We launched into a whirlwind of flame and shadow. The beast dropped onto me like a mountain, its claws like swords striking the echo of my bones, and it laughed as if my pain were a pleasing game. I took the first blow and nearly broke, but something inside me set the terms of my dealings with the world: no surrender, no return.
I shoved my right hand, blazing — a black arrow of flame tore through its chest. Its stone plates shuddered, but the beast shrugged as if brushed by a breeze. It answered with an earth-shaking strike that hurled me back until my feet dug into the soil. It was stronger — wickedly fast, seasoned in blood. Its laughter dripped venom.
His words rang in my head: "You are weak." The phrase cut into my memory, and I dodged the pain. I charged again, but no longer blindly; my intention was not senseless destruction but to turn pain into a clever weapon. The shadow from my left hand spread like a net, binding the beast's limbs and dragging it under my feet, while the right flame coiled around its neck like a belt of black fire.Court of Shadows
Then the real torment began — not mere blows but the tearing of control. I dragged it to the center of a silent arena, where echoes devour sound. I bound it with a ribbon of yielding shadow, then lit its crown with a fire that did not burn flesh but dissolved names. The flame did not kill it instantly; it robbed it of comfort and forced memory to surface. I called out voices — the voices of its victims — until its chest swelled with memories it had buried. I heard it moan, not from wounds but from truths its soul had been denied for centuries.
The beast tried to retaliate; it lunged and snapped its jaws, but the shadow twisted around its maw like an icy fist, so that it cursed. I struck it with a blade of flame, flung a coil of shadow into its belly like a winding lamp, and drew from it a moan no hunter had ever moaned before. Each time it tried to speak, the voices of those it had crushed returned: a child's cry, a mother's lament, a man's lonely scream. That was the greatest strike: to feed it the truths it had silenced.
Then I pronounced judgment. I whispered words never heard before in the void — words that turn pain into mirror. The target was not the body but the mind: I watched it choke between the faces of its victims and a pain no longer hidden. It raged, a fury that felt like its being cracking apart.
There I dealt its end: I did not merely shred flesh; I tore the mask from its power. I stuffed into it a pulsing shadow — a shard of memory kept for its victims — and flames rose within that devoured its existence like illusion. It began to scream, but the scream was gagged by the echo of its victims. Its wail became a hiss, then a scrap of ash scattered into the air. I did not stare at torn flesh; I refused the indulgence of gruesome detail. What I sought was complete defeat: a broken heart, no more defiance.
I stood over it, fire licking my throat. I spoke cold words, drawn from a place lower than the soul:
"Those who see power as amusement, who delight in torturing the weak, will one day taste a torment they cannot forget. You will burn as you burned others, and remain alone amid your ash."
Its final eyes shone with a tremor like regret — not human tears but the last residues of feeling clinging to it. The shadows dragged it into a black pit; the earth swallowed it as if repairing a tear in its fabric. Nothing remained of that beast but an echo and a reputation murmured long ago by generations of its victims.
I breathed hard; blood coated my lips, my path had narrowed, yet a deep voice rose inside me — the price of survival had not ceased. I felt part of my past evaporate with every strike, an old chord inside my chest extinguished. At the same time, I had triumphed. A cruel elation: not joy, but confirmation. I could do it. I could protect my weakness in this way.
When the ring fell silent, I looked around. The shadows readied themselves; lanterns dimmed as if closing a page. I knew I had shattered something vast: I had not merely slain a monster, I had severed a hand from a machine that fed on thousands.
I walked away, the dimness in my chest whispering: "The current pulls. Memory fades."
But I remembered a face — the girl I saved — her look of gratitude and astonishment. Her words fluttered in my mind: "Are you… human, really?"
I answered her within with a cold smile: "Yes. A human, or what remains of one. And I will make this world remember my name — or die forgetting."