It all began with a metallic growl, deep and unnatural, as if the earth itself had been forced to groan.
It was not brief. It vibrated, crawled, and sank into the bones, leaving a cold trail that clung to the heart.
The rocks trembled first. Dust motes detached and danced in the air like ashes of ancient wars.
Then the sand rose, forming whirlwinds that scraped the skin and carried the scent of old iron. Clothes shook. The ground seemed to refuse to hold them.
For a moment, no one knew if they were still standing… or if the world had decided to fall with them.
Dhunark rose.
Imposing.
Solemn.
A judgment made flesh.
His six claws ascended toward the sun with ritual slowness, slicing through the air in front of his face as an instinctive gesture, not a defensive one. Light filtered through their edges, rivaling the sky itself: fire that did not burn, heat that did not wound, yet intimidated. Shadows and glimmers transformed the field into a canvas of fire and darkness.
When he lowered his claws, the earth gave way.
The sand erupted, crawling as if it had a will of its own. Visibility vanished. The horizon disappeared. The battlefield was buried beneath a thick mist that roared and shifted with every shake of the ground.
From the fog emerged six monstrous claws, cutting through the air like blades hungry for bone and flesh.
Arhelia reacted instantly.
A step back.
A scream.
And the Hammer of Lucerna emerged from her shadow.
Black and severe. Two-handed. Dark wooden shaft, topped with a metal spike at its base. Its steel head promised not fury, but precision: a sentence. Riveted plates reinforced the upper section, as if forged to survive centuries of war.
She twisted her wrist.
The hammer intercepted the claw with an impact that ran up her arm like an electric whip. The clash resounded like a metallic thunder. The claw shattered.
Blood exploded into the air and splashed her face. Hot. Thick. Metallic.
But it was sent flying backward, slamming into a tree with brutal force. The arcane taste of iron flooded her mouth as she vomited blood. Still trembling, she rose. Took guard, breathing heavily, eyes fixed on Dhunark. The hammer gleamed through the fog.
Kael moved to her left.
Five steps. One cut.
His sword split the air with an almost imperceptible hiss… and Dhunark's lower right claw, four meters away, split in two under its blade. Blood gushed, heavy, as if every drop were liquid steel.
The recoil threw him backward, but Kael converted it into control. He fell to his knees, the sword planted in the sand like an anchor.
His breath was a contained roar.
Without hesitation, he struck again. The next claw met the same fate.
Dhunark roared.
It was no ordinary scream. It tore through the air, penetrated bones, and filled everything with pain and madness. Its echo was a sentence for any living being nearby.
The yellow mist closed the way, dense like an invisible wall. The air grew heavy. The gray sand swallowed sounds, erased footprints, devoured echoes.
Only slow progress remained.
Stillness was a lie.
Something watched from the fog.
And the hunt began.
Arhelia laughed.
It was not a human laugh. It was a metallic tinkle, dry and sharp, like two blades brushing carelessly against each other.
"Look at you!" she shouted. "Bigger than a man and clumsier than a puppy. That crocodile head isn't scary… it looks like a badly sewn hat."
The All or Nothing sphere pulsed before her chest. Half relentless light. Half abyssal darkness. It spun with calm indifference.
It was not a shield.
It was a pact.
A judgment yet to be pronounced.
Arhelia leapt.
The sand responded to her impulse. Living shadows emerged from the ground, forming pillars a meter high. They breathed. They vibrated. They obeyed.
One rose to her left. She stepped on it, and the dark column hurled her into the air as if it had consciousness. Before losing balance, another pillar sprouted three meters ahead. She jumped onto it and brought the hammer down on Dhunark's left claw.
Blood gushed thickly.
Gravity was not her enemy.
It was her demanding partner.
"Is that all you've got?" she spat. "Seven meters of error… and you don't even know how to look."
Dhunark responded without a voice.
A claw fell exactly where her body had been moments before.
The impact split the shadow pillar and the dune, raising a tide of sand the mist devoured without a trace.
The ground trembled.
And with it, the certainty that the terrain was no longer stable, but negotiable.
She launched herself via a shadow pillar that curved under her weight like a baroque column, ornamented by her own intention. From there, she extended whips of darkness. It was not unleashed Law: it was calculation made flesh.
They did not cut instantly.
They palpated.
They searched together.
They memorized ancient pains embedded in the monster.
Dhunark opened his triple jaws.
He bit.
The shadow column disintegrated.
A claw grazed Arhelia's shoulder, and the world narrowed. She rolled across the sand, letting it tear her skin and pride. She drove shadow into the ground like an anchor and stopped.
She breathed dust.
She rose.
Advanced.
Kael was there.
That alone was already too much.
His sword did not tremble. He did, inside. Short breath. Each heartbeat a countdown.
Dhunark dominated the horizon. Not as a creature, but as an ancient error that no one had corrected. Every movement altered the sand, not through violence, but by right. The ground accepted his weight. The world acknowledged him.
He swallowed.
Threw the sword to the sky.
The weapon halted, suspended.
It emanated a red glow, a voiceless cry,
as if the sword remembered all wounds
and the air felt them for him.
His first strike did not seek flesh.
It sought space.
The air split in invisible lines, sharp beyond measure. Recoil came after: a dry, brutal shove, as if the world refused to be cut without exacting a price.
Kael stepped back.
The impact ran up his arms to his shoulders.
Dhunark's abdomen was split.
Blood fell.
He cried out once.
Turned his torso. Vertebrae creaked. The wound was exposed, unhealed. His head turned toward his attacker.
He recognized him.
Nothing else moved.
Then he advanced.
Attacked without rage. Without doubt.
As one who fulfills what was already decided.
She raised the sword in defense, just in time.
The claw descended like a sentence.
She held it… barely.
The sand swallowed her feet, pinning them, denying retreat. Her entire body vibrated under absolute force. It was not yet pain.
It was worse.
Pressure.
She heard the creak of her own bones.
No glory.
No beauty.
Only resistance.
"No…" she murmured, not knowing to whom.
Dhunark watched.
Not with eyes.
With time.
Every second with the monster was a mismeasure. She felt it in her skin, in her tense muscles, in the fear that did not become panic only because Arhelia was there. Screaming. Laughing. Breaking the world in her way.
"Enough!" he roared, fed up with everything.
He advanced.
Kael blocked and attacked, cutting with contained precision. Every strike seemed to measure time and space, but Dhunark's ancient brutality was unpredictable. One fraction of error and the claws would pierce the space they had just left.
They did not control the Law.
They endured it.
It responded late. Heavy. Hesitant.
Each failure did not strengthen them: it weakened them.
They remained alive by concession, not merit.
They did not fight to win.
Then Arhelia saw the opening.
Her shadow reacted before she did.
From the dark belly emerged an ebony serpent, alive, alert. She mounted it, and the darkness accepted her as rider.
The sky opened.
She emerged from the mist.
The wind tried to tear her apart in the air. It failed.
She dismounted mid-flight.
Gravity was nothing more than a suggestion.
She descended.
Delivered judgment.
The lower spike of the hammer plunged into Dhunark's back with a dry, definitive blow. The beast screamed. It was not a roar: it was pain articulated in teeth. The air trembled.
She pulled out the hammer.
The weapon vibrated, hungry.
And obeyed.
A whirlwind of blows erupted over the monster's back. The exoskeleton gave way. Everything gave way. Each impact bathed her in hot blood. Her blue tunic turned wet black. Her body, red.
Dhunark launched a claw.
Arhelia blocked.
The force was too much.
She was thrown. The world spun. The ground fractured beneath her. Her arms turned deep violet, swollen, alien.
She groaned.
Behind Dhunark, the yellow mist contracted.
The air broke.
Six flying cuts sprang from the fog and sank into the monster's back with surgical precision. A red river struck the ground with a wet, obscene sound.
Dhunark roared again.
Fury.
Denial.
Pure hatred.
He turned his head. Vertebrae creaked. He opened his three jaws.
Kael stood before him.
Dhunark did not see an enemy.
He saw flesh.
The body rolled before thought.
The monster's head penetrated the earth with a thunder that shook the entire campus. Kael was dragged like a projectile, smashing into an old tree that creaked under impact. He rolled to a stop, panting, back in raw flesh.
Arhelia rose.
Advanced a step… and nearly fell.
The world spun too fast. Each breath burned. Each heartbeat pushed pain into her arms.
She did not retreat.
She dropped the hammer.
Metal kissed the earth, and the ground responded with a dull tremor.
"Kael!"
"What?!" he shouted, dodging a claw that passed inches from his neck.
He moved reflexively, taking the space Arhelia had just left.
"Distract him for thirty seconds."
"Why?"
"Just do it, Kael… Trust."
Kael gritted his teeth. Hesitated. Just for a moment.
"Damn… understood."
And he advanced against Dhunark.
Arhelia placed all her weight on the hammer's handle. She lowered her forehead. Allowed exhaustion to touch her for a single beat… then denied it.
She separated her hands from the weapon and brought them together before her chest.
It was not a prayer.
But it resembled one too much.
Her fingers trembled. Not from fear, but from the brutal effort to remain standing when everything in her demanded she fall. She closed her eyes.
The world went dark.
No sound. No wind. No blood.
Only the All or Nothing sphere remained.
She did not look at it with her eyes, but with will.
There it was: silent, expectant, absolute. It promised no salvation. Offered no mercy. Never had. It was a Law that did not negotiate. A judgment that heard no excuses.
Arhelia inhaled deeply… and spoke.
Her voice was not loud.
It was firm.
Every word fell heavy, loaded with intent, as if she tore fragments from her own essence to give them shape. She did not recite to impose. She did not recite to beg.
She recited to declare.
Meanwhile, Kael kept the creature occupied.
His attacks were precise, contained. Brief cuts, calculated movements. He did not seek to wound: he sought time. Every second gained was a debt he knew he could not repay.
The Law responded.
The air tensed.
The sphere vibrated, not with light, but with meaning. Something ancient awoke. Something that recognized the price being offered.
The earth beneath the hammer creaked. Not from force.
From respect.
Arhelia opened her eyes.
From her shadow emerged the black drill.
A monster of metal and fury. Standing like a mechanical titan devouring light. It roared with frenzy: the heartbeat of steel, a serpentine hum that measured the pulse of the world and tore it with every turn.
It struck Dhunark's abdomen.
The impact was an explosion of flesh and noise. A scream doubled on itself, echo of animal agony. Blood sprayed, painting the air with grotesque strokes, splattering the sand like rain of forgotten demons.
But the drill did not stop.
It advanced toward the heart, ripping life with malice before time could blink. As it passed through the upper back, an arc of blood erupted, illuminating the scene with obscene brutality.
Dhunark screamed.
But his roar was not enough.
The mechanical beast, endowed with almost human malice, delighted in his fury, swallowing each sound and returning it multiplied.
The shadow of the drill covered everything, and for a moment, even light seemed to tremble before this wild dance of steel and blood.
For a moment, there was silence.
No victory.
No relief.
Only an unnatural pause, as if the world took a deep breath before committing an irreversible error.
Then it happened.
The black drill kept spinning.
One more turn.
Another.
The blood ceased to gush like a torrent and began to fall heavy, thick, as if the monster's body no longer knew how to bleed. Dhunark's roar cracked into something irregular. Not pain. Not fury. Confusion.
The drill slowed.
Not because Arhelia commanded.
Because something responded.
A dry creak resonated from inside the monster's skull.
Not a blow.
Not an explosion.
A gesture.
The drill's spin halted completely.
Silence.
Dhunark's head did not break.
It opened.
First, a vertical, perfect, unnatural crack.
Then another, transversal.
The bony structure folded back like rigid petals of a flower that should never have bloomed.
Nothing emerged yet.
The air thickened.
Kael felt short of oxygen, though he continued breathing. The world seemed to lean just slightly forward, as if listening.
Then—
Something looked.
Not with eyes.
With presence.
From the center of the unfolded skull emerged a human face.
White.
Smooth.
Still.
Too still.
It had no eyes.
No open mouth.
And yet, it screamed.
It was not sound.
It was pure intent.
The pressure struck Arhelia's chest like an invisible hand closing around her heart. The All or Nothing trembled. Not in rejection.
In recognition.
An aura of Level 1 expanded in slow, crushing waves. The sand sank. The forest beyond the circle creaked as if aged a year in a second.
"…Ah," Arhelia exhaled, taking an involuntary step back.
The black drill emitted a sharp, pitiful squeal. The runes flickered one last time, off rhythm… and shattered.
Dead metal.
Extinguished shadow.
The shower of remains fell silently.
"A fallen spirit," Arhelia said softly—
"So it was a fallen cultivator… that's why there was no altar."
Kael did not respond immediately. His throat was tight.
"That's not just any fallen spirit…" he finally murmured. "It's Level 1."
The face remained.
Watching.
"If we get too close…" Kael swallowed. "We die."
Arhelia advanced.
One step.
The ground creaked under her boot, not as a warning… but as acceptance.
"If we don't approach," she replied, "we'll never learn."
Kael grabbed her arm.
"We're not cultivators! We're mortals! This isn't a trial, Arhelia! This is the end!"
She barely turned her face.
Their eyes met. They said nothing, and yet… said everything.
In her gaze, there was no judgment, no promise, no power. Only a silence so firm it forced him to breathe.
For a moment, fear became smaller. More… manageable.
"Then don't die."
Kael did not know why he did it.
Perhaps fear.
Perhaps faith.
Perhaps because the world offered no other option.
He pushed her.
The earth responded immediately. A sharp column emerged between them, separating them.
Arhelia did not fall.
She advanced.
With elegance.
As if walking toward something she had awaited for a long time.
The human face tilted slightly.
Acknowledging her.
The sand creaked under her steps like small bones breaking.
Kael felt that sound in his chest.
Not as a threat.
As a promise.