The wind howled across the dunes of jagged obsidian, a sound like grinding glass. Daniela and Jasper moved through the dark landscape, two anomalies of light and shadow against the relentless black grit. The storm was fierce, but it could not touch them.
Daniela moved within a shimmering green sheen, a translucent membrane of energy that clung to her skin like a second soul. Whenever the obsidian grains struck the barrier, they hissed and slid away as if hitting polished jade. Beside her, Jasper was a silhouette of shifting darkness. A black mist rolled off his shoulders in shallow, rhythmic waves, dissolving the momentum of the sand before it could even graze his clothes. They walked in a silence heavy with the history of their journey, their boots crunching rhythmically against the volcanic glass.
Through the roar of the wind came a sound that vibrated in their marrow—the wet tear of flesh and a guttural, multi-tonal roar. Over the crest of the next dune, two Vor'gath were locked in a death struggle. These were no ordinary predators; the demonic wolves were double the size of elephants, their fur matted with ichor and their eyes glowing with a sickly, necrotic violet.
One beast unhinged its jaw, releasing a Void-Howl—a pulse of sonic distortion so violent it turned the obsidian sand beneath it into fine powder. Its rival reacted with terrifying fluidity, its entire body flickering out of physical reality. This Shadow-Phase allowed the pulse to pass harmlessly through its translucent form before it solidified mid-air, its claws elongated into glowing talons of pure spite that raked across the first beast's spine.
The sight ignited something primal in Daniela. She stopped, her feet sinking into the black slope, and raised her right hand. The green sheen across her body surged toward her palm, beginning as a violent, swirling vortex of emerald energy that hummed with a low, dangerous frequency. Within heartbeats, the chaos condensed, cooling and hardening into the heavy head of a massive battle-axe. As the last of the sparks settled, her fingers clamped around the hilt, her knuckles white as she prepared to leap into the carnage.
"Daniela."
Jasper's voice was a cold blade cutting through the heat of her magic. He didn't even look back at the beasts. "You are done fighting beasts," he said, his pace never faltering as he continued to walk away from the slaughter.
Daniela's eyes lingered on the Vor'gath for a long moment, the green glow of her magic reflecting in her pupils. With a sharp, frustrated exhale, the weapon dissolved back into a mist of light, and she hurried to catch up. She had learned to love the rush of battle—the feeling of blood as it sprayed against her skin. For most of her lives, she had lived as the prey; now, she was enjoying being the predator. She craved the rush, the way her chest would rise and fall in rapid succession, and even the tremors that made her hands shake. All of it.
"Why?" she demanded, her voice tight with adrenaline.
"Because you fight too much like them," Jasper replied. His voice was crisp, devoid of the chaos of the storm. "From now on, you will only fight me."
He could read her like a book. Daniela was far too excited by the thrill of a fight, so much so that she refused to think or make a strategic move that could end a conflict in a single blow. Instead, she would rather wield an axe like a foot soldier—a common battleman, the first into the fray and the first to die. He wasn't training her to be cannon fodder.
Daniela wasn't sure she would feel the same rush when fighting Jasper. He was stronger than her—exponentially so. Truthfully, she wasn't even sure how strong he was in general; Jasper was mysterious, and it seemed no one had ever truly made him strain his power.
"We can't even hurt each other. The oath, remember?" Daniela reminded him.
"You wouldn't be able to hurt me. And I have more than enough control not to hurt you." Jasper smirked at the thought of Daniela actually being able to harm him. He knew that as she was right now, she couldn't scratch him. It would probably take decades, if not a century, for her to ever catch up to where he stood. "I don't intend to destroy your progress."
"You really think I couldn't scratch you?" Daniela asked, feeling the thrill of battle screaming just beneath her skin. The itch to wield her axe hummed to the surface once more.
He stopped and turned, his dark eyes locking onto hers, more piercing than the obsidian wind. "Focus on finding your will."
The crunch of obsidian sand under their boots was the only sound for a long mile after the beasts were left behind. Daniela felt the phantom weight of her magic humming under her skin, restless and hungry. She kept glancing at Jasper's back, watching the effortless way his shadow-mist drifted in the wind.
"Do you really think seeing you use your full power would make me give up?" she asked suddenly.
Jasper didn't slow down. "It very well could. Knowing how far from true power you are... that kind of knowledge can hurt your progress. It creates a ceiling in the mind."
"I want to know," Daniela pressed, stepping around a jagged shard of glass-rock to stand level with him. "I want to see the divide. I need to know how big the gap is between us. Show me."
Jasper stopped. He didn't answer immediately. He looked out over the undulating black dunes, his expression unreadable as he weighed the risk of shattering her resolve against the necessity of her understanding. Finally, he turned to face her. "Very well," he said softly.
Daniela dropped into a low, wide fighting stance. She centered her weight, her heart hammering against her ribs. Jasper didn't move; he stood with his arms hanging loosely at his sides. She wasn't sure if he truly didn't believe she was a threat, or if he was so confident that he didn't even need a stance.
"I'm ready," she said. She licked her dry lips, watching his every move, waiting for his attack like a bowstring taut and ready to be released.
Jasper nodded once. Daniela took a slow, deep breath, reaching out with her senses to feel the bite of the wind and the shift of the dunes. Her perception was at its peak. She pulled upon her power—and nothing happened.
The God's gift in her chest sat dormant. It was as if it were the first day again, when she did not know how to circulate its power through her body. She tried to direct the flow, urging the magic to respond to her will as it usually did with ease. But nothing happened. It stayed just beneath her heart, still and unresponsive.
The emerald sheen on her skin flickered and died. A cold, hollow sensation began to bloom in her chest. Jasper began to walk toward her. He didn't run, but with every step, his shadow began to stretch, bleeding across the obsidian sand. Daniela tried to step back, but her feet were frozen. The edges of Jasper's shadow had already coiled around her ankles like iron shackles. She hadn't even seen it happen.
The cold, inky shadows crawled up her skin. Her body felt numb and weak, as if it had been pulled apart so thoroughly that she couldn't feel her fingers or her toes. The dark slithered until it covered her mouth and her nose, and eventually, all she could see was darkness. A visceral panic gripped her chest; she wanted to scream, but she couldn't.
Jasper stopped inches from her. His eyes were darkened and ominous. "You lose," he said.
The sound reached her ears as the shadows receded, slowly slinking down her body. Daniela gasped out a harsh breath as the world came back into view. But for once, the night didn't feel dark—it felt like day. The darkness of Jasper's shadows was something else entirely: a void, an empty space so hollow she felt erased.
Her chest heaved as she stared at him in astonishment. "You didn't do anything," she whispered. "Nothing..."
But he had to have done something, because she hadn't been able to use her power.
"This is the gap between us," Jasper said. Reaching out, he caught the strands of her dark green locks, sliding his hand up the hair until he reached her throat. He petted the column of her neck gently. He expected her to still be scared; to be swallowed by his shadows was to be erased from the world. He could only assume it was like the dark realm he had been thrust into. On his command, the last of the shadows vanished instantly. "Let's keep going. We need to make camp."
They walked in a heavy silence until they reached a jagged outcropping of basalt. As they set up their sparse gear, Daniela's mind remained trapped on the ridge. I didn't even feel it, she thought, her fingers tracing circles in the sand. It wasn't a wall I hit. It was like the door was just… gone.
Jasper struck a rock, the spark igniting a violet flame. The flickering light cast long shadows against the basalt walls. Daniela stared at them, her skin crawling. He reached into my power and turned it off.
"You're staring," Jasper said, a mischievous smile touching his lips.
Daniela sat across from him. "I'm trying to find the logic. You didn't just bind me; you bound my mind, didn't you?"
Jasper leaned back. "A clever guess. But I didn't play a trick on your mind." He gestured for her to come to him. Daniela rested her head in his lap and stared up at him. "You know exactly what kind of magic I have. It is enough to figure out what I did and how to stop me," he assured her.
Daniela fell silent. He's playing a game with rules I don't even know yet. This was the first time Daniela realized she truly did not know much about power or fighting. Jasper fought with an expertise that didn't leave room for retaliation; he would dismantle a threat rather than leave it lingering for a chance to strike again. She wanted to be like that. To end threats for good.
"I'm going to figure it out," she said.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "I know. Sleep," he ordered, resting his palm over her eyes.
His shadows thickened around him, jutting out of his body in every direction to create a safety zone so they could sleep in peace.