The world had dissolved into a slow-motion nightmare of blood and betrayal. Eric's head lay at my feet, his eyes, forever open, reflecting a sky choked with ash. The six figures who had appointed themselves our executioners stood over his corpse, their terrible, manic smiles a stark, obscene contrast to the carnage around them. They were vultures, arrived at the end of a great war to feast on the carrion of the victors.
The leader, a tall, handsome boy with cruel, intelligent eyes and a smile that was a razor blade, took a step forward. His gaze swept over our broken, bleeding forms, a connoisseur appreciating a fine, tragic tapestry. His team of five fanned out behind him, their movements fluid, practiced, and utterly predatory. They walked with the casual arrogance of those who had never known defeat. One of them, a wiry boy with dark, thorny vines tattooed up his arms, stepped directly on Jin's outstretched, unmoving hand as he passed, the crunch of bone a sickening punctuation mark in the heavy silence.
They moved toward Lana, who was still on the ground, her body a wreck of venomous gashes and exhaustion. She pushed herself to her knees, her knuckles white as she tightened her grip on her Verdant Iron Staff. Her wild, manic energy was gone, replaced by a cold, familiar hatred.
"Lana," the boy said, his voice a smooth, condescending purr. He stopped a few feet from her. "Stop it. You can't fight me. Not right now. Not in the state you're in. Don't make this harder than it needs to be."
"Lucien," Lana spat, her voice a low, venomous growl. "Just leave us alone. Go find some other broken things to play with, you coward. Your stupid mind is just like it was before. Always backstabbing. Always bullying. Always hurting Dante."
At the mention of my name, Lucien's gaze snapped to me. The condescending smile vanished, replaced by a flash of pure, undiluted poison. It was a look of deep, festering hatred that had been cultivated over years. He was a ghost from a past I had tried to forget, a ghost from the grey, hopeless walls of the orphanage.
"You never change, Lana," he said, his voice dropping, turning cold and hard. "You never saw, did you? You never accepted me. You stuck to that bastard in the orphanage, day in and day out. Trailing after him like a lost puppy." He took a step closer to her, his voice rising with a bitter, wounded rage. "I thought when we went to college, things would change. I thought you would finally see what a real man is. But you chose him. That weak, quiet, pathetic little mistake."
He looked from her to me, a cruel, triumphant light dawning in his eyes. "You hurt me, Lana. You chose the garbage over the prize. But now… now it's time for my revenge. Now, you will finally see the beating I should have given him a long, long time ago. The one he so richly deserves."
He started walking toward me, his footsteps slow, deliberate, each one a hammer blow against my fading consciousness. I tried to push myself up, my body a screaming ruin of pain and exhaustion. I reached for the power within me, for the tethers to my spectral army. I accumulated the last, pathetic dregs of my mana, a tiny, flickering candle flame in the vast, empty desert of my soul, and I tried to call them.
Nothing happened.
The connection was there, a faint, dead thing, but my summons would not answer. My mana, the very lifeblood of my power, felt… clogged. Stagnant. It was inside me, but it had stopped flowing.
Lucien saw the confusion and dawning terror on my face. He laughed, a short, barking sound of pure, malicious glee. "It's no use," he said, stopping just a few feet away, looming over me. "You can't use your magic now. You're useless. Just like you always were."
He glanced over his shoulder at a boy with silver hair and unnervingly calm, grey eyes who stood behind him. "Veyrion, you didn't even need to use your skill. This pathetic bastard can't lay a hand on me."
My mind reeled. A skill. They had a skill that could block magic. The perfect counter. The ultimate weapon against a foe like me. My greatest strength, the foundation of my entire empire, had been rendered utterly, completely useless.
My instincts screamed at me. My hand scrabbled for the hilt of Soul-Drinker, which lay on the stone beside me. My fingers brushed against the cold leather.
But then, a new, excruciating pain erupted through my body. I looked down. The blood that was weeping from the dozens of cuts and blisters I had sustained was no longer dripping onto the ground. It was rising. Tiny, crimson beads floated into the air as if drawn by an unseen, malevolent gravity. They coalesced in front of me, a swirling, liquid sphere of my own life force, pulled by the focused will of another of Lucien's teammates—a pale, thin boy who watched the process with the detached curiosity of a scholar.
I cried out, a choked, gurgling sound, as I was wrung out like a wet rag, the pain of my own blood being forcibly extracted from my body an intimate, violating agony. I collapsed to my knees, helpless. The sphere of blood compressed, solidified, and elongated, forming a beautiful, terrible blade. It was a longsword, forged from my own life, its edge a translucent, ruby red. It flew through the air and settled perfectly into Lucien's waiting hand.
He admired the blade, a look of profound satisfaction on his face. "A beautiful weapon," he mused. "Fitting, that your own strength will be the instrument of your punishment."
Then he kicked me. The blow was not a powerful, bone-shattering thing. It was a simple, contemptuous kick to the ribs that sent me sprawling onto my side. He kicked me again, and again, the impacts jarring my already broken body.
"Please, stop!"
The voice was Lana's. She was crawling, dragging her wounded body across the blood-soaked stone, her face a mask of desperate, tear-streaked agony. "Lucien, please! Stop it! Hurt me! Do whatever you want to me! Just leave him alone!"
"Lana, no!" another voice cried.
Rina. She had somehow found the strength to get to her feet. She stumbled over to me, her hands glowing with the last, faint embers of her healing power. She placed them on my chest, the gentle warmth a stark contrast to the brutal, jarring impacts of Lucien's kicks. She looked up at him, her gentle face full of a fierce, defiant courage I had never seen before. "Get away from him," she said, her voice shaking but firm, as she tried to push him away. "Please… just leave us. We're beaten. There's no honor in this."
Lucien stopped kicking. He looked down at Rina, at this small, fragile girl who dared to stand between him and his revenge. He laughed. It was a sound devoid of all humor, a cold, empty thing that promised nothing but pain.
"Honor?" he said, raising the blood-red sword. "I'm not here for honor."
With a single, fluid motion, he swung the blade. It sliced through the air with a soft, wet whisper. Rina didn't even have time to scream. The sword split her stomach in half, its crimson edge passing through her as if she were made of water. For a moment, she just stood there, her eyes wide with a look of stunned, final surprise. Then, her body, cleaved almost in two, fell apart, collapsing to the ground in a grotesque, steaming heap.
The sight of it, the sheer, casual brutality of it, sent a jolt of pure, unadulterated rage through me that momentarily eclipsed the pain. This was it. My chance. His attention was on her body, his guard was down.
I lunged for Soul-Drinker. My hand closed around the hilt. I was going to take him with me. I was going to drive my blade into his back, even if it was the last thing I ever did.
But as I moved, the ground beneath me erupted. Thick, thorny vines, the color of dried blood, shot up from the cracks in the stone. They were alive, and they were impossibly fast. They coiled around my arms, my legs, my torso, their thorns digging deep into my flesh, locking me in an unbreakable, living cage.
Lucien turned, his maniacal smile returning as he saw my futile, desperate struggle. He looked at the boy with the vine tattoos, who gave him a small, satisfied nod.
He then looked back at me, at my right arm, the arm that held my sword, the arm that commanded my legions of the dead. His eyes narrowed, and the smile on his face widened into a look of pure, ecstatic rage.
"You wanted to fight back?" he hissed, his voice a low, dangerous whisper. "You wanted to be a hero?"
He raised the blood-red sword, my own life force forged into a blade of vengeance.
"A hero needs his sword hand, doesn't he?"
He swung.
The pain was a white, blinding supernova that consumed the universe. I screamed, a raw, animal sound of pure, soul-shattering agony, as the blade sliced through my arm just below the shoulder.
My arm, still clutching my black sword, fell to the ground with a wet, heavy thud. The world dissolved into a vortex of pain and darkness, the last thing I saw being Lucien's triumphant, laughing face.