Dust from the shattered dome still danced in the dim light. My legs felt like lead, entirely disconnected from my brain as the dark-green telluric energy receded from my veins, leaving behind an agonizing emptiness.
Leaning heavily against Laura, her shoulder dug into my armpit to keep my boots from dragging in the dirt. She grunted, her breath hitching as her battered back protested the added dead weight.
"Easy, easy," she murmured. Her raspy voice was laced with that stubborn, predatory pride. "Don't go dying on me now."
We limped toward the mansion in a slow, agonizing three-legged race.
The evening chill of Lavinsk began to bite at our sweat-soaked skin, stinging cuts and abrasions. Ahead, Arthur walked in absolute silence, rolling his massive shoulders as his ashen flesh already began to knit back together.
Dinner that night was a sanctuary of agonizing silence; silverware clattering against porcelain sounded deafening. Chewing the seasoned meat mechanically, I noticed every muscle fiber in my bandaged right forearm trembling with phantom spasms from the earth energy I had channeled.
Lowering my fork for a moment, I observed the deep, dark bruises staining my own skin. My cuts still throbbed, wet and slow to close. Then, my gaze shifted to Laura's wrist.
It was bizarre.
The sickly purple hue was visibly fading, the fibers beneath the dermis reconnecting with predatory efficiency.
"How does that work exactly?" I asked, my hoarse voice breaking the quiet as I looked up toward the head of the table. "Regeneration."
Silver lowered his wine glass. He didn't look tired. He never did.
"It evolves," the platinum god explained, his clinical tone filling the room. "Regeneration isn't a static ability. It improves gradually through trauma. Every time you survive a major battle or have your body pushed beyond its normal limits, divine cells are forced to readapt and concentrate much faster to prevent a lethal failure."
Taking a sip of the dark wine, he evaluated me with his gaze.
"Right now, your natural regeneration, Suki, is still pathetic compared to Laura's or Arthur's," he pointed out without an ounce of pity. "However, it's not impossible for you to reach their level. In fact, you could even surpass them by a ridiculous margin... if you manage to access the right transformation."
I stopped chewing, curiosity crushing my exhaustion.
"Transformation?" I repeated, frowning. "A healing transformation?"
Kânia, sitting on the other side of the table, let out a short, melodic laugh. Sliding a platter of fresh fruit toward the center of the wood with divine grace, she interjected.
"Transformation users aren't just weapons geared for attack, my little one," Kânia said, her sweet voice carrying the weight of ancient wisdom. "Your lineage harbors a colossal arsenal. Just as you have adaptations geared strictly for martial power, there are support ones too. Forms focused on pure cellular regeneration and extreme survival. One day, when you master your blood entirely... you will be like that."
The goddess's words settled into my brain, heavy and thought-provoking. Looking at my own bandaged hand, I imagined what other types of monsters and cures lay dormant beneath my skin.
Taking the lead in the conversation again, Silver set down his glass. The soft clink echoed like a judge's gavel in the silent room.
"You managed to anchor yourself today," Silver stated. "You felt the friction. But unlocking a door is not the same as walking through it and surviving the room."
"Tomorrow," he continued, "we will see how this new earth-bound form of yours deals with moving targets and real pressure."
Looking at the two of us, his expression hardened.
"Tomorrow night, you and Laura will fight Arthur. Together."
Arthur stopped chewing. Slowly lowering his fork, an eager smile spread across his gray face.
Dinner ended shortly after that, under a silent, palpable tension that followed us all the way to the mansion's hallways.
In the bathroom, the sound of running water hitting the sink basin broke the quiet of the house. I stared at my reflection in the mirror while brushing my teeth. The bruises under my eyes and the exhaustion carved into my features seemed even deeper under the cold light of the room.
Spitting the foam, I threw a handful of freezing water on my face and the back of my neck to wash away the weight of divine exhaustion, drying my skin on the fluffy towel.
Stepping out into the dimly lit hallway, I found the door to Laura's room slightly ajar. The glow leaking through the crack almost made me trip over my own feet. Pausing at the doorframe, I leaned my shoulder against the wood and blinked twice, ensuring fatigue wasn't making me hallucinate.
Her room was entirely... pink?
Hot-pink walls, pastel sheets that looked absurdly soft, fluffy rugs, and an almost criminal amount of pillows piled in the corner. This jarring contrast short-circuited my brain. This was the resting chamber of a lethal assassin who cut through granite with silver claws and smiled while covered in enemy blood, yet it looked like a fairy-tale princess's bedroom.
In the middle of that sea of pastels and fluffy fabrics, Laura sat on the edge of the bed, finishing a clean bandage wrap around her bruised wrist.
"Try not to dream about Arthur tearing our heads off tomorrow," I murmured, tearing my eyes away from a fluffy pillow to focus on her face.
Looking up, her red eyes gleamed. She let out a nasal laugh, sharp as always, completely ignoring my silent confusion regarding the decor.
"If he tries, I'll slit his gray throat before you even blink," she countered, falling backward with a dull thud against the pink mattress. "Good night, Suki. Get some rest."
"Good night, Laura."
Leaving her door, I entered my own room. The environment was immersed in a silvery blue, courtesy of Lavinsk's immense moons whose rays pierced the large glass window. Closing the door behind me, my eyes were instinctively drawn to the dark corner of the room.
There, leaning vertically against the stone, rested Lucas's spear.
Walking over in silence, I felt the coldness of the marble floor beneath my bare feet. Running my fingertips along the weapon's shaft, the icy touch of the metal acted as an instant trigger; the safe comfort of the room vanished, replaced by the damp, suffocating density of the Black Forest.
How must they be doing right now? I thought, clenching my jaw. Odássio, Vandashi, Kanzo... are they still getting used to the giant castle?
My fingers tightened around the spear's grip. And Lucas? Did he leave to look for Yasmin?
Inevitably, her face invaded my mind. Sillys.
I remembered her unyielding posture, hiding her own pain and profound exhaustion just so her people could sleep in peace. Those pale eyes, cold on the outside, yet carrying the weight of a ruined empire. A strange, sharp longing squeezed my chest. I missed that icy presence, that stubborn leadership that refused to bow before any deity.
I hope you're doing well, queen...
Letting go of the weapon with a long sigh, I pushed the memories away. I wouldn't be able to help them with anything if I got crushed by Arthur in tomorrow's training.
Dragging myself to the bed, I let my body collapse backward onto the soft blankets. Physical fatigue and mental exhaustion finally switched off my senses like a breaker. The view of the stone ceiling darkened, and the silence of the Lavinsk night swallowed me into a heavy, dense, dreamless sleep.
The Crater of Lavinsk
By late afternoon the next day, we had left the ruined backyard of the mansion far behind. Silver guided us beyond the capital's central limits to a place that swallowed any sense of scale.
It was an enormous crater, gaping like a canyon.
The depression swallowed the sky, painting the horizon with its massive cavernous structure. Dead earth crunched beneath our boots, sunken and reshaped by forces far more ancient than ours. Stretching for miles, this shallow abyss looked as though it had been caved in by a falling star. Jagged, black rock walls formed its edges, tearing through the earth like the teeth of a sleeping beast.
Glancing around, I felt the hostility of the soil penetrate my soles. Though I didn't know this place, the residual energy leaking from the stones was so dense the air tasted like rust and old blood.
Floating a few meters above the shattered floor, Silver crossed his arms, his green eyes gleaming with calculating coldness. Noticing my short breathing as I swept the immensity of that stone necropolis with my gaze, he spoke.
"You can feel it, can't you?" his voice echoed, calm but carrying the weight of eras. "The agony driven into the roots of these stones."
I stopped looking at the rock formations and turned my attention back to him.
"What is this place?" I asked, facing the cold frontier wind.
"The eastern extremities of the Kingdom of Lavinsk," Silver answered, touching down softly on the dead earth. "Many gods and elite disciples descend into this hole when training demands the line between life and death be completely erased. When the fight needs to be pure brutality. But this crater... was not forged by training."
Raising his face, he watched dark clouds swirl above us; the crater was so large that small black clouds formed near its ceiling.
"Years ago, during the great war to conquer Lavinsk, this exact piece of land was the stage for a massacre," the platinum god began, taking on the dense tone of a historian witnessing the end of an era. "Resistance forces were cornered on this plain, and it was right here, in the epicenter, that Vangor, the God of Strength..."
The immediate mention of that name made my muscles tense. I instantly remembered Kamiko's cataclysmic strength in the arena, and how the power of that lineage crushed the laws of physics.
"...faced and executed Prince Yuta," Silver finished, locking his cold eyes on the crater floor. "The impact of Vangor's final blow obliterated the prince. The kinetic force was so immense it sank miles of Lavinsk's crust, wiping out the army and forging this crater in a single second."
"The despair of fallen royalty and the blood of a war still fertilize this dead earth. It is the perfect stage to test survival."
Silence reigned for a second as I processed the magnitude of that event. We were going to fight in the tomb forged by the brute strength of a war god.
"Tonight, you are not here to learn," Silver's voice cut through the howling wind, sounding absolute and wiping away any trace of hesitation. "You are here to prove what you've learned."
Exchanging a quick glance with Laura, our lungs pulled in air forcefully. Our muscles tensed, our blood boiling with the residual sting of adrenaline.
Ten meters away from us, Arthur stood still.
Keeping an absurdly relaxed posture, the giant crossed his thick arms over his broad chest. He wore the same half-smile, confident and almost bored, his ashen skin looking like a storm cloud full of lightning under the dim light.
Silver didn't blink.
"Arthur, hold them both off at the same time." Tilting his face slightly, the master gave the command. "Laura, Suki... use everything."
"Don't get in my way, Suki," Laura murmured, never taking her crimson eyes off Arthur. A wild smile, showing the predatory gleam of her fangs, tore across her face in the gloom. "Try to keep up, and be careful... I've got some new tricks up my sleeve that you haven't seen yet."
Spinning the dark metal spear in my hands, I felt the familiar vibration of the steel as my white aura began to leak from my pores, illuminating the dead earth around us. Our first real team fight, I thought, feeling the adrenaline sweep any trace of hesitation from my blood.
I wouldn't be dead weight.
"Just try not to die before I do," I replied, lowering my stance and locking my eyes on the target.
The Clash of Immortals
The fight began without a signal or a warning from the master; it started with raw, simultaneous murderous intent.
Laura broke into a sprint, erasing the physical space between them.
SNIKT.
The sharp sound cut through the cold crater wind as silver claws popped from her knuckles. In a millisecond, the lethal steel was swallowed by a crackling bluish aura that snapped, contorting the very air around her fists. Leaping not as a warrior, but as a starving predator finally let off its chain, her eyes burned with violent instinct.
"Lightning Thrust!" she roared.
Standing a few steps away, I could barely track the launch. Her body shot across the earth, simply vanishing from my peripheral vision.
Jerking my head up, I searched the battlefield.
What was that? Shock halted my breath for a millisecond. Did she jump and... propel herself on the air itself?
The sheer speed of the jump tore the atmosphere, leaving a visible trail of thin smoke and red static suspended in the night sky, drawing the unreal trajectory of the attack. I had never seen her do that before. It was a new movement trick, manipulating the pressure beneath her boots to change direction in midair.
At the end of that smoke trail, her body materialized again as a blur of red and silver, plummeting in freefall, lethal claws aimed straight to shred the giant's jugular.
The arrogant half-smile didn't waver on the face of granite. Arthur didn't try to retreat or dodge. Raising his massive forearm to meet the blind attack, he offered his gray flesh as an impenetrable shield.
CLAAANG!
The impact rang out like a detonating forge bell. Pure kinetic energy transferred through the clash, making the dead rock beneath Arthur's feet cave instantly into a crater of fissures. Dust kicked up around us, but the warrior's arm didn't retreat a single centimeter.
Before he could lower his arm to strike back and smash Laura against the rock, the wind howled.
I was already there.
Sliding frictionlessly through the air, I bypassed the kicked-up dust and landed perfectly on the giant's blind flank. Beneath my tunic, the white stripes of my aura had multiplied. The lines of energy burned with twice their normal thickness, branding my skin and pulsing at the exact frantic frequency of my heart.
Wind Form: Stage Two.
Letting out a quick, adrenaline-fueled laugh that cut through the metallic sound of Arthur's block, I taunted her. "Did you really think you were the only one hiding tricks up your sleeve today, Laura?"
My eyes glowed with an aggressive, translucent light as I spun the dark metal spear with fluid fury. Catching the oxygen, the black tip of the weapon condensed the air until the space began to hum and distort.
"Twin Slash!"
Carving the air twice in a mere fraction of a second, I sent two crescent blades of super-compressed wind screaming through the atmosphere, sharp enough to slice through mountains. They tore through the empty space, colliding directly against Arthur's unprotected ribs.
The sound of the impact was wet and violent. Inhuman pressure ruptured the warrior's impenetrable gray skin. Dark blood sprayed out, drawing a lethal arc in the air.
But the glimpse of victory lasted only a heartbeat.
In the exact moment the blood flew, the giant's exposed flesh bubbled. Freshly torn muscle fibers whipped around, stretching and sewing themselves back together with an alien voracity, completely erasing the deep cut before the first drop of blood could even touch the dust.
Smiling, Arthur stomped the sole of his boot against the rock.
A shockwave of physical force erupted, slamming against our chests like an invisible battering ram and violently launching Laura and me backward.
Spinning gracefully in the air, Laura dug her claws into the ground to brake and leaped again, now spinning her silver blades like propellers.
I didn't stay airborne. Crouching, I felt the crater's foundation call out to me. The white stripes on my skin shifted violently, darkening into thick veins of deep, rustic green.
Slamming the shaft of my spear into the stone floor, the earth groaned. Massive spikes of pure bedrock erupted from the soil in a straight line, advancing like stone serpents ready to impale the giant.
Crossing his arms in an "X", Arthur took the punishment head-on. The spikes shattered against his chest, tearing wounds into his shoulders and gray back. For a full second, his hypertrophied musculature trembled under the tectonic weight.
"You have no weight," Arthur's voice resonated, frighteningly calm and heavy amidst our storm.
The air in the center of the crater imploded.
What followed was the deafening crack of an invisible whip breaking the sound barrier. Where Arthur had stood a fraction of a millisecond before, there remained only a violent ring of dust bursting outward under the force of a sudden vacuum. The brutal acceleration simply left the light itself behind.
When the drastic change in air pressure hit my eardrums, his silhouette had already materialized. Right behind Laura's back.
Too fast! The thought whipped my brain along with an icy panic that froze my spine. My eyes couldn't track the trajectory.
Laura's lupine instincts screamed. Feeling the shadow swallowing her from behind, she twisted her torso in midair with a reflex of pure survival and crossed both arms at face level. Her silver claws formed a desperate "X" shield, wrapped in red aura, trying to build a barrier against the imminent collision.
But the gross tonnage and gravitational force behind Arthur's punch were overwhelming.
Sinking against the crossed blades, the gray fist generated an impact that echoed like the detonation of an artillery shell, shattering the dead earth beneath the axis of that attack. The silver guard caved instantly under the pressure, violently pinned against the girl's own chest.
Ejected from that spot like a scarlet meteor, Laura tore across the landscape, turning jagged rocks in her path to dust, until she collided against the rocky base of a mountain peak at the edge of the crater. The impact crushed the solid rock, leveling tons of earth with a doomsday roar that swallowed the arena in dust.
Gritting my teeth, I yanked the spear from the ground. The earth beneath my feet vibrated at the same frequency as the wind spiraling around my blade.
I forced the two natures to fuse in my blood.
"HAHEN TATSUMAKI!!!"
The crater's foundation obeyed. Cracking with a geological rumble, massive blocks of dead rock lost their gravity, levitating around me in ascending chaos. Bending my knees, I launched upward, planting my boots on the suspended stones and using them as stepping stones to the sky. With every jump, the rock beneath my feet crumbled to dust, ejecting my body higher and higher into the storm.
At the peak of my ascent, I twisted my body, contorting my spine with blind violence.
Wind and earth united, devouring each other. The black metal shaft of my spear became the eye of a hurricane. Currents of super-compressed air began to howl, sucking in granite shrapnel and grinding the rock in an agonizing spiral storm—a natural grinder designed to shred straight to the bone marrow.
Down below, the shadow of my attack covered Arthur.
Widening his stance, he sank his heavy soles into the floor with such force that the stone cracked around his boots. With a low growl and a smile of pure predatory ecstasy, he raised his bare arms to the heavens, muscles tensed to embrace the destruction open-chested.
I descended.
For an absurd millisecond, the whole world seemed to enter a silent vacuum.
And then... the atmosphere burst.
A dome of pressurized air, dead dust, and rock shrapnel detonated from the center of our collision, sweeping the arena. The kinetic shockwave crushed the ground with such brutality that the planet's crust groaned in agony. Dozens of meters of solid, ancient soil caved in and sank violently to forge a shallow abyss, swallowing the battlefield in a suffocating sea of smoke and devastation.
I hit him! Making Arthur sink into the ground was one of my goals since the first time I faced him.
Dead dust still swirled in the air, thick and asphyxiating, but a sound cutting through the silence of the abyss made my muscles lock.
A laugh. Low, hoarse, and bubbling.
Emerging from the smoke, Arthur walked slowly, his heavy steps crushing the pebbles. He was slashed. Dark red, thick blood ran from the corner of his mouth and dripped from his chin. Deep cuts, open to the muscle, spread across his broad arms and gray chest... but his biology was an aberration.
Cellular regeneration worked at a terrifying pace. The fibers twisted and sealed the torn flesh almost in real time, sewing the open wounds shut with every step he took.
"Yeah," he spat a thick clot onto the shattered stone, his sadistic smile unyielding. "That actually hurt a little, Suki."
Pulling the spear from the rubble, I squeezed the black metal shaft until my knuckles cracked. Beneath the dust covering my skin, the white stripes had darkened into thick veins of a deep, rustic green that pulsed in sync with the earth's core beneath my boots.
I didn't back down. Advancing toward him, I dragged the blade's tip across the stone, leaving a trail of sparks through the shallow abyss.
"I hope it hurts a lot more when I wipe that smile off your face," I retorted, keeping my eyes locked on his.
Arthur let out a loud laugh, cracking his thick neck to the sides. "Then try."
The air burst between us. We clashed in the center of the crater not as warriors, but as two unleashed beasts. The earth energy in my veins anchored me like a mountain as I swung the spear in a lethal arc, aiming for his neck.
Raising his bare fist, he punched the dark steel blade in midair. The impact sent a shock that numbed my right hand, but I didn't stop. Spinning the shaft through my fingers, I chained a sequence of relentless frontal thrusts, aiming for his chest, knees, and throat.
Blocking with his forearms and dodging by millimeters, his hard skin threw sparks against my blade. When one of my thrusts tore past his ribs, spraying blood, he didn't even blink. He didn't run from the pain; he used it. The giant's massive hand slid down the fresh cut and grabbed the shaft of my spear with the strength of a bull.
My eyes widened. Yanking me violently forward, breaking my stance, Arthur delivered a brutal headbutt straight to my face.
The world spun, the metallic taste of blood flooding my palate. Letting go of the weapon instinctively, I stumbled backward. Before I could focus my vision, his right cross was already tearing through the wind. Throwing my crossed arms up to face-level in the final second, the punch collided against my block, dragging me backward and digging two deep trenches into the dust.
I was unbalanced. My stance broken.
"It's over," Arthur growled, advancing like a tank.
His gray arm pulled back. The air around the giant's fist seemed to distort with pressure. It was a direct punch, loaded with enough mass and gravitational force to obliterate my ribcage. There was no time to pull roots from the earth or summon air currents. Death was inches from my sternum.
But the shadow plummeting from the shattered sky didn't belong to the giant.
A suffocating, pitch-black aura, writhing like a devouring abyss, exploded violently between the two of us.
SPLAT.
The sound was wet and shocking. Arthur's fist stopped abruptly less than a handspan from my chest. The invisible shockwave of the punch still burst the air, cutting my cheek with wind pressure, but the driving force had been crushed mid-flight.
Laura was there. Landing almost crouching in front of me, she intercepted the giant's arm in midair. Dark, bestial energy coated her silver claws, which not only blocked the blow but were driven deeply straight into the flesh and bone of Arthur's gray forearm.
His blood ran thick between her fingers.
"What exactly were you going to break, you piece of shit?" Laura hissed, lifting her dirt-streaked face. Her crimson eyes burned with pure homicidal instinct, and her voice came out distorted, torn by an animalistic timbre.
Twisting her claws brutally inside the giant's bone, she forced a gritted groan to escape Arthur's throat.
Arthur's gaze burned with fury. Cocking his other arm to crush her, the distraction provided exactly what I needed.
The green veins on my skin lit up like embers. Digging my fingers into the ground, I pulled the earth's vibration to launch my spear's shaft back into my hands. With a roar, I leaped, used Laura's back as leverage, and sank the blade straight into the giant's shoulder joint.
Blood spurted, but Arthur's smile only twisted into a sadistic grimace. He was in pure ecstasy.
Laura didn't let go of his arm. Using the giant's trapped limb as a pivot, she spun her body to deliver a devastating double kick straight to Arthur's jaw, forcing him to let out a roar and drop her. When he took a step back, we exploded onto him in absolute synchrony.
I attacked low. The spear spun like a dark hurricane, slicing his leg tendons and flanks with cutting wind currents mixed with my strength.
Laura attacked high. She was a blur of devouring energy, tearing at the warrior's chest, face, and back with frantic sequences of cross strikes.
Arthur no longer tried to defend himself; he dropped his guard and embraced the carnage. Taking the cuts laughing, he watched Laura's claws open wounds down to the bone and my spear pierce his musculature. In return, he doled out sledgehammer blows that shattered the earth beneath our feet. A glancing punch from him caught my shoulder, the impact sending a mind-bending pain that nearly dislocated my joint. A knee strike exploded against Laura's hip, making the assassin spit dark blood, but she simply used the blood on her own chin to smile, dive back into range, and sink her right claw into the middle of his chest.
It was a blood-soaked waltz. A feral brawl where agony, torn flesh, and sickening resilience were the only currencies traded on the battlefield.
High above, immune to the dust and the smell of blood infecting the air, Silver's platinum silhouette watched the pandemonium.
He wasn't paying attention to my emerald winds or Laura's fury. The god's cold green eyes were locked exclusively on Arthur.
The boy was covered in severe cuts, with dangerous punctures to his lungs and blood-soaked wounds endlessly gushing devouring blood. Yet, his hypertrophied fists kept moving with the same destructive speed. His smile didn't waver.
Dead flesh bubbled and life returned to those ruined cells in a terrifying biological cycle.
This sickening refusal of his own death... Silver pondered silently, a slight narrowing of his eyes betraying his apathy as his arms remained crossed. They were an anomaly in this universe, the extinct race of the Morokianos.
The master watched an Arthur punch cave the earth and eject me far away, only for the giant to let out a deep laugh when Laura slashed his chest with a red "X" right after.
The Immortals, Silver concluded, the thought echoing in the vastness of his ancient knowledge. An entire lineage designed to defy not only the limits of biology, but the very will of the gods to erase them from existence.
The Promise
Laura stumbled forward, panting, clutching her injured left arm.
Falling to my knees, I dug my fingers into the stone, my lungs burning, completely exhausted and without a single drop of energy to spare.
But then, a macabre sound cut the silence.
He stood up slowly. Even covered in his own blood and dust, the warrior's eyes opened, burning with desire.
He wanted to keep going; not only did he want to, he could keep going. It was madness.
"Enough."
Silver's voice dropped on us like an anvil, instantly switching off any murderous intent in the air. Descending gracefully to the destroyed ground, the master took a step toward the giant, his gaze deep.
"The three of you did well. Don't worry, Arthur. You will have your chance to fight with everything... sooner than you think."
Arthur widened his stance, but inside, the silent gears of his ancestral lineage ground with dark desire.
"When I break these chains... none of you will hold me back," Arthur murmured.
As he and Silver turned their backs and walked away, the violent palette of orange and violet tones that previously burned Lavinsk's horizon began to bleed out of the sky, slowly swallowed by a deep, heavy blue. The crater's temperature plummeted in a matter of minutes, turning the sweat and hot blood on our bodies into a biting cold that gave me goosebumps.
The thick curtain of dust and rock shrapnel, kicked up by the fury of our battle, lost its strength and settled slowly, hovering near the ground like a lethargic fog.
As the smoke spread and the pitch-black took over, stars began to pierce the darkness above us, one by one, until they completely blanketed the sky. A morbid, silent, and exhausted peace finally returned to the stone desert.
I lay flat on my back on the hard ground, chest rising and falling frantically. My whole body vibrated, nerves still short-circuiting from the impact.
A few meters away, Laura sat in the dirt; blood dripped slowly from the cut on her arm, but the girl didn't seem to notice, staring into the dark abyss of the landscape with half-closed eyes.
For long minutes, we were just two pairs of lungs trying not to fail. The silence was absolute.
Rolling my heavy head to the side, I broke the quiet.
"Laura... if this had been a real fight... we'd be dead."
She didn't blink right away; she kept staring into the void, chewing on the words.
"I know," she murmured. Squeezing her own hand, staining her fingers with dirt, she continued. "I had never seen Arthur fight like that. He... he likes it."
Closing my eyes, the memory of the giant's mountain-destroying punch remained fresh in my mind.
"He enjoys it," I noted quietly. "Even when his own skin is tearing, even when he almost killed me..."
Laura gritted her teeth, her silver claws popping out minimally, trembling.
"...I hate to admit it," she whispered, her voice carrying a disgusted fascination, "but he scares me. Not just because of his strength... but his look. He wanted more, Suki. He wanted us to cross the line."
Pressing my bloody palms against the rough, cold rock of the crater, the pain in my body burned like acid. But instead of backing down, I swallowed it and used it as fuel.
"Then we're going to cross that line," I replied. My voice sounded low, dense, and dangerously cold.
Laura jerked her face up. The shock dissipated the lethargy in her crimson eyes for a second; she blinked, visibly taken aback by the darkness spilling from my tone.
Forcing my trembling knees, I pushed my body up. Every muscle fiber screamed in protest, and my joints shrieked in the morbid silence of the stone desert, but I stood up.
"He wants to see how far we can take it before we break?" I muttered, looking down at the assassin's dust-and-blood-covered face. "Then that's what we're going to do. We're going to push our own chains until that guy's instinct screams in terror when he looks at us. We're going to prove that his immortality has a limit."
My lips twitched into a broken, exhausted smile, stained with dirt, but absolutely real.
"Get up," I extended my good hand to her, the shadow of the night covering my eyes. "I can still hold my spear, and your claws... are still in one piece."
The surprise on the assassin's face melted, giving way to a sharp, predatory expression. That wild, wide-open smile that showed her silver fangs tore across her face.
"Of course I can."
Ignoring the pain in her arm, she leaped to her feet.
There, on the edge of the crater, with the night falling over us like an icy cloak, exhaustion was replaced by furious ambition. A new fire ignited in our eyes.
Cracking her neck, the metallic screech of her claws cut the wind.
"Teach me that spinning wind slash."
Pulling in air forcefully, I sank into my own essence; I forced through the blockade of exhaustion. The white stripes lit up on my skin, burning my nerves in a continuous effort.
"And you teach me how to use that instinct," I answered, spinning my materialized spear. "To attack without thinking. That sounds interesting."
Lowering her stance, the deadly energy coated the blades of her hands once again.
"Then prepare your body."
I pointed the black steel tip at her chest.
"Bring it on, kitten."
The black steel of my spear clashed against the silver claws, and a shower of sparks lit up the sunken crater of Lavinsk. The fight resumed.
But this time, there was no murderous intent. There was no acidic smell of fear or imminent risk of death. It was a dialogue forged in brutality, two caged beasts teaching each other how to bite harder.
Charging with lethal ferocity, Laura was a scarlet blur tearing through the darkness, but she locked her blades exactly two millimeters from my skin. Her crimson eyes analyzed my guard, correcting her own posture flaw and stepping back to adjust her balance. In response, I spiraled wind currents dense enough to shatter ribs, but dissipated the pressure in the last millisecond of the impact, forcing her to close her eyes and read the cadence of the airflow, not just the movement of my body.
Were our bodies ruined? Yes. Blood stained the stone and lactic acid burned every muscle fiber. But our gravity was no longer dictated by fatigue; it was sustained by unyielding willpower.
The sound of rhythmic strikes echoed through the empty abyss—a rustic symphony of metallic cracks, crushed rock, suspended dust, and ragged breaths. It was the sound of two souls deciphering each other's strengths and weaknesses at the edge of sanity.
Hours melted under the icy cloak of dawn.
Eventually, anatomy collected its toll. My knees gave out without warning. I collapsed, resting all my dead weight on the planted shaft of my spear. Sweat ran down my chin, mixing with dust and forming a muddy puddle on the rock. The aura stripes carved into my skin no longer glowed translucent; they throbbed in a dull hue, burning like hot branding iron on my flesh.
A few meters away, a dull thud announced Laura's fall.
She fell flat on her back on the dead earth, arms spread like a cross, panting so violently her chest looked ready to tear open. At her fingertips, the silver claws still pulsed with red and black energy—they were faster, incredibly firmer. Alive.
In the silvery gloom of the moon, I turned my heavy face; our eyes met.
The silence of the end of the world crashed down on us for a second, until it was broken by a weak, hoarse, hysterical laugh escaping my throat. Laura joined in instantly, the sound of our sheer exhaustion echoing into the empty sky.
"We aren't going to die..." Laura gasped, her voice thick with fatigue, staring into the starry vastness above us.
"...without making that damn giant sweat real blood first," I finished, my throat so dry the words scratched on their way out.
The night embraced us in a peace I hadn't felt in a long time. The cold wind dried the sweat from our faces, sweeping the dust from the crater as if Lavinsk itself was witnessing the end of the massacre.
Rolling her body, Laura sat on the rock, using the back of her dirty hand to wipe the wet dirt from her forehead. When she lifted her face and met my gaze again, the sadistic gleam and sarcastic tone were completely gone.
"Suki..." her voice sounded lower, carrying a feline intensity that demanded absolute respect. "I want to make a promise to you."
I had no breath to answer. Grunting, my head hanging between my shoulders, I looked up, locking onto her crimson irises.
"Promise that, whenever we fight each other..." She clenched her trembling fists, blood and dirt staining her knuckles. "...you will come at me with your one hundred percent?"
I remained silent for a full second, staring at that unshakeable fire. There was no pity there. There was absolute respect, forged in the pain and sweat of that dawn.
Breaking into a slow, exhausted smile, I reached out my aching arm toward her.
Her hand found mine in the middle of the darkness, and we squeezed our scraped fingers with all the strength we had left.
"Of course," my voice finally came out, hoarse but unbreakable as the steel of my spear. "It's a lifelong promise, kitten."
Laura laughed. It was a tired and absurdly sincere sound. The wide, predatory smile returned to her face, baring her fangs under the moonlight. The sound of that handshake echoed into the early morning, engraved not only in the dead atmosphere of Lavinsk's crater, but scarred definitively into our souls.