Darkness.
There was no shape.There was no depth.There was no reference.
The absence was not empty—it was dense, compact, as if space itself were waiting.
Then—
The groan of doors.
Slow.Deep.
Heavy metal moving against ancient stone.
The tower doors began to open.
Outside light entered in narrow blades, tearing through the darkness and crawling across the floor like something not welcome there.
Dust danced in the air.
And with the light, the space finally revealed itself.
The chamber was vast.
Ancient.
Circular, upheld by stone columns darkened by time and by the fire of countless torches long extinguished.
The ceiling vanished into shadow, too high to be reached by the newly arrived light.
Absolute silence.
The first thing the light touched was a seated figure.
Upright posture.Motionless.Hands resting calmly on the armrests of a stone seat.
It didn't look like a throne.
It looked like a place of waiting.
The head was lowered.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the figure lifted his face.
Golden eyes.
They did not burn like fire.
They shone like freshly forged metal—intense, precise, incandescent in a way too cold to be natural.
Those eyes met Zeph's pale green ones.
There was no reaction.
No tension.
Only recognition.
The golden gaze drifted slowly away, passing over Zeph, following toward the outside of the tower.
The light now revealed, in the distance, fallen bodies. Motionless assassins. Weapons abandoned on ground still wet.
The gaze returned.
Zeph remained standing at the entrance.
Respectful.
Not submissive.
His voice broke the silence.
Low.Calm.Without unnecessary weight.
"The master Karna is dead."
The sentence dropped into the room like a stone into still water.
Silence.
The figure showed no reaction.
No gesture.No change in breathing.
Zeph observed for a few seconds—and then continued, in the same calm tone:
"It seems… this does not affect you."
A short pause.
"I've heard stories about you."
"About how much the Omega Unit meant."
"About the promise between you and master Karna."
The golden eyes remained unmoving.
"I also heard about the mountain girl," Zeph added. "Edda."
There was something.
Minimal.
An almost imperceptible adjustment in the gaze.
Enough.
The sound of stone beneath the figure's feet echoed through the chamber.
He had stood.
"It seems you came here to meet your own death, boy," he said, voice low, deep.
Then—
Metallic sounds began to vibrate throughout the tower.
Zeph's staff answered.
Not with light.Not with sound.
With vibration.
A low tremor ran through the unified shaft, almost imperceptible—but constant. As if something inside it had awakened… or recognized the presence before it.
Zeph lowered his gaze for a moment.
He felt it.
It was not a direct threat.
It was pressure.
The air around him felt denser, too heavy to move freely.
Each breath demanded a minimal effort—too subtle to alarm, too precise to ignore.
The staff vibrated again.
Stronger.
Zeph closed his fingers around it.
Not in readiness.
In restraint.
His gaze returned to the golden eyes.
And shifted.
To the center of the chamber.
There, the floor gave way into a deep circle.
A pit.
Its edges were marked by ancient inscriptions, carved directly into the stone—old symbols, warped by time, but still active.
They were not prayers.
They were records.
Inside the pit, the darkness was not total.
Something reflected the light.
Blood.
Not dry.Not old.
A thick, dark, pulsing mass—like a pool too deep to see the bottom.
The surface moved slowly, in gentle waves, as if breathing.
The smell was metallic.Fresh.Inescapable.
The air down there was different.
Heavier.
Too thick to breathe.
Wrong.
Zeph took a deep breath.
When he spoke, there was no accusation.
There was reading.
"Lord Telvaris…" he said calmly. "What comes out of that pit…"
A brief pause.
"…will not be the woman you lost."
Silence.
Zeph did not wait for an answer.
His gaze returned to the golden eyes.
"You don't care about the consequences."
It was not a question.
The staff vibrated, low, continuous.
"You even used lives to bypass the Abyss."
Another pause.
"Women. Innocent children."
The words fell apart.
Not to wound.
To anchor.
Zeph straightened his posture.
Not in challenge.
In decision.
"It's a shame…" he said, with contained softness. "I would have liked to meet the man master Karna admired and respected."
A single breath.
He felt regret.
Not for Telvaris.
For what he would need to do.
"But this ends here."
Telvaris took the first step.
There was no hurry.
No intent to intimidate.
The approach was measured—as one who moves within a temple, not a battlefield.
The stone beneath his feet did not echo.
It was as if the floor accepted his weight.
A minimal smile appeared at the corner of his golden mouth.
Not irony.
Recognition.
"Funny…" he said as he advanced. "I did everything to kill the past. To bury it. To erase it."
Another step.
"And here you are."
The golden eyes assessed Zeph from head to toe, without hostility.
"Like me… before I lost everything."
He paused for an instant.
The smile did not grow.
The voice remained low.
"He believed there was a right path."
Another step.
Zeph did not respond.
Not out of respect.
Out of observation.
It was not an accusation.It was a portrait.
Telvaris was not speaking only of Karna.
He spoke like someone who had already made the same choice.
"You believe that too?"
The gaze narrowed just enough to mark judgment.
"If you think that way… then you still understand nothing."
The room seemed to listen.
"He was weak," he said, without emotional weight. "Too weak to do what needed to be done."
A final step.
"And that is why he is dead."
The silence that followed was not broken.
Telvaris tilted his head slightly, as one who concludes an argument already won.
"Spare me that faith. It does not sustain decisions."
He stopped a few meters from Zeph.
The air between them contracted.
Telvaris raised his hands.
Not in ritual.
In command.
Zeph's staff reacted before he could adjust his stance.
The vibration exploded—not as response, but rejection.
Not inward.
Outward.
The unified shaft tore free from his fingers as if ripped away by the air itself.
It crossed the chamber in a straight line, shredding the silence—and passed through the tower opening.
Zeph went with it.
His body did not fly.
It was thrown.
Rain received him without mercy.
He rolled across the soaked ground, felt the impact tear through shoulder, back, ribs—and only stopped when his body decided it was still alive.
For a moment, he remained still.
Water ran down his face.
Air came in short bursts.
Then Zeph rose.
To his knees.
Breathing forced into control.
The pale green eyes lifted.
Telvaris stood at the tower entrance.
Motionless.
Cut between inner light and outer rain.
Watching.
He did not advance.
He did not retreat.
As if he were simply waiting for the world to reorganize itself around that choice.
"You will die here."
A fraction of a second.
"And become another channel… for her."
The air changed.
Not sound.Not light.
Intent.
The blades scattered across the courtyard began to vibrate.
Not all at once—one by one, like teeth grinding together.
Metal scraped stone.
Then they flew.
Zeph reacted before his body had time to think.
The first projectile passed where his head had been an instant before, slicing the rain in a straight line.
The second came low—he twisted his hips, slid a foot in the mud, and let the blade skim past his thigh.
He did not retreat in a straight line.
Never.
He shifted diagonally, using the wind as an extension of his own axis—not to accelerate, but to reduce weight.
Each step was too light for the soaked ground.
He danced not for aesthetics.
For survival.
One blade ricocheted off the tower wall and returned in an unpredictable arc.
Zeph dove beneath it.
His body rolled over a corpse.
The impact was dull.
Broken ribs collapsed under the weight—not his.
The blade pierced the dead torso and stuck.
Zeph was already standing when the rain erased the sound.
Telvaris advanced.
Without haste.
A blade returned to his hand as if summoned—and on its way, cut through the neck of a fallen assassin.
The body spasmed uselessly.
Telvaris did not look.
"Standing up…" he said, almost to himself. "That was never a requirement."
He threw another.
Zeph leapt toward the courtyard's side wall, used the impulse to change axis midair, and dropped behind a broken column.
The blade tore a chunk from the stone.
Shards cut his shoulder.
Blood mixed with rain.
Pain registered.
Ignored.
Zeph ran.
Not away.
Inward.
He passed between two bodies, kicked one aside at the exact moment—the next blade buried itself in the hurled corpse, diverted by centimeters.
The wind spun around Zeph like a course correction.
It did not save him.
It allowed fewer mistakes.
Telvaris was closing the distance.
Each step was short.Stable.Heavy.
He entered the courtyard like someone stepping into a ring—open stance, low center, loose shoulders. He was not chasing Zeph.
He was cutting options.
One blade came high.Another low.Another delayed.
Zeph slid under the first, struck the second with his forearm to change its axis—the impact rang to the bone—and let the third pass through a body on the ground.
The blade did not stop.
Telvaris pulled it back with a short wrist turn.
The corpse came with it.
Thrown.
Zeph took the impact to the chest and rolled backward, air ripping from his lungs in an ugly sound. Mud clung to his hands, delaying support.
Mistake.
Telvaris was there.
Close range.
A punch came straight—dirty boxing, no warning, no load.
Zeph raised his forearm at the last instant.
The impact punched through the guard.
The bone did not break.
But it sang.
For an instant too short to be called time, Zeph's vision darkened at the edges.
The world lost depth.
A metallic taste rose in his throat with the air he couldn't quite pull in.
He did not fall.
But the body recorded it.
Zeph turned with the blow, using its force to exit the next axis—an elbow that passed where his temple would have been.
He answered with a short kick to the knee.
Not to drop.
To test.
Telvaris rotated his hip and absorbed it.
Not a single step back.
"You still run…" he said. "Like I used to run."
Another blade rose behind Zeph.
He felt it.
Turned too late.
Zeph stepped into the wrong time.
The step was the same one that had worked before—short base, loose hips, low axis.
But Telvaris did not react as expected.
He did not bite the space.
He did not close.
He waited.
The cut opened Zeph's side.
Not deep.Enough.
Telvaris advanced again.
Stopped a few steps away.
Did not attack.
Did not speak.
Only watched as blood ran, diluted by rain.
The blades remained suspended in the air, slowly rotating, as if awaiting a command that had been given long ago.
Zeph breathed.
Once.
Twice.
Enough to understand.
This was not a duel.
It was a sentence already spoken.