Logan did not die from the first blow.
That was the first thing he thought, which was not exactly comforting, but it was better than the alternative.
The Voidborn's oversized arm smashed into the ground where his chest had been a moment earlier. The platform cracked beneath the impact. Broken stone jumped around him, then settled again under the strange gravity holding the place together.
Logan had barely managed to dodge.
If he could use his full power, this thing would already be dead.
He just had a thread of spiritual power, just enough to keep his mind from being swallowed and his body from becoming useless. Anything more invited corruption.
The Voidborn turned faster than it should have.
Its second attack grazed his face.
Pain cut across his cheek. Blood lifted in small beads before the artificial gravity dragged it down.
This amount of power felt familiar. It was close to the first time his body had been improved after descending into the Spirit Realm. Around the level he had been when he fought Sevika, maybe a little higher in some ways and worse in others.
Back then, that strength had felt absurd.
Now it felt like a cruel joke.
The Voidborn lunged again with its massive arm. Logan bent low and slipped past the swing, feeling the pressure of it scrape over his back. He tried to step in, but the creature snapped its smaller arm forward before he expected it.
Weak-looking did not mean weak.
Logan crossed both arms in front of his chest. The blow landed hard enough to send him sliding across the platform.
His boots scraped against stone and metal. He caught himself before he fell, pain ringing up both forearms.
"If the weak arm threw me that far", he thought, "I really do not want to know what the strong one does."
The Voidborn jumped.
Logan rolled to the side as it crashed down where he had been standing. Its huge jaw snapped shut with a sound like stone cracking. The force of the bite broke the surface beneath it, and for one second Logan saw how easily those teeth could have closed around his neck.
Vi or Sevika could beat this thing, right?
The thought came like a lie he wanted badly enough to believe.
They could. They would. Vi would break its jaw with a gauntlet and call it ugly. Sevika would curse, bleed, and cut it apart. If they could do it, he could too.
The creature sprang again, this time diving headfirst, jaw opening wider than seemed possible.
Logan threw himself backward. The teeth snapped shut so close to his face that he felt the movement against his skin.
Forget the strong arm. The jaw is the worst part.
He pushed off the platform and came up unsteadily. Fighting here was miserable. Every movement required control. If he used too much power in a dodge, his mind filled with whispers and pressure. If he held back too much, his body lagged. The Watcher had forced him into a narrow space between survival and corruption, and the Voidborn was fast enough to punish every mistake.
Ahri stood several meters away, frozen in place.
He could feel her through the connection.
Fear. Fury. Restraint so tight it hurt. Every time the Voidborn got close, something inside her surged toward action, and every time, the memory of the Watcher's threat crushed it back down.
Logan hated that most of all.
The Voidborn feinted with its larger arm.
Logan shifted to avoid it.
The smaller arm split open.
A claw grew out from the forearm in an instant, wet and dark, curving like it had always belonged there. Logan twisted, but not enough. The claw tore across his shoulder, cutting deep.
Pain burned through him.
He kicked on reflex.
His heel drove into the Voidborn's torso with more force than he meant to use. Corruption brushed the inside of his skull, cold and eager, but the kick sent the creature skidding back several meters.
Logan sucked in a sharp breath and pressed one hand against his bleeding shoulder.
Ahri made a small sound.
He looked at her and forced a grin.
"Don't worry," he said. "This'll be a piece of cake."
It was a terrible lie.
He smiled anyway.
Ahri did not look convinced, but the panic in the connection eased by the smallest amount. That was enough.
The Watcher remained seated.
Its single cyan eye never left Logan.
Logan could understand a monster trying to kill him. He could understand hunger, hatred, instinct. The Watcher's silence had none of that. It did not feel impatient. Not amused. Just observing.
Of course.
The Watchers had created some Voidborns to understand reality. That was one of the few things the lore made clear.
This was the same thing.
A test.
A cruel experiment.
It still made no sense that the Watcher had not killed him yet, but studying him made more sense than mercy.
The Voidborn attacked again.
Logan dodged the big arm, ducked under the claw, and jumped back from the jaw. He did not counter. Not yet. He watched how it moved.
One leg was almost normal. The other, with its extra lower segment, gave it strange bursts of speed but also forced its weight to shift unevenly after each landing.
The knees.
Or whatever counted as knees.
That was the only way.
He would have to take hits to land his own.
The next time the creature swung, Logan stepped inside instead of away. The smaller arm slammed into his ribs, and something cracked or nearly cracked. He ignored it and drove his fist into the joint of the more normal leg.
The Voidborn shrieked through its jaw.
It tried to bite him.
Logan threw himself back, but the edge of its teeth scraped his chest, tearing through cloth and skin. He answered with another kick to the same leg.
Again.
Again.
The creature adapted. It began lowering its center of weight, protecting one leg while attacking with the other. Logan took a blow to the side, then a claw across his forearm. He paid for every opening, but each time he struck one of the joints.
Pain narrowed the world.
That helped, in a way.
There was less room to think about the Watcher, less room to feel Ahri's terror, less room for the corruption to find memories and twist them. There was only the creature's movement, the amount of spiritual power he could spend, and the next half-second.
He started to improve.
Not because he became stronger, but because he stopped moving like his real body should move. He accepted the weakness. He accepted the delay. He stopped expecting speed that was not there and worked with what he had.
The Voidborn lunged with its jaw.
Logan stepped aside, caught the angle of its landing, and punched down into the normal leg's knee with everything he could risk.
Something cracked.
The creature buckled.
Before it could recover, Logan pivoted and struck the joint on the other leg, the one between its lower segments. His fist hit hard enough to split the dark surface beneath its skin.
The Voidborn collapsed forward.
Logan retreated several steps, breathing hard.
Or breathing whatever passed for air here. The Void did not make sense.
The creature writhed on the platform. Its legs dragged uselessly beneath it. It tried to pull itself toward him with its oversized arm, jaw opening and closing in slow, hungry snaps.
Logan looked past it to the Watcher.
"Are you satisfied?" he asked, voice rough. "Or do you want me to finish it?"
The Watcher did not answer.
Its eye shifted toward Ahri.
Logan frowned.
That was wrong.
"Careful!" Ahri shouted.
The Voidborn launched itself.
It used its huge arm and jaw together, biting into the platform and pushing off with enough force to turn its broken body into a projectile. It shot toward Logan with its mouth wide open.
There was no time to dodge.
Logan caught the upper and lower edges of the jaw with both hands.
The impact drove him backward. His boots left the ground. The Voidborn carried him across the platform toward the edge, its teeth closing inch by inch.
Logan pushed with everything he had.
Not enough.
The edge came fast.
Instead of falling, his back slammed into something invisible.
A wall.
Gravity, probably. Another invisible boundary shaped by the Watcher to keep them inside the test.
The impact crushed him between the barrier and the Voidborn. Blood burst from his mouth. His vision flickered.
"Logan!" Ahri screamed.
The Voidborn's jaw kept closing.
His fingers were already slick with blood. The teeth cut into his palms, then deeper. His shoulders shook. His wounded arm nearly gave out.
Through the connection, he felt Ahri's defiance flare.
She was about to move.
No.
He could not let her.
Logan had a strange moment of clarity.
He recognized that he needed to lose it.
There was no way to survive with the exact balance he had been maintaining. Not this time. If he stayed careful, the jaw would close around his neck. If he used more spiritual power, corruption would get in.
So he chose corruption.
Power rose through him.
The Void responded immediately.
Cold pressure entered his thoughts, not as a whisper this time, but as a flood. The world sharpened and distorted at once. He felt hatred first toward the creature whose jaw he was holding. Then toward the Watcher, silent and untouchable. Then toward the whole place, the platform, the rift, the dead world, the dark that wanted everything gone.
Then the anger spread too far.
For one terrible instant, Logan wanted all of it to disappear.
The Voidborn. The Watcher. Ahri. Himself.
Everything here.
His hands forced the jaw open.
The Voidborn resisted, thrashing against him. Logan screamed, though the sound came out more like a snarl. His fingers dug into the creature's mouth. Spiritual power burned through his arms, dirty with corruption, violent and unstable.
He pulled.
The jaw split.
Then the body followed.
The Voidborn tore apart from mouth to torso, its form ripping open under one final surge of strength. Dark essence spilled out and scattered across the platform before dissolving into nothing.
Logan stood there, chest heaving, soaked in blood that was partly his and partly not.
He turned toward Ahri.
"Told you I'd destroy it…"
It should have sounded reassuring.
It did not.
His voice was full of anger. His eyes were fixed on her as if she were part of the enemy.
Ahri went pale.
Then she looked at the Watcher.
"Please," she said. Her voice shook. "Let me pull the corruption out of him!"
The Watcher raised one hand.
Just that.
And Logan felt the corruption vanish.
One moment rage filled his skull. The next, it was gone, leaving him hollow, nauseous, and shaking.
His knees hit the platform.
Ahri ran to him.
She dropped beside him and wrapped her arms around him, holding him so tightly it hurt his injured ribs. Logan did not complain. He leaned into her, trying to make his breathing slow down.
"Maybe," he said with a weak smile, "it wasn't that easy."
Ahri let out something between a laugh and a sob. "No. It was not."
He smiled a little more.
For a few seconds, that was enough.
Then Logan noticed something else.
The corruption around him did not feel as dense as before. The pressure was still there, still hateful, still waiting, but thinner. As if the Watcher had not only removed the infection from his mind, but also changed the conditions around him. He could use more spiritual power now. Not much. Nothing close to his true capacity.
But more than before.
His relief lasted less than a breath.
Ahri's fear hit him through the connection like a hand around his heart.
The Watcher was walking toward them.
Ahri stood and moved in front of Logan.
"Ahri," he said.
She did not move aside.
The Watcher stopped only a few centimeters from her face.
Logan understood then.
Her warning had influenced the fight.
That "Careful!" had changed his reaction. Without it, the Voidborn's jaw might have closed around his throat before he caught it. The Watcher had noticed.
Of course it had noticed.
Ahri lifted her chin.
"That did not change anything," she said, staring straight into the cyan eye. "My Logan would have won anyway."
The Watcher kept looking at her.
No anger. No approval. No response.
Then purple essence began forming near its hand again.
Another Voidborn.
Logan's stomach sank.
What the hell are you trying to determine?
The Watcher's gaze stayed only on Ahri.
Not Logan this time.
Logan felt his throat tighten.
"Maybe one percent", he thought. Maybe that was all she had left.
She smiled, though he could feel how exhausted she was.
"I guess it's my turn. This'll be a piece of cake," she said.
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