-Singer into the hinge of Andrew's jaw. Teeth clicked. The corrupted blade scraped stone, throwing sparks.
Andrew reeled back, spit bright red. His eyes burned brighter. He looked like a man with a fever he wanted to keep.
"Run," he hissed—not to Andy, but to some thing that wasn't there. The blade twitched in his hand like it understood.
The ember pressed again—once, hard—then eased as if reassured by his refusal. Andy breathed—one, two—and felt the heat settle enough to think a step ahead instead of half.
Andrew lifted the blade to shoulder height and smiled with all his teeth. "A taste," he said. "You're not the only one who's changed."
He stamped once. The impact thudded through the square. Shadow geysered at his feet and blew toward Andy like gusts of night.
[Environmental Hazard: Corruption Pulse]
[Mitigation: Step, Angle, Guard—Recommended]
Andy slid with it, hunting the seam where pressure thins, and the pulse washed past him. He cut into the tail of it and made it hiss. He didn't chase. He held center. He waited for Andrew to make the next ugly, greedy choice.
It came faster than he expected. Andrew's breath hitched and the Blade of Ruin's glow guttered—too much mana blown in a hurry. He had more, corruption always did, but not this instant. Andy stepped. Ember-Edge drew a neat line across the already-cut chest; Tide-Singer took a bite at the thigh. Andrew snarled and hammered back a desperate backhand that Andy parried on structure, every joint stacked, every tendon humming.
A crack ran through the flagstones between their feet.
Enough. The morning had held its breath long enough.
Andrew froze, head tilting—listening to something inside the blade or inside himself. His lips peeled back from his teeth. "Not here," he said, more to the steel than to Andy. He stepped once, twice; shadow gathered around his boots.
[Quest Progress: Duel Unresolved]
[Status: Andrew—Temporary Withdrawal]
[Damage Dealt: Moderate | Wound Severity: Persistent Bleed]
[Bond Progress: +5%]
[Current Bond: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 30%]
The mist swallowed him. The cold he'd dragged into the square loosened its grip. Somewhere outside the wards, a bird dared a small sound.
Andy stood a long moment with both blades still up, chest heaving. The ember pulsed—hard once, then softer, then settled into a low heat like a banked fire. He slid Ember-Edge home. Tide-Singer followed with a clean click.
Nia was already moving, lowering wards, checking on the villagers who had fallen to their knees. When she reached him, she didn't speak at first. She pressed her palm to his shoulder, then his sternum, feeling the heat through leather and cloth as if to confirm he was still the man she knew.
"You held the line," she said, voice hoarse but proud. "You didn't let it break you."
"I won't," he answered, and believed it more than he had yesterday. His ribs ached. His knuckles throbbed. His breathing steadied with the smell of damp ash and the faint, sweet rot of crushed grass reasserting itself under the burned stink.
Children peeked from behind skirts. An old man raised his head and, for the first time since dawn, did not flinch.
The system chimed once more, quiet as a closing door.
[Quest Line: Black Fang Rising – Progress Updated]
[Objective Chain: Track, Engage, Eliminate]
Andy looked to the road where fog thinned to a ribbon and thought, not of the man who'd gone, but of the ones behind him who had nowhere to go. He rolled his shoulders, winced, and found Nia's hand without looking. She laced their fingers, squeezing once. The day had finally begun.