The world had narrowed down to the razor-edge of a black sword.
Eon stared up at the mercenary standing over him. The blade was already in motion, a pendulum of death descending with a slow, terrifying inevitability. Time seemed to dilate, stretching the final fraction of a second into an eternity. He could see the jagged notches in the steel, the faint, violet aura of shadow magic coating the metal, and the gleam of sadistic pleasure in the mercenary's eyes.
'So this is it, this is the end', Jin-ho thought, a wave of bitter resignation washing over his High Elf soul..'In the end I still was helpless even in this world.'
His mana core was a dry well now. The Heat Manipulation skill had burned through his reserves like a wildfire, leaving him hollowed out and trembling. His broken ribs grated against his lungs with every shallow breath. He was watching his own execution, a spectator in his own body.
"Goodbye, little Elf," the mercenary sneered, his muscles tensing for the final snap of the wrist that would sever Eon's head from his shoulders.
Eon didn't close his eyes. He refused to give them that satisfaction. He watched the blade come down.
Thump. Thump.
Two heavy, wet sounds echoed through the forge, completely out of sync with the violence unfolding above Eon. They were the sounds of dead weight hitting stone.
The mercenary's sword stopped inches from Eon's nose. The man froze, his brow furrowing in confusion. The aura of bloodlust wavered, replaced by a sudden, sharp wariness. He hadn't stopped because of mercy; he had stopped because the rhythmic chanting of the White Mages, had suddenly cut off.
The silence that followed was deafening.
"What are you doing?" the mercenary barked, turning his head angrily toward the back line where the support mages stood. "Keep the suppression field up! The elf is still…"
His voice died in his throat. The two remaining White Mages, the ones who had been maintaining the rest of the elves were no more.
There were no arrows in their chests. There were no burns from fireballs. They simply lay there, faces planted in the dirt, with thin, crimson lines opening up across their throats like second smiles.
There was no one standing near them. The space around the bodies was empty. The air shimmered slightly, like heat rising off asphalt on a summer day, but there was no visible attacker.
"Who's there?" the mercenary shouted, swinging his sword away from Eon and into a defensive guard. "Show yourself!"
The Lead Shadow Mage, the masked monster who had turned Darius inside out just moments ago, spun around. His posture, previously relaxed and arrogant, was now coiled and tense. He didn't look at the bodies; he looked at the empty air above them.
"Shadow Detection," the Lead Mage whispered, his voice vibrating with a dark, subsonic frequency.
Unlike the mercenary, who relied on his eyes, the Lead Mage relied on the void. He cast a net of darkness across the area, feeling for anything that displaced the shadows.
He felt it. A heartbeat that shouldn't be there. A shift in the air pressure.
"There!"
The Lead Mage moved with terrifying speed. He didn't cast a spell; he simply lunged, his hand wreathed in black smoke, snatching at what looked like empty space.
Cr-crack!
The sound of magic shattering filled the air. The empty space suddenly warped. A figure materialized out of thin air, gasping as the Lead Mage's hand closed around her throat.
It was a woman. She was dressed in tight-fitting, dark leather armor that seemed to absorb the light. Her hair was tied back, revealing a face that was currently turning purple under the mage's crushing grip.
"A rat," the Lead Mage hissed, lifting Selena off the ground as she clawed uselessly at his gauntlet. Her invisibility spell, the 'Unseen Path,' had been forcibly broken. "You think you can hide from the dark, little girl? I am the dark."
The mercenary near Eon laughed, relaxing his stance. "Just another fly to swat. Good catch, boss. I'll finish the elf, and then we can…"
Ting.
A soft, metallic chime rang out. It was a delicate sound, almost beautiful, like a silver spoon tapping against a crystal glass.
The mercenary stopped talking. His eyes, which had been fixed on Eon, suddenly went wide. He looked down at his chest.
The tip of a black dagger was protruding from his sternum. It had punched through his leather armor, through his ribs, and buried itself deep within his heart.
Behind him, the air rippled and tore open.
Lyssa, Selena's partner, pushed a blade through inside the mercenaries chest. Her face was a mask of grim determination. She didn't say a witty one-liner. She didn't hesitate. She gripped the handle of the dagger with both hands and twisted.
The mercenary didn't scream. He couldn't. His lungs were filling with blood. He let out a wet, gurgling choke, his sword falling from his nerveless fingers and clattering harmlessly onto the stone floor next to Eon's head.
Lyssa yanked the blade free, and the mercenary collapsed, falling with a heavy thud right on top of the spot where he had planned to execute Eon.
"You talk too much," Lyssa muttered, wiping the blood from her blade onto her thigh.
The situation had flipped in the span of three heartbeats.
The White Mages were dead. The sword-wielding executioner was dead. Darius was dead. And now, the battlefield consisted of the Lead Shadow Mage holding a struggling Selena, facing down Lyssa and a slowly recovering Eon.
The Lead Shadow Mage looked at his fallen subordinate, then at Lyssa. His masked face betrayed no emotion, but his body language shifted. He stepped back, dragging Selena with him, using her as a human shield.
"Variables," the mage muttered, his voice cold and calculating. "Fucking too many variables."
"Let her go!" Lyssa shouted, settling into a combat stance. She held her twin daggers in a reverse grip, her eyes flicking between the mage's hand on Selena's throat and the open ground between them. "You're outnumbered now. Drop her, or you won't leave alive from this place."
"Outnumbered?" The mage let out a dry, rasping chuckle. "You killed the hired help. Do not mistake their incompetence for my weakness."
He squeezed Selena's throat harder. She gagged, her legs kicking feebly.
"However," the mage continued, his gaze sliding over to Eon.
Eon was pushing himself up. It was agony. Every movement felt like grinding glass in his joints. But with the White Mages dead, and the suppression from shadow magic was gone, he was at least from to sit up. His mana was trickling back, slowly, painfully, but it was there. And with the mana came the heat.
A faint, orange glow began to emanate from Eon's skin again. It wasn't the blinding sun he had summoned earlier, but it was enough. The air around him began to shimmer. He looked at the Lead Shadow Mage, his silver eyes burning with a hatred that transcended exhaustion.
"You," Eon rasped, his voice sounding like gravel. "You killed him. You killed Darius."
The mage tilted his head. "I discarded a broken tool. Just as I will discard this one."
He raised his free hand, gathering a ball of dense, violet shadow. He was preparing to blow Selena's head off right there in front of them.
Lyssa tensed to spring, but she knew she wouldn't be fast enough.
But Eon's magic didn't took much time.
[Skill: Heat Manipulation Lv-1]
Eon didn't aim for the mage. He aimed for the air around the mage.
"Burn," Eon commanded.
He didn't have the mana to create a fireball. But he had enough to vibrate the air molecules directly in front of the mage's mask.
Flash!
A superheated pocket of air exploded right in the Lead Mage's face. It wasn't lethal, but it was blindingly bright and hot as a furnace door opening.
"Argh!" The mage recoiled, his concentration breaking. He instinctively threw his hands up to shield his eyes from the sudden thermal flare.
In that split second of distraction, Selena acted. She didn't try to fight him. She drove her elbow back, smashing it into the mage's solar plexus, and then dropped her body weight, twisting out of his loosened grip. She hit the ground and rolled, putting distance between herself and the shadow user.
"Now!" Lyssa screamed, charging forward.
The Lead Shadow Mage recovered his vision, but the tactical advantage was gone. Selena was free. Lyssa was closing in. The Elf boy was awake and wielding that strange, light-based fire magic that countered his shadows. And behind them, he could hear the other elves, the ones before white mages binded, had freed, picking up rocks, iron bars, and the weapons of the fallen mercenaries.
The mage was powerful, but he was not suicidal. He was a professional. And professionals knew when a mission had gone from "cleanup" to "fiasco."
"This is not over," the mage snarled.
He slammed his hands together, not to attack, but to cast.
"Shadow Step: Greater Void."
The shadows in the corners of the room surged forward like a tidal wave, crashing over him. Lyssa slashed her daggers through the darkness, but they hit nothing but smoke.
The darkness swirled, condensed, and then evaporated.
The Lead Shadow Mage was gone.
The silence that returned after that was heavy, broken only by the ragged breathing of the survivors and the soft weeping of Elora, and Verra, who was still curled up nearher daughters dead body.
Eon stared at the spot where the mage had vanished. He held his breath, waiting for a trick, waiting for the shadows to bite him again. But the oppressive weight on his soul lifted. The parasitic drain on his mana stopped.
He collapsed, his body finally giving out. He didn't hit the stone floor; he felt arms catch him.
It was Elsa. She had rushed to him the moment the mage vanished. She lowered him gently, her hands trembling as she checked his chest, his ribs.
"Eon," she sobbed, her voice thick with relief. "You're alive. You're alive."
Eon couldn't speak. He just nodded weakly, leaning his head back. He looked past Elsa to the two women standing in the center of the carnage.
Selena was rubbing her bruised throat, coughing violently. Lyssa was wiping her daggers clean, her expression a mix of adrenaline and exhaustion.
Selena straightened up, her eyes meeting Eon's. She looked nothing like the flirtatious tavern girl now. She looked dangerous, sharp, and very tired.
"You cut it close, 'Mister Eon'," Selena croaked, her voice raspy from the strangulation. She walked over, stepping over the corpse of the mercenary Lyssa had killed. "We were supposed to just watch. But seeing how outmatched you were against that shadow mage, I felt I needed to help for some reason."
Eon managed a weak, bloody smile. "I don't know who you are, but thank you for helping us."
Lyssa snorted, sheathing her weapons. "You'd better be. That Shadow Mage was a high-tier caster. For a second I thought I was a goner. You have some very dangerous enemy, you know."
Eon closed his eyes for a moment, letting the pain wash over him. 'Enemies', he thought. 'Yes. And now they know what I can do.'
He forced himself to look at the other side of the room.
The victory felt like ash in his mouth.
There, in a gruesome heap, lay the remains of Darius, the Marquess of War. The man who was supposed to be Eon's shield, his puppet, his ticket to legitimacy, was now a pile of twisted meat. And next to him, staring blankly at the ceiling, was Elora.
She hadn't moved since the mage had thrown her. She wasn't dead, he could see the shallow rise and fall of her chest, but she wasn't really there, either. Her mind had shattered under the weight of watching her brother being unmade.
On the other side was Verra, crunched up at her lifeless daughter, weeping silently. As if her whole world had shattered. Seeing the scene Eon's heart hurt with a sharp pain. No language can describe the emotion he was felling right now.
But he knew now is not the time for grief. He has take control of this hopeless situation, even though he himself is battered up.
"Secure the perimeter," Eon whispered to Elsa, forcing his command voice to work despite the pain. "Check the... check Elora. And bind the mercenaries who are still alive. We need answers."
"Eon, you need healing," Elsa argued, tears streaming down her face. "Your ribs..."
"I'll live," Eon said, gripping her arm. "Do it. We are not safe yet."
Elsa hesitated, then nodded. She stood up and began barking orders to the other freed elves, channeling Eon's authority.
Selena walked closer, looking down at Eon. "You know he's going to come back, right? Maybe not him, specifically. But the mercenary group he works with. They don't leave loose ends."
"I know," Eon said, struggling to sit up. He looked at the forge, at the bloodstained ground, at the broken gates of his home.
The industrial revolution he had planned, the quiet accumulation of power, that dream was now dead. The forge area had been baptized in blood.
"They wanted money right?," Eon murmured, his eyes glowing with the lingering heat of his mana. "Instead they will get a war."
He looked at the dead White Mages, then at the mercenary Lyssa had killed. The power dynamic had shifted, yes. But the cost had been catastrophic.
"Who are you?" Eon asked, looking directly at Selena. "Really?"
Selena smirked, though it didn't reach her eyes. She reached down and offered him a hand.
"Friends," she said. "For now. We work for the Duke of the North. And it seems, High Elf, that you and the Duke now share a common problem."
Eon looked at her hand. It was calloused, stained with the dust of battle. He reached up and took it.
"A common problem?!" Eon repeated, pulling himself to his feet, groaning as his ribs shifted. He looked at the carnage one last time. "If the Duke wants to talk... tell him I'm listening. But the price of admission just went up."
He limped toward Elora, leaving the spies behind him. He had a grieving sister and mother to console and a whole elf group of people to lead right now. He cannot rest right now.
The game might have changed. The shadows might have been revealed. But they have to rebuild as fast as they can, as a war is approaching them.
As he reached Elora, he knelt down. She flinched, her eyes were wide and unseeing.
"Elora," he whispered gently.
"He's gone," she mumbled, her voice flat. "Inside out. He's all wrong. He's all wrong inside."
"I know," Eon said, a lump forming in his throat. He reached out and gently closed Darius's staring, dead eyes. "I know."
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