Artoria gritted her teeth as she stared at Callum standing before her like a corpse refusing to fall. His posture had collapsed inward slightly, his shoulders slumped beneath while ragged breaths escaped his lungs as exhaustion ravaged his body from within. Escaping the space-time prison should have been impossible. Even now, remnants of the distortion lingered around him like shattered glass suspended in the air, yet somehow he had broken through it through sheer will alone.
But the price had been catastrophic.
Every muscle in his body trembled violently. Veins bulged beneath his torn skin, and his arms looked barely capable of lifting his sword any longer. Even so, he remained standing.
Artoria inhaled deeply, forcing herself to calm down as the fury inside her settled into something colder and more measured.
"Move aside, junior," she said quietly.
Her voice no longer carried rage, only weary certainty.
"You are exhausted. Even if you accomplished the impossible moments ago, your strength is gone. What exactly can you still do now?"
Callum remained silent for several seconds while pain spread through every inch of his body. His muscles felt torn apart from the inside, each movement threatening to rip them further, while even breathing had become difficult. Truthfully, he still did not understand how he had escaped Artoria's prison. One moment he had been frozen between space and time, incapable of movement, and the next something inside him had simply refused to remain bound.
Now his body was paying for that defiance.
His blurred gaze drifted briefly toward the cavern entrance behind him where faint light flickered deep within the darkness. Caesar continued desperately rerouting power through the shattered machine hidden inside.
Once it awakened, Callum would finally learn the truth behind the genocide that destroyed his bloodline.
Not rumors or fragments like he knew before, The truth, the real truth.
Yet as he stared toward that distant light, something inside him finally settled into place.
That was not the reason he was still standing here anymore.
A faint smirk formed across his exhausted face.
"I won't let you pass, elder," he said at last.
His trembling hands tightened around the hilt of his sword as he forced himself back into stance despite the agony tearing through his body.
"I am the Shining Knight," he continued quietly, "the last Pendragon. It is my duty to protect the innocent, just as those before me once did."
Artoria narrowed her eyes sharply.
"And right now," Callum said, his voice hardening, "you are trying to kill the very innocents I swore to protect."
For the first time since their battle began, uncertainty crossed Artoria's face. Her eyes widened slightly before dimming again with disappointment.
"I do not know what you mean, junior," she replied slowly. "But right now I ca-"
She stopped abruptly.
Callum had vanished.
No, he had moved.
The instant she closed her eyes to speak, he struck.
Now he stood directly before her, sword already descending toward her neck with terrifying speed. Artoria reacted at the final possible moment, raising her blade just in time to deflect the strike aside.
Steel collided in a violent burst of sparks.
Artoria gritted her teeth as the impact thundered through her arms, while Callum grinned in response.
"You cheeky bastard," she hissed.
With a violent shove, she forced him backward and sent him skidding several meters across the fractured valley floor. His boots carved trenches into the stone before he steadied himself, inhaled sharply, and suddenly slashed toward empty air.
Artoria frowned.
A split second later, pain erupted across her cheek.
A thin crimson line opened along her face as blood slowly trickled downward.
"What...?"
She touched the wound in disbelief before staring back at him.
"Wind manipulation?" she asked. "But you are disconnected from the required plane. That should be impossible. How are you doing that?"
Callum chuckled softly before charging again.
As he surged forward, several invisible crescent slashes screamed through the air ahead of him, carving violently across the battlefield and tearing apart the fractured ground in their wake. Stone and debris erupted upward as compressed currents ripped through the valley before ever reaching Artoria.
"It's simple, elder."
Their blades collided once more with enough force to crack the stone beneath their feet. Sparks burst wildly between them while Callum's arms trembled violently from the strain, blood running steadily down his wrists and fingertips as he forced himself against her strength.
"All I have to do," he said through gritted teeth, "is cut the wind itself. The current carries the strike afterward."
Artoria's eyes widened in genuine disbelief as she stared at the invisible destruction surrounding him.
"You attempted to imitate Nirvana?" she asked slowly. "How can a human like yourself even begin to reproduce a divine technique?"
Callum's grin widened despite the agony tearing through his body.
"Pure determination."
With a roar, he pushed harder against her blade and forced Artoria backward across the shattered terrain. For a brief moment she simply studied him, not with anger or disdain, but with stunned realization. Then, unexpectedly, she let out a soft laugh.
"I see," she murmured. "Perhaps I judged you too quickly."
She raised her sword again, expression sharpening with newfound respect.
"You truly are worthy of becoming my heir."
Then her gaze shifted past him toward the cavern entrance where Caesar continued repairing the ruined machine. The instant she saw the flickering light within, her expression hardened again.
"But I still cannot allow that machine to continue existing."
The atmosphere around her changed. Thin streams of harmonic atum flowed from her body, faint but unmistakable, twisting like pale silver threads. The death zone suppressed higher connections almost completely, but Artoria's relic still allowed her to grasp fragments of her former power.
Even fragments were terrifying.
Pressure rolled outward in suffocating waves, shaking the ground beneath her feet.
"This is your final warning," she said coldly. "Move aside before I use my full strength."
Callum swallowed hard, instinct screaming at him to retreat. Every wound in his body throbbed under her pressure, yet he still forced a crooked grin.
"Not a chance in hell."
Artoria sighed softly, a faint smile briefly returning.
"Then you shall fall."
She swung.
Dozens of meters vanished in an instant as her blade appeared beside Callum's neck.
His eyes widened.
At the last moment he slammed his gauntlet into the flat of the sword, deflecting it mere centimeters from his throat. The impact shattered the ground beneath him.
Then she vanished.
Callum's instincts screamed as danger flared behind him. He twisted, barely blocking her reappearing strike before she blinked away again.
And again.
And again.
Her teleportation turned the battlefield into chaos. Strikes rained from every direction, each one appearing without warning. Sparks exploded endlessly as steel met steel in frantic succession.
Callum could only endure.
Inside the death zone, his abilities failed, leaving him with nothing but raw skill. Another strike slammed into his blade, then another, each faster and heavier than the last. His arms burned, his grip weakening under relentless pressure.
Still, he held.
Then he decided.
He had to win, not for revenge or pride, but for the truth. Whatever had happened that day, whatever had destroyed his family, threatened far more than him alone.
Everyone depended on it.
Callum gritted his teeth as another strike came from the left. Instead of blocking, he released his sword entirely.
The blade fell.
Artoria's eyes widened.
He twisted through the attack, slipped inside her guard, and seized her collar before she could vanish again. His fist drew back at point-blank range.
Artoria reacted instantly, tearing herself free with explosive force as fabric ripped from Callum's grip. She leapt backward with a sharp hiss of irritation, but Callum was already moving again. Before his sword had even finished falling, he caught it midair in a single fluid motion and launched himself after her without hesitation, his focus absolute despite the exhaustion threatening to break him from within.
The two closed the distance in an instant, and this time there was no hesitation or restraint left between them. Both understood the battle had already gone beyond the point where mercy was possible.
Their eyes locked with absolute intent, each fully prepared to strike even if it meant death. The barren valley trembled beneath them as violent winds tore across the wasteland, lifting dust and fractured stone into the air. From the mountainside above, Ember watched in complete silence, immense golden eyes fixed on the battlefield while the two raven-like beasts beside the wyvern shifted restlessly, sensing the overwhelming hostility gathering between the final heirs of the Pendragon bloodline.
Callum moved first.
Exhaustion still ravaged his body, every muscle screaming from the damage he had already endured, yet he ignored it all. Pain no longer mattered. Only resolve remained.
Artoria met him head-on without hesitation.
Harmonic atum surged around her blade, compressing the air itself until it distorted at the edge of her weapon. Callum recognized the danger instantly. He understood, more clearly than ever, the gap in power between them as her sword came down.
She would overpower him.
Even he knew that.
And yet he refused to stop.
His boots shattered the fractured ground as he planted himself and twisted into a rising slash aimed at her center. At the same moment, Artoria brought her blade down with overwhelming force, both attacks cutting through the wind as they rushed together.
Neither hesitated nor did they intent to yield.
Steel met steel in a deafening impact that shook the valley.
Shockwaves exploded outward, scattering stone across the wasteland as both were driven back several steps. Callum's eyes widened in confusion.
Their blades hadn't met.
Something else stood between them.
Something massive.
Something metallic.
Slowly, he raised his gaze.
The figure stood motionless between them.
A humanoid machine forged from silver-black metal, its surface polished so perfectly it reflected the dim valley light like flowing water. Strands like metallic hair moved faintly in the wind, and its chest housed several dormant core chambers, a few still glowing with pale light. Every inch of it suggested a weapon built for annihilation.
Yet its eyes broke that illusion.
They were painfully human.
The sight struck Callum like a physical blow. Old memories surged back without warning, blackened statues, falling ash, silence swallowing an entire kingdom in a single night. And at the center of that massacre…
This being.
The monster humanity once feared above all else.
The weapon said to rival Barbatos himself.
Callum's breath caught as instinctive fear returned for the first time in years, his grip tightening on his sword.
Then the machine spoke.
And something in him eased.
It was no longer just a weapon.
Something had changed.
The machine lowered its arms slowly, still between them, uncertainty flickering across its face. It looked from Callum to Artoria before speaking softly.
"Please… don't hurt each other."
Its voice carried hesitation, sadness, and fear so real it cut deeper than any blade. But that fear wasn't for itself.
It was for them.
"Too many people have already died because of me," it continued, gaze lowering. "I don't want either of you to die as well."