The silence that followed Bullteik's final breath was not the silence of peace, nor of resignation, but the hollowed vacuum of something violently extinguished. His body—once stretched with sinew and marred by decaying ruptures—suddenly convulsed in one last defiant shudder, and then it began to glow.
Not softly, not as a candle trembles against a draft, but as if a thousand buried suns clawed themselves out of his marrow.
Incandescent white light surged through every pore, every crevice of flesh that had already been withering beneath El Como's intrusion. It began at the veins, a webwork of glowing tributaries, spreading outward until the entirety of Bullteik's husk became an unbearable beacon.
His face stretched into something grotesque—mouth open, eyes blinded not by emptiness but by searing illumination, until his very humanity appeared erased in that celestial burn.
Darr staggered back, raising an arm to shield his eyes. The ground beneath Bullteik charred black though the light was no fire. Stone hissed. The air warped as though the laws that held reality together had been mocked, bent, and undone.
Then—silence broke.
The body collapsed inward, but not as a corpse falls. It folded, contracted, as though sucked by a force within, until there was no weight left to drop, only a blinding sphere of brilliance suspended in the dust-laden air. That was the final mark of Bullteik—the final vestige of his being.
And from within that brilliance, a shadow stirred.
El Como.
Not stepping. Not emerging as a man might rise from water. No, he was peeled out—first a ripple of distortion, then a skeletal framework of energy, until a shape took form: incorporeal, insubstantial, a specter in the rawness of memory.
His outline trembled, translucent, as though he were sculpted from smoke and thought alone. His face was featureless at first, then slowly gathered into form—cheekbones etched sharp, eyes hollow pits of red ember, hair like strands caught between shadow and blood. For a long, suffocating heartbeat, he was not of this world.
And then, as if reminded of some cruel duty, his body knit back into solidity. Flesh returned, garments draped across him as though memory itself stitched him corporeal. He landed soundlessly upon the earth, a few feet away from Darr, dust scattering from the impact though he weighed less than a whisper.
The incandescent glow that had birthed him faded with Bullteik's last essence, leaving nothing but the stench of char and the faint shimmer of ashes scattering in the wind.
Darr lowered his arm, the rage in his eyes unhindered by the remnants of light.
"El Como…" His voice was not spoken—it was dredged, pulled raw from the pit of his fury. "You killed him."
The words hung like iron in the air, heavy and accusing.
El Como tilted his head, eyes unblinking, as if the accusation was a riddle he had heard too often. "He was already dying," he said, voice calm, soft, yet carrying a resonance that vibrated against the bones. "I entered his memory. I walked the corridors of what remained of him. What followed was not my doing."
"You lie!" Darr spat, his breath hot with anger. His fist trembled as he clenched it around the hilt of his Lucerne sword. "Bullteik was my brother in arms. He could have endured. He would have endured—if you had not slipped inside his mind like a vulture and poisoned what little was left!"
El Como's expression did not shift. His silence became an answer more damning than any defense.
Darr's lips curled into something between a snarl and grief. He raised his sword.
The Lucerne, tall and broad-bladed, gleamed under the dim light. Darr rotated his wrist, slow, deliberate. The weapon shuddered as though alive, its steel groaning against reality. With the half-swing, the weapon bent—not by force of muscle, but by force of will. Its shape rippled, altered. The polearm's brutal edge thinned, curved, until it reshaped itself into the elegant yet lethal form of a saber sword. A single arc of moonlit steel now rested in his hand, narrow but radiating with a sharpness that promised blood.
The sound of transformation echoed through the field—a chorus of grinding steel and splitting air. When it ceased, the silence was heavier than before.
Darr's gaze locked on El Como, hatred made flesh. "You brought decay. You entered him. You made him die faster than any wound could have done. And for that, El Como… I will cut you down."
El Como's eyes glowed brighter. His stance shifted, not in readiness, but in stillness—a predator not wasting motion until the strike was necessary. "You blame me because it is easier than blaming death itself. You know what Bullteik carried in his veins. You know he was rotting long before I touched him. I did not destroy him, Darr. I unveiled him."
"Unveiled?!" Darr's voice cracked into a growl. His saber trembled as energy coiled around its edge, a halo of faint blue flame. "You speak like a scholar of corpses, but you are nothing but a phantom feeding on memories. You carved through his essence until his body could no longer hold. I watched him rot in my arms because of you!"
For the first time, El Como's gaze flickered. Not with fear. Not with shame. But with something unreadable—like the stirrings of sorrow, buried deep beneath layers of apathy. He said nothing.
The silence stretched. Only the whispering wind and the faint hiss of cooling earth filled the void.
Darr's chest heaved. His anger was not just grief—it was betrayal, the kind that coils around the soul and refuses release. He tightened his grip on the saber and stepped forward, each pace deliberate, his boots grinding against scorched stone.
El Como's incorporeal essence flickered for a moment, as though part of him still resisted solidity. His red eyes followed every motion of Darr's hand, every twitch of the saber, but he did not move.
It was then Darr understood—El Como was not afraid of him.
Darr's fury thickened into something sharper than grief. His pulse hammered, each thud urging him to cut down the figure before him, the one who had crawled out of Bullteik's death like a thief stealing from the corpse.
"You stand there," Darr hissed, voice rough, "as though nothing binds you, as though his death means nothing. You think you're above consequence? Not today, phantom."
El Como tilted his head slightly, the faintest curl of his lips forming—not a smile, not quite mockery, but a gesture that unsettled Darr further.
"I do not stand above consequence," El Como said at last. His voice rolled through the air, even, unhurried. "I am consequence."
Darr lunged.
The saber carved a blue arc through the air, trailing a glow that burned like frozen lightning. El Como's body blurred at the moment of contact—his form thinning, dissolving, as if the blade had swept through mist. The steel whistled through empty space, then clanged against stone, splitting the earth beneath their feet.
A shockwave rippled outward, tearing fissures into the scorched ground. Dust exploded upward in choking clouds.
Darr wrenched his weapon free, chest heaving. His eyes darted left—El Como was already there, a phantom stride away, his body half-solid, half-shadow.
"You fight with rage," El Como observed. "Rage is strong, but it blinds."
Darr spun, swinging again. This time he twisted his wrist mid-strike, and the saber flared brighter, its edge humming with volatile force. El Como reached out a pale hand, incorporeal fingers brushing the blade. For a breathless second, steel met nothing. Then sparks burst outward—the sword rejected him, shuddering, almost as though it had cut through the veil of memory itself.
El Como's arm shimmered back into solidity, and a faint line of red streaked across his palm. His eyes narrowed.
"You can bleed," Darr growled. "That's all I need to know."
He pressed forward, each strike faster than the last. The saber's curve allowed slashing sweeps, fluid arcs of violence. El Como moved not with the rigid defense of a swordsman, but the grace of something unbound by gravity. His body folded, bent, flickered incorporeal at the brink of each impact.
But even shadows grow tired.
A misstep—El Como's heel brushed the charred earth too soon. Darr seized it, his saber coming down in a vicious diagonal meant to split the phantom from shoulder to hip.
At the last instant, El Como's body vanished into translucence, but the sword cut deeper than before, searing through the edge of his form. A spray of light—not blood—burst from him, scattering into motes that hissed as they touched the ground.
El Como staggered back, clutching at his side where the light spilled. His breath hissed. For the first time, his composure cracked.
Darr saw it and felt his fury harden into grim satisfaction. "You can't slip forever."
El Como straightened, the glow at his wound dimming. His voice, however, was calm again. "And yet, for every strike you land, I remain. For every drop of anger you spend, I endure. Tell me, Darr—how long can flesh chase shadow before it collapses?"
The words stung, because in them was truth. Darr's arms already ached from the relentless swings, sweat streaming down his brow. His grief lent him strength, but grief burns like firewood—it consumes, it does not replenish.
He snarled through the ache. "I'll burn as long as it takes. Long enough to see you end where Bullteik did."
The name hung heavy in the air. El Como's gaze flickered again—this time deeper, as though the memory of Bullteik pressed against him, a weight he had not asked to carry.
"I walked his memory," El Como said quietly, voice carrying like a murmur in a crypt. "He wanted release. He begged for it in the silence of his fading thoughts. I did not force him into death—I gave him what he already sought."
"Liar!" Darr roared, launching forward again. His saber carved downward with the full weight of his grief.
El Como raised both hands. Not to block. Not to fight back. But to catch.
The saber's tip kissed his chest—and stopped.
The world shuddered.
Darr's eyes widened—his strength was behind that strike, but the blade would not move forward. It quivered, caught in some unseen tension, like a beast chained mid-leap. El Como's palms glowed with the same incandescent white that had consumed Bullteik.
"You carry the memory of his body," El Como whispered, his voice a hollow echo. "But I carry the memory of his mind. Strike me down, and you strike him again."
Darr's breath caught. His grip faltered—not because his fury dimmed, but because his grief twisted. For a sliver of a second, he saw Bullteik in that white glow—the outline of his friend's face, the agony that had marked his end.
"No…" Darr spat, shaking his head violently. His anger flared hotter, crushing doubt. "Don't you dare use his memory against me. He's gone because of you!"
With a roar, he pushed harder. The saber cracked through the invisible resistance, slicing into El Como's chest.
Light exploded outward, blinding, like Bullteik's death all over again.
El Como staggered back, his body splitting in two—a ripple of incorporeal essence unraveling him. For a heartbeat, he was smoke. For another, he was ash. But then he pulled himself together, corporeal once more, though weakened. His chest bore the mark of the saber's passage, a wound of glowing white fissures.
He exhaled slowly, the sound more human than phantom. "So be it."
Darr held his saber high, panting, fury still smoldering in his eyes. "This ends with you on the ground. One way or another."
El Como raised his gaze, and for the first time, his tone shifted—not cold, not detached, but heavy, like stone cracking under its own weight. "If I fall, Darr… so does Bullteik. His memory will scatter into nothing. Is that what you want?"
The question did not weaken Darr's resolve—it sharpened it. His grief was already a blade.
He stepped forward, saber burning in hand, ready to carve through phantom and memory alike.
The ground beneath them trembled. The air thickened with spectral pressure, heavy as a tomb's ceiling lowering. Their battle had only just begun.