The rule of advantage was simple.
Whoever owned the environment… owned the fight.
That was what every soldier was taught from the first day of training. When an intruder breaks into your home, turn off the lights. Darkness favors the familiar. You know every wall, every corner, every place to hide. But that, like most rules written by men who had never bled, wasn't always true. Sometimes darkness didn't belong to anyone. Sometimes it belonged to the one who was superior, plain and simple.
Ryuen's armor hissed quietly as he turned, the faint glow of the runes along his chestplate pushing back the dark in a thin halo. The light gave him a narrow circle of safety… and a wider circle of blindness.
He exhaled through his teeth. We finally catch this slippery dog, and now he just runs? His grip tightened on his sword. Let him. Not much a stray from the Plague Sector can do, tricks or no tricks.
Ryuen was one of the best among the court guards, disciplined, brutal, a step away from becoming a royal guard. He couldn't use his element here, not with the room being filled with plague cures and patients, and his core ability was not able to be used in the slightest since it was just as destructive as his enchantments. But he still had his armor, his training, his runes. That should have been enough.
And yet… the echo of Tylian's words gnawed at the edge of his mind: He's a problem. Do not, under any circumstances, underestimate him. We will take him alive if we can… but do not hesitate to kill him if you must.
Ryuen scoffed quietly. "What a joke."
He adjusted his stance, the glow of his armor casting a faint reflection across the glass pods around him. Ahead, Yulriek, the one who used daggers and Ryuen's friend, was checking the shelves they'd just passed, blades drawn, his back pressed to the wall.
"What, scared he'll get you?" Ryuen called, smirking. "He's probably hiding in a corner, shaking."
He let out a low chuckle and narrowed his eyes, activating Spirit Sight.
The world changed.
Spiritual energy bled through the walls in waves of color—the heat of runes, the faint pulse of enchantments, the residual traces of alchemy. He saw it all clearly. Everything except… him.
The air all of a sudden felt much tighter.
"Come out, stray!" Ryuen growled, his voice echoing between the pods. "Stop—"
"Hiding."
The word whispered behind his ear.
Ryuen spun, but too late, an arm hooked around his throat. The hold tightened instantly, cutting the breath from his lungs. Panic flared. His blade came up, slashing backward, but a hand caught his wrist and forced it down, iron fingers locking it in place.
Ryuen's legs kicked against the tile, boots scraping, armor clattering. Yet, it did nothing. He tried to speak, tried to call out to Yulriek, who was just down the row, but all that came out was a strangled gasp.
"Gh—!"
He tried to fight, but it all happened so fast, and he was stuck, the world was growing dark and there was nothing he could do.
"Shhh."
The last sound Ryuen made was the dull clatter of his sword hitting the floor.
Yulriek turned at the sound, a single clatter and saw only a sword on the floor, its tip scoring a dark arc across the tile. No hand welding it, no light, no body there. Just the blade, laid on the ground, useless.
"Ryuen?" he called. No answer came.
Spirit Sight painted the room in pale tracings. Runes, wards, the hum of preserved serum. Three cores pulsed where the two soldiers were, separated, moving, one dark gray, one light gray, moving around. One more node sat fixed, a light-gray core on the edge of the field. Ryuen's. It did not move.
He moved toward it with his back pressed to the wall, steps careful. As he enclosed the distance between himself and the source of the core… and when he did, his heart stopped.
Ryuen slumped against the far corner, shoulders folding like a dropped coat. "R—Ryuen?"
Words died as a blade flicked past the air behind him. The motion was a whisper; his body ducked down on reflex and the sword missed by inches, swishing over his head. He jumped clear, breathed a sharp intake to calm down and looked up into two gold coins of light, eyes and a grin set in on the half and half mask. Sin had edged the line between darkness and the knight's halo.
"You—" the knight snarled, pivoting into a slash, the steel sword arced for his head. Sin used the blade to meet it, metal on metal. For a fraction the knight's sword was dull in his hands: no runes flared. Then, like a lunging animal waking, the hexes flared. Heat and electricity licked the blade. A failsafe. The shock bit through Sin's gloves making him drop the blade and wince in pain slightly.
Pain laced his arm. The knight's boot drove into his stomach and Sin staggered, Yulriek didn't let the advantage go unnoticed. He swung his sword, to cut Sin's neck as he stumbled. But it missed, Sin fell into motion that was not thought so much as reflex sharpened by the potions humming in his blood.
Sin folded low. A split, legs splaying, ankle a lever. He hooked the knight's footing with a foot and the man pitched forward. Momentum carried blade and armored weight in a brutal arc. Sin rolled and used this moment to kick the handle of the blade that shocked him, making it point upwards.
The enchantments on the blade answered the contact. The runes, already hot and still are enchantments that are engaged since the owner isn't dead, bled into the metal's hunger. When Sin forced the sword with his foot, it slid with intention, biting through plate and into flesh. The knight's chest erupted in a soft, wet sound. He coughed once, blood spattering onto the tile as he pitched to his side.
Sin watched the man breathe shallowly, then still. He could have finished it. He did not.
"It's in your chest," he said. "Pull it out and you bleed out. Stay there. A healer will come." He kicked the knight's helmet loose, then answered the room with another blow, deliberate and the man slumped against the floor.
For a breath Sin let his shoulders sag. That was close. He had the medicine. He had carved a hole through steel to take it. That ought to be enough, for now. He just needs to get out somehow and avoid more bloodshed if possible.
Tylian's brow arched slightly. Through the haze of smoke and spiritual residue, his Spirit Sight painted the scene in sharp relief, two fallen cores dimming on the floor, their essence flickering weakly. He could see every thread of motion, every pulse of energy, and the silhouette of their figures to see what was going on through the pods..
"Interesting," he murmured.
He exhaled quietly, disappointment threading through his tone. "Can't blame them. No enchantments, no elemental support… physical combat only." His gaze swept across the fallen men, then toward the black-masked silhouette moving through the still darkness. "And hand-to-hand against him is pointless."
Two more knights emerged from opposite sides of the pods, since they rushed over instead of circling the room, their armor clinking as they converged.
"Hey!" one barked.
"That's enough!" the other shouted, raising a tomahawk as his partner drew a curved saber.
Sin scoffed under his breath. "Dammit."
The first knight lunged. Sin pivoted, parrying the blow with his forearm before hooking the man's wrist, dragging him forward into the path of the tomahawk's downward swing. Steel screeched against armor as the second knight halted his attack, barely avoiding cutting into his comrade.
Sin used the moment. He slammed his head forward. The impact cracked against the helmet like a hammer on a bell, ringing through the hall. The knight reeled backward, dazed, before Sin seized his shoulder and hurled him across the floor.
"Raaaahhh!" The tomahawk knight roared, rushing in with an arcing slash. Sin stepped onto the flat of the blade mid-swing, using it as a platform to kick off. The strike faltered. Sin twisted in the air, boot crashing into the knight's chest. Both armored men stumbled, colliding with each other in a chaotic tangle of steel.
One of them panicked, throwing his weapon as he fell. The Curved saber spun end-over-end, whistling through the air and biting deep into a pipe behind Sin. Steam burst outward in a white hiss, scalding heat flooding the room.
Sin's eyes narrowed behind the mask. He fell back a few steps, hand tapping the wall. The echo was hollow. Thin. He could work with this.
"Damn you!" one of the knights shouted, scrambling up, his tomahawk now glowing faintly as the runes across its head began to pulse.
"Don't—!" Tylian's voice cut sharp through the noise, his eyes widening. He surged forward, arm outstretched. "Deactivate that weapon now!"
Sin's head jerked up, realization dawning in an instant. "You idiot!" he yelled. He dug into his pouch, pulling free a small metallic sphere, one of Taichi's suppressor devices, and hurled it toward the weapon.
Time felt as if it had slowed down.
The sphere didn't hit the axe, since Tylian made it to the axe first, it hit his sleeve deactivating the enchantments..
For one heartbeat, the world held still.
Then came the sound—
A click..
A flare.
Then—
Boom.
The air ignited. The contained fire spell inside the saber detonated first, small, harmless, until it met the leaking gas from the ruptured pipe. The explosion tore through the room like a dragon's breath, light swallowing sound.
Sin felt the pressure hit first, an invisible fist slamming into his chest. His body lifted, spine striking the wall with bone-cracking force before the white wall gave way. Stone fractured, and the wall exploded outward in a shower of debris and flame.
For an instant, there was only brightness. Then darkness swallowed everything again.