The purple light didn't just swallow me; it felt like being dragged through ice-cold syrup.
The transition was brutal, the air in this new space sharp enough to cut, each breath a painful rasp in my lungs.
When the light faded, I stood in an arena that was a study in stark, alien beauty.
The ground was a single, vast sheet of polished black obsidian, so smooth it perfectly reflected the deep, bruised violet of the sky.
Towering spires of the same glassy stone thrust upward at chaotic, impossible angles, casting long, jagged shadows that lay across the ground like fractures in reality.
And at the far end, it waited.
It wasn't a monster. It was a statue given life.
A humanoid form clad in armor of shimmering, overlapping black scales that pulsed with a faint, rhythmic purple light, like a sleeping heart.
Its face was a smooth, featureless helm, offering no hint of thought or emotion.
In its gauntleted hand, it held a blade that was less a weapon and more an absence, a slash of deeper darkness that seemed to drink the faint light from the air around it.
It didn't move. It didn't roar. It simply stood, a silent sentinel in this gallery of shadows.
The silence was heavier than any pressure I'd felt before, a tangible force that demanded action.
I refused. I stood my ground, every sense screaming.
Ding!
[Stage Seven Initiated: Eliminate The Forgotten Knight Of The Null.]
The command was a trigger. I didn't hesitate.
My hand came up, and the lightning answered not as a summoned tool, but as an extension of my will.
A thick bolt of pure energy lanced across the arena, so fast it tore the air apart with a deafening crack.
The Knight didn't dodge. It blurred.
It vanished from its position just as the lightning struck, the point of impact exploding upward in a geyser of glassy shards.
A fraction of a second later, it materialized to my right.
There was no wind-up, no telegraph. Its blade was already slicing toward my neck in a silent, deadly arc.
I threw myself backward, feeling the whisper-close passage of the blade that sucked the warmth from the air it passed through.
I landed hard, lightning already erupting from my palm in a defensive burst.
The Knight was gone again, reappearing ten feet away, having evaded the attack without effort.
Its movements were fluid, precise, and utterly silent.
This wasn't a brawler. This was an assassin.
But this was fine actually. If it wanted to dance, I would provide the music.
I raised both hands to the violet sky. The storm answered.
Not a single bolt, but a deluge. Lightning rained down across the arena, a chaotic, blinding symphony of destruction.
Bolts struck the obsidian spires, shattering them.
They cratered the glassy floor, sending reflective shrapnel flying.
The air itself caught fire with the smell of ozone and shattered stone.
And through it all, the Knight moved. It was a phantom, weaving through the cataclysm with an almost contemptuous grace.
It didn't run; it flowed, its dark blade leaving smoky trails of black-energy in its wake.
Each effortless dodge brought it closer, its advance relentless.
I was forced to give ground, the storm doing little more than carving a path for my enemy.
I pushed harder. The storm intensified, the bolts coming faster, thicker, a continuous, roaring downpour of power.
The Knight's flawless movements finally faltered.
A dodge was a hair too slow. A bolt of lightning clipped its left arm.
The sound was a sharp crack. The shimmering scales shattered, revealing not flesh or bone, but a swirling, liquid darkness beneath.
The Knight staggered, its silent composure broken for the first time.
Now.
I channeled everything into a single point. Mana surged through me, coalescing in my outstretched hand into a spear of concentrated lightning, so bright it was painful to look at. I hurled it with a guttural shout.
It struck true. The explosion was a silent, white-hot bloom of annihilation.
When my vision cleared, the Knight was on one knee.
A clean, smoldering hole was punched directly through its chest plate.
The dark blade lay in pieces beside it.
I approached cautiously. My hands still crackled with residual energy.
I thought it was over. But unfortunately, it wasn't.
As I watched, the hole in its chest began to… writhe.
The liquid darkness within bubbled and surged, flowing like ink across the scales, reforming the armor until it was whole again, but now pulsing with a stronger, more malevolent purple light.
The shards of its blade slithered across the ground, merging, reforging into a weapon twice the size, a greatsword of pure, light-devouring shadow.
The Forgotten Knight rose to its feet. Its featureless helm turned toward me.
The silence was no longer passive. It was a threat.
The real fight had just begun.