Marcus didn't waste time with a dramatic opening move. His first attack was a simple thrust with Hearteater, aimed at Kaelen's center mass—fast, efficient, professional.
Kaelen barely parried it. The impact sent shockwaves up his arm, made his teeth click together. *Strong*. Marcus was so much stronger than anyone Kaelen had fought before.
The second attack came from the other blade—the Mindbreaker fragment—targeting Kaelen's head. He ducked, rolled, came up slashing with Soulrender. Marcus deflected it casually with Hearteater's crossguard.
"Textbook academy footwork," Marcus observed, pressing the attack. "Ronan's drills, I assume? He always did emphasize fundamentals."
Kaelen didn't waste breath answering. He needed all his concentration just to stay alive. Marcus's attacks came in flowing combinations—high, low, feint, real strike—each one testing different defenses, probing for weaknesses.
Behind Marcus, Lia was trying to support with runes, but she had to be careful. A misfired spell in close combat could hit Kaelen as easily as Marcus.
"Barrier left!" she shouted.
Kaelen dove right just as one of Lia's force walls materialized where he'd been standing. Marcus's next strike smashed against it instead of Kaelen's ribs. The barrier shattered, but it had done its job.
"Clever," Marcus admitted. "Coordinated fighting. You two have good synchronization." He pivoted smoothly, sending a wave of shadow energy at Lia. "But it only works if both partners survive."
Lia's defensive runes caught the attack, but the strain was visible. Her echo-scars were darkening by the second, spreading up her arms like ink in water.
*Can't let him target her*, Kaelen realized. *Have to keep his attention on me*.
He attacked aggressively, using techniques Ronan had beaten into him during their training. Draw Marcus's guard up, then go low. Feint right, strike left. Use the environment—he kicked a loose stone at Marcus's face, followed up with a strike when the older man flinched.
Marcus blocked it easily. "Better. You're thinking like a fighter now, not just swinging the sword and hoping. But thinking isn't enough against experience."
He demonstrated by doing something Kaelen hadn't anticipated—he threw Hearteater.
Not at Kaelen. At Lia.
The Forbidden Blade spun through the air like a spear, trailing shadow energy. Lia threw up every defensive rune she had, but Hearteater was designed to break through magical defenses. It was going to punch right through and—
Kaelen caught it.
Barely. He dropped Soulrender, dove forward, and grabbed Hearteater's hilt with both hands. The blade burned his palms—foreign shadow energy rejecting his touch—but he held on.
For about two seconds.
Then Hearteater simply teleported back to Marcus's hand, leaving Kaelen with scorched palms and no weapon.
Marcus smiled. "Admirable reflex. But you should have known Forbidden Blades bond with their wielders. You can't just steal them."
He kicked Soulrender away, sending it clattering across the stone.
"Now then," Marcus said, advancing with both blades. "Let's see how you fight without your—"
Kaelen hit him with a shadow tendril from his bare hand.
Not Soulrender's power—his own shadow magic, the ability he'd developed through weeks of channeling the blade's energy. It wasn't strong, but it surprised Marcus enough to make him take a step back.
"You can channel without the blade," Marcus said, genuinely impressed. "That's... actually remarkable. Most wielders are completely dependent on their weapon." He tilted his head, studying Kaelen like an interesting puzzle. "You know, if you'd joined me willingly, I could have taught you so much. You have real talent."
"I'll pass on learning from genocidal maniacs," Kaelen panted, edging toward where Soulrender had fallen.
"Genocidal?" Marcus looked offended. "I'm trying to save the world from itself. The current system is broken—shadow magic suppressed, power concentrated in corrupt kingdoms, innovation stifled by outdated doctrines. The Shadow Lord's return will tear down the old order and let us build something better."
"By killing millions of innocent people."
"By removing obstacles to progress." Marcus sighed. "You're too young to understand. Too idealistic. You think the world can be fixed within the existing structures, but it can't. Sometimes you need to burn everything down and start fresh."
"That's just mass murder with extra philosophy," Kaelen shot back, his fingers closing around Soulrender's hilt.
"No, it's—" Marcus paused. "Oh, clever. Keeping me talking while you recover your weapon and give Lia time to prepare another spell array. Well played."
Damn. He'd noticed.
"But two can play at that game," Marcus continued. "I've been keeping you distracted while my forces regroup and hunt down your strike teams. By now, Ronan and Selene are probably dead or captured. You've lost, Kaelen. You just don't want to admit it."
He was bluffing. Had to be. Ronan and Selene were too experienced to—
Marcus held up a communication crystal, and Kaelen heard screaming through it. Familiar voices. People he knew.
Not bluffing. Or if he was, it was a really good bluff.
"Last chance," Marcus said. "Give me Soulrender and I'll call off the assault on your friends. They can retreat, live to fight another day. Be stubborn, and they die while you watch."
Kaelen looked at Lia. She was exhausted, echo-scars covering both arms now, but she met his eyes and shook her head. *Don't do it*.
He looked at Soulrender in his hand. At Marcus with his two blades. At the brightening sky that suggested they'd been fighting for longer than he realized.
They were going to lose. Marcus was right about that. The math had never been in their favor.
But there was losing and there was *losing*.
"You want Soulrender?" Kaelen said, settling into a fighting stance. "Come take it."
"Disappointing," Marcus replied. "But expected. You're young. The young always choose futile defiance over pragmatic surrender."
He raised both Forbidden Blades, power gathering around them like a visible storm. "I'll make it quick. More mercy than you deserve, but I'm not cruel."
The attack came faster than thought—both blades moving in perfect coordination, high and low simultaneously, impossible to block both at once.
Kaelen didn't try to block.
He and Lia activated the resonance armor.
The hybrid energy snapped into place around both of them just as Marcus's blades connected. Instead of cutting through Kaelen, they met the resonance field and *stopped*. Not deflected—stopped, like they'd hit an immovable object.
Marcus's eyes widened. "What—"
Kaelen struck back while Marcus was off-balance, Soulrender empowered by the resonance field. The blade actually cut through Marcus's shadow defenses, opening a shallow wound across his chest.
First blood. First time anyone had actually hurt Marcus all night.
The older man looked down at the cut, then up at Kaelen, and for the first time, there was genuine respect in his eyes.
"The resonance armor," he said. "I wondered how you'd managed to defeat Seraphine. Now I see." He smiled, almost pleased. "This changes things. You're not just another wielder. You're something new."
"Glad you're impressed," Kaelen said, though maintaining the resonance armor was already exhausting. They had maybe ninety seconds before it collapsed. "Does that mean you'll surrender?"
"No," Marcus said. "It means I stop holding back."
He crossed both Forbidden Blades, and the world went strange.
Reality bent. The laws of physics seemed to pause for a moment, then resume running in a slightly different direction. Kaelen felt pressure on his mind, like someone was reaching into his head and rearranging his thoughts.
*Mindbreaker*, Soulrender warned. *He's using the fragment's true power. Don't let it—*
Kaelen's vision doubled. Tripled. He saw Marcus standing in front of him, but also behind him, and to the side, and somehow all around him simultaneously. His proprioception went haywire—he couldn't tell which way was up, whether he was standing or falling.
The resonance armor flickered, his concentration broken.
"That's Mindbreaker's gift," Marcus's voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "It doesn't just break physical defenses. It breaks your ability to perceive reality correctly. Can't fight what you can't properly see."
Kaelen swung Soulrender blindly, hit nothing. Marcus's counterattack came from an impossible angle—the blade seemed to curve through space, bypassing his guard entirely. Only Lia's desperate barrier saved him from losing his arm.
"Kaelen!" Lia's voice, distant and distorted. "Close your eyes! Use Soulrender to see!"
Close his eyes? That was counterintuitive. But Lia knew more about magic than he did.
Kaelen shut his eyes, cutting off the false visual information. Immediately, things became clearer. With his eyes closed, he could *feel* Soulrender's connection to shadow energy, could sense Marcus's presence as a concentration of power.
Not perfect. But better than the visual chaos.
He parried Marcus's next attack by feel alone, shadows guiding shadows.
"Adaptable," Marcus noted. "Very good. But you're still burning through energy maintaining that resonance armor. How long can you keep it up? Sixty seconds? Forty?"
Thirty, actually, if Kaelen was being honest. And then they'd be defenseless against an opponent who'd barely broken a sweat.
They needed an advantage. Something Marcus wasn't expecting. Something—
"Lia!" Kaelen called. "Remember the warehouse? The support column?"
There was a pause, then: "You want me to—we're standing on a fortification, not a building!"
"Close enough! Bring it down!"
"That's insane!"
"We're way past sanity! Do it!"
He could sense Lia's hesitation, then determination. Her magic shifted focus, away from supporting him and toward the stone beneath their feet. Destabilization runes, inscribed at speed, marking the structural weakpoints of the old fortification.
Marcus sensed it too. "You're going to collapse the fortification? With both of you standing on it? That's not strategy, that's suicide!"
"Worked at the warehouse," Kaelen said, then realized his mistake. With his eyes closed, he couldn't see the edge of the fortification, couldn't judge distances properly. If the timing was off, they'd go down with the rubble.
*Trust*, Soulrender advised. *Trust your partner. She will not fail you.*
The stone beneath them groaned. Cracks appeared, spreading like lightning across the ancient foundations.
Marcus leaped backward, not willing to risk being caught in a collapse.
Kaelen waited until the very last second—feeling through shadow-sense for the right moment—then grabbed Lia and jumped.
They barely made it to stable ground before the entire fortification came down in a thunderous crash, raising a massive cloud of dust that obscured everything.
When the dust settled, Marcus was on the opposite side of the rubble pile, separated from them by tons of stone and structural wreckage.
Not defeated. Not even seriously delayed.
But separated. Bought time.
Kaelen opened his eyes, risking the visual distortion. The Mindbreaker effect seemed to be fading now that Marcus wasn't actively pushing it.
"Run?" Lia asked, reading his mind.
"Run," Kaelen agreed.
They ran, again, drawing Marcus away from his forces, away from Ronan and Selene's strike teams.
Behind them, they heard Marcus laugh—not angry, but genuinely amused.
"You're making this so much more entertaining than it needed to be!" he called after them. "But you can't run forever, Kaelen! Eventually, you'll be too tired to move, and I'll still be here!"
He was right.
But eventually wasn't now.
And as long as they were still moving, still fighting, they hadn't lost yet.
The chase continued.
Dawn grew brighter.
And somewhere in the ruins of Eredor, the real battle—the one that would decide everything—was still being fought.