He vanished.
Not teleported. Not blurred.
He simply stepped through space the way others breathe.
Sereth turned—too late.
Rheon was behind him.
And when he struck—
It wasn’t a technique.
It was a mory made flesh.
His fist collided with Sereth’s back—
And Essentia ruptured like glass.
The assassin scread—his own channels unraveling from the sheer density of the force. The floor cracked outward like a crater, debris lifting from the shockwave.
Sereth hit the ground hard—harder than gravity should allow.
But Rheon didn’t stop.
He moved forward.
One step. Another.
Each footfall warped the air.
Bent the light.
“It’s not the flow I’m using anymore…”
“It’s my life.”
Sereth struggled to rise.
His body spasd as his own Essentia fought to stabilize—but it was no longer responding.
The shock of Rheon’s blow had torn through more than muscle. It had unwritten his flow.
And Rheon kept walking.
The red glow pulsed deeper now, slow and solemn, like a funeral march beating in his veins.
It wasn’t wild.
It wasn’t beautiful.
It was honest.
Vital Essentia wrapped around him like a shroud, leaking from every breath, every step, every heartbeat.
“I won’t survive another minute like this,” he thought.
“But I only need seconds.”
Sereth turned.
One blade still in his hand, trembling. The other broken, cast aside.
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He looked up—not with fear. But with the hollow clarity of a man who understood too late that he’d never been fighting a fading myth.
He’d been standing in the path of inevitability.
“You’re not supposed to be this strong.”
Rheon’s eyes were calm.
“I’m not.”
He stopped, just a few feet away.
And looked down at him.
“You tried to kill Eryndar once. You failed.”
Sereth’s eyes widened.
“But you did kill others. Warriors. Friends.”
A beat.
“From the east. The south. The old lineages.”
The light pulsed. "You made a reputation off of murdering legends."
Rheon raised his hand.
It glowed red from wrist to fingertips—Vital Essentia spiraling like threads of blood and mory.
“This is where you et your end.”
He struck.
There was no explosion.
No scream.
No clash of blades.
Just a single sound:
A thud.
Like the weight of history being laid to rest.
Sereth collapsed.
His blade clattered beside him. His body didn’t twitch.
There was no body left to resist.
Only silence.
________________________________________
Rheon stood still.
The red glow around him flickered—once, then twice—
And then faded.
His knees buckled.
He dropped to the floor, hands bracing against the scorched boards as his breath ca in hard, uneven gasps.
Towan and Elliot rushed forward.
But didn’t speak.
Because in that mont, they saw not just their teacher—
But the price of being a legend.
And the silence he’d bought for them with his life.
The crimson glow guttered out, leaving his body a shattered vessel—arm split with hairline fractures, skin gray as storm-ash.
He was alive.
Barely.
Now, silence pooled thick as blood.
Towan dropped to his knees, hands hovering over Rheon’s broken form. The air reeked of ozone and sothing deeper, fouler—burning marrow.
Rheon’s chest hitched.
A breath.
Then another—ragged, wet, the sound of a bellows with torn leather.
His face was the color of old parchnt, eyelids fluttering like wounded moths.
Elliot’s fingers found the pulse at Rheon’s throat.
Too slow.
Too weak.
Elliot stood frozen, his gaze locked on the void where Sereth had been—where stone and air still rembered the shape of a man now erased.
"He…" His whisper was ash in his throat. "He didn’t even hesitate."
The truth hung between them, thick and suffocating—the kind of knowledge that stains the back of your eyelids forever.
Then—
—footsteps.
Dragging. Unsteady. Dripping.
Lytharos filled the shattered doorway, his body a map of fresh ruin—arm bent wrong, coat hanging in tatters, blood painting his left side in glossy crimson. The gash across his ribs spat unstable wind-Essentia in fitful sparks, each pop etching new burns into his skin.
His eyes swept the carnage:
The blackened spirals seared into the floor
Morn’s frozen hulk in the corner
Leon—no, Rheon—broken on the ground
A beat.
"...He used it, didn’t he?" Lytharos’ voice was hollow.
Elliot turned, nodding once. "I’m sure it was Vital Essentia."
Lytharos closed his eyes.
Not a sigh of disappointnt. Not even fear.
Grief.
Raw as an open grave.
Lytharos knelt—each movent careful, deliberate—and pressed his palm over Rheon’s heart. Not to check a pulse.
To honor it.
"You stupid, brilliant bastard." His thumb brushed soot from Rheon’s collarbone, the gesture oddly tender. "Still carrying the world."
When he turned, the firelight carved new lines into his face.
"He’s done. Won’t wake for a while…" A pause. "Maybe longer."
Elliot’s hands trembled. "But he won. You both did."
Lytharos coughed—a wet, ragged sound—and wiped his mouth with a bloodied glove. "We didn’t win." His smile was a razor-cut. "We survived. There’s a difference."
His gaze drifted to the shattered wall, where moonlight pooled between the trees like spilled rcury.
"And we won’t survive the next ones." He pushed upright, his injured arm cradled against his ribs. "Not like this."
A beat.
"You want to live through what’s coming?"
Towan and Elliot nodded, fear and resolve warring in their eyes.
Lytharos exhaled through his nose. "Then it’s ti you learned what it ans to carry a legend."
One last look at Rheon’s still form.
"And how to survive being one."
The inn held its breath.
Not peace—the silence after the storm, fragile as a spiderweb glistening with morning dew, heavy with every word left unspoken.
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