Steel shrieked.
Zayn's blade and Juniper's dagger slammed together, locked so tightly the metal vibrated between them. Sparks spat upward like fireflies caught in a storm. Their faces hovered inches apart—Zayn's twisted in pain and fury, Juniper's blank as frost, emotionless even as their weapons groaned under the pressure.
Zayn could barely keep his left eye open. Blood streamed into it in a hot, stinging line, tinting everything red. His skull throbbed with deep, pulsing pressure—like something inside was swelling, straining, forcing its way toward the surface. His muscles trembled; fatigue wrapped around his limbs like heavy chains.
But he refused to give an inch.
From the bushes, Chauncey lurched upright—branches cracking beneath his weight, leaves dripping off his shoulders. He stared, breath caught in his throat. For a moment, awe hollowed out every word inside him.
If the Zayn from Isle Fareth fought this woman,
he wouldn't just be losing—
he'd already be dead.
But the Zayn who had broken himself under Flokki's drills…
who had clawed past fear and softness…
who had learned how to endure…
This Zayn was still here, teeth grinding against pain. He wasn't relying on borrowed strength. Not anymore.
Juniper adjusted—tiny shifts of her heel, a calculated twist of her wrist—trying to break Zayn's pressure. But his sword felt heavier than before. Hotter. The air around them quivered faintly, as if something unseen was coiling around his strikes.
His Codex pulsed, veins of gold growing into something angelic as blue throbbed harder around his body and weapon.
A metallic thrum shot up his arm—sharp, electric.
Juniper's eyelids twitched. Barely. A hairline crack in her perfect calm.
Zayn felt it.
And he slammed forward.
With a guttural snarl, he shoved downward with everything he had. Their locked blades screeched louder, Juniper's boots carving ragged trenches through the dirt as she slid back. She gritted silently against the pressure.
One step.
Another.
Another.
Her dagger trembled.
Her grip wavered.
Her composure fractured.
The moment he felt her strength dwindle more than it should've— Zayn tore free of the bind with a violent twist. He discerned weakness like a shark sensing blood.
Juniper staggered—her equilibrium shattering for the first time for the two men to to see.
Chauncey gasped, breathless.
"Holy—"
Zayn didn't let her breathe.
He struck.
SLASH—!
Juniper recovered fast—faster than most could see—but her parry was a hair too shallow. The force jolted her arm back. Her wrist absorbed the shock at a bad angle.
Zayn pressed harder.
TING—!
His blade slammed into her guard, knocking her arm wide.
CLANG—!
Her dagger scraped uselessly against the flat of his blade.
He attacked again.
And again.
And again.
Each collision burst sparks, each movement ripping the air like cutting wind. Juniper stepped, pivoted, weaved—her movements still elegant, still mathematically precise, but their certainty was unraveling. Her body sought patterns she could no longer find.
Her timing eroded.
Her breathing grew sharp.
Her feet slipped on her own blood and Zayn's.
A thin red line drew down from her nostril.
Zayn saw it—
and something dark and predatory ignited in him.
His next scream ripped from his throat ragged and animalistic.
"RAAAAH—!"
Upward slash—
Juniper blocked, forearm shaking violently.
Downward slash—
Her knees buckled under the sheer weight of it.
Horizontal slash—
She twisted, barely escaping a fatal cut but losing her stance entirely.
Her dagger wobbled in her grasp.
Zayn's final hit crashed into her wrist with a brutal, crunching force—
Her dagger spun away, carving a silver arc before vanishing into the underbrush.
Juniper froze.
Her face—usually unreadable—broke just slightly. A flicker of disbelief. A realization: she had misjudged him.
Zayn didn't wait for comprehension to settle.
He charged.
Silver fire still licked faintly at his blade's edges as he slashed across her torso in a deep, decisive line. His new found codex wasn't used, to Chauncey's surprise.
SCHHK—!
Juniper exhaled softly—
Not in pain. Not in fear. Just… empty.
She stared at him as if seeing him clearly for the first time.
Her pupils unfocused.
Her breath hitched.
The world dimmed behind her eyes.
Blood slid slowly from her lips.
Her knees buckled.
Her body tipped forward—
—and she collapsed into the grass with a quiet, final thud, her blood soaking into the earth beneath her.
Zayn's breath came out in ragged bursts—hot, uneven, steaming against the cold night air. Each exhale puffed out in trembling clouds that drifted past his blood-smeared chin. His entire body shook, not from fear but from the raw, throbbing violence still pulsing through his veins.
Chauncey watched from the brush, frozen.
What he saw twisted something deep in his gut.
Between Zayn's heaving breaths…
between the tremors of exhaustion…
the boy was smiling.
A thin, crooked, unsettling smile.
And his crimson eyes—usually warm, usually human—flickered with something else.
Something darker.
Something predatory.
Chauncey swallowed hard.
Was he imagining it?
Overthinking?
Or had Zayn crossed a line he didn't know existed?
Zayn lifted his blade—slowly, almost reverently—aiming the tip down at Juniper's bleeding, collapsed form.
"Zayn—" Chauncey breathed, eyes widening.
But it was already too late.
Zayn brought the sword down in a merciless arc—
—and steel stopped on steel.
A hand—metallic, burnished, unmoving—had caught his blade between its fingers as if stopping a falling leaf.
Zayn's eyes snapped wide.
Juniper, barely conscious, twitched her gaze upward. Chauncey eyes widened more than it had already.
A tall figure loomed over her, shadows rolling off him like smoke. His mechanical arm gleamed in the muted forest light, engraved plates reflecting Zayn's stunned expression back at him.
Edgar.
Zayn froze—his breath hitching, his heartbeat stuttering.
His smile vanished instantly.
He stared up at the man's face—scarred, stern, and disappointed in a way that cut deeper than any blade.
When did he get there?
How did he move that fast—?
He didn't get time to think.
THWACK—!
Edgar's fist slammed into Zayn's jaw with the force of a battering ram. Pain detonated across Zayn's skull. His body lifted from the ground—weightless for a split second—before being fired backward like a launched projectile.
He smashed through a tree trunk—
splintering bark exploding around him—
then tumbled through bushes, branches snapping, dirt spraying.
He didn't stop.
Didn't slow.
He vanished into the distance, crashing through the forest until the sound faded into a low, distant echo.
Chauncey's head whipped around, stunned.
Zayn had been sent flying well over a hundred meters.
Maybe more.
Silence fell.
Edgar exhaled—a long, tired breath—and knelt beside Juniper. He scooped her up with careful, practiced movements, her limp form slumping over his shoulder. Blood dripped slowly from her forehead, pattering onto the leaves.
He turned to leave.
But a sharp crack split the quiet.
Chauncey had stepped out fully—branch snapping beneath his boot, his posture low and ready despite the shaking in his legs.
Edgar paused.
He turned back over his shoulder, eyes narrowing with disdain—like a man inconvenienced by a gnat… until recognition flickered in his gaze.
Chauncey drew his hands up into a stance.
Edgar lowered Juniper gently to the forest floor.
His voice was low, gravelly.
"…Your face looks familiar."
Chauncey's breath hitched.
The forest was dead silent—mist curling between the trees like pale smoke, cold air stinging the inside of his lungs. His heartbeat thudded so loudly he swore Edgar could hear it.
He forced his shoulders back, ignored the man's earlier comment, before barking--
"Leave the woman here."
His voice didn't echo. It simply vanished into the woods, swallowed by the cold.
Edgar didn't blink.
He just stared—those sunken, iron-hard eyes burning into Chauncey's with a heat far hotter than anger.
Chauncey held the gaze for three seconds. Four.
By the fifth, his expression faltered.
Then Edgar spoke.
"Are you perhaps a relative of Alden Wraithfield?"
The name hit Chauncey like a hammer.
His eyes shot wide. His jaw clenched. His knuckles whitened until they were bone-pale. His breath grew sharp, uneven, furious.
"How do you know him?!" he roared—voice cracking like thunder through the trees.
Edgar's eyebrows raised in surprise—genuine surprise—as though Chauncey had just spoken some hidden password. A light flickered in his expression, quick and startling.
"Why—" Edgar said, a breath of excitement rolling out with the word,
"I fought alongside him in the army."
Chauncey blinked, stunned into stillness for a heartbeat.
Edgar's excitement only grew.
He even smiled—an expression that sat strangely on his scarred face.
"What a small world we live in, eh? Your father was like a brother to me."
Chauncey's face twisted.
Not from joy.
Not from nostalgia.
From rage.
His teeth ground together. His fists trembled.
Edgar continued, oblivious—or uncaring—of the fury rising in front of him.
"It's a shame," he sighed.
"He defected and turned to the heretic's culture. You wouldn't believe it, I tell you. An admiral… turned madman."
Chauncey's body went rigid.
His jaw set.
His chest rose and fell with shaking breaths.
Edgar's eyes sharpened further.
"I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, now does it? Is that why you're chasing the myth?"
And that was the breaking point.
The ground fractured.
Chauncey lunged—exploding forward with such force that dirt burst upward under his heels. Leaves whipped into the air. A shockwave rippled through the clearing.
Edgar's grin widened.
Their hands collided—fingers interlocking, forearms bulging with strain. Chauncey's momentum carried them several feet backward, Edgar's boots digging trenches into the soil.
The forest shook with the impact.
Their bodies locked together, muscles tense and trembling, heat blistering from their skin.
Edgar chuckled under his breath.
"Your strength rivals your father's."
Chauncey snarled through clenched teeth, pushing harder, their hands shuddering between them.
"Yet," Edgar continued lightly,
"even a fool knows it wouldn't have saved him from Plugand's finest hunters. He should be long dead by now."
That did it.
Chauncey let out a guttural scream—raw, wounded, vicious.
A burst of invisible force erupted from him, his aura flickering violently around his body like distorted heatwaves.
Edgar's eyes widened—not in fear, but interest.
Then—
WHAM—!
Edgar slammed his forehead into Chauncey's.
The crack echoed through the forest like a splitting log.
Chauncey's vision blurred; his eyes rolled back for a heartbeat—just long enough for Edgar to seize him by the hair.
With a grunt of effort, Edgar yanked him upward—
—and flung him.
Chauncey's body flew like a ragdoll, slamming into a tree trunk so hard the bark exploded outward, splintering into showering fragments.
Before Chauncey could even rebound, Edgar launched himself forward. He met Chauncey mid-air, intercepting him with brutal precision. Chauncey barely had time to cross his arms over his face before Edgar's fists rained down.
THUD!
THUD!
THUD-THUD-THUD—!
"A waste of a warrior, you and your father are!!!!"
Each punch sounded like a hammer against iron.
Chauncey's bones rattled. His arms shook violently with every impact. Bark and leaves swirled around them with every shockwave of Edgar's strikes.
Edgar's expression was no longer playful.
It was focused.
Cold.
Deadly.
And Chauncey—still blocking, still enduring, teeth gritted against the pain—felt the truth in every bone of his body.
This was no ordinary soldier.
No random warrior.
This was one of Plugand's finest hunters.
And he had just become Chauncey's executioner.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WORLD INFO>>>
The Eidolon Whisperer.
Eidolon Whisperers are a rare and secretive order which existed ages before the concept of a true warrior's heart grew into fruition, known for their ability to perceive and interact with Eidolons—semi-conscious remnants of life and energy left behind after a being's death. They are not bound to hearts or bodies, but instead "listen" to the echoes of spiritual and kinetic energy, often using this to detect threats, track movements, or anticipate events.
Legends say they can sense disturbances in spiritual fields that no ordinary person—or even Codex—can detect. Their knowledge is fragmentary and highly guarded, and most societies consider them myths, though some secret texts hint at their real, formidable existence.
Their revered offensive ability, the cursed scream. A manifestation of the Eidolon energy they channel, which can disorient, injure, or manipulate those nearby. It is quite effective against codex users.