"Can you feel it? How wonderful this power is. This is the true nature of the Abyss!"
The dark knight closed his eyes, an expression of ecstasy spreading across his ravaged face.
"Jean. Traveler. Move!"
Jean and Lumine retreated immediately at Diluc's warning.
"Thus, I render judgment!"
Diluc gripped his greatsword with both hands. An enormous amount of Pyro energy gathered behind him, condensing into the shape of a massive firebird that radiated heat intense enough to warp the air around it.
He swung.
The firebird launched forward, screaming toward the dark knight.
The dark knight's eyes opened. He looked at Diluc, his gaze flat and bottomless.
He did not raise his sword.
He simply extended one hand toward the oncoming firebird.
"Weakness is a sin."
At those words, the corrupted dark power surged outward like a nest of serpents, coiling around the firebird and consuming it from every direction. Within moments, the enormous construct of flame had been devoured entirely and was gone.
"Ugh..."
The color left Diluc's face. Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.
He looked down at his hand and found that the corrupted power had reached him anyway. His palm had gone dark, stained through with the black taint.
The dark knight turned his attention to Lumine and Paimon next. He raised his hand and directed the dark power pouring from the fissures around him to wrap around them. Not to harm them. Simply to hold them in place.
That left only Jean standing free.
Jean called out: "Senior! Traveler! Paimon! Are you hurt?"
Diluc's jaw was tight: "I'm fine. Don't concern yourself with me."
From within the black mist, Lumine's voice came back steady: "We're fine."
Paimon: "It's so dark in here! Traveler, think of something!"
---
The dark knight's gaze settled on Jean, and something that might have been a smile crossed his face.
"Your Favonius Bladework is far too crude."
Jean tightened her grip on the sword: "I don't know who you are. But if you truly understand Favonius Bladework, then you know it is one of the greatest sword arts Mondstadt has ever produced."
She met his eyes and held them: "I will not deny that you are overwhelmingly powerful. In terms of raw strength, I cannot match you. But that is a matter of strength, not of the art itself. Favonius Bladework is not lacking."
"No, no, no."
The dark knight shook his head, and the motion was almost gentle.
"I never said Favonius Bladework was lacking. On the contrary, there is no one alive who understands its greatness better than I do."
Jean frowned: "Then what did you mean?"
The dark knight's expression changed.
The sword came up, and his voice cracked into something raw and furious:
"What I meant is that you are the one who is lacking!"
"How weak you are! How sinful in your weakness!"
"To wield a sword art of that caliber so poorly!"
"Is it truly so difficult? Slice! Swing! Thrust! These are simple things. Can you not even do simple things? You disgrace him with every motion!"
Even Jean's considerable patience had a limit. The blood left her face.
"My skill is insufficient. I will not argue with that. But what gives you the right to speak to me this way? Do you believe you understand this art better than I do?"
"Heh heh heh."
The dark knight grinned at her.
"Better? You ignorant little..."
He vanished mid-sentence.
He reappeared directly in front of her, the black sword already moving.
Jean's arms came up on instinct.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
She caught the first exchange, and the second, and the third. But cold sweat was already forming at her temples.
"How do you know Favonius Bladework?"
To be precise: he did not merely know it. His command of it was more refined than hers. He was not using his overwhelming dark power to overpower her. He was keeping his strength level with hers, fighting her on equal footing within the same art.
And she was constantly being outmaneuvered.
Every gap in her technique that she had ever half-sensed but never been able to identify was being found and exploited with every exchange.
Losing to a stronger opponent was something Jean could accept. But being defeated within the very art she had spent years mastering, by someone using that same art against her with a fluency she had never reached, that was a different kind of loss entirely.
What she was trying not to think about too carefully was the implication. The Favonius Bladework the dark knight was using did not match the version that had been passed down through generations of the Knights of Favonius. It was older. More complete.
Which suggested something about who this figure might be.
Bang.
After dozens of exchanges, the dark knight seemed to decide he had seen enough. He stopped holding back. His longsword swung full-force.
Jean could not block it. The impact went through her guard and into her body. She was thrown backward and hit the ground hard.
"Heh heh heh."
The knight advanced toward her, unhurried, sword in hand.
"Let your sinful blood wash away your weakness."
---
Deep within the Abyss.
Aether tapped one finger slowly against the armrest of his throne.
"It's over."
The Cryo Abyss Mage bowed its head: "Your Highness is wise. Under your command, Sir Roland continues to advance our plans."
Aether smiled faintly and said nothing.
With Lumine trapped inside the black mist, the mirror projection had shifted to Roland's perspective and could no longer show his sister. Aether's attention drifted.
He raised one hand and drew a line through the air. A dark rift opened in response.
The rift slowly widened.
Looking into it offered nothing but depth and chaos, a vast corrupted presence surging in the dark beyond. And deeper still, at the center of that space, a pale golden fragment floated in stillness.
Around the fragment, a golden barrier had formed on its own, protecting it from the corruption surrounding it on all sides. When the dark power made contact with the barrier, it evaporated like morning mist hitting sunlight.
The fragment appeared resilient. Aether was not concerned. In this space, the power of the Abyss was inexhaustible, and the fragment was sitting at the shallows, where the dark power had not yet condensed into its denser forms. Further in, the Abyss grew stronger. Its nature changed. Different. Heavier.
Until, at the very deepest point, there was only the endless dark sea.
It was only a matter of time.
"Your Highness!"
The Abyss Mage's voice cut through his thoughts. "Something has changed. Look at the mirror!"
Aether looked up, his brow pulling together.
A new figure had appeared in the projection.
The figure wore a black cloak and carried an ordinary longsword. A black mask covered the face entirely. Nothing about the appearance was remarkable.
Under normal circumstances, Aether would not have paid any particular attention. Roland could simply cut the figure down.
But Roland's reaction to the figure's appearance was wrong. Very wrong.
---
"Roland."
The masked swordsman in the black cloak stood on elevated ground above the scene, voice carrying a quality that was difficult to place. Low but clear.
"After five hundred years, you still haven't learned anything."
The dark knight had his sword raised above Jean, ready to bring it down.
At the sound of that voice, he stopped.
He lowered the sword and turned, tilting his head at the figure above him.
"You... who are you?"
His eyes narrowed.
"A coward who hides and watches."
He pointed his black sword upward and let a slow, ugly smile spread across his face: "What sin do you carry?"
As he spoke, a patch of shadow formed silently beneath the masked swordsman's feet, reaching upward.
The swordsman glanced down, read it immediately, and stepped neatly aside.
The dark knight's expression shifted. Something about the way the swordsman moved sat in the back of his mind, half-familiar and half out of reach.
"Hiding? Is that what you think?"
The swordsman's voice remained level. His hand moved slowly toward the hilt at his waist.
Then his bearing changed.
It was not a dramatic shift. He simply settled into a different kind of stillness, and the air around him changed with it. A razor-edged quality radiated from him, the same focused, melancholy pressure that had once defined the young wolf of Mondstadt.
The dark knight went rigid.
Something moved through him, violent and uncontrolled, like a tremor running through old stone.
The swordsman spoke slowly, each word placed with care.
"Is this how I taught you?"
-------
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