[Nicholas Anstalionah.]
The sky was a pale, endless blue, a boundless realm untouched by sin or sorrow.
No law governed this place. No fault dared to exist within it.
It was serene. the sacred expanse from which dragons drew their strength.
"I hate to stain this realm with struggle," I said, my hair whipping across my face as mana roared through the stillness.
Harlequin nodded, his expression unreadable. "Yes... and yet I would not wish to stain the world below with our grief."
I smiled faintly. "So we agree."
Then, we moved.
My blade arched through the air in a violent flash, and pain surged through me as I pushed myself beyond mortal strain.
He met my strike with flawless precision, and the battle began, a terrible, transcendent sequence that was above causality itself.
Each moment folded into the next, each clash happening in infinite mirrors of the same instant.
His speed rivaled my own, his strength reflected Mirabel's, a balance too perfect to endure.
Every time our blades met, I felt more of him.
His grief, his fury, his will to protect. So I spoke between the thunder of our blows.
"How does a king rule his kingdom?"
He deflected my thrust with an effortless twist, countering in the same breath. "For the betterment of all, those beneath him, and himself."
I ducked low, driving my leg into his chest.
He staggered back through the air, and I surged forward, my blade trailing black light.
"And if the kingdom faces ruin? If it falls, how will you rise again?"
He caught my wrist mid-swing and threw me upward into this realm without ground or sky.
"Then I will return," he said, voice firm, "with a force greater than the one that forsook me, and I will rise again."
I swung downward, our blades screaming as they met. "And if they refuse your efforts?"
He trembled, falling back from the clash, a bitter smile cutting through the firelight. "Then I will try again... until I obtain victory."
"This is the price of a king, is it not? Is this your conviction?"
He met my gaze, his tone like cracked iron. "My conviction is boundless. I am... lost within it."
[The two were at odds, yet could not fully explain why. It was a battle of mystery, of reflection, a tragedy painted in steel.]
Harlequin raised his hand, invoking a spell so vast that even my ink magic could not rewrite its frame.
A pastel-white orb of flame burst forth, streaking toward me at impossible speed, a sun reborn from grief.
But it was devoured in an instant by a greater fire, one black and unholy.
He scoffed. "Bold. Disrespectful. And foolish."
The white flames pierced through my darkness and slammed into me, searing through my ribs.
I was thrown back, spinning in the emptiness, and then his blade came down like a comet.
I conjured a grand barrier of ink magic, rewriting the concepts before me.
The realm shimmered, the rules trembled, and he struck through it all, unyielding.
He broke the barrier cleanly, only to meet my fist.
His head snapped back, and I followed with a strike to his gut before bringing my blade toward his throat.
He vanished, replaced by a clone of white fire. For a breath, I was blinded by light.
Then I heard his voice.
"Dragon's Breath."
Above me, his throat glowed white, and the realm was consumed.
Flames filled the realm, stretching endlessly, burning through the fabric of existence.
There was no sky, no horizon, only annihilation. It burned my body, my soul, my name.
Yet I stood.
A cloak of darkness rippled around me as two pillars of void rose to either side.
He cursed, wings flaring, and charged, only to meet my descending blade.
His fist struck my chest. I coughed blood, the crimson floating weightlessly.
His next kick sent me upward; his blade followed, piercing my shoulder.
He twisted it. Fire exploded through the wound, a detonation that ripped through the silence of heaven.
I vanished, reappearing above him, grabbing his leg before he could retreat.
My throat burned as I released a miasmic wave, death magic, thick and choking.
He escaped by flying beyond infinity, but in this realm, infinity was only a circle.
I reached through the endlessness, seized him, and called down spires of void.
They rained upon him without mercy. His eyes widened as I whispered the incantation.
"Great flames of evil that transcend life and death... Hellfire Dragon!"
From the blackness, a colossal dragon rose, its body woven from the flames of damnation.
Harlequin did not flee. He smiled, a tired, broken smile.
Happy.
Happy to be embraced by such power, as though he had long awaited its touch.
When the dragon engulfed him, he did not resist.
Tears blurred my vision, tears that should never have fallen for an enemy.
"Nicholas!" he roared through the fire. "This is the extent of my conviction!"
His clothes burned away, revealing a mark upon his chest, gold, radiant even amidst ruin.
It was a bear, curled in slumber.
My heart clenched. I knew that mark. It was one of kinship, of divine lineage, not unlike my own.
His eyes shone with golden light as his voice broke through the flames. "As I once told you... I am lost. Yet I am to be found once again."
And in that instant, the truth settled heavy within me.
This dragon, this monster sung of in war and fear, was not cruel.
He was sorrow itself, bound in scales and fire. A tyrant to the world, yet a wanderer at heart.
A king with no home, but many admirers. A soul who, like me, had carried his grief too long and too far.
His blade gleamed, faster, colder, the weight of finality behind every strike. He moved like a reaper who had long forgotten mercy.
Steel screamed. The blade came for my head without hesitation.
I blocked, sparks flaring, but his kick slammed into my ribs, and a spiral of white flame burst from his palm.
I flew back, swallowed by a roaring inferno that threatened to consume everything I was.
I swung downward, slicing through the terror with Sotergramma and thrust my hand forward, calling forth a spear of void.
The air warped, reality rippled, but Harlequin spun around the strike as if weightless, like a leaf turning in the wind.
Following this with merciful grace he drove a spear of flame straight into my chest.
It burned, not just the body, but the soul, a searing wound of pure truth and fury.
I fought against it, flooding myself with water, coating my body in its embrace to counter the heat.
The clash exploded outward, a geyser of vapor and pain.
Yet he evaded it, impossible, fluid, and raised his hands to the heavens. From above, the sky bled fire.
Each droplet fell with divine intent, each one heavy with annihilation, capable of burning through worlds and the concepts that defined them.
I grit my teeth, gripping my sword tighter, forcing Sotergramma to pulse with rewriting force.
I would not let reality bend to him. I would make it answer to me.
He charged, faster than thought, to stop me.
But in that precise instant, I had already rewritten the coming second. His movement aligned perfectly with my design.
Like clockwork, he advanced, leaving a single opening in the rhythm of his assault.
I took it. My fist struck his chest, and I pressed a glowing rune into his scales.
He jerked, blood rising in his throat, and the blast that followed was catastrophic, a burst of red and light that cracked the air itself.
But even as I thought him undone, he vanished. His presence, his essence, gone.
Then, pain. His blade embedded into my chest from nowhere.
My vision flickered. He wasn't merely fast, he was ceasing to be.
He dissolved, then reappeared only to strike again, from above, from behind, from nowhere at all.
This was not movement.
This was disappearance, the power of his Mark. The ability to lose himself from existence.
It was horrifying to witness. To fight something that unmade itself between every breath.
Yet as he appeared once more, I saw it, the flaw. Each time he was reborn, a faint burst of energy preceded him, a ripple in the weave of the realm.
In that heartbeat, I acted. I struck him with ink magic, binding his essence to this plane.
"This realm mirrors the Earth," I said, sealing the spell, "and now, Harlequin, you shall stay locked eternally to the Sky."
He tried again to vanish, but could not. His golden eyes met mine with a quiet, almost regal defiance.
"Then if I am unable to lose myself," he said, voice steady, "I shall, in turn, make you lose yourself."
And then, I was gone.
The world folded. I was no longer Nicholas, not even a name, not a thought. I was nothing and everything, adrift in an eternal calm.
It was perfect. A bliss so profound that the idea of returning to pain felt monstrous. The peace was narcotic, whole, unending.
[And yet, Nicholas moved. In that unchanging domain where all things were perfect, he moved.]
My eyes flickered. Reality trembled before me like a reflection breaking on water.
I stumbled back into the Sky, the illusion shattering, my mind scarred with the sweetness of what I had almost accepted.
He stood across from me, a faint sorrow in his gaze. "So, you were able to reject that sweet bliss?"
I lifted my sword, the weight of choice heavy in every breath. "As were you. It seems we are both fools of our own design."
He raised his blade. Our auras clashed, violently, beautifully, waves colliding across a boundless ocean.
"Yes," he said, his voice echoing through the realm, "foolish we are. So foolish. Perhaps it is best if we die."
The air rippled with his words, and then came the voice, everywhere, as if the realm itself acknowledged his truth.
"Dragon of Loss: Harlequin."
As he spoke, the Sky opened, and his true power unfurled before me, the ability to lose all things, even limitation itself.
Then the storm came.
A flurry of strikes rained upon me, faster than thought, faster than the concept of speed. Each cut devoured more than flesh; each blow eroded the ideas that built me.
Despair incarnate, loss made sentient.
And yet, even as the storm tore through me, my mind held one thought, one act left to take.
But when I reached for my Regalia, it did not answer.
In that silence, that failure, I felt something else rise, something deeper, darker, and forbidden.
If divinity had abandoned me, then sin itself would answer.