Date: August 2, 541 years since the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored.
The parity established on the battlefield was but a fleeting illusion. Tork "Bloodbrand" wasn't going to play cat and mouse anymore with a Warrior who had dared to draw his blood. The bandit leader took a deep breath, and his ribcage expanded to unnatural proportions.
"You've made me do this, pup," Tork rasped. "Watch how your hope dies."
The space around Tork suddenly grew heavy. From his Vessel, a viscous, ink-crimson substance gushed forth, beginning to form into something horrifying. This was his Spirit—the "Executioner of the Past." Behind the giant materialized a ghostly figure, resembling a skeleton in tatters, clutching a bloodied noose and an axe in its hands.
As soon as the Spirit manifested, Tork changed qualitatively. His skin turned grey as stone, and his muscles bulged, transforming him into a mountain of living armor. The Pillar rank revealed itself in all its terrifying grandeur. Now, each of the enemy's movements was accompanied by a powerful gravitational response: the snow around him simply pressed into the ground, turning into ice.
Tork lunged forward. His two-handed sword no longer just whistled—it emitted a sound like the scream of a thousand dying souls. Iskon tried to block the blow, momentarily increasing the thickness of his shield, but the Pillar's power was overwhelming. The young man's internal framework groaned under the extreme load. The vibration from the impact was so strong that blood began to flow from Iskon's ears.
Things were going badly for the young man. He was faster, but Tork now simply ignored minor thrusts, absorbing them with his Spirit-enhanced skin. Iskon circled the enemy, constantly changing his sword's length, trying to reach the joints of the armor, but the "Executioner of the Past" created a zone of slowness around Tork. Each time Iskon's blade was about to strike, its movement would bog down, as if in thick honey.
"You're too small!" Tork roared, unleashing a series of blows that shattered the boulders the detachment's knights were trying to hide behind. "Your energy is but a drop in the sea of my pain!"
Iskon felt his Vessel emptying. His breathing became labored, red circles swam before his eyes. He understood that in a direct confrontation with an activated Pillar's Spirit, he had not a single chance. Tork was pressing him towards the cliff, methodically destroying his defense and his will to resist.
The denouement came instantly. Tork, seeing his opponent's exhaustion, performed a feint. He deliberately opened his left side, provoking Iskon to strike. The young man, whose instincts were sharpened to the limit, couldn't resist—he delivered a thrusting blow, lengthening his sword's blade.
This was what the Pillar needed. Tork caught the sword blade with his bare hand, protected by the grey crust of his Spirit. A screech of metal against bone was heard, but the enemy didn't even flinch. With a powerful jerk, Tork tore the sword from Iskon's hands and threw it far into the fog.
"Now you're mine," Tork raised his two-handed sword above his head with both hands. The "Executioner" behind him repeated the movement, ready to cleave the Warrior in two.
Kaedan and Liana lunged forward, breaking Grak's order, but the distance was too great. Grak the Axe remained motionless, his gaze fixed on Iskon's left hand.
Iskon didn't try to run. He knelt on one knee, unarmed, staring death straight in the eye. At the last moment, as Tork's massive blade began its descent, tracing a black arc in the air, the young man raised his left arm, shielding himself with his teardrop shield.
Tork grinned in a victorious smirk. He was sure his blow would cleave through shield, arm, and the boy himself.
But at that instant, as the Pillar's sword almost touched the shield's steel edge, Iskon poured the last drops of his inner essence into his Scaling Spirit.
"Die," he said, barely audibly.
The steel spike in the very center of the shield suddenly came alive. It didn't just lengthen—it shot forward with the force and speed of a crossbow bolt. Tork, having put all his mass into the descending sword stroke, impaled his own throat on this point.
A wet, squelching sound was heard. The spike entered Tork's eye socket and exited the back of his head, piercing his cervical vertebrae.
Tork's sword stopped a few centimeters from Iskon's shoulder. The bandit leader froze. His eyes widened in shocking, impossible pain. The ghostly "Executioner" behind him instantly crumbled into grey ash. Tork tried to say something, but only a bloody bubble burst from his mouth.
Iskon, his expression unchanged, abruptly shortened the spike back. The Pillar's body, robbed of support, collapsed forward, right onto the young man. Iskon simply pushed the heavy corpse aside, letting it fall into the mud.
The silence that fell over the gorge was absolute. The knights of the Seventh Detachment stood frozen, staring at their leader. It was a cruel, calculated, and incredibly effective victory. No nobility, no honor—only the pure function of destroying an enemy.
Iskon rose, swaying. He wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve and, not looking at the slain Tork, headed into the fog to find his sword. His energy was completely spent, his body trembled from overexertion, but in his gait, one could still read that icy arrogance, now backed by the blood of a Pillar.
Grak the Axe slowly descended from the rock. He approached Tork's corpse, looked at the neat hole in its throat, and shifted his gaze to Iskon. "Special Detachment..." the commander boomed. "Seems I wasn't wrong in choosing the leader of the assault group. Gather the trophies. We leave in an hour."
Kaedan looked at his hands, then at Iskon. He understood that the path to the Pillar rank was not only about the density of stone. It was also about the ability to strike at the only gap the enemy leaves in their pride.