If you've never had a sword aimed directly at your neck by a man who looks like he bathes in firelight and contempt, I don't recommend it.
My mind didn't have time to scream—didn't have time to do anything except shove my head just far enough out of the way that the blade kissed my cheek instead of splitting it.
The air sang between us as the edge whispered past my skin, leaving behind a line of heat so fine it almost didn't hurt at first. Then the sting came, sharp and wet, and the smell of iron flooded my nose before I realized it was my own blood. Behind me, the mirror groaned, then cracked with a sound like ice breaking over deep water, and for one strange moment, I was more offended about the mirror than the fact that I'd nearly lost part of my skull.
I didn't breathe. Salem didn't either.
He just stood there, still in the follow-through of the strike, his arm lowered slightly, his head tilted toward me with that infuriating softness in his smile. A smile that said: Yes, I could have ended you. No, I won't bother explaining why I didn't.
My pulse was galloping hard enough to make my vision throb, but I didn't give him the satisfaction of seeing fear—only the flare of something reckless and dangerous in my own eyes.
Before I could think better of it, before sanity could tap me on the shoulder and ask politely if I'd lost my damn mind, I lunged forward with a flurry of blows so fast and messy it felt less like swordsmanship and more like trying to beat the smugness out of someone with sheer persistence.
Steel rang against steel in a rhythm that should have sounded like battle, but instead it sounded like a blacksmith tapping a bell for fun. Salem didn't shift. Not even an inch.
My strikes came in from the side, from above, from below, looping in feints and driving in straight lines meant to overwhelm—yet each one met with the barest flick of his wrist, as though swatting away moths.
The impact of every parry jarred up my arms until my shoulders ached, my breath coming faster and heavier with each failed attempt to even get him to move. There's a special kind of humiliation in realizing you're pouring every drop of yourself into something, and the other person isn't even taking you seriously enough to break a sweat.
I staggered back, bent slightly at the waist, panting, and let my sword arm sag.
"Alright," I rasped, letting my knees tremble. "Fine. You win. I surrender."
The words came out hoarse and pitiful, and I saw the faintest flicker of surprise in his eyes as he stepped forward—just enough surprise for me to tighten my grip and swing downward with every scrap of strength I had left. The blade cut through the air in a vicious arc aimed for his shoulder, the kind of blow that wasn't about elegance or precision—just raw, ugly intent.
It might as well have been a falling leaf.
Salem's hand came up, palm open, and caught the blade from above as if it were nothing more than a cane being politely returned to him. The steel didn't cut his skin—didn't even mark it.
My disbelief didn't have time to register before his other foot came up, braced against my stomach with all the casual cruelty of someone closing a door. The kick wasn't even a kick—more like being shoved by a collapsing wall.
The air tore out of my lungs in one sharp, ugly grunt as I flew backward, the mirrors exploding around me in a chorus of splintering glass before my body finally met the stone wall behind them.
My spine complained in about six different dialects of agony, and I slumped forward, coughing once, then twice.
"Well," I wheezed, pushing myself up on one trembling arm, "I think I see the problem. You fight like a vengeful god. I fight like a drunk in a bar brawl. Small mismatch."
Salem didn't smile this time. His face was carved from focus, the kind of expression that said the warm-up was over.
In one silent, fluid motion, he bounded toward the wall I'd just bounced off and came at me in a vertical lunge aimed squarely at my forehead. I tilted my head to the side at the last second, the edge of his blade slicing the air close enough that I felt it tug at my hair. The sound it made was obscene—like a razor gliding over glass.
I didn't wait for him to retract. Instinct took over. I dropped low and darted forward, right between his legs, twisting into a crouch as I came up behind him. I had just enough time to grin—just enough time to think Now we're getting somewhere—before his foot swept in low from the side, hooking cleanly against my ankles.
The world tilted, my knees slammed the floor, and my palms caught me in an awkward sprawl. Before I could scramble up, I felt it—the cool shadow of steel hovering dangerously close to the back of my neck.
"You know," I said into the marble, my voice dry and even, "most people would buy a man dinner before humiliating him like this."
"You talk too much," he replied, not unkindly. The blade didn't press harder, didn't cut—it simply lingered there, an unspoken reminder of how little effort it had taken him to put me down.
I let out a slow sigh, part frustration, part reluctant acceptance. "You're not even trying."
"No," he agreed, and the word landed heavier than any blow could have. The sword lifted away, and I felt the sudden, cold rush of vulnerability at the absence of its weight. I rolled over onto my back, staring up at him as I caught my breath. My chest rose and fell like bellows, my body already trying to plot revenge it didn't have the energy to carry out.
And then, like an idiot, I said it. "Show me."
Salem's brow creased. "Show you what?"
"The power I'm going to be up against," I said, forcing the words through my teeth. "No games. No teasing. No shallow duels. Show me what you're really capable of. I don't have time for anything less."
He stood there for a long moment, the weight of his stare pressing against me harder than the sword had. When he finally exhaled, it was slow and deep, the sound of a man resigning himself to something he'd hoped to avoid. "You might not like what you're about to see."
I grinned, standing back up, though my throat felt tight in the act. "That's adorable. You think you can scare me."
And then he moved.
No—movement wasn't the right word. One moment he was standing there, and the next, the entire chamber seemed to tear apart under the violence of his acceleration.
Every mirror shattered in unison, the sound a single, deafening scream of glass. Shards hung in the air like frozen rain, and in the chaos, I caught flickers—no, blurs—of him bounding off the walls, the ceiling, the floor. I couldn't track his shape; I couldn't track anything. My body spun in place, my sword jerking up in raw, animal defense every time the edge of steel flashed in the corner of my vision.
It was too fast for thought. Too fast for technique. My bones rattled with every block, the shocks traveling up into my shoulders, my grip faltering as I stumbled from one deflection to the next. I could hear him, sometimes—small, sharp snaps of air being sliced apart, footsteps that landed and vanished before they could echo. The room had no up, no down, only motion and the scream of my heartbeat in my ears.
And then—silence.
A silence that felt wrong, pregnant with something I didn't want to meet head-on. My eyes darted from wall to wall, hunting for any sign of him, my breath hitching in short, panicked bursts. And then I felt it—not in my sight, but in the faint, impossible weight pressing down from above.
I tilted my head back.
Salem was standing on my head.
Actually standing there, perfectly balanced on the crown of my skull, looking down at me with that same infuriating softness from before. Steam poured from his skin in great, curling ribbons, the heat of it licking down over my face.
I laughed. It was a high, nervous sound that tasted like hysteria, the kind of laugh you make when your brain can't decide between running and fainting. "You're… you're standing on me."
"Yes."
"Well, that's… humiliating."
He stepped down without ceremony, landing on the marble floor in front of me with the grace of someone stepping off a train.
The steam trailed behind him as he straightened, his outline blurred in the haze of his own heat. I dropped to my knees—not because he'd knocked me there, but because there was nowhere else for my body to go. The fight had left me, drained out like sand through a broken glass, leaving nothing but awe in its wake.
Just as I was beginning to gather the tatters of my dignity from the floor, the door to the chamber slammed open hard enough to rattle the hinges.
Rodrick came barreling through in a whirl of boots and chain, his sword at his side, his eyes wide with a kind of battle-born panic. My body tensed instinctively—because if Rodrick was panicking, something had to be catastrophically wrong.
But then his gaze swept the room, landed on Salem, and—just like that—his posture eased. His expression slid back into that lazy, distant calm he always wore when the danger wasn't his problem.
"What's this?" Rodrick asked, stepping into the room, boots clicking on the marble in that slow, deliberate way that always made me feel like I was about to be appraised and found wanting. His gaze flicked to Salem, then to me, and the faintest smirk tugged at his mouth. "You finally decided to teach him how to fight, or is this just for your own amusement?"
"Both," Salem said, not even pretending otherwise. Then, without looking at me, he added, "This is a perfect opportunity. Let's do this two on one."
I perked up immediately, my brain slotting the pieces together in the only way that made sense. "You mean me and Rodrick… against you?" I could already picture it—two sharp, handsome devils working in tandem to finally knock that unreadable expression off Salem's face. The thought almost made me smile. Almost.
Salem shook his head. "No. Rodrick and I… against you."
The floor seemed to tilt under my boots, my stomach doing that fun little drop it does when you realize the trapdoor's already open beneath you and gravity's just been waiting for its cue. "That's not—this isn't—don't you dare—"
But it was already too late. Salem's feet shifted. Rodrick rolled his shoulders. The space between them tightened like a noose, and then they were both on me.
Salem was speed. Not just fast—liquid, flowing in and out of my guard with precision that made my head spin. Every time I tried to track him, Rodrick's blade came crashing down from the other side, his style the exact opposite: heavy, punishing, designed to split stone as much as bone. The clash of their rhythms drove me backward, my boots skidding over the marble as I tried desperately to keep up. My arms ached from deflecting Rodrick's brute-force strikes, my lungs burned from chasing Salem's flickering movements.
It wasn't even like they were going all out. This was play for them—a cat batting around the mouse before deciding whether to eat it. I managed to parry one of Rodrick's blows hard enough to open a sliver of space, tried to pivot into an attack of my own, but Salem was already there, his blade sliding against mine in a perfect, frictionless redirect that sent my momentum crashing into nothing. My breath was coming ragged now, my shoulders screaming protest with each swing, and the constant pressure closed in until—finally—my knees gave out.
I collapsed onto my back, sprawled across the cold floor like a man washed up on shore after a storm. My chest rose and fell in uneven bursts, my vision swimming, but I could hear the faintest note of approval in Salem's low hum. He sheathed his sword with that maddening economy of motion and nodded once.
"You've got potential," he said simply.
"Wow," I gasped, dragging myself up onto my elbows, "I can die happy now that the walking furnace thinks I have potential."
He didn't rise to it, and Rodrick just chuckled on his way out the door, leaving me alone in the cracked and glittering ruin of the mirror chamber.
That night, I found myself back in my room, every muscle in my body muttering curses at me for still being alive. The dim lamplight painted long shadows against the walls, and for the first time since the fight, the quiet didn't feel oppressive—it felt earned. I sat at the edge of my bed and reached into the small pouch I kept hidden beneath the mattress, my fingers brushing over the cold, familiar weight of Vincent's stopwatch.
It sat heavy in my palm, its metal casing softly catching the light. My thumb traced over the tiny, intricate etchings along the rim, and for a moment, Vincent's voice came back to me—low, steady, threaded with warning. Second Stage progression… comes with a price. I didn't need him to say more. I understood. This wasn't a toy. This wasn't something to flip open for fun or curiosity. Every tick could shave something from the thread of my life, and whatever was left on that thread, I intended to keep.
I closed my hand around it, feeling the edges press into my skin. Only when absolutely necessary, I promised myself. Only then.
The door creaked open before I could tuck it away, and Miko slipped inside. Barely dressed—light fabric draped loosely over his shoulders, the rest left to air and imagination. My heart decided to lodge itself somewhere in my throat, but before my thoughts could get truly unhelpful, Miko's voice cut through. "I'm not here to play," he said. "Not tonight."
He crossed the room with that easy, feline gait of his, and before I could react, he plucked the stopwatch right from my hands. "Hey—" I started, but he was already pressing the top. The faint click echoed in the quiet.
Nothing happened, just like last time.
Miko sighed, a touch of disappointment in it. "Thought so."
And then it hit me. "Of course," I said, more to myself than him. "They must be attuned. The relics—only people marked by 'The Maker' can use them."
He turned the stopwatch over in his fingers, studying it one last time before placing it gently back into my palm.
"Just curious," he said simply.
He was halfway to the door before I stopped him. "Wait." The word came out softer than I meant, but it hung in the space between us all the same.
The tension thickened—slow, deliberate. Miko looked back, his expression unreadable at first, then softening into something that wasn't quite a smile. "You're holding up," he said after a pause. "Better than I expected, honestly. You've got all this weight on you and somehow you still… keep the show going."
"That's me," I said lightly. "The ever-smiling disaster."
"I admire it," he said, and there was something raw in his voice that I hadn't heard before. "Even if it is just a show sometimes."
We stood there for a long moment, the air stretched taut, before Miko crossed the last step between us and leaned down. The kiss was light—just a quick, warm brush of lips that barely lasted long enough to count. But it landed with the force of a sword to the ribs all the same.
Then he was gone, the door closing softly behind him, leaving me standing there with the stopwatch in my hand and my pulse thundering in my ears.
I sat back on the bed, still breathless, staring up at the ceiling, dreading over whatever Salem had planned for me next.