Lindarion stood at the center, chest bare, sweat running down the cut of his shoulders. His coat, with the hidden blade beneath, lay folded over a crate nearby. In his hands gleamed Zerathis. The weapon pulsed with a dark red light that coiled faintly, like embers trapped beneath black glass. Each swing cut the air with a low hum, as though the blade sang its own hunger.
Ashwing lounged in lizard form on Nysha's lap at the edge of the chamber, his scaled body sprawled as though he'd claimed her as his personal cushion. She sat cross-legged on a flat stone, gray skin glowing faintly in the torchlight, her red eyes fixed on Lindarion.
For hours, the rhythm repeated: a step, a slash, a burst of mana so violent the walls cracked. Stones fell in small showers, dust coating the air. Lindarion's face remained cold, but there was a fury in the way he drove the blade, as though every cut sought to erase an enemy that wasn't there.
"Again," he muttered to himself. "Stronger."
