Chapter 18 : The Meaning after Nothingness
"I didn't think I'd see a Death Knight practicing in a garden."
Lucien approached Ethelia where she worked through sword forms with methodical precision, each movement a study in controlled violence. She didn't answer with words. Instead, she tossed him a practice sword—the way warriors had been communicating since blades were first forged.
He caught it easily, then adjusted his grip in a way that was fundamentally wrong. Too tight. Fingers instead of palm. The kind of mistake he'd corrected in Nian just days ago.
'Why is he gripping it that way?' Ethelia's confusion flickered across her face for just a moment. 'If Darian were here instead, he would've tried to overpower me immediately. But this...'
She noted the tight grip reaching toward his fingers rather than settling properly in his palm. Either Prince Lucien truly didn't know basic technique, or he was testing her.
"I couldn't practice in the training arena," she said, launching into a swing aimed at his shoulder. He parried—barely, with visible effort. "That place is already occupied by your brother and other warriors."
"Oh?" Lucien's response came with another clumsy-looking parry. "I wonder why a Death Knight like you would fear my brother."
He attacked toward her grip—telegraphed, obvious, easily dodged.
"I don't fear him." She swung low toward his legs. He backed away with awkward timing. "I just don't want to scratch old wounds. Some pride, once damaged, never fully heals."
Behind them, near the garden's stone pathway, Cian had arrived and positioned himself to watch. Close enough to see, far enough not to intrude. Neither combatant acknowledged him—or perhaps Lucien simply pretended not to notice.
"You question a lot," Ethelia observed, forcing her blade toward his shoulder with real strength behind it. He parried, but the impact made him stagger slightly. "Now my turn—you said you know Mabel very well?"
She stopped, stepping back and beginning to remove her heavy Death Knight armor. The plates were designed for battlefield endurance, not garden sparring in afternoon heat. Beneath, thin training clothes clung to a physique that was muscular yet undeniably feminine—the body of someone who'd spent a lifetime honing themselves into a weapon.
Lucien's eyes tracked her face, cataloging the sweat on her brow, the intensity in her brown eyes, the way she moved with such economy of motion.
"Ah, I knew a Death Knight would want to know about another Death Knight." His smile carried something that might have been genuine warmth. "Mabel and I were like mates—training together, fighting together, eating together. He was very much like a brother to me. Him and Theo both."
Something softened in his expression. Nostalgia, perhaps. Or the memory of a time when he hadn't yet perfected the art of feeling nothing.
"So why do you want me to train you when you trained with him?" Ethelia swung her blade again, this time noticing that Lucien's reaction was slower, more deliberate than necessary. "He's Rank 2 among us all. Even Marakanda respects him."
Marakanda. The Apex Knight. Rank 1. The strongest Death Knight in existence, stationed somewhere in the Tharqesh Empire. The name alone carried weight.
"How do you feel about him?" Lucien asked, attempting a sword swing that looked like a rookie experimenting with an unfamiliar technique.
"I feel that he's good. Stronger than most of us. Somehow too good to even be a Death Knight—like violence isn't his nature, just something he's excellent at." She watched Lucien's wasteful movements with growing confusion. 'Is he truly this inexperienced? Or is every mistake calculated?' "How do you feel?"
Her blade swung toward his chest—not a killing blow, but a serious strike meant to test his reflexes, to see what he'd do under pressure.
"I feel he is more necessary in this world than I am."
The words came with genuine respect. Genuine admiration. And beneath that, something darker—a self-awareness that bordered on nihilism.
And he didn't dodge.
Didn't even try.
Just stood there, violet eyes steady, as her blade came straight for his heart.
'He's not going to move—'
Ethelia jerked the momentum sideways with desperate force. The sword flew from her grip, embedding itself in a nearby tree trunk. The sudden shift in weight and direction sent them both tumbling to the grass.
She landed on top of him.
For five seconds—maybe ten—neither moved.
Her hands were braced on either side of his shoulders. His chest rose and fell beneath her, steady and unhurried. Their faces were close enough that she could see the exact shade of purple in his eyes, could feel the warmth of his breath.
Something unfamiliar bloomed in her chest. Not just attraction—though that was there, undeniable and uncomfortable. But something deeper. Confusion. Connection. The unsettling recognition that the line he'd just spoken wasn't manipulation.
It was truth.
He genuinely believed Mabel was more necessary to the world than himself. Believed it with the calm certainty of someone who'd stared into the abyss of his own worthlessness and found it... acceptable.
'The Meaning After Nothingness.' That book in his chambers. This was what it meant.
"So you wanted this?" Lucien's voice carried teasing warmth, but his eyes held something more complex.
"Oi, what are you two doing?"
Cian's voice shattered the moment. He stood a few paces away, his expression caught somewhere between pain, teasing, and jealousy—emotions he couldn't quite sort into proper categories.
Ethelia scrambled to her feet, flustered in a way she hadn't been since adolescence. "Pardon me, Prince Lucien—I got carried away testing advanced techniques on you."
She grabbed a towel from the nearby table, covering herself more thoroughly despite being fully clothed.
"Ah, surely my death was near." Lucien stood with deliberate slowness, moving like someone recovering from injury rather than a simple fall. "Your eyes alone felt dangerous enough to kill."
The statement landed somewhere between flirtation and genuine observation.
Ethelia's face burned. She excused herself quickly, fleeing toward the palace with as much dignity as she could salvage.
Once she was gone, Lucien turned to Cian and began wiping dust and sweat from his clothes with methodical care.
"So, Cian..." He didn't look at his friend directly. "Don't you think something has started to change? Very fast."
Cian opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again.
Because he couldn't answer. Not truthfully.
He himself had started to change—his perception of power, of friendship, of what it meant to stand in proximity to someone like Lucien who rewrote reality simply by existing in it. His relationship with his father had shifted. His understanding of the court had deepened.
Everything was changing.
This was how cause and effect worked. One stone thrown into still water, and the ripples spread outward until nothing remained unchanged.
Not the empire. Not the court. Not the people caught in the orbit of the Serpent Prince.
And especially not Lucien himself, though he pretended otherwise—carrying his book about meaning after nothingness like a shield against the uncomfortable reality that he might, despite everything, still be capable of feeling something real.