The dagger came fast.
Kade's backhand met the dagger's flat blade, smacked it away, and stepped forward into his space to deliver with his left. The commander, caught off guard by Kade's defence, wasn't ready for the follow-up, his free hand rocketing to defend him.
But Kade's fist struck through, impacting his cheek; the force of his blow jolted his head to the side. Despite the powerful hook, the commander resisted it, his feet bracing on the floor. His knife hand, now back in control, jabbed forward into Kade's eyes.
Kade's focus locked on the dagger and took a quick step back, the attack now just out of range, only inches before his irises. He began retreating into the safety of the darkness as the commander lunged repeatedly to strike him with the blade.
'Fighting an awakened is something else.' He had fought the awakened beast, of course, yet the commander was a human who had intelligence and experiences far beyond that creature, along with a dagger. He was far more dangerous.
Snatching a relic of the floor as a makeshift shield, the artifact deconstructing at the knife blade, managing to absorb one attack for Kade to step into his space, but the commander responded to a front kick, his heel crashing into Kade's guard and sending him skidding back.
"You're an awakened warrior of the war god, yet you use a weapon against an unarmed mundane? Where's the glory in that?" Kade taunted, Anything he could manage to make the commander lose the dagger would be his play; every single instance he had the weapon was a losing one for Kade.
The commander replied by ripping his knife free from the broken artifact, cleaning the debris off its blade with his palm, and readying it again.
"It will make it quicker; your life doesn't need to go on any longer, heretic."
His form blurring once again as he shot towards him, Kade sidestepped the attack and prepared to counter, but the recursive swing on the weapon once again prevented him, again and again; the commander surged forward, and Kade couldn't do much.
Any attempt to try and get some damage in would return him with a much more grievous wound; he was not under the delusion he could defeat the commander while injured, as even now that Kade had been healed from the oblique beads, he was struggling heavily against the tired commander.
The normal trick under this circumstance would be to make his opponent overconfident and punish them with a flurry of strikes, yet the commander wasn't a fool; he had the experience and wouldn't fall for such a thing.
The commander struck out with the dagger once again, this time the eerie steel catching Kade's arm, slicing the skin and cutting into the shallow muscle, blood painting the blade's edge as it passed by.
Grimacing, Kade ducked away from the next slash, grabbing a candle holder from the walls and pelting it at the commander. They caught it with his free hand, the impact sounding out the room before being followed by it being slowly crushed in his hands.
Kade's feet shifted back a step. His chest rose and fell as he panted, mind racing.
'This isn't going well.'
Strength. Speed. Experience. None of it was on his side.
'If this keeps up, I'll bleed out before I ever reach him.'
Desperately dodging and weaving the knife's arcs, Kade understood that from now on it was his loss; he couldn't meaningfully strike the commander with anything; his surplus of strength and durability from his attribute only allowed him to at least keep up with the commander.
But it wasn't enough by far; the gap between them was too far, and along with the commander's focus planted on simply killing him, there wasn't much he could do to taunt him either. With his life on the line, Kade desperately attempted to figure way he could win.
While in the middle of dodging a flurry of swings, Kade's thoughts clicked together as his brain offered him one last solution. 'He just has to think he's already won.' If Kade got banged up enough, maybe he could get the commander to accept that he had given up.
Once he put the knife towards Kade's heart, that moment he would be the least guarded, the best moment Kade had for dealing with his needed damage.
The battle continued in the depthless darkness of the shrine, Kade now purposefully leaning into slashes made by the commander rather than completely dodging them, only allowing them to grace his skin to give off the look of grievous damage without it being too catastrophic.
The commander looked confident as he cut Kade more and more, and in response, Kade played the part of gritting his teeth with desperate refusal and clung to his expression, his blood painting his body with perceived weakness.
Deep down the anticipation and expectation riddled hope of the play under the veil that was his face, his muscles ready whenever to respond to his final call, which. The prey had convinced the predator that they were now a meal rather than a combatant.
The shrine had gone still — only the flicker of far-off flames and the blood on the altar moving.
Kade now bled from a dozen shallow cuts. He leaned into the pain and made it believable. The commander, all cold confidence, carved him again and again, and Kade gave him the expressions he wanted: fear, pain, and denial.
He didn't have to fake much.
But beneath that battered mask, his muscles stayed coiled, his eyes watched, and the trap slowly closed.
He stumbled back, let his foot catch, and collapsed against the altar, the stone drinking his blood. His breathing came ragged, a pitiful display.
The commander stood above him, dagger held low.
"You understand it now, heretic," he said flatly.
Kade let his mask shift. Hope drained from his face. His eyes widened with crafted terror.
"What… no. No, it's not over yet."
He staggered forward an inch — a failed push, a final gasp — then slumped again.
The commander stepped forward. Slowly this time. There was no rush. No need. The dagger rose, gleaming silver in the firelight, and began its descent.
Kade's body coiled. This was it.
Now.
Muscles screamed as he lashed upward, fingers reaching for the attack. And stopped. A smirk.
He hadn't meant to. But he'd smiled.
The commander saw it. And punished him.
The crushing fish landed with a devastating impact. Kade's head snapped back into the altar with a dull crack. The world blurred. Blood ran down into his eyes.
Vision swimming, he saw the glint of the dagger above him, hungry for his life.
He caught the commander's wrist, barely. Arms shaking. Chest rising.
They struggled. The brute strength pushed closer and closer, the blade quivering right above his heart.
'I fucked up, didn't I?'
And then, slowly, his arms gave way.
The dagger plunged.
Narrowly missing his heart, and instead, the twisted blade punched deep beside it, easily passing through and into his lungs. Kade's world erupted with pain; every tug of the metal inside his body helped build the agony washing over him.
Kade tried to scream or groan in pain, but when he tried to make any sound, he could only manage a bloody cough. The strength in his body started to vanish as he bled on the altar; it fed off the red substance and began to shift under him.
The depths liquefied into a pitch-black ink, Kade struggled under the dagger sunk into the ink further and further, a terrifying weight pushing down on his soul as he started to be submerged.
His eyes regained focus on the commander, who let go of the dagger deep in Kade's chest, letting it sink with him as he began to pray, the red mist of his aspect expanding from his form and filling the shrine, chasing away the otherworldly presence for his own.
A suitable sacrifice for war.
Kade's eyes slowly sank into the void, his life flashing before his eyes as his vision was consumed by the ink. He didn't see much worth fighting for, having grown up as
His only parent is a bastard of a father who trained him from birth to learn how to control violence as a tool. Before consequently throwing him in a gambling ring of other kids, forced to fight each other until one couldn't stand. Grooming is the perfect option to gamble on. With him only growing richer and richer while he suffered the brutal abuse and treatment of the scum.
He was not his child, but his little hood sent to prop up his sloth-filled life.
One day Kade had enough of the torturous life; with all his hatred, he snuck up on his drunken father, sinking a knife straight into his throat. Watching as his father woke up in horror, Kade still had the memory ingrained into his head as he watched the life drain from his eyes.
Running away from his father's infatuated partners in crime and deep into the streets of the outskirts, where no one would find him.
At thirteen that was the first and only time he had killed someone; for the rest of his life, he used the knowledge beaten into him to make a life of his horrid circumstances. He hadn't had the chance to form any deep connection with anyone; they would either die from gang conflict or mugging to avoid Kade entirely, as weaving their lives with his would threaten their own.
Sinking further into the abyss, he wondered if anyone would even care for his demise; he had been fighting for himself and failed to do that, so now in the throes of death, he had nothing.
The silence lasted, and Kade started to accept his fate, after all; despite his fighting, he had no future to speak of, and to face the pain again and try would only make his final moments worse.
In a moment like this, he would like to spend his final moments with the calming, familiar embrace of a cig, yet he could not even have that.
It reminded him of when just before he entered the trial, he talked to Dawn, the girl just younger than him, who had somehow ended up an ally far, far away from where she should have been, not to mention her gift of allowing him a final smoke before he ended up in this hellhole.
'.....'
'Good luck' Her final words before she drifted off into the spell lingered in his mind, the tone and smoothness of her voice bringing him an unusual feeling as he drifted off into death.
Her voice lingered, not like a farewell—but like a reason.
Inside the trial, she could be pulled into that same hell with him.
He couldn't let that happen. Not to her. Not because he was too weak.
And dying here and accepting death would betray everything he'd ever fought for. The struggle, the abuse, and the years of torment shaped him into something more than a victim. He had carved out a presence in the chaos of the Outskirts and clawed it with blood and grit.
Living meant more than survival now.
It meant rising—reemerging as a Dreamer and someday an Awakened. With that power, the world would finally have to acknowledge him. His pain, his fists, his desperate climb.
He could go places he'd never imagined. Meet people who'd never looked his way. And prove to the memory of his father that he was always enough.
Even lost in darkness, Kade felt something bloom inside him.
Hope.
A roaring fire driving back the abyss that had almost claimed him.
His fading muscles stirred with forgotten strength. A defiant, dying surge that told him: not yet. Not here.
He wasn't ready to be swallowed by ink, or by fate.
He would live.
He would rise.
He would decide his destiny.
"I'll die on my own terms."
And then: [Vigilance] his attribute flared, emboldened by his desire to stand and live in defiance.
Adrenaline surged, numbing the pain. Kade gritted his teeth, muscles straining, as he clawed through the viscous black.
Toward the surface.
Toward life.
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