The ruins shook with the weight of battle. Stone mosaics, once carved to honor the gods of the sun, now lay shattered underfoot, their gilded tiles dulled by centuries of dust. Broken pillars loomed like skeletal remains, jagged and leaning, their shadows thrown long and crooked by the faint glow filtering through the fractured ceiling. And in that broken sanctuary, Kaelen's sword clashed with a dagger that should never have existed.
Steel screamed against shadow. Sparks burst—some golden, others disturbingly black, as though light itself bled when it touched the boy's weapon. The sound set Kaelen's teeth on edge, ringing in his bones, a clash too wrong, too unnatural. Every strike of Elian's corrupted blade dragged like a claw across the knight's soul, a scraping reminder that he was not facing steel, but a wound in the world.
Elian staggered under the force of each blow. His grip was weak, his stance sloppy, his breath shallow and panicked. By all rights, he should have fallen long ago. Any half-trained recruit Kaelen had drilled would have collapsed within the first exchange. Yet somehow, impossibly, the boy held on. His eyes—wide, terrified, and luminous with starlight's reflection—met Kaelen's without breaking.
It was not strength that kept him upright. It was corruption.
The void's tendrils coiled in his veins, lending him resilience he did not deserve. A disease disguised as power. A curse, not a blessing.
"Elian!" Lyra's voice split the air.
She came limping from the rubble, her face streaked with blood and dirt, one saber lost to the fight. But she was far from finished. Her remaining blade flashed, raw and merciless, her strikes driven less by technique than by desperate instinct. A pirate's brawl, wild and lethal.
Her steel caught Kaelen across the cheek, cutting a shallow but stinging line. Blood ran warm down his jaw. He grunted, turning with the blow, allowing it to slice skin but not throat. The pain brought his focus back into brutal clarity.
He retaliated in a heartbeat. His armored elbow drove into her ribs with crushing force. Lyra gasped, folding around the impact, and flew backward into the cracked remains of a fallen column. She landed hard, teeth clenched against the cry that nearly escaped her throat.
Kaelen did not watch her fall. He could not afford to. His oath reminded him where the greater threat lay.
The boy. Always the boy.
Elian's dagger pulsed with shadow. Its smoke curled upward like the breath of a dying star, choking the air with the stench of cold ash. Every time the boy raised it, the stars above seemed to dim, as though unwilling to witness their own unmaking.
Kaelen's jaw tightened. His grip around the hilt of his longsword was steady, but inside, fury warred with something dangerously close to doubt.
"You think you resist it?" Kaelen growled, his voice low and cutting, meant to pierce deeper than his blade. He pressed forward, his strikes raining down with relentless precision. "Every moment you wield that dagger, the void feeds. Every heartbeat you steal while clutching it poisons the stars."
Elian shook his head, his hair plastered to his sweat-drenched forehead. His lips trembled as he tried to speak through the strain of holding Kaelen's assault. "I—I never wanted this. I didn't ask—"
"But you wield it!" Kaelen roared, his blade crashing down with righteous fury. The ground quaked beneath their feet as stone split under the force. "And that makes you a danger I cannot allow to live."
The words rang hollow even as he spoke them. They were iron on his tongue, metallic and bitter, the creed of the Solar Guard etched deep into his marrow.
Stand against the shadow. Be the shield of the helpless. Burn corruption before it roots.
Kaelen had recited those words as a boy beneath the spires of the Solar Sanctum, trembling but proud, his voice lifted with countless others. That oath had been his compass, his anchor, the reason his sword hand never faltered.
But tonight, it faltered.
Lyra's voice cut through the clash again, raw and ragged. "Maybe the problem isn't him, knight. Maybe it's you. You keep seeing a monster where there's still a man."
Her words hit harder than her blade had. Kaelen's cheek still burned with the line she had cut into it, but her accusation burned deeper. He wanted to dismiss her, to call it blasphemy, heresy—but the thought lodged like a splinter in his mind.
The stars did not choose corruption. They could not. That was impossible. That was doctrine. That was truth.
And yet—why had Elian not already fallen? Why had the boy not surrendered to the whispers clawing at his soul? Why, when Kaelen looked into his eyes, did he see not void's hunger but human terror?
His strikes faltered, just a fraction, and the void seized upon that hesitation.
Whispers slid into Kaelen's skull, slick as oil, cold as night. Strike him down. End this. Kill him and be free of doubt.
Kaelen staggered inwardly, though his body remained steady. The void was not Elian's alone—it slithered through the cracks of every soul, and tonight, it had found his.
His teeth clenched until they ground. He snarled, forcing the words out like an oath renewed. "I am not yours!"
The cry burst from him louder than intended, echoing off stone and broken archways. Dust fell in lazy drifts from the ruined ceiling. Elian froze, his eyes wide. Lyra's lips parted in startled silence.
And Kaelen—Kaelen felt shame crash into him. He had revealed weakness. He had let them hear it. See it. The shadow's reach extended even into him, a knight sworn to burn it away. His creed should have been shield enough. His will should have been iron.
But the whispers retreated, just for a moment.
Breath he did not know he'd been holding burst from his lungs. His blade dipped by a fraction before he caught it again. His oath had not changed. Duty had not changed. Elian was corruption. Elian was danger. That truth was unshaken.
And yet—
He stared into the boy's trembling eyes, and for the first time, Kaelen did not see a vessel of darkness. He saw himself. Young. Afraid. Crushed beneath an impossible burden. A boy who had once stood before the Solar Guard, praying he would be enough.
Kaelen's sword wavered. His hands faltered. The oath and the shadow wrestled in his chest, each demanding blood, each whispering what must be done.
The ruins seemed to hold their breath. Even the stars above flickered uncertainly.
For the first time in his life, Kaelen was no longer certain where his blade belonged.