Chapter 60: Performers and Actors
The rooftops of the district shimmered with hostile silhouettes. About fifty of cloaked magicians crouched above, their wands sparking with volatile spells, cards spinning between their fingers like blades. Each wore a gleaming winged mask, faceless and merciless beneath the pale wash of sunlight.
On the street below, Zirak stood alone. His ghostly-blue sword pulsed with spectral fire, the blade humming like a living thing. The weight of his presence pressed against the air itself—so heavy, and so suffocating, it was as if the street dared not to breath.
The silence broke in a violent chorus.
A barrage of spells along with sharp metallic cards descended all at once—flames roaring, lightning cracking, shards of shadow screaming alongside violent barrage of cards through the air.
Zirak's eyes narrowed. With a single sweep of his hand, a spiral of radiant sigils flared to life around him, forming a barrier that whirled like a storm of runes. Fire bent harmlessly aside, lightning split against the barrier's glow, and the shadows dissolved as if burned away. Not a single attack was able to touch him.
Then the air itself flickered.
Ten of Zirak's figures appeared, each cloaked in the same ghostly-blue fire. The rooftop magicians stiffened as cold sweat beading beneath their masks. Every phantom raised its sword in unison.
A storm of spectral crescents tore free. Blue fire roared like a tidal wave, sweeping across the rooftops. Magicians were scattered like brittle leaves—some shrieked before vanishing into swarms of maggots and sparks, others were shredded in silence.
And then—sudden stillness.
Zirak felt it already from the start. The world was dimmed and the sunlight above seemed veiled, the colors dulled, as if a heavy shroud had been draped over creation. The streets were eerily calm—no echo of wind and no whisper of life as if everything was asleep.
He was in a concealed world.
He exhaled steadily. He understood it. This was not reality, but a stage hidden beneath it. No matter how violent the clash, the surface world would remain untouched.
His voice cut through the silence, calm and sharp. "Is this the measure of your order? Or have you mistaken me for a relic of the past?"
One by one, the masked magicians bowed and dissolved into nothing as if their performance was over.
Zirak's brow furrowed. These enemies were no rabble. They had chosen their moment carefully—striking while the King of these lands was away, and striking at him first. Their motives remained unclear, but one thing was certain: they considered him an obstacle. And their skill in disappearing was proof enough of their cunning.
He could break free of this concealed world at will. But he expected resistance or someone to stop him—
And as he expected, the resistance came.
From a vortex of stormclouds and lightning, a figure emerged. He landed on a rooftop opposite Zirak, black cloak billowing with a crackle of static. Upon his back blazed the crimson emblem of a twin-sting scorpion.
He lifted his head, revealing short, spiked black hair streaked with white sideburns. His voice was mocking but steady.
"Zirak of the Azure Village … a pleasure at last."
Zirak lowered the high collar of his white robe, revealing his face fully—clean-shaven, his short, lustrous black hair catching faint glints of the dim light. His black eyes, dull yet unyielding, met the stranger's with cold clarity. "I did not expect the Scorpio Order to lend aid to the Order of Cards. What has rattled your pride?"
Elsewhere, in the waking world.
Blue flames sparked across a glowing rune circle, and in a warded chamber, Zaara and Noel stumbled into safety. The walls pulsed with Zirak's protective sigils, still shimmering faintly with heat.
"Zaara!" Noel rushed forward, "Are you alright?"
Her head shook, though her heart still pounded. "Teacher … he stayed behind."
Her grip tightened around the black book in her lap. For an instant, the golden sigils on its cover shimmered like a heartbeat, resonating with her fear.
Noel's eyes widened. "Zaara … that book—"
She looked down again but the glow was gone. The cover was lifeless and ordinary.
Back in the concealed world, the man in the black cloak sneered. "You Azures have always been a nuisance wall in our path. Always! How I wish you were nothing but maggots—so I could crush you beneath my feet!?"
Zirak's lips curved into a faint smile.
"Even if we were and crushed, another would rise. This is the war that has been occurring since the beginning of the world—the struggle and endurance of light and shadow. No wish of yours can end it, and no power can silence it. It will continue … until the last breath of the world itself."
For a heartbeat, the Scorpio mage's disdain faltered into grim focus. His hand emerged from his cloak, drawing a staff etched with crimson runes. As he leveled it at Zirak, the dim sky deepened into a storm-black void.
Zirak let his sword extinguish in his grasp. His hand rose in a poised gesture, fingers weaving a shape of power. His tone was low, but resolute.
"So … you show your true fangs. Then I will answer in kind."
The concealed world cracked as spirals of blue fire radiated outward, unfurling like constellations in the dark. His aura swelled until the entire sky trembled with its weight.
And then, just behind him, a phantom emerged.
An immense figure wreathed in pale flame, crowned in ghostly light. Its eyes burned like stars, and in its hands rested a blade that mirrored Zirak's own.
The Scorpio mage's voice dropped into a mutter, tight with unease.
"Old Vemari … and the Spectral Flame Aspect."
He lifted his staff. The clouds convulsed, lightning roaring to life. With a single thrust, he unleashed twelve colossal dragons wrought of storm and thunder. Their eyes glowed with lightning, and their roars splitting the stillness like deadly wrath.
On the ground below, Zirak stood unmoving, his faint smile unshaken.
Above him, the phantom raised its blade.
And the storm met the flame.