Chapter 70 – Regret
For some reason, the name Hans has always felt wrong to me.
Not cursed. Not prophetic. Just… sticky.
Back in one of the failed runs, I had a barbarian friend who refused to party with anyone named Hans. He swore up and down that "every Hans I've met means bad luck"—cheating gamblers, lying priests, smiling butchers who sold rotten meat.
I'd laughed at him then.
Superstition, I'd thought.
Now I stood in a ducal arena under Vastriel's gaze, looking at Duke Hans of Morel sitting above thirty knights and two Swordmasters, and I didn't feel like laughing at all.
There was no omen here.
Just injustice written in fat and gold.
***
He didn't even bother to stand to watch the preparations.
Why would he?
From his point of view, he'd already won. Thirty knights in full armour, two Swordmasters with named derivations, and one "weak" masked mage who'd burned himself half-empty taking down the Outer fragment.
I could feel his eyes on me as the arena filled. Not sharp. Not wary.
Just… amused.
"Enjoy the spectacle," Hans said lazily, when the captain reported the lineup was ready. "Vastriel does love a bit of drama."
The sigil high above us glowed faintly, law hanging in the air like a cold chain.
Sacred Duel. Terms fixed.
If I died, I vanished.
If he fell, his house did.
Simple.
The kind of "simple" that usually buried people who believed in it.
***
The un-helmeted knight stood at the very front of the semicircle facing me.
He hadn't put his helm on.
He held it tucked under his arm instead, golden eyes clear, face set in the kind of calm that wasn't peace so much as acceptance.
He looked like a man who'd finally reached the end of a road he'd known was coming for years.
***
(That Knight, Before)
He'd never wanted to be a knight as a child.
He'd wanted to not starve.
That had been goal enough.
He remembered dirt under his fingernails and his sister's hands red from harsh soap. His mother's back bent over laundry that was never quite clean enough for the nobles who wore it.
He remembered hunger.
Not the dramatic, storybook kind.
The dull, grinding sort that turned days into long, grey stretches between the few times they managed to eat until they were full.
Then the duke's carriage had stopped in front of their alley.
The world had changed in an afternoon.
Soft hands in expensive gloves had tilted his sister's chin up. Comments about "good bone structure," about "wasting away in the gutter," about "opportunity."
They'd been brought inside the palace walls for the first time in their lives.
Food came in plates instead of scraps.
Beds had actual mattresses.
His sister had smiled, at first.
Her golden eyes—the same shade as his—had lit up when she realised he wouldn't have to go out begging anymore. When she realised their mother could sleep indoors.
He'd loved that smile.
He didn't see it fade all at once.
Just… piece by piece.
A missed breakfast here. A day where she didn't come out of the duke's wing. A week where she started wearing dresses that didn't quite fit, that showed more skin than they used to.
Bruises she covered with powder badly.
A laugh that didn't reach her eyes.
He'd been twelve the night he found her.
Everyone knew where the servants weren't supposed to go. Especially gutter-boys dragged into velvet for convenience.
He'd gone anyway.
He'd heard something hit the floor. The sound had been wrong.
He'd opened the door.
He remembered the rope first.
Thick. Coarse. One end tied to a beam. The other around her neck.
Her feet dangled inches off the wooden planks, toes pointed like she was still trying to find the ground.
Her dress twisted around her thighs.
He hadn't noticed the stains at first.
Later, much later, when they cut her down, he saw it: a cloudy streak on her leg, drying against her skin, running down from where her dress had bunched up. The kind of thing he'd heard older boys snicker about and never really understood until then.
It wasn't blood.
If it had been blood, someone might have cared.
Something in him had gone very quiet.
Grief came later. Anger too. But in that moment, he'd just felt… small.
Helpless.
He'd wanted to grab a sword off the nearest wall and run screaming into the duke's chambers, hacksaw rage and tears and whatever else he had left.
He'd also seen his mother.
Bruises peeking out from under her sleeves now. The way the steward spoke to her. The way the duke's eyes slid over her like he was checking the ripeness of fruit.
He'd understood.
The only reason he was still breathing was because the duke wasn't finished with his family yet.
He'd swallowed his rage.
He'd taken the offer.
"Serve in my knights," the duke had said, clapping him on the shoulder with mock fatherly warmth. "You'll have food. Pay. Purpose. I am not a cruel man."
He'd become a Sword Knight.
He'd drilled until his arms shook. Learned formation calls, field tactics, the weight of armour. Got good. Good enough to be noticed. Promoted.
He'd learned how far he could push his objections without losing his mother's roof.
Not far at all.
He'd watched the duke pull other girls into his orbit. Watched the same patterns play out. Bright eyes dulling. Spines bending. Sometimes a disappearance. Sometimes a quiet burial with a priest who didn't ask questions.
He'd stood in the background, sword at his side, and pretended he couldn't see.
He'd told himself he had no power.
A knight who raised his blade against a duke was a traitor. A traitor's mother didn't live long.
Survival turned into complicity slowly.
Then a stranger came to town and burned a tower-high monster off the map.
A "dwarf mage," they said.
He'd felt the mana flare.
Small. Tight. Strange.
Not like their court mages' bloated, sloppy circles.
Then, today, that same "dwarf" had knelt in the throne room and invoked the Sacred Duel.
Under Vastriel's eye.
Against Hans.
The words had hit the knight like a slap.
He'd known then.
He couldn't kill his duke.
Couldn't challenge him.
Couldn't even get his mother out without her name being dragged through every gutter in the duchy.
But he could do one thing.
Die properly.
Die somewhere that mattered.
Die in a way that might drag Hans down with him.
***
(Back to the Arena)
The sand under my boots was stained darker where blood had soaked in from older fights.
The priests along the walls had gone very quiet.
Thirty knights formed a rough crescent in front of me, shields raised, swords drawn. Two men in slightly different armour stood behind them—Swordmasters. You could tell by the way they held themselves, by the way the air seemed to bend a little around them.
The un-helmeted knight was at the center of the line.
He caught my gaze across the distance.
There was no hatred there.
Just a strange, almost gentle exhaustion.
He bowed his head once.
Then he put his helmet on.
The captain's voice carried across the arena, amplified by the runes set into the stone.
"Sacred Duel of Morel," he called. "Terms invoked and accepted under Vastriel's sight. Thirty knights and two Swordmasters stand for House Hans. Harbard of no house stands as challenger. Fight until the challenger yields, all defenders fall, or death. Killing blows permitted under law."
A buzzing sound went through the crowd at that last line.
Sacred Duels usually discouraged lethal ends.
Hans wanted a show.
Figures.
"Begin," the captain said.
The runes flared.
The world narrowed again.
***
They didn't rush all at once.
That would've been stupid.
They came in waves.
Three knights to test me. Two to flank. One holding back to read the patterns.
They had discipline.
I'll give them that.
The first knight came in shield-first, sword high. Standard opening. Keep the unknown factor busy while your friends try to gut him from behind.
My mana suppressed aura still whispered the same lie it always had: small core, weak output, not much to worry about.
Useful lie.
I stepped into his charge.
Most people step back.
Stepping in breaks rhythm. Throws their angle.
His sword came down, shield rising to batter me aside.
Melody moved.
Not with any fancy flourish.
Just a simple, straight cut, edge-line tight and clean, through the gap between shield rim and breastplate.
The mono-edge licked out in a thin flash.
There was a brief, bright resistance—metal, leather, bone—and then nothing.
His head didn't fly dramatically.
It just… detached.
A line appeared across his neck, too perfect to be real. His body took half a step more before his knees forgot how to hold weight. Helmet and head slid off his shoulders together, hitting the sand with a dull thud.
His sword clattered down a second later.
No scream.
No messy spray.
Just a clean, horrifying wrongness. A body that still thought it was alive for one last moment.
Gasps rippled through the stands.
"Fluke," Hans said behind me, loud enough for the crowd to hear. "Lucky angle."
He didn't sound worried.
I didn't expect him to.
Two knights came in on my left, one low, one high.
They'd seen the mono-edge now.
They were cautious.
Good.
Melody hummed in my hand, eager.
"Don't get drunk on it," I muttered under my breath.
I let the next exchange look messier.
Took a glancing hit on my shoulder plate. Let a blade scrape along my ribs, felt the impact rattle my bones. Cut one knight across the visor, not quite deep enough to kill, deep enough to blind him in one eye forever.
The other caught the backswing.
Neck again.
Straight line.
The crowd's noise pitched higher.
Hans's laugh did too.
"One becomes five," he said.
He didn't even pretend to care about rules.
The Sacred Duel allowed "force in proportion to standing power."
That was vague.
He took it as invitation.
Five knights broke from the line at once this time, forming a staggered wedge. Spears stayed on the rack; this was swords-only, at least. They came from different angles, timing their steps, trying to flood every route I could take.
Good tactic against someone who only had body skill.
Bad against someone who also owned the vectors under their feet.
I let their momentum build.
One heartbeat.
Two.
Three.
Then nudged.
Not much.
Just enough.
Gravity is a suggestion when you talk nicely to it.
I twisted the lines under them, barely. Their weight leaned forward a fraction more than they meant, boots sliding half a step where they didn't want to go. Shields overlapped wrong. Sword angles shifted from "threat" to "obstacle."
It was tiny.
Barely visible.
But in battle, small shifts compound fast.
I stepped into the gap I'd made. Melody drew a crescent through the air, low and vicious.
Three men went down in one motion.
One shield split. One thigh opened. One unprotected elbow lost its joint.
They weren't dead yet.
They would be, if the healers couldn't get through the chaos.
Two more knights crashed in from my flank.
One actually grazed my mask, sparks jumping as steel met transmuted adamantium under leather disguise. The impact rang my teeth.
I moved with it, let the blow slide, stabbed backward without looking.
The point slipped up under his raised arm, under the plate, into the soft gap where even good armour had to flex.
He made a noise like he'd forgotten how to breathe.
Then he went still.
The crowd was shouting now.
Not Hans.
He was quiet.
I could feel his stare burning between my shoulder blades.
"You're going to make him panic," Melody murmured, pleased. "Good. I want his last moments ugly."
Knights kept coming.
Ten.
Fifteen.
More.
Cuts accumulated.
A nick on my thigh where I mistimed a vector. A slice along my side that left my shirt sticking to my skin with warmth. A bruised rib where a shield slammed into me hard enough to crack something.
I wasn't untouchable.
I was just… cheating a little harder.
All the while, I kept the same lie up.
Mana output low.
Flashes controlled.
No big spells.
No obvious core flare.
Let them think they were bleeding me dry.
Let them believe the court mage's assessment.
One knight fell. Then another.
Then another.
From somewhere, someone started counting under their breath.
"Seven… eight… nine…"
I didn't have the spare attention to care.
***
The un-helmeted knight moved last.
He'd stayed in the line while the others charged, sword up, eyes never leaving me. He'd watched his comrades fall, one by one, jaw tightening each time.
When we were down to fewer than ten, he finally lifted his blade and stepped forward.
The other knights parted for him without needing orders.
They respected him.
Of course they did.
He was probably their captain.
He approached at a steady, measured pace. No rush. No false feints.
We stopped a few strides apart.
I could hear my own breathing in the sudden hush more clearly than the crowd.
He lifted his visor with one hand.
Golden eyes met mine.
"Please win," he said quietly.
Not begging.
Just… stating a requirement.
"Save them."
His gaze flicked, just once, toward the chained women at Hans's feet.
Then he dropped the visor again and came at me.
He was good.
Derivation: Flowing Edge.
I felt it the moment our swords met.
His blade didn't just cut in one line.
Every swing carried echoes.
Cuts stacked at odd angles, riding just behind the main strike. If you parried the obvious path, one of the echoes tried to bite you in the exposed spot a fraction of a heartbeat later.
Against anyone relying on normal reflexes, he'd have carved them apart like meat.
I let the first swing come in high.
Melody met it, mono-edge sparking along his steel. Echoes flared—black lines, barely visible—trying to wrap around my guard.
I stepped sideways.
Not physically.
Vector.
I nudged the flow of force attached to those echoes, turned the "after-images" of his cut just a hair wide. Enough that they whistled past my shoulder instead of biting into it.
He felt the dodge.
He smiled behind the visor.
Good.
He shifted footwork, adjusting, trying to corner me.
Our blades kissed again and again, ringing sparks into the air. Each contact sent little shocks up my numb fingers. Each misstep cost me a thin line of pain across skin somewhere.
He didn't hold back.
Neither did I.
When the opening came, it wasn't dramatic.
He overcommitted on a low cut, expecting me to hop back.
Instead, I stepped in.
Close.
Too close for his sword to matter.
Melody's point slipped up under his breastplate at an angle, between ribs, straight toward the heart.
He jerked.
We were close enough that I heard the soft "ah" he made.
Then I pushed.
The blade slid through.
His sword fell from his fingers.
For a moment, his body stayed upright out of sheer habit.
Then his knees buckled.
He toppled forward, weight heavy on my shoulder for a second before gravity claimed him.
I eased him down as much as I could.
His visor had jostled open.
Golden eyes stared up at the sky.
He wasn't blinking anymore.
***
His last thought, maybe, was relief.
He'd wanted to see Hans panic.
He got his wish.
From the ground, from that low angle, he could still see the dais.
He saw the duke's hand grip the armrest tighter.
Saw the first real crack of fear run across that fat face.
Saw priests shift uneasily, glancing up at the glowing sigil overhead as if wondering how much the goddess was actually watching.
Blood crept into his vision from the corner, colouring everything red.
He wasn't angry.
He was… satisfied.
Then everything went dark.
***
There were only two Sword Knights left.
And behind them, the Swordmasters finally moved.
Time to stop pretending.
***
I straightened slowly, feeling everything at once.
My shoulder ached where plate had taken a heavy blow. My side burned with each breath. My left wrist had a suspicious crackle to it when I flexed my fingers. My legs were steady now, but they'd start shaking if this dragged out much longer.
The crowd's roar surged and dipped around me, wordless noise.
Two men stepped forward from the back line.
Swordmasters.
One was broad, with a shaved head and thick arms corded with muscle. The other was leaner, taller, eyes half-lidded like he was half-asleep and bored.
I could feel their derivations from here.
One hummed like a twisted echo of Quiet Second, warping motion lines.
The other was a line bent so tight around speed it didn't quite make sense.
The shaved one pointed his blade at me.
"You should have yielded when you had the chance, boy," he said. "You've done enough. No one would have called you a coward."
"If I yield," I said, "they stay in chains."
I didn't need to say who "they" were.
Everyone knew.
The lean Swordmaster snorted softly.
"What's a pair of palace toys to a life?" he asked.
"Everything," Melody said, unheard. "That's the difference between you and him."
I didn't look away from them.
I stopped suppressing my core.
Mana flared.
Not outward like a beacon. Just… unmasked.
For a second, the arena *buckled*.
Priests gasped.
The two Swordmasters' eyes widened just enough to show cracks in their composure.
They felt it then.
The density.
The volume.
The S-rank core I'd kept folded down tight, wrapped in the illusion of "weak, overtaxed mage."
Hans leaned forward in his chair.
"What," he said softly, "is that?"
Too late to put it back now.
My lungs hurt.
My body hurt.
My patience hurt.
Fine.
No more sandbagging.
Time to bleed properly.
***
The shaved Swordmaster moved first.
Derivation: Cleaving Kaleidoscope.
I'd seen a version of it in another life, under a different name. A cut that split into multiple angles mid-swing, turning a simple strike into a fan of impossible threats.
He stepped in.
His sword came down in a vertical chop.
Straightforward.
Except halfway through, it fractured.
Lines split off from the main path, each an after-image with its own weight and bite. One angled toward my neck, one toward my left shoulder, one toward my right hip.
Dodging one meant getting hit by another.
Blocking one broke your guard for the rest.
Fun.
I took a breath.
Pushed mana into Vector.
No time tricks.
Just force management.
The easiest way to handle too many lines is to make them one.
Melody came up to meet the main cut.
Mono-edge screamed against his steel.
At the same time, I reached into the cluster of echo-lines, grabbed the "direction" they were trying to move in, and twisted.
They snapped inward.
Angles collapsed.
His own derivation turned on itself for a heartbeat, all the phantom cuts tugging back toward his central axis instead of fanning out.
His blade juddered.
He grunted, stance wobbling as his muscles fought his own warped lines.
I took that beat.
Stepped into his guard.
Drove Melody's edge along his forearm, not deep enough to sever, deep enough to ruin fine control.
Blood welled, dark against steel.
He spat a curse and jerked back, eyes blazing.
The lean Swordmaster was already moving.
Derivation: Blink Slash.
He didn't slow time.
He cheated distance.
One moment, he was five paces away.
The next, he was *inside* my reach, sword already halfway through a swing aimed at my liver.
No build-up.
No telegraph.
Just presence / absence / pain.
I barely got Melody down in time.
His blade slid along mine, angling up toward my ribs instead. The impact sent a bolt of fire through my side.
The metal there stopped most of it.
Not all.
Warmth spread under my shirt.
He wasn't satisfied.
He blurred again.
Blink, strike.
Blink, strike.
Every appearance came from a different angle.
Up. Left. Right. Behind.
For a few terrifying heartbeats, he turned my world into a stuttering series of "where is he now?" puzzles.
Fans in the stands saw flashes of silver and read it as "inhuman speed."
I saw the trick.
He wasn't ignoring distance.
He was stepping through pre-folded paths.
Anchors in the arena.
He'd fought here before.
Many times.
The lines were already burned into the stone.
All I had to do was… grab them.
Pain flared again as a cut scored my thigh.
I hissed between my teeth.
"Pay attention," Melody snapped. "Stop admiring his footwork and break it."
"Right," I muttered.
Next time he vanished, I didn't try to guess where he'd appear.
I felt for the tug.
The pre-existing vector channels he used to "blink" along.
Found one.
Hijacked it.
He reappeared—
—too high.
For him, it must have felt like he was stepping onto a stair that wasn't there. His body expected ground. Instead, his ankle rolled as he dropped half a foot lower than he meant to.
His swing went wide.
I rammed my shoulder into him, hard, turning his momentum sideways.
We crashed together.
He stumbled.
I brought Melody up in a brutal, inelegant arc.
He got his sword up in time to save his head, but the force still took him across the face.
Steel scraped cheekbone.
I felt something crunch.
He reeled back, blood spraying from a split brow and broken nose.
The other Swordmaster came in again, fury making his movements heavier.
Two at once.
Kaleidoscope and Blink.
Angles and gaps.
The fights I hate the most aren't the ones where I'm outnumbered.
They're the ones where I *know* how to break my enemies and my body might not hold out long enough to do it.
Cuts added up.
Even vector nudges cost strain.
Every hack of Cleaving Kaleidoscope I redirected twisted my own joints. Every blink-line I hijacked made my head pound.
My breathing shortened.
Sweat stung my eyes.
My left arm started to tremble from repeated impacts.
A slash got through.
Bit deep into my side this time.
I felt something give.
Rib or cartilage. Hard to tell.
"Yield," one of them barked, blade at my throat for half a heartbeat before I swatted it away.
Knights around the ring watched, some grim, some pale.
Hans watched too.
I could feel his hope returning with every drop of my blood.
"Do it," Melody said softly. "Show them why you scare gods."
I laughed breathlessly.
"If gods scare that easily, they deserve it," I said.
Fine.
Enough dancing.
I stepped back, just out of reach, and raised my free hand.
No grand incantations.
No shouting.
Just… circuit.
I traced it in my mind.
Not Vera Flamma.
Promethean was too big here—I'd level the palace.
A smaller pattern.
Contained.
Focused.
Fire isn't just heat.
It's reaction.
Input, output, constraints.
I shaped the channels, pulling ambient mana through the scarred air, weaving it around the Swordmasters like invisible glass.
They moved to interrupt.
Too late.
The first to reach me—the shaved one—lifted his sword to cleave.
I snapped my fingers.
A line of blue-white fire flared to life not on the blade, not on him—
On his *shadow*.
Heat surged up from the point where his presence touched the world. Not enough to vaporize. Enough to *bite*.
Flame roared up along his legs, hugging armour, seeking gaps.
He screamed, tried to jerk back.
The problem with fire that starts at your grounding point is that you can't step away from your own contact with reality.
He dropped, rolling, slapping at it, trying to smother.
The lean Swordmaster lunged through the flare.
Good instincts.
Bad idea.
His shadow overlapped his friend's for an instant.
The flame jumped.
Kissed his boots, climbing up.
Now we had two men in high-grade armour suddenly discovering that steel made a very good oven.
I could have baked them alive.
Left them there.
Watched them cook.
Part of me wanted to.
Part of me remembered the knight's request.
"Save them."
Not "make him suffer as much as possible."
Just… end it.
I stepped in.
Melody's edge took the shaved one at the gap in his neck plating.
Quick.
Clean.
He went limp. The fire died with his consciousness, circuit collapsing.
The lean one swung blindly through heat and panic.
I caught his wrist with my off-hand, ignoring the pain in my cracked ribs, and wrenched.
His sword clattered to the sand.
He bared his teeth at me through smoke.
"You'll burn with us," he hissed.
"No," I said.
Melody punched straight through the thinner plate over his heart and out his back.
He jerked.
Went still.
I yanked the blade free.
The modified fire line guttered with him gone.
Two Swordmasters down.
The arena had gone quiet enough to hear my own ragged breathing.
I straightened slowly.
My vision fuzzed at the edges.
Too much blood lost.
Too much strain.
Hans stood now.
Not lounging.
Not smirking.
Standing.
His face had gone pale under the fat.
His hands gripped the throne arms so tight his knuckles were white.
Around him, priests looked from me to the glowing sigil overhead, then to him.
The Sacred Duel wasn't over.
Not yet.
But the balance had shifted.
Hard.
Melody vibrated faintly in my grip, exhilarated and furious.
"You're falling apart," she said. "But you're still standing. That's enough."
My knees wanted to disagree.
I locked them.
Looked up at the duke.
He met my gaze.
For the first time since this started, he didn't look amused.
He looked scared.
Good.
"Your knights are down," I called, voice hoarse but carrying. The amplification runes did the rest. "Your Swordmasters are dead. I'm still here."
Silence hung between us like a blade.
Vastriel's sigil burned brighter, waiting.
We both knew what the law wanted next.
Submission.
Or one last stupid move.
Hans's mouth worked.
He could yield.
He could admit loss.
He could save what was left of his family's lives by surrendering his title and neck gracefully.
He could.
He wouldn't.
I saw the decision harden in his eyes.
Regret flickered through him, faint and quickly smothered.
Regret for underestimating me.
Regret for not killing me in the throne room.
Not regret for the chains at his feet.
Not regret for the sister hanging from a rope.
Not regret for a duchy starved under his table.
He lifted his hand.
Snapped his fingers.
"Guards," he shouted. "Kill him. I revoke—"
The law moved.
Vastriel doesn't usually interfere.
She records.
Watches.
Lets mortals choke on their own choices.
But Sacred Duels have rules.
Rules he just tried to break in front of her eye.
The sigil overhead flared white.
His voice cut off mid-word.
The weight of the world shifted.
The runes under the sand hummed, angry.
The air thickened.
The crowd flinched.
Something like a laugh—not mine, not Melody's—brushed the back of my thoughts, cold and sharp as a falling star.
Hans's hand froze in the air.
His throat worked.
No sound came out.
He'd just discovered what it felt like to be under judgment instead of above it.
Regret flickered in him again.
Too late.