"A man capable of standing in your way has not yet been born?"
Aeloria's voice dropped to a growl that made the grass itself tremble. "The Cannibal disagrees."
The man in black turned his head lazily toward his crimson companion.
"Blank," he said, "deal with those at the back. I'll play with our friend here."
His gaze swept across the four hundred soldiers as if counting insects, then settled on Aeloria like a predator finally choosing its meal.
"Yes, Your Majesty," the red warrior, now Blank, answered, and the title hung in the air like a death knell.
Blank shot forward, a blur of red and death, straight past Aeloria toward the ranks at the rear.
He never made it two paces.
Aeloria's boot smashed toward his skull with all the force that had once shattered castle gates. Blank reacted a heartbeat faster, throwing both forearms up in a cross-block. The impact rang like a blacksmith's hammer on anvil. Shockwaves rippled through the dirt. Blank's boots carved twin furrows several feet long before he skidded to a halt beside his master again, his arms trembling from the blow.
'He's too strong for any of them.
I don't like a single one of those idiots, but I will not let them die meaninglessly.'
Memory flashed behind her eyes, one quiet evening months ago, Orin sliding her monthly pay in a small patch filled with silver coins across the table.
"Commander, aren't you afraid of me? At the very least disgusted?" she had asked.
Orin had barely looked up from counting coins.
"There are already plenty of monsters in this world, Aeloria. Adding one more man-eater doesn't make it any crueler than it already is. You have yet to meet others of your kind."
Now, staring at these two, she finally understood what he meant.
"DISPERSE!" she roared, her voice cracking across the plain like a war drum. "ALL OF YOU—REQUEST BACKUP FROM JORM! NOW!"
"But—Head Captain—" a female lieutenant began.
"I WILL HEAR NO OBJECTIONS!" Aeloria snarled, spinning to face them. "GO! THAT IS A DIRECT ORDER!"
They had never truly liked the Cannibal.
They had whispered behind her back, flinched when she passed, spread stories about teeth and blood and the child she devoured.
But she had never eaten a single one of them.
In every battle she had fought like a demon to keep casualties low, throwing herself into the worst of it so fewer of them came home in boxes.
And now even the slowest among them could feel the truth: these two strangers existed on a different plane. Standing against them was suicide.
"TO JORM!" the lead rider bellowed, wheeling his horse.
"TO JORM!" four hundred voices thundered back, and the earth shook as they galloped away, a storm of dust and desperation.
The lieutenant at the front risked one last glance over his shoulder at the lone figure in black-and-crimson armour.
"Please," he whispered to the wind, "don't die."
Blank watched them go, rolling his shoulders, working the numbness from his arms.
'I thought the rumours were exaggerated,' he thought, narrowing his eyes on Aeloria. 'But she blocked my charge with one kick. Not only is she strong—she's perceptive. I murdered someone precious to her, yet she hasn't charged blindly. She's been watching, measuring, testing us from the first second. The moment she realised she was outmatched, she sent her soldiers away to live.'
"Not only did you save their meaningless lives," the man in black said aloud, his voice laced with grudging respect, "you sent for reinforcements. You are very clever—for a man-eating beast."
He took one slow, deliberate step toward her.
Aeloria's gaze never wavered.
"That man's name is Blank, as you called him," she said. "What is yours?"
The man in black smiled, all teeth and no warmth, and kept walking until his face was mere inches from hers.
"You are not worthy to know."
She stared into his eyes—deep, dark, bottomless twin voids that swallowed light itself.
Her instincts screamed louder than they ever had, even louder than the first time Queen Nyxelene had looked at her.
'It's the same feeling—exactly the same.
No… worse.
The queen's gaze had been cold, but there had been something human buried in the crimson.
This man's eyes held nothing. No warmth, no mercy, no soul.
Just endless falling.'
Aeloria leapt backward on pure reflex, landing ten paces away, her heart hammering against her ribs.
'So what if he's terrifying?
He killed Yoru.
He will die.
I will make sure of it.'
In the span of a single heartbeat she exploded into motion.
Her boots slammed into earth—once, twice—she launched herself upward, caught the lowest branch of an ancient oak, swung, released, and shot higher. Bark tore beneath her gauntlets as she ricocheted from trunk to trunk, ascending faster than any human should, a black-and-crimson streak against the green, until she perched thirty feet above them on a branch no thicker than her wrist.
From that height she looked down, eyes burning, lips peeling back from teeth already lengthening into something far too sharp for any daughter of man.
Below, the man in black finally turned to face her fully.
And for the first time, he smiled.
After perching on the branch for a while, she became a storm of black and crimson, a living shadow that refused to stay in one place long enough for the eye to pin her down. Left, right, forward, backward; she ricocheted between ancient oaks like a vengeful wraith. Leaves shredded into green confetti by the sheer violence of her passage. No pattern, no rhythm, only chaos given claws and fury.
The man in black watched her with the idle patience of a cat who already knows the mouse has nowhere left to run.
"Blank," he called with a patient voice as he took one unhurried step forward.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Step back. Give me the field. I wish to play with the cannibal for a while. Then we resume our journey."
"As you command, Your Majesty."
Blank bowed his head and retreated toward the riverbank and settled onto a flat boulder like a spectator at a private execution.
Aeloria used the heartbeat of silence. She kicked off the trunk behind the man in black, twisted mid-air, her canines fully extended beyound anything human, aiming to tear the pale column of his throat out in a single savage bite.
He turned.
Not rushed, not startled; simply turned anticlockwise in one fluid shift of weight, sweeping his gaze across the full circle of the world as though he had already seen her coming before she herself had decided to move. His hand rose, pale fingers closing around her throat with contemptuous ease, stopping her dead in the air as if she weighed nothing at all.
Her eyes widened.
'What—how—?'
The question shattered inside her skull, unspoken.
"Is this the game you wish to play?" the man in black asked, tilting his head so those void-dark eyes could drink in her shock. "A monkey game of trees and leaping?"
He held her suspended, her boots dangling a foot above the ground, the same way Commander Orin once lifted her; except Orin's grip had been an iron wrapped in mercy.
This man's grip was iron wrapped in nothing at all.
His fingers were a noose of living stone. She clawed at his wrist, her gauntlets screeching uselessly against skin that refused to yield.
"I'm afraid I dislike jumping," he continued conversationally. "So let us play something more refined. We take turns. One strikes. The other receives; and the one who receives does not make a sound. A simple game. Do you accept, cannibal?"
Blank, lounging on his rock, allowed himself half a smirk. 'Don't be shocked he caught you, little monster. Your speed is monstrous for a human. Shame your opponent was his Majesty.'
Aeloria couldn't answer. The pressure on her windpipe turned the world grey at the edges; black spots danced across her vision. All that escaped was a wet, choking rasp.
The man in black took her silence as consent.
"My turn first."
His right fist moved; not fast, not slow; simply inevitable. It sank into her stomach with a sound like a warhammer striking an anvil wrapped in meat. The impact folded her in half around his arm, drove every molecule of air from her lungs in a single explosive cough of blood. For one endless second her consciousness fled, swallowed by red-dark nothing.
Then her cursed blood remembered what it was, knitting shattered bone and torn organs with spiteful speed. She came back gasping, tasting blood and ruin.
'I think he just broke every rib I own.'
Another cough painted the ground crimson.
"You made no sound," the man in black observed, genuine curiosity threading his tone. "Impressive restraint."
She hadn't screamed because blood had filled her throat faster than pain could climb it.
He released her.
Gravity took over where his hand left off. She crumpled, her knees striking earth hard enough to send fresh jolts through her healing ribs, her palms sinking into the dirt as she fought to stay upright on trembling arms.
"Your turn," he said politely, stepping back and clasping his hands behind his back once more, as though they had all the time in the world.
Aeloria knew, with the cold clarity that comes right before the end, that she could not win this fight. Not with blades, not with fists, not with anything mortal.
But he had given her one free strike.
And she still had a Šërēĺįťh's syllable locked behind her teeth.
'Commander Orin said the longer the chant, the more terrible the reckoning. Very well.'
She let herself sag forward, forehead almost touching the ground, blood dripping from her lips in steady crimson beads. The man in black watched, amused, patient.
She began to speak.
The first word was barely a whisper, yet the sky heard.
Clouds that had been lazy white puffed things curdled to bruised purple, then to blacker than forge-soot. The temperature plummeted. Wind reversed direction and howled inward from every horizon, dragging the scent of ozone and distant graves.
Rain came in sheets thick as chainmail, hammering the earth into mud.
Thunder growled low and hungry, shaking loose pebbles from the riverbank.
Aeloria lifted her face, rain mixing with the blood on her cheeks, and let the ancient words pour out of her like a confession and a curse in one.
"Shälënin žhürœ, vynënin vëlthœ,
Zhürën növë šëvën lïsäœ, zhëvë šëlą ën mälë vərö œmëthin.
Väl nälïn rëvënœ ën zhëvë ävën,
Vën žhënën lä vąřëth šälëvîn, vëřenœ välənin.
Lä zhëvë, läel zhëvë,
Thrī zhëvëœ, vəlóin välən.
Moräth Šëlvën: Thrī Vynën Zhëvë; Öräën Lä Väl Óräën."
"Tears of heaven, cries of thunder,
Pain in folds of seven, strike down body and every bone to cinder.
Target my enemies and strike true,
With the force of a thousand falling stars, mark their doom.
One strike, a second,
Three strikes, his end.
Primal Genesis: Triple Thunder Strike; Dawn of a Single Man."