The Anomaly's Path

I raised Tempest higher, and my affinities were humming around me. I could sense them.

My Flash Instinct roared in the back of my mind, sharpening my senses, showing me every twitch of everyone’s muscles and their shift of weight.

The corridor went silent.

The demons behind Kael froze where they stood, their whips crackling uncertainly in their trembling hands and their rusted blades wavering as if they could no longer remember how to hold them steady.

The knights on the floor looked up at me with eyes that were too wide and faces that had gone pale, their mouths hanging open as if they had forgotten how to speak. Even the green torches on the walls seemed to dim, the flames shrinking back from the edges of their iron brackets as if they were afraid to burn.

Something had changed in the air.

Something heavy and cold and ancient pressed down on everyone in the corridor, and no one dared to break the silence that had settled over them like a shroud.

It was as if the laws of the world had been rewritten by the boy standing in the center of the carnage.

Everyone just stood there, frozen, waiting.

Kael lowered his foot from Ren’s head, his gaze locked on me. He took a single step back, a small movement, but a significant one.

"What... is this?" he asked, his voice flat, trying to maintain his mask of indifference. "You think a name and a change in the wind makes you my equal? You are a brat playing with toys you don’t understand."

I did not answer. I did not need to. The words were no longer in my mouth. They were in my sword.

I looked down at Tempest, at the black lightning dancing along the blade in jagged arcs that illuminated the corridor in sudden, violent flashes. The space around the sword was no longer still. It rippled and warped, bending the light from the green torches, distorting the air between me and Kael.

The void between spaces was awake, and it was hungry.

I thought about Roran, what he said to me about the sword.

"A sword art is not a technique. It is not a form. It is the moment your soul decides what it is willing to die for."

I had found my answer.

"...Eclipse of the Singularity," I said.

My voice was low and steady, and the words echoed off the stone walls like a bell tolling the end of something. The green torches flickered in response, their flames shrinking back as if they recognized the name and knew what it meant.

Kael’s eyes widened.

"First Form — Fractured Eclipse," I whispered.

In that moment, I shattered my presence. The world around me shattered into pieces.

I was no longer confined to a single point in space, no longer bound by the simple geometry of being in one place at one time. I had learned, in the darkness of my inner world, that space was not a wall.

It was a door.

...And I had finally learned how to open it.

My Flash Instinct roared to life in the back of my mind, lightning mana flooding my brain and my spine, sharpening my senses until I could see the dust motes floating in the air and hear the individual heartbeats of every person in the corridor.

The world slowed to a crawl around me, each second stretching into an eternity, and I could see everything.

The fear in the demons’ eyes was unmistakable—their pupils dilated, their breath catching in their throats.

On Kael’s forehead, a thin sheen of sweat glistened. His weight shifted onto his back foot, and dark energy flickered in his palm.

I pushed lightning mana into my legs, and Volt Step carried me across the stone floor faster than sound.

But I did not stop there.

I folded the space around me as I moved, bending the distance between points, compressing the corridor into a series of shortcuts that only I could see. To anyone watching, I did not run. I vanished from one spot and appeared in another, leaving afterimages in my wake that flickered and faded like dying stars.

The first demon did not see me coming.

Its eyes were fixed on the spot where I had been standing a heartbeat ago, and its whip was raised to strike at empty air.

My blade opened its throat before it could lower its arm, and black blood sprayed across the stone floor in a wide arc. The demon’s hands flew to its neck, but it was already dead, and its body crumpled before it hit the ground.

The second demon turned at the wrong moment, its head swiveling toward the sound of its companion’s fall.

My sword drove through its chest before it could raise its blade, piercing its heart and emerging from its back in a spray of black ichor. I pulled Tempest free and spun, using the momentum to carry me toward the third demon.

I killed six of them before the first body hit the ground.

They fell like dominoes, one after another, their bodies collapsing into heaps of grey flesh and black blood. Heads rolled across the floor, severed from their necks by strikes too fast to see. Arms and legs separated from torsos, their weapons clattering against the stone as their owners fell.

The green torchlight reflected off the pools of blood that spread across the floor like spilled ink, black and thick and glistening.

The knights stared with their mouths open, their eyes wide, their bodies frozen in place. They could not understand what they were seeing. They could not follow my movements.

To them, I had simply vanished from one spot and appeared in another, and the demons around me had collapsed for no reason at all.

Ren whispered something that I could not hear over the pounding of my own heart. Elena’s hands trembled on her twin swords, the blades shaking in her grip. Dorian let out a breath that he had been holding for too long, his massive chest heaving.

Marcus, still lying on the floor with his arm gone, watched me with eyes that held no hope, only the distant flicker of something that might have been wonder.

The demons fell.

Their bodies hit the stone floor one after another, and the blood that poured from their wounds flowed between the cracks in the stone, pooling around their fallen forms and spreading outward in dark, glistening stains.

The smell of iron and ozone filled the corridor, thick and cloying, and the green torches flickered as if they were struggling to stay lit against the weight of so much death.

One heartbeat. That was all it took.

I returned to my original position.

The afterimages faded, and I was standing where I had started, my boots in the same spot on the stone floor, my sword raised in the same stance I had taken before I moved. The only difference was the blood dripping from Tempest’s edge and the bodies scattered around me in a circle of carnage.

I shook my hand, flicking the black blood from the blade. It splattered across the stone in a dark arc, and I watched it fall.

Then, the world caught up.

Thud! Crack!

Thirty heads hit the floor simultaneously. Bodies exploded in sprays of black ichor, limbs sliding from torsos as the demons collapsed like puppets with their strings cut. Blood began to flow in thick, hot rivers, pooling around my boots until the corridor was a sea of red and black.

The silence that followed was absolute.

The remaining demons stared at the bodies of their comrades, their whips hanging limp at their sides, their blades lowered until the tips touched the floor. None of them had seen me move. None of them had seen me strike.

They had only seen the aftermath, the bodies falling, the blood spreading, the impossible reality that something had killed their companions without warning.

Kael stood among the corpses of his men, his eyes darting around. "Wh... what? What just happened?" he stammered, the first traces of genuine disorientation in his voice.

I looked at him and grinned.

"I told you," I said. "I have created my own art."

"You are bluffing," Kael spat, his voice trembling with a mix of rage and confusion. "Do you really think a few tricks can defeat me? Even if you created an Art, it takes years to truly master a form. Look at you—your body is already screaming. Look at your hands! You are still weak. You are still pathetically weak."

He pointed at my hands, at the blood dripping from my fingers, at the way my arms were shaking despite my efforts to steady them. He pointed at my chest, at the shallow wound that was already soaking through my shirt, at the way my breath came in short, ragged gasps.

"Your body can barely handle what you just did. How long can you keep that up? How many times can you use that technique before your mana runs dry and your body gives out?"

He was right.

I knew he was right.

I could feel it in my chest, the drain, the ache, the hollow emptiness where my mana had been. The river that had been surging through my veins was already starting to ebb, the current slowing to a stream, the stream slowing to a trickle.

My arms were shaking, and my legs felt heavy, and my head was throbbing with the effort of holding the space around me in place.

I had only created two forms.

Fractured Eclipse was the first, the one I had just used to kill the demons. It used Space and Lightning together, folding my presence across the battlefield, letting me be in multiple places at once.

It was fast and deadly and beautiful, but it drained me every time I used it. Every fold and afterimage cost focus. Each strike cost something that I could not afford to lose.

I knew I could not truly defeat a Master-rank hybrid yet. My body was not ready to handle the art fully. Who knows what will happen if I use the second form.

I did not have to kill him, I thought, my chest heaving for air. I just have to stall. I just have to wait for Cassian.

"I do not need to master it to kill you," I said. "I just need it to work once."

"Let us find out," Kael snarled.

He lunged.

Our blades crossed in the center of the corridor, steel screaming against steel, sparks flying in all directions. Kael fought with the raw, overwhelming power of a Master-rank, his strikes heavy enough to shatter my bones through my guard.

The impact jarred my arms and sent shockwaves through my shoulders, and I stumbled back, my boots scraping against the stone floor, barely keeping my feet beneath me.

Kael did not give me time to recover.

He pressed forward, his sword swinging in a wide arc aimed at my head, the blade whistling through the air with a sound like tearing silk. I ducked under the strike, feeling the wind of the blade ruffle my hair, and swung Tempest at his legs.

He jumped over the blade and kicked me in the chest.

The impact drove the air from my lungs, and I flew backward, my arms flailing, my sword slipping in my grip. I hit the wall hard, my back slamming against the stone, and slid down to the floor, gasping for air that would not come.

Kael stood over me, his hollow eyes cold. "You are still slow."

I pushed myself to my feet, my legs shaking, my chest burning, my breath coming in short, ragged gasps. "...Maybe," I said, raising Tempest again. "But I am still standing."

We circled each other, our boots scraping against the stone floor, our eyes locked. The demons pressed themselves against the walls, not daring to interfere. The knights watched from the floor, too weak to stand, too afraid to look away.

Kael moved first.

He lunged at me with speed, his sword aimed at my heart. I raised Tempest to block, but his blade slipped past my guard and cut across my shoulder. The pain was sharp and hot, and I hissed, stumbling back.

Kael did not give me time to recover. He swung again, and again, and again, each strike faster than the last, each one aimed at a different part of my body. I blocked and parried and dodged, but I could not keep up.

He was too fast. Too strong and too experienced. We circled each other again, our breaths heavy, our bodies bruised and bleeding.

Kael raised his sword. "Let us end this."

I raised Tempest. "Yes. Let us."

We moved at the exact same moment.

"Eclipse of the Singularity: Second Form — Heaven’s Divide!" I roared.

"Demon Art: Ravaging Maw!" Kael countered.

The world slowed around us.

We moved with blinding speed. As his green energy lanced toward my chest, I did not just parry; I used my space affinity to distort the air around his attack, forcing his blade to veer slightly to the left.

Even so, his blade cut across my chest, opening a shallow, burning wound from my shoulder to my sternum. But my attack was already in motion. Heaven’s Divide did not cut flesh; it cut the space where the flesh existed.

A thin, impossible fracture appeared in the air between us, a line of nothingness that seemed to drink the light from the green torches. The fracture spread from my blade toward Kael, severing the coordinates he occupied, ignoring his armor and his aura and his rank.

Kael’s eyes went wide.

He twisted his body at the last moment, throwing himself to the side with a speed born of desperation.

The fracture missed his neck by less than an inch, but it caught him on the shoulder, opening a deep gash from his collarbone to his armpit. Black smoke poured from the wound, thicker than before, and he screamed.

A massive shockwave erupted from our collision, the force of our combined mana blowing out the walls and sending stone and rubble flying in a blinding explosion of dust.

I was sent hurtling backward, slamming into the far wall with enough force to make my vision go white.

I slumped to the floor, blood dripping from the new gash on my chest, gasping for air. Kael crashed into a pile of rubble on the other side of the corridor, dust and debris exploding outward from the impact.

The corridor fell silent again.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, coughing, blood dripping from my chest onto the stone floor. My vision swam at the edges, dark and blurry, and my head throbbed with the effort of holding the space around me in place.

I looked across the corridor.

The rubble where Kael had landed was still, covered in a cloud of dust and smoke. I could not see him.

Did I hit him? I thought. Did I actually hit him?

The dust began to settle.

A silhouette emerged from the smoke, tall and dark, its hollow eyes glowing in the dim light. Kael stepped out of the rubble, his hand clutching his shoulder, black smoke pouring from the wound.

But his neck was untouched.

He had dodged. At the last moment, he had twisted his body and turned what should have been a fatal blow into a shallow cut on his shoulder.

My heart sank.

He was still standing. He was still alive.

...And I had nothing left.

My blade had missed his neck by a fraction of an inch because he had sensed the spatial shift and twisted his body at the last possible microsecond. Instead of taking his head, I had opened a deep, jagged gash from his collarbone to his armpit.

Kael hissed, clutching the wound, his face twisted in a snarl. "It... it almost had me," he whispered, his voice trembling with genuine shock.

"It negated the distance between us. It negated my defenses. It struck at the coordinates of my existence rather than the flesh of my body." He looked at me, and his eyes burned. "If I had been a moment slower, if I had not sensed the shift in the space around me, it would have taken my head."

He stepped closer, his boots crunching on the broken stone.

"...You are a monster," he said. "What kind of art is that? What kind of sword creates something like that?"

Kael stepped closer, his hollow eyes fixed on mine, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "It was a deadly attack, bastard. But fortune is on my side. You have not mastered it. You cannot control it fully. Your body cannot handle the strain."

He pointed at my chest, his bloodstained finger aimed at the wound that was still seeping red through my torn shirt. "Look at yourself. You are bleeding. You are shaking. You are running out of mana."

I tried to stand, but my legs buckled beneath me, and I caught myself on one knee, gasping for air that felt too thin and too hot. My arms were trembling, and the black lightning on Tempest’s blade was flickering like a candle in a storm, struggling to stay lit against the weight of my exhaustion.

Kael was right.

The Art was too much for my current rank. My mana was already dangerously low, the pool in my core feeling shallower than it had been in weeks, and even with this new power, I could not forget about the gap between us.

He was Master Low. I was Adept High. The Art had closed the distance, but it had not erased it.

He raised his sword, the blade catching the green torchlight and throwing it back in pale, sickly flashes. His hollow eyes were fixed on me, and there was no mercy in them, no hesitation, no doubt. He was going to kill me.

He was going to end this.

"You cannot kill me, Leo," he said, his voice flat and cold. "Not today. Not ever."

I looked up at him, at the blade that was about to come down, and I waited for the end.

Then I heard it.

Footsteps.

These were lighter, faster, more urgent, and they were coming from somewhere behind Kael. The sound echoed off the stone walls, growing louder with each passing second, and I saw Kael’s head turn slightly, his hollow eyes narrowing, his sword lowering just a fraction.

He had heard them too.

I started laughing.

It came out of me before I could stop it. I laughed until my ribs ached and my lungs burned and tears streamed down my face, mixing with the blood that was still dripping from my chin.

Kael’s head snapped back toward me, his eyes narrowing. "What are you laughing at?"

I looked up at him, and I grinned.

"I told you," I said, my voice raw and broken but steady underneath it all. "...I told you, Kael. You are going to die here."

His eyes widened.

The wall behind him exploded.

Stone and dust and debris flew in every direction, and the green torches on the walls flickered and died, plunging the corridor into darkness for a moment before the emergency lights flickered back on, dimmer than before.

A massive hole had been torn through the stone, and through that hole stepped a figure with golden-blonde hair and golden-blue eyes that gleamed in the dim light.

Cassian.

Behind him, a dozen knights poured through the breach, their swords raised, their shields gleaming, their faces hard with the determination of men who had fought their way through hell to get here. They spread out across the corridor, forming a line between me and the demons, and I saw the fear in the demons’ eyes as they realized that the tide had turned.

Cassian looked at me, at the blood on my chest and the sword in my hand and the grin on my face, and he laughed.

"You are late," I said.

Cassian shrugged, his golden-blue eyes sparkling. "Traffic was terrible."

He raised his sword and pointed it at Kael, and the knights behind him raised their weapons in unison.

"Now," Cassian said, his voice dropping into a cold, lethal calm. "Let us finish this."

Kael’s hollow eyes swept across the knights, across Cassian, across the hole in the wall where more soldiers were still pouring through. His jaw tightened, and his grip on his sword tightened with it, and I saw something flicker in his gaze that I had never seen before.

Fear.

Real fear.

The corridor exploded into chaos.