"No skin-to-skin contact. I will not lay my bare hand upon you," he promises, though it sounds more like a threat. "But I will bring the decay to your very breath. I will forge the curse into a weapon, and we will see if your human resilience is truly absolute, or if you will finally burn."
The dueling hallis a cavernous monument to violence.
Located deep within the eastern wing, its walls are forged from impenetrable black ironwood, and the floor is a vast expanse of polished obsidian, scarred by centuries of ancestral combat. The ceiling arches into a vaulted darkness, supported by massive stone pillars. It smells of old blood, steel rust, and the metallic tang of necrotic magic.
I stand at the edge of the sparring circle, wearing my lightest leathers, my boots gripping the smooth stone. The heavy leather satchel containing the obsidian relic is strapped securely to my waist.
Khaelor stands thirty paces away. He does not draw a sword of steel.
Instead, he raises his right arm. The air around him warps, screaming as the atmospheric pressure violently collapses. Theblack-gold ichor weeping from his skin pools into his open palm. It solidifies, elongating into a massive blade of pure, condensed decay. The weapon crackles, weeping a toxic, luminous smoke that instantly pits the obsidian floor beneath his boots.
"You will yield when the air decays," Khaelor commands.
He does not wait for my compliance. He moves with the terrifying, impossible speed of an apex predator.
One second he is thirty paces away; the next, the heavy displacement of air batters my face. He brings the blade of condensed rot down in a devastating arc.
I do not attempt to block. I dive.
I hit the polished floor and roll, the rough leather of my tunic scraping against the stone. The sound of his strike is deafening—a cataclysmic rupture of magic and matter. A shockwave of pure force violently throws me another three feet. I scramble upright, gasping for oxygen.
Where I had stood half a second before, the reinforced obsidian is annihilated. A crater of bubbling, glowing slag remains, the stone literally dissolved by the concentration of his curse.
He turns, his molten eyes tracking my movement. He does not run; his advance is a stalk, measured and utterly lethal. The heat emanating from his form is blistering.
"Speed," Khaelor murmurs, the word carrying over the hum of the decaying stone. "A common prey response."
He sweeps the blade horizontally. A crescent wave of black-gold energy detaches from the weapon, severing the air as it hurtles toward me.
I sprint toward the nearest structural pillar, using the heavy momentum of my run to vault off a shattered chunk of masonry. I hurl my body behind the massive column just as the magical wave impacts. The stone shudders violently, cracking under thecorrosive force, sending a rain of sharp debris and dust over my shoulders.
I do not panic. My years in the Undercity—scaling collapsing ruins, dodging the rusted traps of dead warlords—take over. I redirect my momentum, pushing off the pillar and sliding beneath the dissipating smoke of his attack, staying within his immediate perimeter. To flee is to die tired. I must remain in the storm.
Khaelor’s jaw tightens. He registers my tactic—refusing to create distance, choosing the dangerous proximity of his reach.
He escalates. The black-gold light marking his skin flares to a blinding intensity. He drives the heel of his boot into the floor, unleashing a radial shockwave of necrotic force.
The blast tears through the hall. The upper balcony, a heavy structure of marble and ironwood directly above us, groans under the sudden, violent decay. The supporting brackets rust into nothingness in the span of a breath. With a deafening crack, a massive section of the balcony fractures and plummets.
I weave through the falling debris, the heavy slabs of marble shattering against the floor around me. The air is thick with dust and the choking scent of sulfur. My lungs burn. The exertion pushes a sheen of sweat to my skin, yet as the localized pockets of his curse wash over me, my flesh remains whole. I do not blister. I do not rot.
At my waist, a sudden, searing heat blooms.
The obsidian relic strapped in my satchel awakens. It begins to hum, a deep, resonant vibration that vibrates through my hip bone and up my spine. But it does not scream in opposition to his magic. It sings in perfect, terrifying synchronization with the pulse of his black-gold energy.
I pivot around a falling chunk of marble, my gaze flicking upward. High in the vaulted shadows, near the fractured glassof the clerestory windows, hovers a small, silver orb. A court scrying eye. Theryn’s observers.
The orb should be flashing red, warning of critical magical destabilization. It should be shattering under the sheer weight of Khaelor’s output.
Instead, the orb glows a steady, serene blue.
The manor is not detonating. As Khaelor pours his raw, volatile curse into the room, the dormant Blackflame wards embedded in the obsidian floor are quietly drinking it in. The foundations are anchoring his rage. My presence is not inciting an explosion; it is forcing a stabilization.
I am so distracted by the glowing orb and the humming relic that I misjudge my footing on a patch of fresh slag.
My boot slips.
Before my knees can hit the stone, a heavy, inescapable force cages me.
