The assault came without warning, a blade in the night.
One moment, the Kharman border was a silent wall of shimmering energy. The next, it screamed under a barrage of alchemical fire. Green explosions tore holes in the wards, and through the gaps poured the King's soldiers, silent, disciplined, and deadly.
Kenji was already moving. He and Rina had been stationed at the central breach, Eris's warning ringing in his ears: "You are the dam. If you break, we all drown."The shadow stirred under his skin, a cold, eager serpent. He let it bleed out, forming a dark, clinging aura around him. His father's knife was in his left hand; his right crackled with a jagged blade of solidified night.
Beside him, Rina was a storm of focused fury. No more scattered bursts. She fired searing lances of golden light from her palms, each shot melting a sword hilt or burning through a boot. Her control was terrifying. She was a surgeon on a battlefield.
They fought as one. Kenji would shatter a shield with a shadow-enhanced kick; Rina would drop the exposed soldier with a precise beam to the throat. They were a perfect, lethal dance. But for every man they felled, two more took his place. The dam was straining.
On the ridge above, General Zed watched, his expression carved from ice. "Mage-Knights," he commanded. "Target the boy. Break their rhythm."
Six figures in rune-etched plate stepped forward, staves glowing with violent purple energy. They fired not at the wards, but at Kenji.
The first bolt took him in the shoulder, spinning him around. The shadow-aura flared and spat, absorbing the worst, but the impact was a sledgehammer to his soul. He gritted his teeth, feeling the cold hollow in his bones deepen. Another piece of my life, he thought wildly.
"KENJI!" Rina's cry was raw. She tried to turn her fire on the knights, but a phalanx of soldiers locked shields, cutting her off. She was trapped, fighting her own desperate battle.
The Mage-Knights advanced, firing in a relentless volley. Kenji rolled, dodged, formed desperate shadow-shields that cracked under the barrage. Each defense cost him. A hot line of blood trickled from his nose. The white streaks in his hair seemed to pulse with a sickly light.
The shadow's whisper became a scream in his mind. "Pathetic! Let me out! I will scatter them like dust!"
"Not yet," Kenji grunted, dropping to a knee as another bolt seared the air above his head. He was tiring. The dam was cracking.
Rina saw it. Saw him faltering. A cold resolve settled over her. She stopped trying to fight her way to him. Instead, she planted her feet, closed her eyes, and reached deep.
She pulled on every ember of her Sun Spark, every memory of her tribe's light, and she unmade the magic around her.
A silent, expanding ring of pure golden force erupted from her. It didn't burn; it erased. The soldiers' shields dissolved into splinters. The Mage-Knights' staves glowed white-hot and backfired, throwing them to the ground with screams of short-circuiting energy.
The wave hit Kenji's shadow-aura. Light and darkness clashed in a painful, resonant shriek that made his teeth ache. His aura shattered. He was exposed, gasping.
But so were the knights.
The shadow roared in triumph. "NOW! FINISH IT!"
Down. But not out. A shock wave of abyssal pressure exploded from him, staggering everyone in a ten-foot radius.In the sudden stillness, Kenji pushed to his feet. he wasn't smiling. He was grinning, and the laugh that followed wasn't human, it was the sound of a chain snapping.
This time, Kenji didn't refuse. He unleashed.
He moved like a vengeful ghost. He didn't use skill or form. He used rage. Shadow-claws extended from his hands. He tore through the stunned Mage-Knights. He ripped staves in two, punched through enchanted breastplates, moving with a speed that blurred. One. Two. Three knights fell in as many seconds. It was brutal. Efficient. The shadow fed on his fury, and he fed on its power. He felt invincible.
"YES! THE GENERAL! KILL HIM! END THIS!"
From the ridge, Zed watched his elite unit being dismantled. His pale eyes showed no surprise, only calculation. He drew his longsword, the runes along its blade glowing with a dull, hungry light, and started down the slope.
Kenji saw him coming. The shadow sang for blood. "HIS HEART! GIVE IT TO ME!"
Zed reached the field. "A display of brute force," he stated, his voice flat. "Let us see if it can withstand discipline."
He attacked. No flourish. A simple thrust. Kenji met it with a shadow-blade.
CLANG-SHATTER.
Zed's runed sword sheared through the darkness as if it were smoke. The anti-magic runes flared, creating a dead zone. Kenji's shadow-claws flickered and died near the steel.
Kenji staggered back, parrying with his physical knife, the shock of each block vibrating up his arm. Zed was stronger. Faster. His sword was a key that unlocked Kenji's greatest weakness. A slash opened Kenji's thigh. A pommel-strike to the jaw snapped his head back. He was being systematically broken.
"HE MOCKS YOU! HE MURDERED YOUR FATHER! LET ME OUT! LET ME SHOW HIM TRUE FEAR!"
"Stop!" Kenji screamed, a plea to the voice and a defiance to Zed as he barely rolled away from a thrust aimed at his heart.
He was losing. Badly. He glanced for Rina, she was surrounded, her light guttering as she held off three soldiers. No help would come.
The shadow's offer was a warm, dark promise in the cold terror of defeat. Just a little more. Just enough to win.
Merinet broke through then, a blast of silver energy forcing Zed to leap back. She stood panting between them, her arm bleeding. "This ends, General!"
"It does," Zed agreed. He fired a red flare into the sky. "Retreat! Reform on the ridge!"
His forces disengaged with terrifying efficiency, dragging their wounded, leaving their dead behind.
Zed took one last look at Kenji, kneeling in the dirt, bloodied and beaten. "You see? Your power has a price. Mine is patience. I will return. And you will be weaker. And I will collect what the King is owed."
He turned and walked away, untouched, through the smoke and chaos.
Kenji tried to stand, but his legs failed. He collapsed, the shadow's rage a storm inside a broken vessel. Rina stumbled to his side, her hand on his back.
"We held the line," she breathed, her voice thin with exhaustion.
Kenji looked at his shaking, empty hands. They hadn't held anything. Zed had exposed him, humiliated him, and left him with a single, corrosive truth: his own power wasn't enough.
And in the silence after the battle, the shadow's whisper was no longer just a voice. It was a presence, coiled around his heart, waiting.
"Next time… do not be weak. Say yes… and we will feast."