Somewhere deep within the city's inner ruins—where fractured stone pathways cut through abandoned merchant stalls and crumbling archways bathed in twilight glow—a blur of motion swept past the silent alleys. The air trembled with speed, a burst of force exploding at the center of the plaza where a spiritual blade struck like lightning. It crashed against a knife gripped tightly by a young boy dressed in a tattered, hooded uniform.
Sparks burst from the impact. The boy was hurled backward, his boots dragging harshly across the cracked ground, leaving scorched lines in his wake as he fought to stay upright. Before the dust could settle, another figure—a woman, light on her feet and lethal in her grace—darted in from behind him. Her movements curved like a crescent around the initial fighter, and in her extended hand, a gleaming spiritual glaive shimmered with vibrant energy.
She lunged, the blade of her glaive slicing toward the boy's exposed side—but he twisted sharply, instincts sharp, and raised his knife just in time. Steel met spirit once more, the clash echoing like thunder between the broken walls.
The man wasted no time. With a grunt and sudden flare of energy along his arms, he slashed back with a sweeping arc of his blade, not meant to wound but to close the distance. His footwork drove him forward with a burst of momentum, and in a heartbeat he was pressed against the girl's guard, the two locked in a tight, volatile exchange.
His movements were brutal and exact—angled elbows, sharp slashes, low kicks that forced her to either react or be thrown off balance. She met him strike for strike, her glaive now used more like a shield than a weapon, absorbing the punishing blows with reinforced technique. Each clash sent tremors down her arms, her boots digging into the stone for leverage.
But she didn't intend to keep trading hits.
She shifted her stance, twisting her body mid-block and shoving the man back with the haft of her weapon. Dust scattered from beneath her heels as she skidded out of the immediate range. Her breath caught in her throat—but she didn't falter.
"Cassian!" she called out, her voice sharp and commanding. "Now—take him!"
The signal was clear, and her body was already in motion again—sliding wide, circling the enemy like a second tide ready to crash in.
The instant Vivia's call cut through the air, Cassian became a blur—his form slipping between flickers of shadow and light, his feet barely kissing the ground. He ran like a ghost stitched from speed itself, steps too quiet for the devastation they wrought. Every movement seemed weightless, but the force behind him was anything but. His spiritual knife, sleek and jagged with an ever-flickering edge, glowed faintly with spectral energy as he lunged toward the cloaked man.
The man turned, just in time, blade drawn across his side to catch the strike. Steel shrieked against energy, the impact sending a concussive shockwave surging outward in a tight burst. The street cracked beneath them as Cassian's momentum forced the enemy back two full strides, dirt and fragments of stone flung into the air.
Vivia followed immediately.
She twisted into a wide spin, her spiritual glaive cleaving horizontally, carving a gust with it. The man blocked again, but the sheer weight behind the glaive made him grind backward, feet digging into the earth, leaving grooves in the cobblestone as she pressed in. Sparks spat in every direction as their weapons met in a flare of raw energy, the collision thunderous.
Cassian didn't give him time to recover.
He phased again—ghost-steps vanishing between flickers—and reappeared at the man's flank, knife lunging low for the ribs. The cloaked figure barely managed to twist and parry, but the deflection created a violent recoil, air compressing and slamming outward in a deafening pulse that blew apart chunks of the nearby wall.
Now they were in rhythm—synchronized chaos.
Vivia lunged high with a vertical slash, glaive trailing burning light. The man raised his weapon to guard, and Cassian slipped low beneath the swing, spinning into a rising slash from below. Caught between both, the man released a controlled blast of spiritual force from his body, a sphere of pressure that blew them both back, boots skidding along shattered earth.
Cassian flipped and landed with precision, crouched low, knife reversed in hand, breath steady.
Vivia rotated mid-air and slammed down with one foot before springing again, her glaive spinning overhead before she brought it down with a roar. The enemy crossed both arms to block—and the force shattered the ground beneath him, dust and force spiraling upward in a jagged ring.
The entire street seemed to tremble under their exchange.
Cassian blinked from sight, ghost-running once more. In a blink he reappeared behind the cloaked man, stabbing forward with blinding speed—only for the man to whirl and deflect just in time. Another explosion of force. The buildings surrounding them cracked from the residual blasts. Windows shattered. Craters formed with every direct clash.
Breathless but relentless, Vivia stood beside Cassian once more, twirling her glaive into a ready stance. Cassian rolled his neck, narrowing his gaze, spectral energy lacing around his wrist.
Their enemy emerged from the smoke again, coat torn and edges scorched—but still standing, blade raised, unshaken.
The tempo was rising. And none of them had blinked yet.
The man stepped forward from the haze, his coat fluttering in the windless air, untouched by the violence that scarred the streets around him. His blade lowered slowly—casual, as if none of the impacts had mattered. His pale eyes flicked between the two with an almost clinical interest.
"What's with the commotion?" he said, voice smooth and eerily calm. "Attacking a random civilian?"
Vivia gritted her teeth, lowering her glaive just slightly. "We weren't here to impress you, Rhaziel."
Cassian remained crouched beside her, knife still ready, breath controlled. "We know what you're after. We know about Soul Severance."
Rhaziel tilted his head, amused. "Do you?" A faint chuckle escaped him, dry and empty. "You speak like children who've stolen words from a language you barely understand."
"You're the one who started all this," Vivia snapped, her voice rising like the edge of a blade. "The research, the disappearances, the scars people still carry—you're the thread tying them all together!"
But Rhaziel only blinked, feigning confusion with subtle mockery.
"Soul Severance… That's what they're calling it now?" he murmured. "Sounds dramatic. I assure you, I know nothing of such a thing."
Cassian's expression darkened. "You're lying."
Rhaziel smiled without warmth, stepping closer. "And if I were?" His voice took on a serpentine curl. "Would it change anything? Would knowing what it truly is help you stop it? Or would it break you before you even got close?"
He turned his gaze to Vivia now, unreadable and cold.
"You think naming me makes you understand me. But you don't know why people follow my path. You don't know what was done before I began."
For a moment, silence.
Then Cassian stepped forward, defiant. "We don't need to understand you. We just need to stop you."
Rhaziel stopped moving. A slight twitch of his fingers suggested readiness, but he didn't raise his weapon.
"You can try," he said. "But know this—if you're here for truth, you're in the wrong place. I bury truth in silence, and feed on those who pretend they deserve answers."
His eyes narrowed slightly, glowing faint in the dark.
"If you want to survive what's coming, don't follow me any further."
He turned his back to them—brazen, fearless—and began to walk into the smoke.
Cassian tensed.
"Don't—!"
But Vivia raised a hand, stopping him.
"…We've seen enough," she whispered, eyes hard, heart hammering in her chest. "For now."
Cassian moved.
A blur of ghostlike momentum streaked across the narrow passage, his form trailing behind like the remnants of a spirit torn from the wind. Each step erased sound. Each breath was silence given shape. His spiritual knife pulsed with an inner flame, flickering with purpose, his eyes locked on Rhaziel with a precision that cut deeper than steel.
But Rhaziel remained still.
Not with confidence—something colder. A stillness rooted in dominion.
Then, without gesture, without sound, a ripple shimmered outward from him. Space warped—not visibly, but perceptibly. The atmosphere distorted. Time fractured.
Cassian froze mid-lunge.
Suspended in a phantom frame, his body hung above the ground, mid-sprint, mid-slash, as if the world itself had forgotten what motion was. Dust in the air paused. The breath of wind became a sculpture of stillness. Light no longer shifted.
Rhaziel didn't walk—he flickered. Reality rejected him, yet made room. And in that rejection, he reappeared in front of Cassian, his stance straight and sovereign.
His left hand rose.
It phased—like smoke passing through silk, each finger unraveling from substance. It drifted forward, bypassing skin, bone, and armor like none of it ever mattered. His hand passed through Cassian's chest without wound, without pain. It simply… existed where it shouldn't.
The palm reached Cassian's heart.
Then came the surge.
An implosive force detonated inside the frozen world. No fire. No light. Just pure, suffocating pressure born from within Cassian's body. Energy coiled and snapped in a radius too tight to see, crushing his nerves and rattling his core from the inside out.
Time returned.
With it came the shattering of glass—no, something more cosmic. As if reality itself cried out in protest.
Cassian's body convulsed.
His chest burst backward from the unseen impact. His top shredded mid-air, muscles recoiling from the inner trauma. In the blink that followed, his frame was launched—blasted across the space with devastating velocity. He smashed through the stone wall behind him in a storm of debris, dust, and silence.
Gone.
And Rhaziel stood unmoved.
His left arm lowered again, phasing back into visibility without a trace of effort. His right hand, however, never released its grip on the spiritual blade at his hip—untouched, unsheathed. Its edge gleamed faintly, pulsing not with heat but with the lingering resonance of time having been violated.
He hadn't broken his stance. Hadn't taken a single step.
Vivia's knees trembled as her eyes widened.
"Cassian!!" she screamed, a note of pure terror slicing through the silence as she raced toward the collapsed wall, her glaive forgotten in her hands.
Rhaziel didn't follow. He didn't watch. His right hand flexed once on the blade, eyes distant.
The moment had passed. And all that remained was ruin.
Vivia crashed to her knees beside the wreckage, the jagged remains of the wall still hissing with fine dust. Her glaive tumbled from her grip, forgotten. Her hands found Cassian—limp, sprawled in the debris, his clothes shredded, chest scorched with a faint glowing mark that pulsed like an echo rather than a heartbeat.
"Cassian—!" Her voice broke as she slid her arms beneath him. "Cass, say something—look at me!"
But there was nothing.
His eyes were open—but glazed, unfocused, staring at something far beyond her. His chest didn't rise, didn't fall. No breathing. No blink. No movement. Just… stillness.
And yet—he was alive.
She could feel it. There was warmth to his skin, a lingering weight to his presence. But he was gone in some other way. Hollowed. Drained. Like someone had carved out something vital and left a body intact.
Footsteps tapped lightly behind her.
Vivia snapped her head up, eyes blazing. Rhaziel approached with the same composed stride, his right hand loosely gripping the spiritual blade at his side, its edge still humming faintly with residual force. His left hand—unnaturally pale and shimmering—rested casually at his hip, as though what he'd just done meant nothing.
"What… what did you do to him?" Her voice trembled with fury and dread.
Rhaziel didn't pause. "I silenced what made him resist."
"That's not an answer!" she shouted. "What does that mean?!"
He stopped only a few paces away, and for a moment, the silence between them deepened. Then he spoke—calmly, without weight.
"His blade reached further than he understood. So I took what allowed it to reach at all."
Vivia's breath caught. Her gaze fell to Cassian again. The dull haze in his eyes. The way his body rested—not unconscious, but disconnected.
It clicked.
"You…" her voice dropped, cracking. "You severed his soul…"
Rhaziel offered no correction.
"You severed it—didn't you? You didn't just injure him. You carved out his spirit—"
"Not all of it," Rhaziel said quietly, eyes almost regretful. "Just enough."
Her mouth fell open, a mix of rage and grief choking her all at once. She couldn't scream. Couldn't breathe. She only clutched her brother harder, trying to find the rhythm of life in someone whose flame had been half-extinguished.
Rhaziel turned.
"I gave him a fate better than death," he murmured. "He can live… if you can still call it that."
And with no more words, his body blurred into pale fragments of spiritual light, vanishing into the night—leaving Vivia kneeling in the rubble, with nothing but her brother's hollow shell and the echo of what had been taken.
Vivia's voice tore through the silence, raw and broken, as her fingers curled into Cassian's unmoving shoulder.
"So… all this time…" she choked, looking up with wide, disbelieving eyes, "you have the power to sever someone's soul?!"
Rhaziel stopped mid-step, his silhouette framed by the faint shimmer of spiritual light dancing along the edge of his sword. He didn't turn.
"The power was never mine," he said calmly, voice drifting like wind through glass. "Only the understanding of how to use it."
She stood slowly, trembling, one hand still clinging to Cassian as if afraid letting go would mean losing him completely. "You talk like this is some kind of knowledge," she spat. "Like you're above it all. But you ripped something out of him!"
Rhaziel's head tilted slightly. "That boy came with the intent to kill. He burned with fire, but fire without focus consumes the soul. I simply removed the piece that would've led him to destroy himself."
"You're lying," she growled, her glaive trembling in her grip again. "You didn't save him. You hollowed him."
Rhaziel finally looked over his shoulder, his expression unreadable beneath the veil of silver strands and half-shadow.
"You call it hollow," he replied. "I call it mercy. Next time… I won't be as kind."
And without another word, his form dissolved again—into light, into dust, into silence. He didn't flee. He didn't vanish in haste. He walked—slowly, gracefully—into the distance, until even the glow of his presence faded from sight.
Vivia stood alone, eyes stinging.
Behind her, Cassian's breath still wouldn't come. Only the warmth of a body that remained behind—while everything else had been taken.
Vivia dropped to her knees beside Cassian again, her hands trembling as they hovered above his chest, as if willing his breath to return, willing the life to flicker back into his glassy eyes. But there was nothing—no twitch, no gasp, no pain. Just stillness.
Her voice cracked through clenched teeth.
"He's still warm… He's still here. That bastard didn't finish it. There's still time—he didn't take everything."
She clenched her glaive tighter, then let it drop beside her as she steadied herself, brushing Cassian's disheveled hair from his forehead.
"I just need to find her. That girl… the one the marines are chasing. The one they said could reach into someone's soul. A resonator. She could bring him back."
Her gaze hardened, burning through the blur of rising tears.
"She will bring him back."
Vivia stood slowly, the weight of her brother pressing on her shoulders more than gravity ever could. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, turned toward the darkened path Rhaziel had vanished into—and then away from it. Her direction now was set, heart pounding with purpose.
Even if the world didn't believe in second chances, she'd find a way to give him his.
To be continued...