Two broken things collided in the fog.

Neither of them should have been standing.

Both of them refused to fall.

Revan burst forward, charging without a shred of hesitation. He channeled Aura into his calves so hard that the ground beneath each step exploded backward. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

He cut through the battlefield in sharp, jagged angles, snapping into a new direction every half-second.

Each burst propelled him three meters in a mere quarter-second. Five positions in two seconds. Eight in three.

The afterimages of his manifested shroud lingered in the fog like ghosts, dark smears of black energy that dissolved a heartbeat after he’d already moved on.

CLANG.

He lunged at the knight’s left flank, driving his blade through a gap in the loosened plates.

The edge bit deep. With a violent twist, he ripped a chunk of armor free, sending it spinning into the fog in a trail of sparks.

Before the knight could turn, Revan was already behind it.

He planted the gauntlet against the knight’s spine and released a spring-loaded shockwave that buckled the back plate inward, then followed with a rising knee to the exposed gap the buckle had created.

The knight staggered forward.

Revan vaulted off its hunched back, flipped midair, and came down swinging.

The blade caught the knight’s remaining shoulder guard at the joint and split it clean, the two halves falling away from the arm like shed scales.

He landed in a crouch and immediately surged upward into a bare-fisted uppercut with the gauntlet, the spring technique driving the shockwave through the knight’s chin.

The helm snapped back, forced upward as the knight reeled from the blow.

Revan didn’t give the knight a single second of breathing room.

He spun low, swept blade across the knight’s left shin, carved a groove through the greave, and transitioned the spin into a gauntlet-first palm strike to the knight’s knee that folded the joint sideways.

"AHAHAHAHA!"

The laughter spiraled into something completely unhinged.

Revan recognized the madness in it and simply didn’t care.

His brain was a furnace of numbers and the gauntlet was pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat and every 0.8 seconds the world reset and he had another window to do something violent.

Attempting to offer some resistance, the knight swung back in a heavy, backhanded arc that caught Revan mid-burst and sent him tumbling.

He hit the hard ground and rolled, finally springing up only to spray blood from his mouth.

In a condition like this, Revan should consider getting a blood transfusion after the fight.

"Hah—! Not bad!"

With a violent shake of his head to rid his hair of grit, he tightened his fists once more and lunged forward, reclaiming the role of the aggressor.

The shockwave caught the knight’s exposed ribcage and something inside it cracked.

A massive hand engulfed Revan’s face as the knight lunged, fingers locking around his skull like a vice.

It squeezed, the pressure threatening to shatter bone.

Revan’s vision compressed. He felt bone creak.

With a raspy voice, blood bubbling in his mouth, Revan choked out, "You forgot to pin my hands, you bastard."

Instead of pulling away, he channeled the gauntlet at point-blank range and released the spring directly into the knight’s wrist.

The armored hand blew apart. Finger joints scattered.

Revan spat a tooth into the mud.

"You mindless piece of shit."

[Remaining Mana: 5%]

The knight didn’t mourn its shattered hand for long.

Instantly, it planted both feet, coiled its entire body, and swept its sword in a massive arc designed to catch anything within five meters regardless of direction.

"The attack was predictable, you idiot."

Revan leapt, pulling his knees to his chest as his body rotated backward in a tight, mid-air spin. The blade whistled harmlessly beneath him, cutting through nothing but air while he flipped over the steel arc.

He landed five meters back, his chest heaving as he fought for breath.

His shoulder was screaming in agony, and blood dripped from every surface of his body, staining the sand beneath him.

’Damn it, I’ve forced my body’s flexibility too far and exhausted too much of my internal flow. If I don’t get first aid the moment I wake up, I’m guaranteed to end up completely paralyzed.’

The knight stood in the center of the ruined clearing.

Revan frowned.

Since the beginning of this fight, a nagging sense of wrongness had been clawing at him.

He muttered under his breath, "This is strange. He’s had plenty of perfect opportunities to kill me, yet he stays passive. Is he doing this on purpose just to torture me?"

Revan watched the massive creature carefully.

The dark flames that had covered it from head to foot were guttering, reduced to scattered patches that clung to the remaining plates like embers on charcoal.

The exposed flesh beneath was covered in cuts and dents from Revan’s strikes.

[Remaining Mana: 4%]

"Focus, Revan. Watch your breathing. Think."

He forced his mind to clear.

"He’s definitely doing this to torture me. Creatures like that can sense mana and aura with terrifying precision. There’s no way he doesn’t know I’m running dry."

He swallowed hard with great difficulty.

’Four percent. Two minutes at most before I hit zero. Technically, since I’m still holding onto my life force, I could probably last another twenty minutes. Just keep pushing, Revan. The momentum is on your side. The tempo is yours.’

After forty seconds of suffocating silence, it was the knight who broke the stalemate.

It froze in place, unleashing an aura so heavy that Revan felt a deep, primal unease.

Slowly, its sword arm lowered and its stance widened, like a predator coiling before a strike.

The violet eyes, enormous and bare without the helm to hide them, locked onto Revan with an intensity that made the air between them feel solid.

"W-what...?" Revan’s breath hitched.

It was acknowledging him.

In the language of warriors, there were moments that transcended technique and strategy and the mechanics of who could hit harder.

Moments where two fighters, having torn each other apart for long enough, arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously.

This ends now. One strike. One answer.

The knight brandished its blade with a sense of solemn pride.

Both hands on the grip.

Blade pointed straight up at the white sky, held there like an offering to something far older than either of them.

And the Dead Zone responded.

The remaining flames on its body surged, pulling away from the battered armor, peeling off the cracked plates and the ruined joints and the exposed flesh like petals being stripped from a dying flower.

They crawled up the knight’s arms in spiraling ribbons of lightless fire, coiling around the forearms, the wrists, the fingers, converging on the blade in a cascade that grew brighter and denser with every passing second.

The knight was burning itself away.

Feeding its own existence into the weapon, sacrificing the fire that had sustained it for centuries, pouring every last ember into a single edge.

The armor, already in pieces, began to crumble.

The dark metal flaked and dissolved, eaten from the inside by the withdrawal of the energy that had held it together.

The flesh beneath grew pale, then translucent, the ash-colored skin thinning until the violet light from the creature’s core was visible through its own body, glowing softly from within like a lantern being consumed by its own flame.

It was something beautiful, yet terrifying.

Revan had never thought he would use that word for something trying to kill him, but there was no other way to describe what he was seeing.

The blade above its head was no longer a sword.

It was a pillar of compressed annihilation, radiating a pressure so dense that the fog for twenty meters in every direction was sucked inward, drawn toward the edge like air into a vacuum.

The stone beneath the knight’s feet fractured in spreading webs that raced outward across the battlefield.

This was everything it had.

Every remaining fragment of the ancient mana that had kept it alive, every century of patient vigil, every breath of lightless fire.

All of it gathered into one descending arc.

The final swing of a guardian that had never once failed in its duty.

Until tonight.

Revan stood frozen in place.

No words could truly capture the expression on his face. Was it fear? Confusion? Or perhaps something akin to pride?

Every emotion had bled into one, etched deeply into his features.

The blood on his face caught the faint violet glow. His eyes reflected the burning blade.

Until at last, a faint smile began to trace across his lips.

"...Alright," Revan hissed.

[Remaining Mana: 3%]

Revan exhaled. The blood on his lips sprayed into the fog.

"If you’re staking your soul on a single strike, then I’ll offer you nothing less than mine. Let’s see whose resolve breaks first."

His blade sank low to his right, the tip trailing behind his knee.

He was coiled and ready to explode, aiming for a single strike that would start at his feet and snap upward across his chest, finishing high above his left shoulder.

A cut that would travel from the ground to the sky.

As he channeled every ounce of his being into the steel, his voice rang out with a fierce, unwavering pride.

"Within this blade, I offer every heartbeat I’ve ever had. From the first breath I drew coming out of my mother’s womb, to this very second."

Moved by the knight’s wisdom and honor, Revan made his choice: he was ready to die today.

He stopped holding back.

He released his grip on his life force, letting it flood into his final strike.

Every remaining drop of mana in his core, pulled through the diversion, extracted into Aura, fed into the gauntlet and compressed and amplified and poured into his muscles and his bones and his sword arm in a continuous flood that made the black shroud around his body flare so bright it turned the fog dark by comparison.

The gauntlet screamed.

The grooves along its surface lit up with a cold light visible through the mud and blood caking his skin.

The amplified Aura raced through his channels at a speed that made his heart stutter, skip two beats, and slam back into rhythm so hard he saw stars.

In the heart of the battlefield, a heavy stillness settled between them.

Both were breathing so heavily that white mist hissed from their lips, clouding the air between them.

From ankle to sky.

The two edges met.

The world was consumed by a blinding white void, followed by a stillness so absolute that it felt as though all of existence had ceased to be.

***

Somehow, and through means he could not fathom, a man of imposing stature found himself in a pitch-black room filled with stars.

There was a vastness to his back, but it felt hauntingly lonely, as though he were a man who had spent lifetimes waiting in the silence.

Amidst the stillness, a voice drifted toward him, and he turned back to meet its source.

When he looked in that direction, a rare look of surprise rippled across his stoic features.

Standing before him was a boy with messy hair and his signature dark circles.

In a voice that echoed through the starlit void, he spoke:

"Walk on. The shackles of this world no longer hold you. Soar as high as you can, for the chains that bound you have finally shattered. Reach for them — reach for the ones who have been waiting for you all this time."

His shocked expression gave way to a broad, heartfelt smile that transformed his handsome features.

His captivating blue eyes shimmered, clouded by tears of joy; it was the most genuine expression he had ever graced the world with.

His red lips trembled as he choked out the words, his voice breaking with emotion.

"O, you... who no longer belong to this world, nor to the one you left behind. A wanderer lost between realities... before I go, may I finally know your name?"

The boy with the dark circles under his eyes opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated, closing it once more.

Finally, a weary smile tugged at his lips.

"Who am I? I suppose... it depends on how you perceive me. I have carried so many names across so many lives. To some, I was but a servant; to others, a dog on a leash. I was branded as a slave, and whispered about as ’The Silent Sin.’ But in the end... most simply knew me as Revan."

He paused, his gaze drifting toward the infinite stars, his voice softening into a whisper.

"And once, in a world far from here, I was known as Haruki — a name given to me by a father and mother I dearly loved."

"I only wish to know the real you. Amidst all those names, where does your heart truly lean? Having a name — a true identity held deep within your own heart — should not be a burden. It is not something that should hurt you."

The man with the blue eyes answered, his voice firm and unwavering.

"Spring isn’t just a season," said the weary-eyed man with a gentle warmth in his voice.

"It’s a promise that the sun will always find the courage to warm the earth again. It’s the scent of life refusing to give up, telling you that no matter how cold it was, you are allowed to bloom once more."

"You can call me Haruki," he said softly, a calm smile finally settling on his face.

"In the end... just Haruki."

The blue-eyed man nodded solemnly, his gaze filled with a profound respect.

"Haruki," he whispered, as if etching the name into his soul.

"I will remember. I will always remember."

Slowly, the man’s form began to shimmer.

He dissolved into a brilliant radiance, ascending until he merged with the infinite stars above, becoming a part of the celestial beauty of the void.

But on the other side, Haruki did not ascend.

As the light faded, he let his body fall back into the shadows.

He sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, the cold abyss rising to meet him, wrapping around him like a heavy shroud until the silence consumed him completely.