Forcing his enemy to retreat behind her wall of shadows, the Champion of War had pierced the heart of that gloom with a roar of brute strength. As he yanked his arm back, shattering the ink-like barrier into a thousand obsidian shards, he dragged his prize out from the shadows.
But as his crimson eyes fell upon his own fist, the triumph in his gaze vanished.
He wasn't holding the Priestess. In his grasp was a spherical object, as black as pitch and cold as the void. Before his mind could process the deception, the sphere unfurled. A serpentine head, with eyes like twin pools of bottomless night, lunged from the darkness and coiled itself around Goliath's throat with suffocating speed.
It was Thene's Mark of Shadow—a Soul Serpent.
With one hand white-knuckled on his greatsword and the other clawing at the Soul Serpent tightening around his throat, Goliath was vulnerable.
Seizing the opening, Thene reappeared mere steps behind him, ghosting into the blind spot of his peripheral vision. In a heartbeat, a surge of concentrated darkness erupted from her palms, coalescing into a fresh, jagged blade. Using the surrounding shadows as a springboard, the Priestess launched herself into a steep dive, descending upon Goliath like a black spear. The giant still struggling for air.
His plated black armor and crimson mantle made him nearly impervious to a frontal assault, but his neck remained a tantalizing gap in his defenses. If she could find the right angle, Thene could drive her point straight through the Champion's spine. She wasn't aiming for a clean kill—a single blow wouldn't fell a monster like him—but a paralyzing strike would turn the tide.
Unfortunately, Goliath's combat instinct was as sharp as his steel.
Catching the glint of her descent out of the corner of his eye, his body moved before his mind could even process the threat. He swung the flat of his massive blade upward. The heavy iron collided with Thene's shoulder mid-air, shattering her momentum and robbing her of gravity's killing force.
The impact sent both combatants tumbling across the stone floor. As he rolled, Goliath managed to seize the head of the Soul Serpent and grind it against the ground, finally tearing it away.
They scrambled back to their feet simultaneously. The Champion massaged his bruised throat, his quads tensing like coiled springs as he rose. The Priestess used her black sword to steady herself; with a silent command, the serpent of pitch-black scales dissolved and flowed back into her right hand, reshaping itself into a sleek, deadly tachi.
Their eyes locked once more.
Then, the surrounding shadows surged upward, sealing them both inside a lightless dome. The duel vanished from sight, continuing within the embrace of a night that knew no end.
***
Through it all, Sunny watched the clash in stunned silence, his face a shifting spectrum of raw emotion—a jagged mosaic of terror, awe, and wonder. The duel was a masterpiece; two Masters of combat bleeding skill and experience every time iron collided with iron.
Thene, the Priestess of Shadows, wove through the fray in a dark symphony of thrusts and shifting constructs.
Goliath, the Champion of War, countered with the sheer weight of his monstrous stature and a wellspring of superhuman fury.
On the surface, they seemed evenly matched.
Yet, Sunny could see the grim math of the struggle.
Goliath was a juggernaut who wouldn't fall unless his heart was carved out or his head severed. Thene, however, lived on a razor's edge—a single clean strike from that greatsword would be enough to send her to the afterlife.
She maintained control of the space with sheer ability, lunging close to force him onto the defensive, then leaping away to ghost through his counters. But she couldn't afford to meet his blade head-on even once, and her shadow constructs were being swatted aside like cobwebs by the brute force of that foe.
Deep within, a persistent voice—a sort of Jiminy Cricket—began to whisper in Sunny's ear.
<
Sunny wanted to move, he truly did, but reason and his survival instinct had him shackled to the stone floor. At the mere sight of the enemy warrior, his mind screamed only one command: flee.
'Are you crazy!? How am I suppose to help her? That's a Master! There isn't just a gap between us—there's an abyss.'
<
Instead, Sunny remained rooted, a spectator incapable of agency. He felt the crushing weight of his own uselessness, the burning shame of his weakness. And yet, his cold logic offered a terrifying counter-argument: his intervention might be the very thing that killed her. If he ran into the fray, Thene would inevitably try to shield him with her own body, giving the Champion the perfect opening to finish her in one blow.
He had no right in this fight.
Weak as he was, Sunny could only watch as the strong ones unfold their will into the world. That's the unadulterated, unavoidable true.
Suddenly, the dome of shadows shattered. The two combatants were hurled outward once more, skidding across the debris in opposite directions.
***
Both Masters lay grounded for a fleeting moment, the heavy toll of the previous exchanges and the slow drain of stamina finally beginning to claw at them. Yet, the fire of battle was far from extinguished.
Goliath was a roadmap of violence, his arms and face mapped with shallow gashes and jagged cuts-wounds that would have crippled a Sleeper, but meant little to a Master. Thene, by contrast, bore a dark, swelling bruise on her forehead slicked with fresh blood—the result of a brutal headbutt from the giant. Had anyone below the rank of Ascendant suffered such an impact, their skull would have detonated into a crimson spray of viscera; for her, it was merely a dull throb to be ignored.
Wasting not a single heartbeat, they kicked off the stone and threw themselves back into the fray.
The slaughter resumed, relentless and unyielding.
Thene moved with a fragile, mesmerizing grace through the gloom, weaving shadows into a symphony of constructs and blades. Her every motion was a masterpiece of sheer adaptability and agility, a testament to the Shadow Dance—a style that allowed her to read and manipulate the very flow of the enemy's momentum.
Yet, her opponent, though unable to match her speed and versatility, knew exactly how to compensate with overwhelming, raw power. The constructs, the spears, the swords—everything the Priestess summoned from the shadows was instantly pulverized, crushed by his brute strength or cleaved in two by a single, shattering blow from his greatsword. Only the dark blade in her hand—the Soul Serpent—held firm against the crushing magnitude of his steel.
The duel devolved into a vicious cycle. Thene lunged with a horizontal slash aimed at his throat; Goliath ducked the blow and countered with a thunderous punch aimed at her solar plexus. Thene blocked the strike, redirecting his force and calling forth a hail of shadow spears from every direction to pin him down.
With each exchange, the clash ceased to be a mere contest of skill. It had become a war of attrition—a brutal measurement of who possessed the greater resolve and the deeper well of will.
The hall continued to shudder as the two combatants tore into one another, locked in a lethal choreography of dark shadows and cold iron.
After an eternity of brutal exchanges, the duel finally reached its breaking point.
Goliath faltered.
The giant stumbled, his boot catching on a jagged floor tile unearthed during the struggle. The Champion of War crashed to one knee. One hand remained white-knuckled around his greatsword while the other braced against his thigh. His head hung low, his face veiled by the shadows of his own mane.
For a fleeting heartbeat, an opening appeared.
Thene did not hesitate. Without taking her eyes off the slumped enemy, she launched a definitive strike. Her tachi streaked through the air like a falling star across a midnight sky.
But as the blade neared its mark... Goliath grinned.
It was a trap.
The moment the Priestess committed to her assault, the warrior surged upward. His greatsword whipped around in a vicious arc, a counter-stroke designed to cleave the girl in two before her own blade could land.
Thene's eyes tracked the massive slab of iron as it rushed toward her. The deception had been revealed, and the trap had sprung—but the Shadow Dance was not so easily snared by such predictable tricks.
As the greatsword's edge made contact with the silk of her black robes, the Master of Shadows didn't break. Instead, her silhouette bled into pure darkness, as if the shadows themselves had stepped forward to devour her. The heavy blade passed harmlessly through her.
Thene vanished, swallowed by the floor.
Before Goliath could process the flicker of her movement, she erupted from the gloom to his right. With a single, fluid motion of her Soul Serpent, she severed his right arm at the shoulder.
With a guttural, raw shriek of agony, the Master of War collapsed. His dominant arm—still clutching the greatsword—spun through the air and thudded into the dust, far out of reach.
Watching from the sidelines, Sunny felt a surge of pure, unadulterated joy.
It was over.
Thene stood over her fallen foe, her obsidian gaze cold and unforgiving.
The Champion looked up to meet her eyes, a bloody, delirious grin stretching across his face. To him, the struggle had been fulfilling; there was no shame in falling to a superior warrior. His scarlet eyes held no regret, no remorse, and no fear.
Thene met that hollow arrogance with an incandescent rage. This man felt no guilt for the lives he had snuffed out within the Shadow Temple—his "glory" was built merely on corpses.
Her eyes, black as the abyss and cold as death, fixed on him. She spoke with a jagged, brutal honesty.
"Find peace within me."
She raised the tachi once more. The blade, sharp and hungry, descended toward his exposed neck.