Surviving two hours turned out to be less about heroic combat and more about creative cowardice.
Kaelen and Lia ran. They hid. They ambushed when they had advantage and fled when they didn't. They used every dirty trick, every environmental hazard, every bit of terrain they could exploit.
First thirty minutes: They led Marcus through the merchant district, knocking over market stalls behind them, setting fire to canvas awnings, creating obstacles. Marcus destroyed everything in his path, but it slowed him down. Seconds mattered.
"Left!" Lia gasped, pointing. They ducked down an alley barely wide enough for one person, forcing Marcus to go around.
Forty-five minutes: They reached the canal system—the same canals where Kaelen had first found Soulrender. The water was dark and foul-smelling, but it was cover.
"Can you swim in armor?" Lia asked.
"Guess we're finding out," Kaelen replied.
They jumped. The water was shockingly cold, and Kaelen's armor tried to drag him under, but he kicked hard and managed to surface. Lia beside him, both of them swimming poorly but swimming.
Above them, Marcus stood on the canal edge, watching. For a moment, Kaelen thought he might follow.
Then Marcus just smiled. "Clever. But I'll find you when you surface. The city is only so large."
He turned and walked away, heading in a direction that would let him intercept them at the likely exit points.
"He's herding us," Kaelen realized, treading water. "Pushing us toward somewhere he wants us."
"Then we don't go where he expects," Lia said. "There's maintenance tunnels under the canal system—they're flooded now, but if we can hold our breath long enough, we can use them to get to an unexpected exit."
"How long is long enough?"
"Forty seconds, maybe?"
Kaelen had never held his breath for forty seconds in his life. "Let's try thirty and see what happens."
They dove.
The maintenance tunnel was completely black, no light at all. Kaelen followed Lia by touch, one hand on her ankle as she swam ahead. His lungs burned. His armor felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
*Twenty seconds*, he counted. *Twenty-five. Thirty.*
His chest was screaming for air. He could feel panic trying to claw its way up his throat.
*Thirty-five.*
Ahead, he saw light. Faint, but there. An exit.
*Forty.*
They broke surface in a different canal section, three blocks from where they'd entered. Both of them gasped for air, coughing up canal water.
"Never," Kaelen managed between coughs, "doing that again."
"Agreed," Lia wheezed.
They dragged themselves out of the canal and kept moving.
One hour: They were exhausted, soaked, and Marcus had still found them twice more. Each encounter lasted only minutes before they escaped again, but those minutes took years off Kaelen's life from stress.
"I can't keep this up," Lia admitted. They were hiding in an abandoned building, watching for Marcus through a broken window. "My echo-scars are at critical levels. One more resonance armor activation and I might not recover."
"Then we don't use it unless we absolutely have to," Kaelen said. "We've made it halfway. Just one more hour."
"Just," Lia echoed bitterly. But she stood, ready to keep moving.
They heard footsteps outside. Multiple sets.
Cultists, five of them, searching the buildings. Marcus must have called them back from their retreat to help corner Kaelen and Lia.
"Out the back?" Kaelen whispered.
"There is no back exit," Lia whispered back.
The cultists were getting closer. Twenty feet away. Fifteen.
Kaelen made a decision. "Stay here. Stay quiet. I'll lead them away."
"Kaelen—"
"You need time to recover. I can run faster alone." He squeezed her hand. "Trust me. I'll circle back."
Before Lia could argue, Kaelen burst through the front door, nearly colliding with the lead cultist.
"There!" the cultist shouted.
Kaelen ran, hearing them give chase. Good. Away from Lia. That was all that mattered.
He led them on a chase through three streets, then turned suddenly and dropped into a combat stance. Five cultists. Manageable, if he was fast.
The fight lasted maybe thirty seconds. These weren't Marcus's elite forces—they were ordinary cultists, poorly trained, relying on corrupted magic rather than skill. Kaelen cut through them with Ronan's techniques, efficient and brutal.
Five bodies on the ground. Kaelen, breathing hard but alive.
"You're getting better at that," Marcus's voice said from behind him.
Kaelen spun. Marcus was standing there, both blades sheathed, looking almost casual.
"Killing isn't something I wanted to get better at," Kaelen replied.
"Few people do. But the world requires it sometimes." Marcus studied him. "You're exhausted. Your partner is near magical burnout. This can't continue much longer. Why not surrender with dignity?"
"Because dignity doesn't matter if the world ends," Kaelen said. "You want to release the Shadow Lord. That means everyone dies. I can't let that happen."
"The world doesn't end," Marcus corrected. "The world transforms. Yes, there will be casualties during the transition. But afterward, those who survive will build something better. Something without the corruption and stagnation that plagues the current kingdoms."
"That's just dressing up mass murder in philosophical language," Kaelen said, already looking for escape routes.
"Is it? The Shadow Lord's first return three centuries ago toppled three kingdoms. Terrible, yes. But those kingdoms were built on slavery, oppression, constant warfare. What replaced them was better. Sometimes destruction is necessary for growth."
"And the millions who died? They get a vote in this 'better world' you're planning?"
"The dead never get votes," Marcus said. "That's the tragedy of history. We make decisions now that affect the future, and we can never know if we chose correctly."
He drew Hearteater. "But I believe I'm choosing correctly. And I'm willing to accept the consequences of that choice. Are you willing to accept the consequences of stopping me?"
"What consequences?" Kaelen asked, genuinely confused.
"The kingdoms remain stagnant. Shadow magic remains forbidden, practitioners hunted and killed. Nothing changes, nothing improves, and in another three centuries we'll be right back here having the same conflict." Marcus shook his head. "You're preserving a broken system, Kaelen. I'm trying to fix it."
"By breaking it even more," Kaelen said. "That's not fixing. That's just creating different problems."
"Perhaps," Marcus acknowledged. "But at least they'll be new problems. We might learn something from solving them."
He attacked, and Kaelen barely managed to block. They exchanged a flurry of strikes, neither gaining advantage, both recognizing the other's growing exhaustion.
Then Marcus disengaged, stepped back.
"You're not running," he observed.
"Tired of running," Kaelen admitted. It was partially true—he was buying time, but he was also genuinely exhausted.
"Then let's finish this properly. You and me. No tricks, no traps, no interruptions. Winner takes Soulrender, loser accepts defeat."
It was a trap. Had to be a trap.
But what choice did Kaelen have? Run again, delay longer, hope backup arrived before Marcus killed him?
"Kaelen!" Lia's voice from a nearby rooftop. She'd followed them, was watching. "Don't! Just keep running!"
"Can't run forever," Kaelen called back. He looked at Marcus. "Alright. You and me. But when I win, you leave Eredor. Abandon the convergence, disband your cult, disappear."
"Agreed," Marcus said. "And when I win, you give me Soulrender and walk away. Live your life, forget about shadow magic and ancient prophecies."
They both knew only one of those outcomes was actually possible. Marcus wasn't going to let Kaelen walk away alive.
But pretending gave them permission to fight.
They fought.
Kaelen used everything Ronan had taught him. Every technique from his training. Every lesson learned through desperate combat. He was faster than he'd been weeks ago. Stronger. More skilled.
It wasn't enough.
Marcus was simply better. More experienced. More powerful. Every attack Kaelen made, Marcus had a counter for. Every defense, Marcus found a way through.
Kaelen took a cut to his left arm. Another across his ribs. A third that nearly took his ear off.
He was losing.
"You fought well," Marcus said, pressing his advantage. "Better than I expected. In another few years, you might have actually been a challenge."
"I don't need years," Kaelen gasped. "Just a few more seconds."
"Seconds for what?"
Kaelen smiled through bloody teeth. "For my backup to arrive."
Captain Thorne and forty City Guards burst into the square, weapons drawn, anti-magic wards active.
"Marcus Blackwood!" Thorne called out. "By order of Princess Isabella, you are under arrest for crimes against the crown! Surrender or be destroyed!"
Marcus looked around at the surrounding forces. At the guards, at Selene's team appearing from the north, at Ronan's group from the south.
At Kaelen, still standing despite his injuries.
"I see," Marcus said quietly. "You've won the tactical battle. My forces are scattered, my ritual sites destroyed, my timeline disrupted." He sheathed both blades. "Congratulations. This round goes to you."
"This round?" Kaelen repeated.
"You don't think this is over, do you?" Marcus smiled. "The convergence is delayed, not prevented. The Shadow Lord's return is inevitable. I'll simply wait for a better opportunity." He raised his hand, and shadow energy began gathering. "Until next time, Kaelen Voss. Keep Soulrender safe for me."
"Take him down!" Thorne ordered.
Guards and Shadow Hunters attacked simultaneously. But Marcus's teleportation spell completed first, and he vanished in a swirl of shadow energy.
Gone.
Not defeated. Not killed. Just... gone.
Kaelen stood there, bleeding and exhausted, trying to process what had just happened.
"Did we win?" he asked nobody in particular.
"You survived," Ronan said, appearing beside him with Lia. "Against one of the most dangerous shadow mages alive, you survived. That counts as winning."
"He's still out there," Kaelen said.
"Problem for another day," Selene replied. She was binding wounds on one of her team members but looked relatively intact. "Today, you stopped a convergence ritual, saved the city, and proved that Forbidden Blades can be wielded without losing yourself completely."
Lia grabbed him, checked his injuries, started applying emergency healing runes. "You idiot," she muttered. "You absolute idiot, fighting him one-on-one like that."
"I bought time for backup to arrive," Kaelen protested.
"You nearly died!"
"Nearly doesn't count."
"It absolutely does count!"
They were both too tired to properly argue. Lia just pulled him into a hug, careful of his injuries, and held on like she might never let go.
Around them, the city was recovering. Cultists in custody. Creatures being hunted down. Buildings burning but not spreading. Dawn had fully broken, painting everything in warm light.
They'd survived.
Not won, maybe. Marcus was still out there. The threat wasn't eliminated.
But they'd survived.
For now, that was enough.
---
Later, after the healers had patched up the worst of Kaelen's injuries, after the debriefings and the casualty reports and the thousand administrative tasks that followed every major battle, he found himself sitting on a rooftop with Lia, watching the sun rise higher.
"Final count?" he asked.
"Forty-three dead," Lia said quietly. "Seventeen permanently injured. Forty-two wounded but expected to recover. " She was silent for a moment. "We lost a lot of good people."
"I know," Kaelen said. "It's my fault. If I hadn't—"
"Don't," Lia interrupted. "Don't make their sacrifice about your guilt. They chose to fight. Honor that choice."
Kaelen nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
They sat in silence, watching the city slowly return to normal. Guards patrolling. Merchants cautiously reopening shops. Life, continuing despite everything.
"What happens now?" Lia finally asked.
"I don't know," Kaelen admitted. "Marcus is still out there. The Shadow Lord is still a threat. And I'm still bound to a Forbidden Blade that's slowly corrupting my soul."
"But we have the resonance technique," Lia pointed out. "We can manage the corruption. Maybe even reverse it, given time and research."
"Maybe," Kaelen agreed. "And maybe we can figure out how to stop Marcus permanently, end the Shadow Lord threat for good."
"That's a lot of maybes."
"Better than no maybes at all."
Lia leaned against him, careful of his injuries. "We'll figure it out. Together."
"Together," Kaelen echoed.
Below them, Eredor was healing. Above them, the sky was clear for the first time in days.
The battle was over.
The war had just begun.
But for now, in this moment, they could rest.
And that was enough.