# Chapter 694: The King's Champion
The obsidian limb descended, not with the speed of a striking snake, but with the inexorable, crushing weight of a landslide. Elara didn't flinch. She couldn't. Her world had narrowed to the space between the monster and the woman at her feet. She raised the Fused Shard, not like a sword, but like a shield. It was a fool's gesture, a historian holding a museum piece against a guillotine, but it was all she had. The air grew thick, tasting of ozone and ancient dust, the pressure of the avatar's presence making her ears pop. The shard in her hands remained a dead, cold piece of crystal, its inner light extinguished.
A voice, not a sound but a pressure inside her skull, vibrated through her bones. It was a voice of immense age and profound emptiness, the sound of a star collapsing into a black hole. *"You fight with borrowed fire, little spark. But I am the darkness that gives it meaning."*
The limb stopped, a mere inch from the crystal. A faint, almost imperceptible shimmer of pale blue light flickered across the shard's surface, a dying ember gasping for air. It was a reaction, but it was nothing. A pathetic sputter. The avatar's featureless head tilted, a gesture of unnerving, almost curious, dismissal. It had expected a defense. It had found a prayer.
*"A fleeting sentiment."* The thought was colder than the ash-choked wind. *"And now, you are in the way."*
The limb moved again, faster this time. It didn't strike. It simply swatted her aside. The force was not a blow but a dismissal, a casual flick of a wrist that sent Elara flying. She crashed against the rock face, the impact driving the air from her lungs in a pained gasp. The shard was torn from her grasp, skittering across the dusty ground to land near Nyra's still hand. Pain lanced through her side, a sharp, hot fire that told her something was broken. She tried to push herself up, but her arm gave way, her vision swimming with black spots. Below, on the ashen plain, she could see Kaelen, a tiny, broken figure on his knees, his face a mask of horrified helplessness. He had torn out the heart of the army only to watch its champion claim its prize.
The avatar ignored her. Its purpose was singular. It took a deliberate step toward Nyra, its shadow falling over her unconscious form. The blue light in its eyes intensified, focusing on the woman who had dared to wield the shards against its master. It raised a hand, this time not with sharp points, but open-palmed, ready to simply crush the life from her. The air around the avatar warped, shimmering with a palpable aura of despair. It was a null field, a pocket of pure hopelessness that leached warmth and light from the world, a power specifically designed to counter the shards' radiant energy. It was a predator evolved to hunt its prey.
From the ground, Elara watched, her heart a cold stone in her chest. It was over. They had lost. Kaelen's sacrifice, the Warden's charge, Nyra's agonizing struggle—all of it for nothing. The King's champion was here, and it was absolute.
Then, a sound. A low, guttural groan of pain.
Nyra stirred.
Her fingers, curled near the shard, twitched. Her eyes fluttered open, not with clarity, but with a haze of pure agony. Every nerve in her body screamed. The Cinder Cost was a fire consuming her from within, a relentless tide of cellular decay. She could feel her own cells dying, her body failing on a fundamental level. But through the red fog of pain, she saw the shadow. She saw the looming figure of despair, the burning blue eyes, the hand descending to end her.
Survival was not a choice. It was an instinct, primal and absolute.
With a cry that was more of a torn gasp, she rolled. The avatar's hand slammed into the rock where her head had been, pulverizing the solid stone into dust. The impact sent a shockwave through the outcropping, rattling Elara's teeth. Nyra scrambled to her feet, her body screaming in protest. Every movement was a fresh hell, a tearing of muscle and fiber. She was a ghost, a hollowed-out shell held together by sheer will. She stood, swaying, facing the monster that had come to claim her.
The avatar turned its head slowly, its blue eyes fixing on her. It seemed surprised, not by her survival, but by her defiance. It was the surprise of a god finding an ant still standing after its footfall.
*"The vessel awakens,"* the voice resonated in her mind, colder and more intimate now. *"Empty. Broken. Yet you still stand. Why?"*
Nyra didn't answer. She couldn't. Her breath came in ragged, shallow pants. Her gaze fell to the Fused Shard lying near her feet. It was inert, its power spent. She had poured everything into it, and it had given her everything, leaving her with this catastrophic debt. She knew, with a certainty that chilled her more than the avatar's presence, that she could not draw on its power again. To do so would be to ignite the last of her life and burn herself to ash in an instant. She could not win this fight with power.
The avatar took a step forward, its aura of despair pressing in on her. It felt like a physical weight, trying to buckle her knees, to whisper to the broken parts of her soul that it was time to give up, to lie down and become part of the ash. It was the ultimate counter to the shards, which were fueled by will, by hope, by love. This thing fed on despair.
*"You are a conduit, a fleeting spark meant to channel a greater fire. Your purpose is served. Your existence is now an error to be corrected."*
It lunged.
It was not the slow, crushing movement from before. It was a blur of motion, a predator abandoning its taunts for the kill. Its limb, now a wicked spear of obsidian, shot toward her chest.
Nyra didn't try to block it. She didn't try to meet it with a force she no longer possessed. She moved. Her body, pushed beyond all limits, found a reserve of desperate agility born of a thousand Ladder Trials. She threw herself sideways, the obsidian tip slicing through the air where she had been, so close she felt the wind of its passage on her cheek. She hit the ground and rolled, coming up in a crouch, her mind racing.
Power was not the answer. The avatar was designed to defeat power. It was a nullifier, a perfect predator for the Gifted. So what was its weakness? It was a construct of the Withering King, a being of pure, corrosive magic. But this avatar… it was different. It had intelligence. It spoke. It had a purpose. It was not just a mindless beast. It was a champion.
Her eyes darted around the small ridge. Elara, struggling to rise, her face pale with pain. The shard, inert on the ground. The avatar, turning to face her again, its movements fluid and terrifyingly graceful. It was toying with her now, confident in its victory.
*"You are quick. A dancer in the ruins. But the music is ending."*
It lunged again, a feint this time, then a sweeping backhand that caught Nyra on the shoulder. The impact was immense, not just physical but spiritual. A wave of pure, unadulterated despair washed over her, and for a moment, she saw a vision of Soren, his face etched with sorrow, turning away from her. She saw her family, their faces cold with disappointment. She saw herself, alone and forgotten, her ashes scattered on the wind. The despair was a weapon, attacking her will, her memories, her very sense of self.
She cried out, stumbling back, the vision shattering as pain flared in her shoulder. It was dislocated, the joint a screaming mess of fire and agony. She cradled it with her good arm, her breath hitching. The avatar was not just fighting her body; it was trying to unmake her soul.
But in that moment of psychic assault, something else flickered. A connection. A thin, frayed thread of gold and silver, stretching across the wastes. Soren. He was alive. He was far away, but he was there. The vision was a lie, a cruel trick of the avatar's power. The memory of his face, not the one the avatar had shown her, but the real one—his stubborn, stoic, fiercely loving face—became an anchor in the storm of despair.
The avatar paused, its head tilting. *"A flicker. A stubborn little ember. You cling to a ghost."*
Nyra straightened up, ignoring the fire in her shoulder. She was not just a dancer. She was a strategist. She had been trained by the best minds in the Sable League. Power was not the only weapon. Information was. Misdirection was. And this thing, for all its power, had just shown her its hand. It was trying to break her spirit. It relied on despair.
She couldn't fight it with the Shard of Will. But maybe… maybe she didn't have to.
Her gaze fell upon the shard again. It was split into two distinct halves, though fused together. The Shard of Will, and the Shard of Compassion. She had used them as one, a weapon of pure force. But what if she didn't? What if she used only one part? The Shard of Will was depleted, its energy spent in the final, cataclysmic blast. But the Shard of Compassion… it was not a weapon of force. It was a lens. A conduit for emotion. For empathy. For love.
It was a weapon the Withering King, in all its eons of nihilistic existence, would never understand.
The avatar took another step, raising its hand for the final blow. It was done playing. *"Your ghost cannot save you."*
Nyra didn't dodge this time. She dropped to one knee, her good hand shooting out and wrapping around the Fused Shard. She didn't try to draw on its power. She didn't try to channel its light. Instead, she focused everything she had left—her pain, her fear, her love for Soren, her grief for her fallen friends, her fierce, unyielding will to live—into a single, singular point. She didn't push it *out*. She pushed it *in*, into the shard, specifically into the half that pulsed with a faint, residual warmth. The Shard of Compassion.
She wasn't trying to break the avatar. She was trying to make it *feel*.
The obsidian hand stopped, inches from her face. The avatar froze, its entire body going rigid. The aura of despair around it wavered, flickering like a faulty lamp. A low, guttural sound emanated from its chest, not a growl of aggression, but a sound of… confusion. Of pain.
Inside its mind, where there was only the cold, silent will of the Withering King, something new was happening. A wave of pure, unfiltered emotion, not directed at its monstrous form, but at the sliver of consciousness trapped within it. The echo of the person it had once been, the man or woman who had been consumed and reforged into this perfect champion. Nyra wasn't attacking the monster. She was reaching for the ghost inside it.
She projected Soren's love for his family, his desperate, aching need to protect them. She projected Elara's fierce loyalty, her willingness to stand against a god for a friend. She projected Kaelen's sacrificial rage, his final, defiant act. She projected every ounce of compassion she had ever felt or witnessed, a tidal wave of empathy crashing against the shores of a dead, soulless sea.
The avatar trembled violently. Cracks of brilliant, golden light began to spiderweb across its obsidian skin. The blue fire in its eyes sputtered, fighting against the invading warmth. It was a battle for the very soul of the construct, a war between absolute nihilism and a single, powerful spark of shared humanity.
And then, something impossible happened.
A single, perfect tear, clear and pure as spring water, formed in the corner of the avatar's burning blue eye. It traced a path down its cheek of blackened ash, sizzling as it hit the cold, dead ground. The sound it made was not a sizzle, but a chime, like a tiny, crystal bell ringing in the silence of the wastes.
The avatar staggered back, its hands rising to its head as if in torment. The voice in Nyra's mind was no longer a cold, resonant command. It was a discordant shriek, a cacophony of two voices—the King's and another, fainter one—locked in a struggle.
*"…what… is this… pain…?"*
The golden light from the cracks intensified. The avatar was breaking apart. Not from an external force, but from an internal conflict it could not comprehend. Nyra held on, pouring every last ounce of her emotional strength into the shard, her own body beginning to shut down from the strain. Her vision tunneled, the world fading to grey. She was dying. But she was taking the King's champion with her.