Harian lifted his sword toward the sky, and for a brief moment, everything around him seemed to still. The chaos of the collapsing prison, the rumbling storms of clashing essences behind him, even the shouts of knights and prisoners faded into a distant murmur. And in that suspended moment, he heard a voice he had not heard in years calm, stern, and unforgettable.
If you don't strike with an empty mind, your blade will cut you too.
His surroundings warped, and before he could stop it, the present dissolved. He was dragged into a memory he thought he left behind.
He found himself standing barefoot on soaked ground, his younger body trembling violently. His arms were thin, almost stick-like, covered in cuts, bruises, and barely healed wounds. His palms were raw and bleeding as they gripped a battered wooden sword. In front of him loom a massive boulder, its surface marked by countless shallow dents evidence of his repeated, miserable failures.
To his right lay another boulder, cut cleanly into perfect slabs as if sliced by a divine blade. Harian remembered staring at that impossible cut for a long time as a child, unable to comprehend how his master had done it with ease.
He stared at the ruined wooden sword in his hands, then at the massive boulder in front of him. His master's footsteps approached, but Harian kept his eyes fixed forward.
"Empty your mind," his master said. "Calm your heart."
Harian almost laughed then, even as a child. His heart was anything but calm. Rage festered there, thick and choking. Misery and grief were all he had known. Peace was a fantasy reserved for people who weren't born crawling at the bottom.
But still… he tried.
He inhaled shakily and forced himself to focus. He gathered the void essence the way his master taught him, drawing it into the wooden sword. His grip tightened. His breath grew uneven. Old memories faces, screams, fires..rushed through him. His hatred surged before he could stop it.
So he swung.
Dark energy burst from the sword and then collapsed inward like a dying star. The backlash hit him instantly, throwing him off his feet. His small body slammed into the mud with a heavy thud, knocking the air from his lungs.
He lay there, staring up at the sky. The clouds above were dark and heavy. The air was thick with the smell of rain. When the droplets began to fall, they mixed with the warmth running down his cheeks. He couldn't tell where the rain ended and his tears began.
His young legs trembled, his arms burned, his palms stung with every movement but he didn't stop. He refused to stop.
He stood up and he lifted the wooden sword again.
The voices in his head fear, rage, grief, exhaustion screamed at him to give up, screamed that it was pointless, screamed that he was too small, too weak, too broken. Harian closed his eyes and whispered to them, barely audible beneath the rain.
"Just… for a moment. Quiet."
His master's voice came through the storm in his memory, low and steady.
"Your sword is a clear, flowing river which you will turn into your strike… a never-ending waterfall."
Harian exhaled. Slow. Controlled. His stance straightened. His shoulders loosened. The void inside him settled like calm water. He lifted the sword to the sky a second time. He emptied his mind. He steadied his heart. And he called out not to the world, not to the storm, but to his own soul.
The memory dissolved.
Harian snapped back to the present, his blade raised high, void essence spiraling around him like a living shadow. His grin twisted into something sharp and cold, a grin that belonged only to the man he had become not the boy bleeding in the rain.
he whispered. "I'm not that child anymore."
His voice deepened, layered with the power gathering in his core.
"Now… I'll show you."
The ground cracked beneath him. The air warped. And with a voice that cut through the battlefield like a blade:
"Shadow Ascend."
A massive black slash tore through the prison yard.
The very air split open as void essence surged outward, rippling like a tidal wave of darkness. Josen felt the pressure crash into him before the slash even reached them his core trembled, his essence control wavered, and every instinct he had screamed that he was about to be erased from existence.
"Focus!" he shouted, voice cracking under the strain.
He forced every drop of his essence into his blade, his stance, his breath. The other royal guards followed, pouring their strength into a single unified barrier. Their weapons glowed with concentrated world essence, trembling violently as they clashed against Harian's attack.
But it wasn't enough.
The slash struck them like a falling star.
A shockwave erupted outward violent, booming, and blinding...devouring the ground beneath it and tearing the stone apart. The area around them was shredded into rubble, the earth gouged open in a long, deep cleave. Yet the precise path where the guards stood… was less damaged, the void slash bending just slightly at the last moment.
But the second impact the explosion, it hit them head-on.
Josen felt himself being launched backward. His vision blurred. Essence slipped from his grip. His sword arm went numb as he slammed into the ground and rolled like a discarded doll.
He forced his body up. For a moment, he actually stood.
He was breathing in ragged gasps, sweat mixed with dust dripping down his cheek, his entire weight leaning against his sword like a crutch. His aura flickered, unstable and broken.
Then his knees buckled.
His sword slipped from his fingers.
Josen collapsed face-first into the dirt with a heavy thud like a felled tree completely unconscious.
Around him, the other knights were scattered in the rubble. Alive… but unmoving. Their armor dented, cracked, smoking from the intensity of the blast. None of them had died, but none had the strength left to rise.
They were defeated.
Overwhelmingly, utterly defeated.
And Harian's black slash continued trailing across the prison grounds carving the earth, stone, and walls like they were soft parchment until it finally dissipated into the air, leaving only the lingering scent of void essence and silence.
Elsewhere, the two monsters stopped mid-clash.
Neither Leon nor the Reaper tore their eyes away from the other. one misstep and they'd be dead but both of them felt it. That surge. That enormous, foreign concentration of essence erupting from the distance. The same one that had appeared earlier… but stronger this time, sharper, more defined.
They both saw the black slash arc through the prison grounds. Then the explosion. A violent burst of void energy tearing through everything in its path.
Leon's jaw tightened when he felt his subordinates' presences in that direction. Injured… shaken… but alive. He forced himself not to look away from the Reaper. The man would attack him in an instant if he dared shift his attention.
The Reaper noticed the flicker in Leon's eyes and scoffed.
"Oh, so you felt it too," he said, letting out a low, amused laugh. "That boy… whoever he really is. That concentration of essence earlier and now this? Even you must see it."
Leon narrowed his gaze.
"Perhaps," the Reaper replied. "But tell me, knight if someone like him is allowed to grow unchecked… what then? What if we're watching the birth of another Knight of Radiance?"
Leon's eyes twitched. The Reaper never made comparisons lightly, and invoking that title wasn't something he expected to hear today.
"You're reaching," Leon said coldly. "Wild speculation does not make truth."
The Reaper shrugged, a sly grin pulling at his lips. "Who knows, knight? But it's exactly why I can't waste any more time with you. Just like you, I have many questions I need answered to and that boy is where I'll find them."
Leon's expression shifted. Something was wrong. Subtle, but there.
The Reaper was… fading.
"What.." Leon muttered, stunned.
The Reaper's body blurred at the edges, portions of him dissolving like smoke caught in a breeze. His grin widened as he watched Leon's reaction.
"You didn't even notice?" he said mockingly. "How disappointing. For someone of your caliber, that's just sad."
Leon instantly drew Arondight, its radiant light erupting outward in preparation for a finishing blow but the Reaper only chuckled as more of his form evaporated.
"You won't reach me with that. Save your energy, knight."
Within seconds, only his voice remained, echoing faintly as the last of him vanished.
"I'm already gone."
Silence fell.
Leon's fingers tightened around his sword as he scanned the battlefield. Nothing. No trace. Not even a lingering presence. The Reaper had escaped while they were clashing, slipping away with frightening precision.
Leon tried searching for the boy's presence next. Harian, the source of the disturbance. But like the Reaper… he was gone too. Along with the prisoners.
His subordinates' auras flickered weakly nearby they needed help. But Leon's thoughts lingered on that dark slash. On the overwhelming essence he felt. On the boy who wielded a power he didn't understand. He sheathed Arondight with a quiet click.
Bizarre incidents had taken place today far too many. But none of them concerned him more than that mysterious child. Leon looked up at the darkening sky, the scent of dust and destruction still thick in the air.
If a boy like that existed he wondered why would he appeared in this prison with the reaper. And then caused all this destruction and commotion. He pondered on what their intentions could be but...he found only questions piling up one after the other…
The memory of the boy strange power and confidence nagged at his brain so he only thought of one thing ....He needed answers.
And he would find them.
No matter what.