The mist was not fog—it was memory, unraveling in threads of silver and shadow. From its heart, a voice spoke. Calm. Measured. Sharp enough to cut through the very silence.
"In the nation of Natlan… I have learned many lessons."
The haze parted like torn silk, and a man emerged—a monolith of iron will amidst a landscape shattered and bleeding.
He spoke again, softer now, yet every syllable rang like a war drum in the marrow of all who heard.
"The most crucial one," his voice dipped to a whisper, "is that no one fights alone."
The sword in his hand was not forged of metal. It was a verdict, honed by centuries, polished by blood. Light struck its surface, igniting a cold, hungry gleam—as if the blade longed for vengeance as much as the man who wielded it.
His eyes—two storm-lit horizons—fixed on Yandelf with the stillness of a vow carved into eternity.
"In your fight with the Abyss," he said, each word a silent oath, "I shall lend you a hand."
For a fleeting breath, the war goddess faltered. Her composure cracked like frost under a careless heel.
"You're strong," she murmured, her tone dripping with a predator's respect. "Just make sure you don't drag me down."
Capitano gave no answer—only a nod. A gesture as elegant as it was lethal. Grace coiled into readiness.
---
Orion moved first.
Not with a cry. Not with fury. With silence—the most terrifying sound of all.
His hand snapped toward Citlali, and the world froze with her. Her breath stilled. Her words died unborn.
A tomb of ice swallowed her whole. Layer upon merciless layer, until she was nothing but a monument—a frozen prayer to a god that would never answer.
Yandelf's tongue clicked, a knife-edged sound of irritation.
"Noctharn. Now."
And the sky tore open.
The Frost Dragon descended—not like a creature, but like judgment itself. The wind screamed with his arrival, snow spiraling in a cyclone of blinding rage. He struck Orion with a single beat of wings, and the force was a storm—a cathedral of cold collapsing on the would-be killer.
His scales burned with a glacial hymn, every note singing death to flame and shadow alike.
Orion's eyes narrowed, slit and serpentine. His voice slithered out, low and venomous:
"You're a problem. I can't kill her while you still draw breath."
Then, softer. Darker. His gaze slid to the younger dragon.
"Felix…"
The name was a blade, but Felix did not bleed. His eyes blazed, and the growl that followed was thunder chained in a dragon's throat.
"Why call for me now?" His voice spat contempt like sparks from stone. "Do you think I'll be as blind as Frieda? Your corruption oozes from you like rot."
---
And then the world soured.
The air grew heavy, thick with a stench older than sin. Blackness, slick and glistening, crawled across Orion's flesh, swallowing him whole.
Abyss.
It did not creep; it conquered. Coalescing into a sphere that pulsed with a heartbeat no mortal ear could endure.
On the opposite end of the battlefield, Yandelf's grip tightened on her lance. Her eyes—razors of obsidian—narrowed to slits.
And then it burst.
A hand ripped through the writhing shroud.
The scream that followed was not human. It was a tear in reality—a shriek that clawed through every soul, every bone, a note of agony so pure it was almost holy.
"UYGGGGAHAGAHHHHHHH!"
Capitano did not flinch. His gaze, calm as winter stone, slid to Ashlyn.
"The Abyss toys with hearts again," he murmured, his voice a scalpel cutting through chaos.
Ashlyn smiled—a crescent of malice—and raised her severed arm. Blood dripped like rubies… and then, impossibly, rose.
The flow reversed, stitching flesh as shadows coiled like lovers around her wound. A new arm bloomed, perfect, pale, obscene.
"The Abyss," she whispered, her voice silken poison, "does not hunger for your fragile realm—not yet. Our eyes… are higher."
---
A DEBT OF BLOOD
Capitano vanished. No sound. No flourish. Only speed sharpened to a single thought.
"I care not for Celestia," he thundered, his words molten iron in a frozen void, "but the Abyss owes me blood."
And then—darkness ate the world.
The Abyss was not black. It was absence. It was hunger shaped like silence.
Capitano stood alone, a silhouette against infinity.
"Is this… the Abyss?" The whisper left his throat like frost.
Then—a scream.
"COMMANDER!"
It did not echo. There was no surface for sound to cling to.
Capitano's breath stilled.
"Zephaniah? No… it can't…"
Another voice—"It hurts…"
"Irizar?"
The names were ghosts and knives all at once.
And then—light bloomed. A single lavender flower, spinning in the void. Then another. Then hundreds, floating like tears that refused to fall.
The glow revealed men. His men.
Crucified. Burned. Hanging like grotesque ornaments from the gallows of eternity.
"Please… save us…"
Capitano's grip tightened until the hilt screamed in his hand.
He moved.
Steel sang—a hymn to fury—and chains shattered. Ropes snapped like serpents split by lightning.
The men fell, clutching him like children to a father. "Help us…"
But for every soul freed, ten more bloomed from the dark.
Bleeding on salt. Screaming his name.
What game is this? he roared, his voice a war-horn swallowed by the void.
---
A LEGION OF ONE
Capitano split himself. A deliberate, surgical act. One ghost became two. Two became four. Until an army of Capitano's strode across infinity, each a shard of his defiance.
The clones cut chains. They tore down crosses. They burned gallows.
And still—more men came.
The Abyss was a womb of suffering that birthed only pain.
The illusion cracked. Splintered. Screamed.
And then—shattered.
---
A DANCE OF SHADOW AND STEEL
Ashlyn stood with a smile carved from midnight. Shadows curled around her arm, and from them, a blade was born—a sword that ate light as a star devours a dying sun.
She lunged.
Capitano met her. Steel kissed shadow, and the earth convulsed from the violence of that union.
The ground split. Air warped. Gravity forgot itself.
Ashlyn struck like a storm unchained. Capitano deflected. Parried. His armor shrieked as if it too feared death.
One blow—his visor cracked.
Another—a gash carved fire across his ribs.
Blood. Not flowing. Weeping.
His body became scripture, written in wounds. And still—he stood.
Ashlyn paused. A single breath. Eyes wide.
"You're… still alive?"
Capitano rose from one knee like a titan dragging mountains behind him. His voice was ruin wrapped in iron:
"Death…" he whispered, each syllable molten, "…is the reward I ache for myself."
Her mask shattered. For the first time, shock bloomed on her face.
"You're cursed…" The words fell like prayer beads. "…with immortality."
And Capitano smiled—a grave blooming under winter frost.
He did not answer. Silence bled from him like a second skin—heavy, suffocating, absolute.
The sword in his hand no longer gleamed like steel. It howled like grief. Every stroke was a hymn to the dead, every thrust a prayer carved in blood and vengeance. He swung not as a swordsman but as a storm, his movements vast and merciless, the weight of entire wars behind his blade.
Ashlyn felt it. For the first time, the Abyss whispered—not in her ear, but in her bones—You might break.
This was no man. No knight. He was the avalanche that buries kings. The tidal wave that does not negotiate.
His blade did not parry; it devoured. Her strikes fell like midnight rain against an unfeeling glacier. She lashed with the grace of a serpent, her Abyss-forged edge slicing arcs of shadow—yet each cut was swallowed in silence, buried under his unrelenting march.
He absorbed her. The curse dripping from her blade seeped into his wounds, but his flesh was already a reliquary of poisons, a cathedral of scars. Her venom met a man who had drowned in venom long ago.
Every impact carved gashes into his armor, tore rifts into his skin. Blood poured, blackened by the Abyss—and yet… he kept coming.
Ashlyn moved faster. Harder. Her steps blurred into afterimages, her strikes becoming a cyclone of darkness. Her blade shrieked with the cry of the Abyss itself, black fire spilling across the battlefield.
And still… he did not yield.
For every elegant flourish she made, his answer was brutality sharpened into inevitability.
He was not fighting to win. He was fighting because to stop was to die—and he had been denied the mercy of eternal rest.
Each wound she gifted him became fuel. His sword rose heavier, his breath harsher, his eyes emptier—a well with no bottom.
Ashlyn realized the truth. She was not dancing anymore. She was drowning.
Her movements, once art, now cracked with desperation. Her blade, once a phantom, now shook under the weight of his steel.
She struck—a perfect arc, a death sentence sculpted in shadow.
He didn't block. He let it take him. Her sword carved through flesh and plate, splitting him open like a book… and still, his arm swung.
The counterstroke came like a mountain falling. Her blade met his.
The earth screamed. The shockwave fractured stone into shards, splitting the battlefield like a wound.
Their eyes locked—hers wide with terror dawning like a sunrise in hell. His… empty. Not dead. Worse—immortal.
And then—he stepped forward. One step. Then another. An inevitability dressed in iron and blood.
His sword swept in a slow, perfect arc. The world dragged into silence as if afraid to breathe.
And in that breathless eternity, Ashlyn understood:
She had not met a warrior.
She had met a curse with a name.