Kaelion advanced.
Without hesitation.
The first cut came fast.
The creature's arm was separated.
Regeneration began immediately—
the black smoke gathering,
the limb returning.
Kaelion did not step back.
Second cut.
The leg was separated.
Regeneration began again.
Slower this time.
As if the second request cost more than the first.
Third cut.
Deeper.
The smoke took longer to rebuild the structure.
The sword's light burned the edges of the separation—
preventing the darkness from closing over itself as easily as before.
The creature stepped back half a step.
Kaelion advanced again.
The movements were faster.
More precise.
He cut again.
Arm.
Leg.
Part of the torso.
Regeneration still happened.
But it was no longer instant.
There was delay.
There was cost.
And the cost grew with every cut.
The creature felt it.
Not with thought.
With instinct.
And did what beings of darkness do
when the fight stops being favorable.
It dissolved.
Did not disappear.
Dissolved.
The solid form came apart slowly—
the edges first,
then the center—
until there was no longer a creature
and there was only layer.
Darkness fused with darkness.
Kaelion stopped.
Observed the layer around him.
It was somewhere in there.
Fused with the darkness that formed the ground,
the shadows that had no source,
the void that breathed around them.
There was no way to see where the creature ended
and the void began.
They were the same thing.
The layer pulsed.
At a distant point—
the darkness thickened.
The creature emerged.
Not from nothing.
From the shadow of the layer itself—
like something that had always been there
and had simply decided to take form again.
The attack came from the blind spot.
Kaelion turned.
The blade found the structure before the impact.
The creature stepped back—
and dissolved again before the second cut could reach it.
The layer pulsed again.
Another point.
More distant.
— That trick won't work anymore.
Kaelion was not looking at where it had emerged.
He was looking at the layer.
At its movement.
At the thickening that preceded the emergence—
that instant before the darkness decided to take form,
when there was a subtle difference
between the void that simply existed
and the void that was about to become something.
The creature emerged behind him.
Kaelion was already turning.
Diagonal cut.
More smoke.
More delay in the regeneration.
The creature dissolved before it finished reconstructing.
Kaelion stopped.
Not to rest.
To observe.
The black smoke that rebuilt the creature's body
did not come from the creature.
It came from the layer.
From the void.
Invisible threads connecting the dissolved form to the void around it—
sustaining,
rebuilding,
returning what had been separated.
And when it dissolved to move—
it used the same threads.
The same flow.
The same source.
He tilted his head slightly.
— Ah…
The creature emerged again—
this time more aggressive,
as if it knew something had changed
without understanding what.
Kaelion did not attack.
He observed the flow between the creature and the layer.
The invisible threads pulsing.
The darkness moving toward the form
to rebuild what had been cut.
— So that's how it works…
He raised the sword slowly.
— You don't regenerate.
The golden light reflected in the darkness around him.
— You drain.
A pause.
— The layer rebuilds you.
— And when you dissolve to move…
— you use the same source.
Cold eyes fixed on the invisible threads.
— What happens if I cut that source?
Silence.
The layer rippled.
The creature did not respond.
But the threads between it and the void
pulsed faster—
like something that had been identified
and now needed to be protected.
Too late.
He had already understood.