The week after the battle was a silent, simmering wound.
Kenji trained alone. He avoided the grove, the other witches, even Rina. He could see the question in her eyes, Are you okay? but he had no answer. The shadow's whisper was now a constant murmur, a second heartbeat of cold, promising fury. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Zed walking away unscathed, heard the mocking promise in his retreat.
Merinet watched him, her expression unreadable. She did not stop his solitary, brutal sessions. She knew a storm was brewing, and trying to cage it would only make the explosion worse.
On the seventh day, as a blood-red sunset painted the sky, the horns sounded again. Not a probing force this time. This was the sound of an army arriving to finish the job.
Zed's forces didn't bother with fire or subtlety. They formed a vast, silent crescent at the tree line. At their center, Zed stood with a new weapon, a massive, rune-covered ballista, its bolt a shaft of black iron as thick as a man's leg, aimed not at the wards, but at the heart of the Kharman village.
"Witch Queen!" Zed's voice, amplified by magic, boomed across the clearing. "Your defiance ends now. Surrender the relics, open your woods to the Crown's justice, or I will burn your sanctuary to the root."
Merinet stepped to the front of her gathered witches, her face a mask of cold defiance. "You trespass on sacred ground, General. You will find only your grave here."
Zed's smile was a knife-cut. "So be it."
He gave the order.
The battle that followed was chaos incarnate. It was no disciplined probe. It was total war. Soldiers advanced behind towers of enchanted shields that resisted the witches' magic. Archers fired volleys of whistling arrows that sought heat and life. The Kharman woods, a place of beauty and peace, became a charnel house of splintering wood, screams, and erupting spells.
Kenji fought beside Rina, but it was different. He was a black hole of violence. He didn't conserve power. He spent it lavishly, recklessly. Shadow-blades longer than he was tall scythed through ranks. Waves of nullifying darkness snuffed out magical attacks before they could form. He moved with a terrifying, silent efficiency, but with every explosion of power, the hollow in his chest screamed, and another patch of his hair turned bone-white.
"Good… good… more… he's close…" the shadow purred.
Rina fought to keep up, her light brilliant and desperate, but she was being eclipsed by his descent into the dark. "Kenji, stop! You're burning up!"
He didn't hear her. His eyes were locked on one figure, cutting a path through the melee with calm, devastating sweeps of his runed sword: Zed.
The General was a reaper. He cut down witch and vine alike, his blade severing spells and flesh with equal ease. He was making straight for Merinet.
Kenji saw his chance. He broke from Rina, becoming a streak of living shadow, barreling through anyone in his path.
He intercepted Zed just as the General was about to engage Merinet.
"You," Zed said, his pale eyes showing the first flicker of something, not fear, but intense, clinical interest. "Come to pay your debt?"
No words. Kenji attacked.
It was not the duel from before. Kenji was faster, stronger, fueled by a torrent of borrowed power. He pressed Zed back, their blades ,one dark, one runed ,clashing in showers of sparks and dying magic. Kenji took a cut across the chest, ignored it. He landed a blow that cracked Zed's pauldron, making the General grunt.
"YES! HE BLEEDS! MAKE HIM BLEED MORE!"
Kenji's assault became a frenzy. He disarmed Zed with a savage twist, sending the runed sword spinning away. A shadow-enhanced punch to the gut doubled the General over. A kick to the knee brought him down.
Zed looked up, breathing hard, a trickle of blood at his temple. For the first time, there was no mockery in his eyes. There was the cold acknowledgement of defeat.
Kenji stood over him. He planted his right boot on Zed's chest, pinning him to the bloody earth. The sounds of battle seemed to fade. In his hand, a sword of pure, liquid darkness formed, longer and sharper than any he'd ever made. It hummed with a hungry frequency.
This was it. The man who had destroyed his father. The man who had hunted him. The author of all his pain, at his mercy.
Kenji raised the shadow-blade high, both hands on the hilt, point aimed straight for Zed's heart. His face was a stone carving of vengeance. The shadow within him roared in triumphant ecstasy.
"DO IT! END HIM! FEED ME HIS SOUL!"
He took a final breath, muscles coiling for the killing thrust.
"KENJI!"
The voice sliced through the red haze in his mind. Rina. From behind him. It was filled not with triumph, but with… terror.
He froze. The shadow-blade trembely slightly.
Slowly, he turned his head to look back at her.
Rina stood twenty feet away, her golden eyes wide with horror, her hand outstretched not in victory, but in a plea. She wasn't looking at Zed. She was looking at him.
And in that moment, Kenji saw his own reflection in her terrified gaze.
It was not his face.
His eyes were not brown. They were pools of smoldering crimson, glowing with infernal light. Thick, pulsing black veins covered every visible inch of his skin, like cracks in a corrupted statue. A faint, dark vapor wept from his pores.
The laugh that had been building in his chest died. The vengeful certainty shattered.
It wasn't Kenji standing over Zed with a blade of murder.
It was the shadow. And it was wearing him like a suit.
The realization was an ice pick to his soul. He tried to speak, to say her name, but no sound came. He had said 'yes'. And the shadow had answered.
From the ground, Zed stared up at the possessed boy above him, and for the first time, a true, primal fear touched his features.
Rina took a step forward, her voice breaking. "Kenji... don't ..."
From the deep shadow of a splintered oak, a figure sheathed in a dark cloak ,one of Zed's surviving mages materialized like a phantom. In his hands was a short, cruel sword already stained with witch-blood. He moved with silent purpose, and before any cry of warning could leave a throat, he drove the blade straight through Rina's back.
Her golden eyes went wide. A choked gasp escaped her lips, followed by a cough that sprayed flecks of crimson into the air. Her outstretched hand trembled, then fell. She didn't scream. She just stared at Kenji through the red glow of the shadow's eyes as her knees buckled.
But the thing wearing Kenji's face just stared at her with those hellish red eyes, the shadow-blade still poised to fall... until it saw her stumble, saw the dark-cloaked mage yank his sword free from her back.
A sound tore from Kenji's throat not a scream, not a roar, but a shattering noise, like the world breaking in two.
The shadow-blade in his hand dissolved.
Zed, still pinned under his boot, saw the crimson glow in the boy's eyes flicker.