Aetheris moved like a ghost along the cold stone path leading to the harbor. The surrounding roads were utterly deserted, draped in a silence so absolute it felt like death itself. It was a deafening, oppressive quiet that threatened to fracture her focus, but bound by her commands, she forced herself to endure and press forward.
At the docks, the isolation only deepened. There were no sailors, no merchants, nor even the usual randy old men lingering to trade gossip. A thick, unnatural fog rolled across the water, swallowing everything in its path. Fortunately, Aetheris possessed heightened vision that cut cleanly through the fog, laying the harbor bare for her eyes.
Unanchored yet eerily stationary, a single ship drifted alongside the wooden piers. This was certainly not the merchant vessel she had been assigned to protect, yet an ominous feeling drew her toward it. For a newly arrived ship, it stood dead in the water, looking just as hollow and haunted as the empty harbor.
Click! Clack!
The sharp crack of boots on wood shattered the silence. Aetheris spun on her heel toward the source: the descending gangplank of the vessel. Above, the upper deck was choked in a dense, swirling mist, out of which a figure slowly began to emerge.
He possessed long, silver hair that cascaded all the way down to his waist, and eyes of a striking blue that seemed to carry the weight of impending doom. He was clad in noble garments from a realm Aetheris did not recognize. In his hand, he held a sword with a unique, curved tip, forged entirely from an exotic blue metal. His ears were long and sharply pointed. Though he carried himself with regal grace, Aetheris instantly knew he was trouble.
His blade was heavily coated in fresh blood, and his silk white clothes were violently soiled in deep crimson. He was limping slightly, causing his heavy leather boots to strike the wooden platform with an uneven, heavy rhythm.
Ignoring her completely, the stranger walked past her into the fog. But after a few paces, he halted.
"Don't enter that ship if you have an aversion to dead bodies," he muttered quietly, his voice hollow.
As he turned to walk away, Aetheris exploded into motion. She dashed forward, her sword flashing toward his exposed back. Without even turning around, the silver-haired warrior swung his sword backward in a blind, flawless arc, parrying her strike with a deafening metallic clash.
"I do not know who you are, and I have no quarrel with you," he said coldly, his presence expanding as a suffocating aura began to rise around him. "Leave now, before I am forced to kill you."
It was then that Aetheris noticed it;
a roiling, dark mist radiating from his body. It was a dark energy that only she had been capable of seeing since childhood.
She instantly leaped backward to create distance, never letting her guard down for a fraction of a second.
"Who are you? No... what are you?" she demanded, her obsidian eyes narrowing.
"That does not concern you, whoever you are."
"It concerns me when you might have just slaughtered an entire ship's crew!" Aetheris gritted her teeth and charged again, unleashing a ferocious attack.
This time, the stranger pivot-turned to face her fully, executing a sweeping counter-strike. His blue blade cleaved through the air with terrifying elegance, but Aetheris was remarkably agile. She contorted her body to evade the lethal path of his sword, slipping beneath his guard to target his vitals. He reacted instantly, sidestepping sharply to the right and bringing his blade down to cleave her in two but before the blue metal could touch her skin, she vanished into thin air.
"It seems you heavily underestimate me," her voice echoed from the shifting fog. "Let me give you a proper introduction. I am Aetheris Yg'Dalis, an arcavel of the shadow call."
She reappeared, grinning wildly as violent wisps of purple mist erupted from her body and enveloped her blade.
The entity's eyes narrowed, but his absolute composure did not fracture. He raised his curved sword and whispered an inaudible incantation. With a heavy, ragged sigh, he breathed a dense fog that had been trapped within his lungs, blending his magic with the surrounding air.
"Bring it on, Aetheris."
Aetheris propelled herself meters into the air, her silhouette cutting across the misty sky. Downward, she unleashed a devastating barrage of shadow sword waves, crescent arcs of dark energy tearing through the fog. The warrior swerved with supernatural speed, evading the descending blasts as he closed the distance to her landing point.
Aetheris threw herself sideways the moment her feet touched the ground, immediately launching into another fierce flurry of sword strikes. But the silver-haired stranger countered flawlessly. His movements were lightning-fast and mathematically precise, turning the clash into a blinding dance of sparks and steel.
Even with her velori fully activated, he anticipated her trajectory. With a calculated flick of his wrist, his blue blade caught her cloak, shearing a section of it away. The slice exposed her bare right arm, revealing an intricate, indelible tattoo stamped into her skin.
The stranger froze, genuine shock cracking his otherwise emotionless face. "You're a slave," he breathed.
"Yes. And what business is that of yours?" Aetheris replied, her voice burning with cold rage.
"You seem far too powerful to be wearing chains," he remarked, his gaze intense. "You have sustained twenty direct sword strikes from me, yet not a single drop of blood flows from your body."
"I don't care what you think," Aetheris sneered, dropping into a low stance as she readied her ultimate attack.
In a burst of blinding speed, she dashed forward, aiming a lethal, definitive slice straight for his neck. But before her blade could complete its arc, the warrior's knees buckled. He collapsed heavily onto the hard ground, slipping into immediate unconsciousness.
Aetheris lowered her sword, standing over him in utter shock. It was only as she looked closer at his unmoving form that she realized the truth;
the staggering amount of blood soaking his clothes had been his own the entire time.