Camelot. Eternal morning; the city walls glowed with a blinding white light that made the eyes ache, and shadows hid in the cracks, as if ashamed of their own existence. White towers reached toward the sky like temple pillars, and the air around them trembled with a surge of sacred heat—not warmth, but ritual, when light does not bestow, but judges.
At the foot of the hill, by the massive gate, a company had gathered. They weren't an army in the true sense of the word—they were men rejected by their own history: former knights, their faces seared by old honor and new loss; mages, their runes dulled by long doubts; peasants, pilgrims, and fugitives who had found no salvation in the light. All they had left was a hand in a hand, banners, torn and tangled, and a weary determination in their voices that sounded more like a judgment than a plea.
One by one, they climbed the cliff face. Their faces were eaten away by dust and old pain; their eyes glowed not with a fanatical flame, but with the dim, tired light of those who have seen too much falsehood in sacred words. The banners fluttered; the wind seemed unwilling to touch the fabric—perhaps because it saw what lay in the hearts of men.
The old mage from the Temple of Solomon stood above the others. They looked to him as the voice of an ancient truth, forged through years of prohibitions and exile. His cloak was singed, his hand trembled only slightly; his eyes held not fear, but a firm recognition of the inevitable. He placed his palm on his staff, covered in cracks and carved symbols, and when he spoke, his voice rang out like the ringing of an ancient bell.
"Arturia!" he shouted, his voice echoing across the square, casting a shadow over the faces of those listening. "You call yourself the light, but whose light have you preserved? Whose children die while your altars glow? You feed the palace and scorch the field. You turn fear into law, and because of this, your name has become not the name of a king, but the brand of an executioner!"
The crowd responded with a cry—not just a noise, but a single wave of reproach:
"False Sun! False Sun!" came the sound, like a guttural bell, and the word echoed off the stone slabs.
The old man raised his hand, and the sudden silence became sharp as a knife blade. Then he leaned closer to the edge and spoke slowly, each word like a spell:
" If Light has become a tyrant, let Darkness free us."
These words weren't a plea—they were a sworn promise. They cut the air like a sting, and they touched the most hidden places in the souls of each person standing there: the hope that had once given them the strength to endure was replaced by a determination to take back what had been taken from them.
The horn boomed. At first, barely audible, then a second and a third—harsh, methodical, like the reflection of a drum in battle; the sounds of the horn stretched across the valley and, like a cord, tautened hostility toward the peaks. A ceremony unlike its usual descended upon the city. It was a call to action, a signal that words had been translated into action.
The rebel troop surged forward, their feet digging into the sand, their hands clutching shafts and staves. The mages raised their hands, hundreds of symbols and seals blazing in the darkness of their fingers—not for worship, but for defense and attack, for their faith had been stripped away, and they now wielded magic as a nameless weapon.
From the top of one of the arched towers, looking out as if into an arena, Arturia watched the siege begin. Her figure was carved from bronze and light; her helmet obscured her features, but couldn't hide what flickered across her visage: not mortal embarrassment, but something resembling sadness. She stood upright, calm—as one who has accepted a sentence even before it's pronounced.
Rongonniamiad rested in her hand, cold and silvery, like a pitchfork of reason. Arturia did not raise her voice; her words were not a matter of demonstration, but a measure. But those who could read the lines of a face noticed a moment—barely perceptible—and it reflected something nameless and rare: a memory of dawns that had come before, of laughter that once spilled over the fields, before the sacred light became an instrument.
On the ground, the battle raged, like torn canvas: shields clashed with spears, the clanging of iron becoming the music of battle. The rebels advanced on the gates, eager to wrest from the authorities the right to speak about life. The knights of Camelot, precise as prayer, rose to defend themselves—their hissing hovered between ritual and machine; every step was as precise as a law.
But Arturia remained on the tower, and there was something less terrifying about her calm—more inevitable. Her eyes slid over the faces of the rebels, and in that brief, indifferent glance, there was a hint of regret, as if she knew that many of those now screaming and throwing themselves on spears had once followed her with trusting faces. Now that trust had wavered; the light she carried had become heavy. She didn't lower the rongonnimiad, but she didn't raise it in angry pleading either—she simply held it, like the head of the clan law, and it seemed as if even her weight was sad.
None of her gestures were demonstrative; even as the first ranks touched steel and the first spells flared, she took no steps downward. Perhaps because judgment is not a momentary flash, but a protracted act, and Arturia knew that if she descended now, she would become not a judge, but a participant; if she remained, she would become the embodiment of the law. Her calm held an almost sacred sadness—not weakness, but acceptance of the price that must be paid for order, whatever that may be.
The horn sounded again, as if the world were reminding itself of a rhythm. And when the rebels stormed, when the sounds of battle filled the space between the wall and the hunched mass, the eternal morning of Camelot did not change its light. It continued to shine—cold, merciless—and in that radiance, as in a mirror, a new name was reflected: the name cast into the crowd by those who rose up against the crown.
"False Sun!" came a bloody chorus of voices; the word repeated itself, pounding against the stone and, like a ringing bell, returning to the walls, and its echo reached all the way to the tower where Artoria stood, quiet as the grumbling of an ancient god.
A new sound rose from the fields toward the gates—not the roar of a crowd, but the precise march of a formation. Knights emerged from behind the arch, each of their forms as if carved from the morning vault: Gawain, in armor gleaming with gold, beneath banners that caught and sent back the light; Mordred, with a hard, mocking gaze and a mother of refusal in his voice; Tristan, with a harp slung over his shoulder, his fingers instinctively touching the strings; Agravain, solid, stern, his bearing more lawful than human. They carried more than just banners: they carried symbols that had become sacred in this world—circles of light, the carvings of seals, images that captured entire oaths.
They advanced as one, step after step, in a prayerful formation, and their tread echoed ancient oaths. A thin carpet of rebels unfolded before them—disorganized but wrathful; their faces were determined, but they were confronted not by a mob, but by an institution—a center of faith, represented by the whole armies of warriors.
The rebel mages, not waiting for the swords to meet, raised their hands. Their fingers traced ancient symbols in the air, long forgotten in the sacred halls, and the air around them shimmered like liquid iron. Their seals flared—not in the light, but in defiance: circles of sand, scorched runes, pillars of fire erupting from the stone of the earth. They hurled sheets of magic into the sky: pillars of heat, purple discharges, and streams of hot sand that rose like storms to pierce the faces of those standing at the summit.
Gawain stepped forward. His shield was like the sun, his sword like a statement. He raised his voice, and though it was firm and even, there was no hatred in his words, but iron duty.
"Light needs no mercy," he said, and the phrase struck the air like a brand. It wasn't a plea for mercy, but a declaration: Light is order, order is duty, duty is law.
His words echoed through the valley like a drum, and the front rank of the rebels swayed. In that instant, the clash became more than just physical—it became meaningful: two universes collided. The rebels' magic surged, trying to breach the ritual's wall, but the Knights' shields and armor were more than just metal: they were bearers of an oath, and each oath reflected the light back, condensing it, making it dense.
The air above the field seemed to warp; the sky descended like a glass slab, and the sounds of battle became muffled, as if passing through thick glass. Every sword strike produced a spark, but the spark melted in the light, as if sensing someone else's power. Spears darted, clashed, and for a moment the world seemed molten, where the roar of steel and the cries echoed only the magnitude of the sentence.
Mordred charged, her blade hissing like a taunt, expecting no mercy. Each of her thrusts struck not only the point, but also the very idea of doubt. Tristan, by contrast, kept his distance: his fingers trembled over the strings, and the air was cut not by words but by layers of music that cut not flesh but resolve. His melodies were not greetings but signs; hidden within them were seals that confounded the rebels' magic, causing it to disintegrate, as if the notes were knives, severing thought from action.
Agravain was stern. His blows were calculated, like judgment, his movements undramatic; he was doing his duty and expected that duty to yield results. He held the line, covered the flanks, directed the flow of light like a carpenter directs a stream of water: not to anger, but to the benefit of form.
The rebels' magic tore again and again at the light, which absorbed it, reflected it, and returned it in hot flashes and slashing beams. Bodies collided; armor creaked; dust rose and settled like helmet dust. The light seemed to thicken under the touch of magic, as if it had itself hardened, absorbing the blows and growing even harder. Camelot responded: the earth trembled, as if the very foundations of the city had felt the impact: the rings on the towers rang, the columns emitted a soft call, and even the wind, which usually carried the scent of lader and incense, stilled.
And when the sword cut through the flesh of magic, when the shield deflected the arrow, the earth around them distorted—not geometrically, but spiritually: space trembled like glass, bending under the strain of light. Sometimes people fell, sometimes they died, but more often their movements slowed, as if time had decided to test whether flesh could withstand the resistance of a reality created by an idea.
The brutal battle raged on—blows, blocks, magical blasts—but the main battle was not so much about physics as about what each participant represented: some spoke with light, others with the voice of rebellion. And each clash was like a judicial act: a verdict rendered right on the battlefield.
As the first wave of rebels began to break through, as it seemed that chaos was about to break the straight line of the ritual, Gawain raised his sword and, looking straight into the crowd, spoke again, loudly, so that not only the people but the walls themselves could hear:
"No matter how much pain you suffer, order will remain. The Light is directed not at the destruction of people, but at the preservation of the law."
There was a conviction in those words—and like a hammer blow, they brought order back to the ranks. The knights of Camelot advanced, repelling the onslaught, and there was no idle cruelty in their movements—only the cold precision necessary to uphold the legal order. The stone slabs beneath them rattled, and even as blood dripped into the sand, it was clear: this was the price paid for faith.
Thus the air was distorted like glass under heat, and the world in which light and darkness fought for the right to be called fate, for a moment showed the face of war: glitter, metal, and the motionless, statue-like, inexorable calm of those who served the law.
At the climax, when it seemed the ritual's power had exhausted itself and the battlefield was about to be buried in armor and sand, the very fabric of the world tore. The crack came neither from above nor from below—it pierced the space between them, like the drawing of a bow, and with that sound, all life froze.
Darkness crawled out of the rift—not gloom, not smoke, but a dense black substance, smooth and cold as moonglass. It didn't spread, it grew: the surface of life parted, and where there had once been stone and rope, a gaping abyss emerged—a sea of emptiness, calm and heartless. It grasped the light but didn't reflect it; instead, the light seemed like a foreign film, a superficial glint that didn't penetrate the depths.
The ghost emerged from this darkness as if born of it. His silhouette—slender, unadorned, his mask featureless yet captivating—stood at the edge of the gap, and his presence made space shrink. He was neither a warrior nor a demiurge: he was the boundary between what was called existence and what was commonly called nonexistence.
When the Ghost's hand trembled slightly, the sea responded with tentacles. They erupted from the abyss, thin and sharp as blades; their surface glistened with cold, and the light glided over them without lingering. These were not the tentacles of a beast—they moved as methodically as a machine: grasping, wrapping, pulling.
The claws seized the first rank of rebels, not tearing flesh or ripping out hearts. They dug deeper: they captured the contours of their existence, drawing in memory and intent—those things that make a person human. In an instant, their bodies trembled, their faces contorted in strange terror, and then, without a sound, they vanished like puppets cut out of a stage. All that remained were empty armor, helmets rolling down and clanking against the stone, but within them there was no longer any weight or warmth.
The air between light and darkness began to ring—not like thunder, but like a string stretched taut between two worlds; the sound rustled through bones and echoed in the heart, making breathing difficult. It seemed as if every particle of dust suddenly acquired the weight of a word, and with its vibrations, humanity grew ever thinner.
Even Arturia, whose gaze was usually as steady as that of those who measure actions by time, took a step back. The gesture was almost imperceptible, but it contained a recognition: something was happening here that defied both simple law and oath. Her hand gripped the shaft of Rongonnamiad a little tighter, and a rare shadow crossed her face—not fear, but an understanding of the magnitude of what had been summoned to earth.
The blood on the sand was still warm when the mage, clenching his teeth, sank to one knee. His right hand trembled—dark spell burns gleamed on it—and beneath his tattered robe, the hand in which he hid a tiny crystal was visible. Fine lines ran across the crystal—a rune forged in the symbols of the Seven Towers, the ancient and forbidden language of those who once recited not prayers, but decrees.
His eyes were fading, but a spark of maddened solidity still smoldered within them. He raised the crystal above his head, and his voice, rough with wounds and fatigue, cut through the roar of battle:
"Let the gods themselves see their fear!" he cried, and his words rolled across the square like a stone thrown into a lake; they sent ripples, and these ripples were not just sound.
The world trembled. Not the earth, but rather the fabric of the visible; the sky, like glass, sang at its edges, and in this squealing, another spectacle was born. The light from the rongonnimiad, from the shields and seals of the rebels, mingled with the black polish of the Sea of the Void, and a form emerged from the boundary of these two streams, like a seam.
It came not wholly from the light, nor wholly from the darkness, but from what remained between them: a mixture of reflection and echo, the memory of what had been consumed. Rising above the sand, in whose light the ripples scattered ghostly, an image emerged—and this image was, without exaggeration, a lie, yet a truthful one. The Pure Vessel became visible: nameless, dispassionate, carved like a sculpture for prayer, in which faith had been replaced by absence.
His skin, if one could call its surface that, glowed not with a warm glow, but with the cold gleam of bone; his face was a smooth white mask, without eyes, without slits for words; his movements were precise, geometric, like inscriptions on tablets. A blade appeared in his hand, and that blade did not seem like a weapon, but a complete idea of the end: it was unadorned, it demanded no recognition—it was simply a sentence, ready to fall upon the neck of the world.
The illusion was not an empty vision. It weighed heavily on the air; its presence was tangible: even the shield panels vibrated with it, even the grains of sand lost in the seams of the armor fluttered to the sides, as if escaping the heat. The knights, whose hearts were accustomed to stern oaths and clear threats, felt it in a new way: a metallic taste in their mouths, a frozen breath in their chests. Gawain released his grip slightly; Mordred froze in mid-thrust; Tristan couldn't grasp the harp—his fingers turned pale, and the strings trembled without emitting a sound. Even Agravain, whose face rarely faltered, felt the ancient crack beneath him reverberate.
Arturia closed her eyes for a split second and whispered, so quietly that it was almost to herself, but her words, sounding in that silence, became a weighty sentence:
— Without a heart. Without a name. Without sin...
These words—neither a curse nor a prayer—hung over the arena like a mirror: in describing the creature, she perhaps tried to understand its essence, but in speaking them, she also acknowledged her own impossibility of fitting it into conventional terms. The illusion stood, motionless and precise, like a statue, and the world sensed that before it was not an image, not a projection of someone's memory, but an embodied silence that could turn into a blade.
The Pure Vessel wasted no time. His attack was not an outburst of anger, but an act of absolute necessity—as if the very concept of "strike" had suddenly taken shape and decided to consume the world.
His movements were unerring. Each thrust was not simply a slash through the air, but a wave, missing something fundamental; the blade glided across the world as if tracing a new contour of existence. When the Vessel's blade passed close, it left a scar in the air—a dull crack from which a cold void shone. It didn't burn or cut flesh in the usual sense; it erased certainty, removing the foundations on which faith stood.
Gawain raised his sword and cast a spell of light into space. His blade ignited, his shield lit up with a solar corona, and he himself seemed a pillar of dawn, the embodiment of the light that guarded order. He stepped forward, his voice cutting through the din of battle:
— For the World! For the law!
A beam erupted from his chest, a stream of light that usually frightened the darkness, rushing toward the Pure Vessel... but it met not flesh, but a mirror of thought. The light passed through the mask without touching the essence, and returned to Gawain not as an answer, but as an accusation: it flared in his own armor, and the golden crown became an inferno. His eyes flared brighter, as if the sun had turned against its wearer. The armor glowed, the hilt slipped from his fingers, his breath caught—and Gawain burned in his own light: not torn, not ravaged by the enemy, but dissolved in the very truth he bore—a flame that does not save, but incinerates those who have forgotten measure.
Mordred rushed after him. Her blade rang with mockery and pain; she advanced like a storm, revealing her blood in response to the priesthood. She advanced without hesitation—blow after blow, each thrust a cry: "I am here!" Her steel cut into the white mask of the Vessel, but instead of resistance, there was emptiness. Her sword passed as if through a reflection in water; her hand felt only cold, as if holding not an object but a promise. She leaned back, her eyes widening at the truth that her blade left no mark: not because the enemy was all-powerful, but because he did not belong to this familiar world.
Tristan, standing slightly to the side, tried to find the note that would turn the tide. His fingers thrashed at the strings, but when he played, the sound cracked and shattered into fragments. The harp fell from his hands; the body struck the stone with a dull, hollow thud, and the musician himself fell to his knees, like someone whose singing had suddenly become meaningless. Its melodies had not touched the being, had not moved him; instead, they had diminished the vanity that fueled so many. The strings became covered in grains of sand, and in their deafening silence, Tristan's heart grew still.
The field emptied of footsteps—space had gone haywire. The soldiers made thoughtful, ritualistic attempts to defend themselves; their movements grew slower, as if the world itself had decided to test the strength of every act. The light tried to hold onto reality—and in this struggle, it proved less a tool than a mirror: it returned to its bearers and, in turn, gave back what they had invested in it.
Arturia rose. Her hand gripped the shaft of the Rhongomyniad, and the spear flared like the sting of a judicial speech; the light around her thickened, forming a dense corona, ready to shatter any lie. She took a step—a step that, in a normal battle, would decide fates—and the entire line of Knights felt a surge of tension: now the king would enter the very heart of the phenomenon and weigh the scales of judgment.
But she didn't have time. Her gaze caught a silhouette standing between her and the mask of the ideal. The phantom emerged without a sound or ritual pathos: he stepped from the very shadows, not the shadows cast by walls, but from the shadows that lie along the edges of meaning. His mask was as smooth as the Pure Vessel's, but in it the world saw not emptiness, but a boundary. He stood erect, like a pillar erect, and his blade, lowered downward, was not a challenge—it was a sign.
Arturia froze. Something rarely shown by kings flashed across her face: a momentary, almost forbidden doubt. She looked at the Phantom and saw in him neither an enemy nor an ally, but something else: a power that came from more than one shore. In that moment, all her ritual light seemed to weigh: to continue would mean entering a game where the rules were no longer the same; to retreat would mean allowing the void to take over.
The Ghost looked up, and the din of battle died down for a second. Between the two masks—the Pure Vessel and the Ghost—a pause hung, charged with more energy than an entire army. The air rang like a taut string; even the stones seemed attentive. No word, no gesture was more necessary than a blow; all the knowledge of battle was concentrated in the instant readiness of two absolutes.
And as the world waited for a moment, everyone who still held their breath understood: the line had been drawn. A clash would begin, not so much of weapons as of definitions themselves—emptiness against emptiness, order against the abyss—and the outcome of this duel would decide what would remain of Camelot.
***
The Ghost stepped forward, and the world shifted tone. This wasn't a clash of swords in the strict sense—it was a conversation of forms, where every blow was a question, and every defense an answer, carved in silence. The Pure Vessel moved in the same way: without haste, without fear, as if both were following the same ancient reckoning, performed only to test the strength of existence.
Their blades met in midair—not with the crack of metal, but with a resonant, lingering sound, like a bell in a deep mine. The waves of this resonant, lingering sound, like a bell in a deep mine. The waves of this ringing diverged, breaking space; grains of sand froze in the air at the moment of impact and fell again, as if delaying time. Each thrust of the Pure One was pure as geometry, and each counter of the Ghost a precisely drawn edge; their movements reflected each other, like two mirrors looking at the same abyss from different angles.
As the duel raged, even the light of Camelot, usually relentless and dense, began to fade. The beams of the rongonnimád bounced, losing their clarity; the reflections on the armor blurred, as if a finger had been traced across glass. The city, so confident in its own light, felt a tremor: the columns trembled slightly, the flags hung limp, and a muffled grinding sound could be heard from afar—as if matter itself were trying to adjust to the new rhythms.
Their blows tore the air so that the sound took on a form—not just a noise, but a material cut. It seemed as if somewhere below, behind the stone slab, gigantic bells were ringing, and each successful combination created a new wave in the depths, echoing throughout the earth. The people standing around instinctively covered their ears; some fell to their knees, not from the wound, but from the sudden realization of the incompatibility of their previous words and the new truth.
An hour, a moment—time stretched out. They struck not only at flesh and steel; they struck at foundations, at concepts, at what was called "order" and "limits." And the more furiously the emptiness danced on the blades, the deeper the crack in the foundations of the world. Emptiness responded to emptiness, ideal to ideal; it was a mirror-like cleansing, a purge in which there was no room for pity.
Finally, when it seemed the blades' flights had exhausted the very air, the Ghost made a move, simple and final. Not a slash, but a gesture of acceptance: his blade touched the silhouette of the Pure Vessel, and at the point of contact, no dust rose, no flame spilled—deepness was revealed. The illusory flesh of the Vessel did not disintegrate into mush, did not crumble to dust; it was not externally destroyed—it was consumed by the same principle that had created it.
The absorption occurred without a cry. The Pure Vessel grew thinner, as if turning one page, then another; the white mask softened, absorbing the reflections of the night, and finally being absorbed into the black ligature beneath. His blade vanished, not falling, but dissolving, as if answering a call no one heard. The illusion returned to where it had come from—the space between light and darkness—and with it, the remnants of the image created by despair melted away.
When the final echo of the consuming had faded, the world stood still. There were no bodies left on the ground, no scraps of hope: those once held by passion and anger simply dissipated—not ashes, not as dust, but like shadows erased from the canvas. Armor lay empty; shields lay on the slab, a reminder of those who had ceased to be a part of the world. The battlefield was slowly consumed by darkness, not a gushing one, but as if soaking into the pores of stone and sand.
Arturia stood at the top of the tower, motionless, and her voice, when it came, was as quiet as a sentence pronounced in an empty hall.
— Even the abyss has a limit. But who guards it?
Her phrase wasn't a rhetorical question: it was a request cast deep into the very structure of things, an invitation that power, fear, and conscience couldn't readily accept. She looked not so much at the Ghost as at the space it now guarded: not a possession, but a new condition of the universe.
The final frame froze—the void beneath Camelot, previously hidden, now pulsed. It wasn't the heartbeat of life; it was the rhythm of the depths, dense and steady, like the breathing of a colossal organism. Dark waves, barely noticeable, rolled beneath the foundations, reflected in the cracks of the marble, and seemed to synchronize with that very silhouette standing at the edge—the Ghost. He hadn't simply become part of the Void; he had become its border—the one who hears and responds, the one who now bears the weight of what is lower and older than light.
And from above, in the white light of Camelot, no one could anymore say serenely where the law ended and the abyss began.