Previously....
——-
Voice: You see monsters here. I see purpose. I see control. I see obedience. We don't pretend to be holy. We don't pray to a sky that's never spoken. We don't ask for forgiveness. We take what others are too scared to take.
Dark: You take nothing. You steal lives.
Dark: You don't build. You harvest suffering.
Dark: You're not leaders. You're rot.
A heavy breath left the throne's figure, almost a sigh.
Voice: Then why haven't you drawn your blade yet?
Dark: Because I wanted to hear what you'd say.
Dark: And now I know.
Dark: You're not worth redemption.
The man smiled wider now.
Voice: Then you've come to judge?
Dark: No.
Dark: I've come to bury.
To Be Continued....
——-
Present:
Snow continued to fall from the jagged holes in the cavern ceiling, drifting lazily through the torchlit air. The silence that followed Dark's words wasn't shock—it was recognition. A shift in atmosphere. As if even the stones underfoot knew something irreversible had just been said.
Kaishen didn't respond right away. He stepped down from the final ledge, boots tapping softly against the cold stone. The torchlight painted slow flickers across his sleeveless robes. His arms, marked with fresh ritual cuts, glistened faintly in the cold, as if bleeding was still part of his identity.
He moved without fear. Without tension. His eyes locked on Dark the entire time.
Kaishen: So you really mean to end all of this.
Dark didn't answer.
Kaishen: No justice. No verdict. Just... burial.
Dark: I gave the rest of your kind a chance.
Dark: You stayed buried for a reason.
Kaishen nodded once.
Kaishen: Fair.
He came to a stop six feet from Dark.
Kaishen: I won't stop you from trying.
He raised his left hand.
It wasn't a signal. It didn't need to be.
The response was immediate.
Hundreds of assassins dropped from above. Off bridges, walls, and shadows that shouldn't have been wide enough to hold anything human. They landed silently—flawless synchronization. Not one stumbled. Not one wasted movement. Their cloaks didn't even flutter wrong.
They surrounded Dark in a perfect circle.
Black-clad forms. Silent blades. Steady breathing.
Each of them moved like they had already rehearsed this moment a thousand times in their heads. Eyes sharp. Expressions blank. Killers bred from the marrow out.
Dark didn't move.
His eyes swept once through the circle, calculating—not intimidated, not amused, just... reading.
Kaishen folded his arms behind his back.
Kaishen: These are the Five Hundred.
Kaishen: Retsyu's final selection. The ones who didn't graduate into the surface world. The ones who were too precise, too silent, too dangerous to ever be seen.
He turned his head slightly, scanning the assembled assassins like a conductor watching his orchestra.
Kaishen: Every one of them has survived the Hundred Cuts, the Thoughtless Trial, and the Mirror Test. None of them have families. None of them have names.
Kaishen: They weren't trained to obey.
Kaishen: They were trained to wait.
A pause followed. The weight of that sentence settled like ash on stone.
Kaishen: And now they wait for my word.
Dark: Then speak it.
Kaishen didn't.
Not yet.
Instead, he stared at Dark for a long moment. Measuring. Not his strength—Kaishen had no illusion about that.
He was measuring something else.
Kaishen: Before this begins... I want to ask you something.
Dark said nothing.
Kaishen: You fought Retsyu's shadows. You watched his empire bleed. But what you don't know is this—
Kaishen stepped closer. The assassins didn't react.
Kaishen: None of us have ever seen him. Not fully. We've seen afterimages. Echoes of his presence. Flickers of speed that tore through steel before we even processed it.
Kaishen: And we're his chosen.
Kaishen: But you... did you ever see him?
Dark's eyes didn't flicker.
Dark: No.
Kaishen waited.
Dark: I only felt the air change.
Dark: And the next moment... four of my ribs were gone.
Kaishen nodded slowly.
Kaishen: Then maybe you understand why we don't rebel. Why we don't imagine anything else. Why even now, as this place rots under its own hunger... we still wait for him.
Kaishen: Because if he ever does return...
Kaishen's eyes narrowed, voice lowering.
Kaishen: We won't have time to regret.
Dark glanced past him—at the Five Hundred.
Dark: I'm not here to break your faith.
Dark: I'm here to end chaos. To bring peace to every corner of this world.
Kaishen didn't smile this time.
He simply stepped back into the circle, joining the assassins.
Kaishen whispered something.
Too low for anyone else to hear.
A single breath of sound.
But it moved through the Five Hundred like a shockwave. Every assassin twitched in unison—eyes narrowing, muscles coiling. Blades unsheathed silently. Cloaks shifted. The entire cavern tensed.
Then they moved.
All of them.
At once.
A blur of motion erupted in every direction—five hundred elite assassins closing in on a single point. Dark didn't blink. He didn't brace. He didn't summon a weapon. The entire cavern lit with speed and bloodlust. Steel flashed. Boots skidded. Hands clawed through the air.
They were aiming for pressure points.
For organs.
For silence.
One came from above with twin daggers aimed at Dark's throat.
Two more from his left, sweeping low with curved blades meant to sever tendons.
Three from behind, no footsteps, just the sharp hiss of wind slicing air.
He didn't move until the first blade was inches from his skin.
And then—
Dark tilted his head.
Not fast.
Not sudden.
Just enough.
The dagger passed by his neck with millimeters to spare.
The assassin behind him twisted midair, realizing too late that Dark's elbow was already coming up. It struck his jaw—clean, brutal, bone-shattering. The assassin's body spun sideways into the others, breaking formation.
Dark pivoted.
Another blade came for his back.
He caught it between two fingers.
The assassin froze, eyes wide behind the mask, right before Dark shattered his wrist and sent him flying into the stone wall.
And that was only two.
The other four hundred ninety-eight didn't hesitate.
They didn't break formation.
They didn't panic.
They came faster.
Circling. Pressing. Collapsing the radius like a timed mechanism. Precision layered over pressure. Every second, ten blades flew. Every motion was meant to kill—without sound.
But Dark was still reading.
Still learning.
Not retreating.
Not attacking.
Watching.
Dark: (thinking) So this is what you kept hidden, Retsyu.
Dark stepped back—not to retreat, but to shift his stance.
Another blade sliced through the air beside his jaw, missing by a breath. He didn't flinch. His foot slid across the stone, pivoting his body between two strikes aimed for his spine. The assassins moved like ghosts—no wasted effort, no hesitation. One dove low, sweeping for his legs. Another dropped from above, spinning with dual short-swords aimed straight for his collarbones.
Dark exhaled once.
Then disappeared.
Three assassins struck where he had just been, their blades biting only the air. Before they could react, Dark reappeared behind them, boots silent, eyes calm, fist already mid-swing. The first assassin's ribs caved in with a thunderclap. He didn't scream. He couldn't. Blood sprayed from his mouth, and he crumpled.
The second twisted, bringing a knife toward Dark's throat.
Dark snatched the blade mid-air, flipped it, and slammed it hilt-first into the assassin's temple. He collapsed instantly.
The third assassin hesitated—not from fear, but confusion.
Dark turned toward him.
Dark: (quietly) You're following orders written by a man who hasn't looked at you in centuries.
He struck once—flat palm to the chest.
A wave of invisible force erupted from his hand.
The assassin flew backward, slammed into three others, and brought them all down in a pile of breathless silence.
But still—
They kept coming.
Dozens at a time.
Dark moved through them like gravity didn't apply. He ducked a spear, weaved around a blade, slammed his heel into the floor so hard the stone cracked beneath him. An entire section of assassins staggered. He didn't give them a second to reset.
He surged forward.
Elbow into a throat. Backfist across a cheekbone. Fingers dug into one's shoulder, lifted him, and used his body as a weapon—slamming him into another two like a ragdoll of broken bone.
Yet they didn't fall back.
They adapted.
The circle shifted. Tightened. Blades stopped targeting vitals and started targeting movement. His knee. His wrist. His breath.
Dark: (thinking) They're learning.
Another assassin lunged from the side—only to be met with Dark's palm pressed to her sternum.
He didn't push.
He erased the distance between her body and the floor.
She dropped, spine-first, her body twitching once before going still.
Three more followed. Dark moved like wind laced with muscle, every step deliberate, every strike minimal. He wasn't wasting power. He was showing them—
That he didn't need to.
Dark: (thinking) You built this army to be silent, fast, perfect.
Dark: (thinking) But you never taught them to survive me.
Blood began to mark the floor.
Not enough to matter.
Not yet.
But enough for every assassin still standing to feel the shift in momentum.
Kaishen stood beyond them.
Watching.
Expression calm.
But his right hand was now behind his back—gripping something.
A signal.
A contingency.
Something darker.
Something faster.
Dark ducked under a high kick, caught the assassin's leg, and twisted until the bone snapped with a muffled pop. He let the body drop.
He looked straight at Kaishen.
Dark: (calmly) They're not enough.
Kaishen didn't flinch.
Kaishen: I know.
Kaishen raised his left hand again.
The rest stopped attacking.
Instantly.
Silence returned. Five hundred reduced to two hundred standing. Blood slicked the floor. Bodies groaned, unconscious or broken or breathless.
Dark stood untouched.
Steam rising from his shoulders.
His breath slow.
Kaishen stepped forward once.
The stone beneath his boot didn't crack. It didn't echo. It didn't even register as a sound. The movement was too clean, too deliberate, as though gravity itself had made room for him.
He reached to his waist and unclipped something small.
A blade.
But not one designed for war.
It was thin. Curved. Jet-black with no reflection. Its edge looked like it had been whetted against the skin of silence itself. And in his other hand—he carried nothing.
No stance. No flare.
Just presence.
Kaishen: Retsyu never taught us to win.
Kaishen: He taught us to leave no witnesses.
Dark didn't reply. His body was still, but his mind was reading every twitch of muscle, every subtle tilt in Kaishen's shoulders. There was no doubt—Kaishen wasn't stalling anymore.
He was ready.
Dark's eyes narrowed slightly.
Kaishen vanished.
No sound. No afterimage. Just gone.
Dark pivoted. Barely.
Kaishen appeared behind him, mid-swing. The blade whistled through the air—not at Dark's neck, but across the space where Dark's shadow stretched.
Dark's foot slammed down, instantly shifting his weight. Kaishen's blade missed—but not entirely. A single thread from Dark's cloak floated loose.
Kaishen twisted mid-air and landed thirty feet away. His cloak didn't move. His expression didn't change.
Dark glanced at his torn cloak.
Dark: (thinking) He's not testing me.
Dark: (thinking) He's testing the space around me.
Kaishen struck again.
This time from above.
He came down like a blade of night—too fast for footsteps, too precise for wind. Dark blocked with his forearm. Their limbs clashed—and the sound that followed wasn't the clang of steel.
It was silence breaking.
A pulse rolled across the cavern floor. Torches flickered. Stone cracked under Dark's boots. Dust rained from the ceiling.
Dark didn't move back.
Kaishen didn't stop.
He vanished again—not blinking, but bending. As if slipping through a version of the world where time skipped frames. His blade reappeared to Dark's left, then above, then behind.
Each swing was meant to remove—not limbs, not blood—but movement. Kaishen wasn't aiming to kill.
He was aiming to trap.
Dark countered again—his hand catching Kaishen's wrist mid-strike. The sheer weight behind it sent a shock through the air, knocking two of the injured assassins nearby completely unconscious.
They held the pose for one heartbeat.
Dark: (flat) You're not fast enough.
Kaishen: You're not standing in the right place.
He twisted, and the blade turned in Dark's grip—cutting through his sleeve and nicking the skin just above his elbow.
Dark stepped back once.
Only once.
And Kaishen vanished again.
Not behind him.
Above.
From the cavern ceiling, he came down like a spear.
This time—aiming to en
Kaishen descended like a spike of midnight steel, blade reversed, body spinning in a blur of momentum meant to kill anything beneath him in one clean stroke.
But Dark had already moved.
Not dodged.
Not stepped.
Shifted.
He caught Kaishen mid-air with one hand—just one. Palm up. No tension. Kaishen's body froze on contact, all that momentum trapped, strangled mid-motion.
Dark's eyes didn't widen.
They narrowed.
Then came the counter.
A single pulse of raw force erupted from Dark's arm—not energy, not magic. Will.
Kaishen's body was blasted backward mid-flip, skidding across the stone like a broken arrow. He landed on his feet, but stumbled, boots scraping the floor, jaw clenched. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth. His blade arm twitched.
Dark didn't follow.
He stood in place.
Lowered his arm.
And then—
Dark: Igor.
The moment the name passed his lips, the cavern shifted.
There was no sound.
No light.
No flash of aura.
Just the sudden, impossible presence of something massive, cold, and unmerciful.
A figure appeared in front of Dark.
Not stepped.
Not blinked.
Appeared.
Igor.
Black coat dragging. Veins laced with coal-like texture. Chest rising slow, like a beast bored of sleep. His face, emotionless. His eyes, starless. His arms, still by his sides.
And in that first second of his arrival—
Everything else moved.
The Five Hundred.
Every assassin, still standing, surrounding Dark.
They didn't charge.
They didn't react.
They simply fell apart.
All at once.
Bodies slid sideways. Necks parted. Torsos dropped in half. Legs collapsed with no bone to support them. Heads rolled across the floor in mechanical silence.
No screams. No gasps. No recognition.
Just death.
Instantaneous. Perfectly timed.
Some hadn't even known they were dead yet.
Igor didn't even raise a blade.
He had simply walked in.
And they had stopped existing.
The floor was painted in pieces now—limbs twitching, blood hissing into the cracked stone, cloaks still fluttering from invisible motion.
Only Kaishen remained.
He looked around slowly.
His lips didn't move.
But his fingers trembled.
Dark didn't move from his place.
Igor turned his head slightly.
Only slightly.
Dark: You're the last one left.
Kaishen didn't speak.
He just stared at Igor.
Not like a man stares at an enemy.
Like a man staring at a memory he'd spent his whole life trying to forget.
His throat tightened. His body didn't move. But his eyes betrayed everything.
Kaishen: (quietly) That can't be you...
His voice cracked, as if even saying the name might draw blood.
Kaishen: You were frozen. Sealed in that cathedral built to hold forgotten gods... locked in a place no man dared enter. Not even Retsyu. They said your body was ice. Your soul, deeper. A myth kept still by time itself.
Kaishen: You were the one place we never looked.
Dark didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Kaishen's gaze dropped—not in defeat, but in dread. Toward the great sword on Igor's back.
God Killer.
Sheathed. Untouched. But undeniable.
Kaishen: (thinking) I've seen legends fall. But that sword never did.
Kaishen: No edge has ever been faster. No wielder has ever missed.
Kaishen: That blade isn't a weapon... it's a boundary.
Dark stepped forward once, boots pressing into the blood-slick stone.
Dark: You know his name. Good.
Kaishen: You released him?
Dark: He released himself.
Dark: I found him frozen in a cathedral that felt older than time. Everyone before me called it cursed. They feared it.
Dark: I walked in.
Dark: And I asked him one thing.
Kaishen didn't breathe.
Dark: "Do you want to be forgotten?"
Dark: He said no.
Dark: And now he walks beside me.
Dark looked at Igor for a moment, then back to Kaishen.
Dark: My first Shadow.
Dark: The God Killer.
Igor didn't raise the sword.
He didn't take a stance.
He simply existed.
And that was enough.
Kaishen: (barely audible) We used to say your name like a warning.
Kaishen: To disobey was death. To challenge was suicide. And if anyone ever claimed to outrun your blade... we buried them in silence.
Kaishen: I thought you were long gone.
Dark: He's never been gone.
Dark: Just quiet.
Kaishen's hand reached slightly toward his own blade... then stopped.
Because Igor's head tilted.
Just slightly.
And Kaishen froze.
Dark: You're not facing an assassin now.
Dark: You're facing what assassins were made to fear.
Dark: You're facing the end.
Igor raised his hand.
The back of it brushed the hilt.
Kaishen's mouth opened slightly—but no words came.
And then—
God Killer unsheathed.
Clean. Silent. No flash. No wind. Just finality.
The air didn't shudder.
It ceased.
Half the torches lining the cavern died on instinct.
And Kaishen's knees buckled.
Not from a strike.
From knowing it hadn't even begun yet.
Dark: Now...
Igor moved.
No blur. No sound. No warning.
Just the end.
One moment Kaishen stood—knees shaking, breath broken, eyes wide. The next—
God Killer was already through him.
Chest to spine. No hesitation. No resistance. The blade slid cleanly out the other side, carrying what little was left of Kaishen's pride with it.
Kaishen's body jerked once.
Then froze.
His mouth opened like he might speak.
But no words came.
Only blood.
He collapsed onto his knees, arms hanging limp. Head bowed.
And for one second, it looked like he might fall forward—
But Igor was already gone.
Dark walked forward in silence, boots leaving dark prints across the cold stone slicked in crimson. He stopped in front of Kaishen's corpse, staring down at the last breath twitching through his lungs.
Dark: You knew it was coming.
He raised his hand.
Shadow poured out from his palm—slow, thick, patient. It curled around Kaishen's broken body like smoke around a dying candle.
Dark: You don't deserve a name anymore.
Dark: You'll walk.
Dark: You'll serve.
Dark: And you will never speak again.
Kaishen's chest twitched violently once more, and then the body hollowed—sucked dry of voice, soul, and light.
What remained was a hollow figure.
A husk wrapped in shadow.
Motionless.
Purposeless.
Forever loyal.
Dark turned his head, voice calm.
Dark: Malik.
A black veil cracked open beside him. Malik stepped out, coat dusted in void, horns slightly curved from his last battle.
Malik: Already done?
Dark: Bring the survivors. The innocents. Get them out.
Dark: Heal what you can. Raz will assist.
Dark turned again.
Dark: Raz.
A pulse snapped through the stone, and Raz appeared without a word. He looked around the ruined city, eyes narrowing at the scattered corpses.
Raz: You want them carried or buried?
Dark: Only the innocent. Everyone else stays where they fell.
Malik nodded.
Malik: Consider it cleansed.
Dark walked away—past the piles of limbs, past the carved walls, past the broken throne now cracked down the middle.
And just before he reached the last step of the ruined courtyard—
He whispered one word.
Dark: Clum.
A gust of black wind erupted beside him.
And Clum arrived.
Massive. Steady. A walking cataclysm, veins pulsing with raw destruction. His chest expanded once like a forge breathing in.
Dark didn't stop walking.
Dark: Burn it all.
Clum turned his head slightly.
And obeyed.
He raised both hands.
The sky inside the cavern shattered—walls split, floors cracked, towers buckled inward. A blinding shockwave of red-black fire erupted from Clum's chest like a sun tearing through the atmosphere.
The empire was undone.
Instantly.
Buildings vaporized.
Stone turned to vapor.
Every hallway, every ritual chamber, every corpse—erased.
Not burned.
Obliterated.
Within seconds, nothing remained.
No structure.
No ashes.
No sound.
Only a crater of silence, heat-warped stone, and the lingering breath of something that should have never existed.
Dark stood at the crater's edge.
The cold wind from the outer snowlands swept gently past his coat, tugging at the scorched hem. For a long moment, he said nothing. He simply looked out over the destruction—absolute, unchallenged, and necessary.
Then—
The silence behind him broke.
Not from war.
Not from battle.
But from life.
Soft footsteps.
Unsteady breathing.
The sound of bare feet against fractured stone.
He turned.
And saw them.
A line of women, children, and broken men—bandaged, wrapped in cloaks and cloth, limping, carried, held upright by each other's trembling arms. Malik and Raz walked slowly among them, glowing with soft healing magic, guiding them up from the lower caverns.
Some couldn't stand on their own.
Some still bore the chains.
But all of them—every one—looked at him.
Their eyes weren't filled with confusion.
Or fear.
Only clarity.
Only gratitude.
And then it happened.
One voice—frail, but loud—rose from the group.
Voice: Thank you...
Another followed.
Then another.
Until the sound became layered, rising, echoing through the scorched ruins and blackened stone. Voices breaking. Tears falling. Grief mixing with relief in a sound that no language could define.
They cried.
Not out of pain.
But because someone had stopped the pain.
And then, one by one, they began stepping forward.
A woman fell to her knees, hands pressed together, whispering something under her breath. A young boy limped ahead, then stood upright just long enough to speak.
Boy: We want to follow you.
Dark stood still.
Another man, eyes hollow, voice raw:
Man: We don't want to be ruled.
Man: We want to walk with you.
And then—
They all stopped.
The entire group.
The wounded. The broken. The scarred.
They all stared at him.
Not begging.
Not demanding.
Just waiting.
Dark's voice was calm. Not loud. But it reached every one of them.
Dark: I didn't come here to create worship.
Dark: I came here to stop rot.
He stepped closer, boots silent against cracked stone.
Dark: You've been torn apart. Beaten. Conditioned to obey. I won't continue that.
Dark: Heal.
Dark: Breathe.
Dark: Stand when your legs are strong again. Speak when your voice returns.
Dark: And when you do...
He looked across them—at faces once sunken, now lit by hope they didn't know how to wear yet.
Dark: Begin building something greater.
Dark: A new empire.
Dark: Not one built on blades and silence.
Dark: One that will stand long after mine is gone.
Dark: Call it what you want.
Dark turned fully now, cloak dragging through the dust as he walked away.
He stopped once more before disappearing into the distant veil of snow.
Dark: And let the worlds remember...here, in my story, in my heart.
Dark: Light is not always good.
Dark: And Dark is not always evil.
And then he vanished into the wind.
End Of Arc 6 Chapter 2.