The Warden struck first. The air in the Hall of Echoes did not move; it shattered. Its tendrils lashed out, dozens of them, each one a serpent of pure illusion. They morphed mid-swing—one moment a chain forged from Ryne's fear, the next a sword gleaming with the Grandmaster's light, the next Elara's hand, soft and forgiving, reaching for his face.
Ryne darted to intercept, her own blade a clean, sharp line of defiance. She sliced through the phantoms, and they dissolved into glittering, soundless glass. "Keep your mind clear!" she shouted, her voice tight with strain. "It feeds on what you fear! They'll wear your face next!"
But Nameless didn't seem to hear. He moved. Not like a knight, not like a soldier—but like a predator finally let off its leash. His stance was all wrong, too low, too wide, an unholy crouch that no swordsman would ever be taught. His steps were jagged, arrhythmic, as if he danced to a song of pure madness that only he could hear.
His single crimson eye blazed, and when his blade struck, it wasn't a clean cut. It was a cruel, tearing, gouging motion. He wasn't severing the Warden's tendrils; he was dismembering them, carving not just flesh but the very essence of their form. He laughed, a low, guttural sound that was more terrifying than any war cry.
The Warden howled as its phantom faces shattered into shards of light. From the broken pieces, new illusions bled out, each one crafted to break a hero's heart. Ryne's own corpse, pale and broken. Tianlong, chained and weeping tears of starlight. And Elara, smiling with a forgiveness he knew she had never given.
Nameless bared his teeth in something that was not a smile. It was the grin of a wolf about to tear out a throat.
"You think I'll beg for her forgiveness?" His voice was ragged, mocking, and disturbingly gleeful. "No. I want her wrath. I want her curse. I want to feel her hatred burn through me until there's nothing left." He took a step forward, his presence warping the air around him. "So show me more, you pathetic liar. Show me everything."
He didn't lunge. He vanished. One moment he was there, the next he was behind the wave of illusions, his blade dragging along the ground, sparking a line of hissing, crimson light. When he swung, it wasn't at the creature's body but at the illusions themselves. He tore them apart with such savage, joyful precision that the Warden screamed—not from pain, but from the pure, psychic shock of being so utterly seen and defied. Its weapon was memory, and this man was feasting on it.
"You feed on echoes," Nameless snarled, his voice deepening until it was barely human, a resonance that made the glass-like floor vibrate. "Then drown in mine!"
Before Ryne could even process it, he seized one of the Warden's largest tendrils—one shaped like his own masked face—and bit into it. He tore away shards of solidified illusion with his teeth, the crunch echoing in the silent hall. The fragments dissolved into black ash as he spat them out, a line of crimson blood dripping from his lips.
Ryne froze, a knot of pure horror tightening in her stomach. In that moment, Nameless did not look like a protector or even a man. He looked like something forged from primordial hatred and sharpened into blasphemy. A demon wearing a human mask.
The Warden, a creature of nightmare itself, recoiled. It had expected fear, grief, despair. It had not expected this ravenous, joyful madness. But Nameless followed with merciless, flowing precision. Every strike of his blade was not just a cut, but a message carved into the fabric of the realm itself: lies are weaker than grief.
"Tell Lianxu this!" he roared, slamming the flat of his sword into the ground. The impact sent a shockwave of raw power, shattering a ring of illusions fifty feet wide and exposing the writhing, venous floor of the realm beneath. "I do not seek truth. I seek blood."
The Warden shrieked, its form unraveling as it retreated into the deep shadows of the Hall. The walls twisted, doorways appearing and vanishing, inviting, mocking, daring them deeper into the labyrinth of memory.
Nameless stood over the wreckage, his blade dripping with shards of falsehood. His chest heaved, his grin wolfish and triumphant.
Tianlong's voice rumbled from behind them, the ancient dragon's tone edged with a deep, profound unease. "You fight as though you were not bound to oaths, but to curses."
Nameless did not look back. His crimson eye was fixed on the shifting darkness ahead.
"Perhaps I am." He stepped into the Hall of Echoes, his shadow long and jagged across the shifting floor. "And curses," he chuckled, the sound echoing in the oppressive silence, "are much harder to kill."