The three cloaked figures fanned out, their black robes blending with the skeletal landscape of the Wailing Barrows. Mehandi clutched the Veritas Stone, its cool surface a reassuring weight in his hand. He was outnumbered, but he was not alone. The aether of the land, scarred but no longer corrupted, hummed beneath his feet.
"Hand it over, Volkov," one of them commanded, his voice muffled by the hood. His hands were already crackling with a deep-red mana, a hungry, unstable energy that smelled of burnt ozone.
"You're not from the Magisterium," Mehandi said, his own voice steady despite the pounding of his heart. "You're hired thugs."
"Semantics," the second enforcer sneered, throwing a sharp, magical shard toward him.
Mehandi didn't raise a shield. Instead, he pushed his aetherial magic into the earth beneath him. The ground shifted, and a half-buried pile of bones erupted, sending the shard off-course. It was not a spell of destruction, but of manipulation, an effortless command over the physical world. The three enforcers, used to brute-force magic, looked at each other with confusion.
The third enforcer, the most imposing of the trio, didn't hesitate. He launched a full-scale assault, a barrage of mana bolts, each one designed to pierce a magical shield and end the fight quickly. Mehandi knew he couldn't deflect them all. He had to be smarter.
He reached into the very heart of the barrow's corruption, a small, lingering pocket of the necromancer's power that he hadn't yet cleansed. It was a risk, but it was his only option. He didn't use the corruption, but simply agitated it, causing a wave of malevolent energy to surge outward. The enforcers, not knowing the source, were forced to conjure powerful defensive shields. Their attack faltered.
In that brief moment of distraction, Mehandi unleashed his true power. He drew on the faint, ethereal green glow he had infused into the land. He didn't attack them. He reached into the mana in their hands, the volatile energy they had so carelessly manipulated, and with a silent, powerful push of his aether, he sent it back into the atmosphere, neutralizing it. Their hands went cold.
The three mercenaries stood dumbfounded, their magic gone. Mehandi walked toward them, and the ground around him began to glow with a faint, blue light, a perfect circle of purity in the otherwise desolate landscape. He didn't have to fight them; he had simply disarmed them. He was a force of life, and their magic of death and destruction was an affront to his very being.
"You took everything from me, once," he said, his voice low and cold. "But you will not take my truth."
The enforcers, stripped of their power and terrified by the sight of Mehandi's living magic, fled, their bravado gone. They would not report back to their employers with the Veritas Stone, but with a far more chilling story: that the "Ghost Volkov" was not a pretender but a power unlike any they had ever encountered.
Mehandi stood alone in the Wailing Barrows, the Veritas Stone in his hand. He looked at the desolate landscape around him, a place of death that was slowly but surely beginning to heal. He had won a second time, but this victory felt even more profound. He had not only proven his innocence to a Magister he had just met, but he had also proven to himself that his power was not a curse to be hidden but a gift to be wielded. He turned and walked away from the barrows, his pace faster now, his purpose clearer than ever. He had the truth. Now, he would use it to bring justice.