ShadowBound: The Need For Power-Chapter 394: Fall Of The Green Calamity (12)

High above the fractured ruins, where the wind stirred dust like whispered omens and sunlight fractured through cracks in the sky, the tension between Aesmirius and Sylvathar thickened. Their opposing auras bled into the heavens, churning space itself, light and shadow curdling together in a storm that stretched over the broken land like a god’s breath held still.

Aesmirius moved first.

He didn’t launch—he glided forward with a grace that defied weight or effort, his violet aura rippling like oil across water. One hand swept outward, fingers languidly twisting through the air, and the very fabric of space responded. Veins of ancient myst spiraled forth, blooming into jagged black tendrils that reached for Sylvathar with serpentine hunger.

Sylvathar’s response was equally deliberate. He didn’t flinch. He simply lifted his arm, palm forward, and exhaled through his nose. The emerald myst circling him surged. Dozens of crystalline glyphs formed behind him in the shape of a blooming star—each glyph pulsing with compressed power. As the tendrils neared, they were intercepted by bladed green projections erupting from those glyphs—like sharpened leaves forged in divine pressure. They didn’t clash; they sliced, countered, parried, unraveling Aesmirius’s shadow strands mid-approach with swift, angled cuts.

But Aesmirius was already gone from that position.

The air split where he’d stood.

He appeared above Sylvathar, descending upside down like a comet, arms wide as his body rotated fluidly midair. In that moment, his form was a sculpture in motion. His right leg snapped downward—not just to strike, but to plant a spatial sigil directly upon Sylvathar’s crown.

Sylvathar, however, turned his head slightly, just enough.

The foot grazed air.

Aesmirius’s boot kissed a pocket of altered gravity. Sylvathar had restructured the field around him in the instant prior, displacing force and trajectory. A minor tilt in pressure had been enough to turn what could’ve been a crippling seal into a harmless pass.

Sylvathar countered by raising two fingers. He pointed upward and five green lines extended from the edge of his fingers like spears, each humming with a narrow pulse. They darted upward toward Aesmirius, not just aiming to strike, but to detonate his internal myst.

Aesmirius contorted mid-fall—his entire spine arching like a whip. One hand drew an arc across his chest, summoning a shield formed from overlapping time-folds—moments locked in loop. The spears pierced the shield, only to freeze within the loop, trapped in a repeating echo of collision. They never completed their strike.

With a twist of his wrist, Aesmirius compressed the loop into a dense sphere and cast it downward. It detonated as it touched the ground, folding a piece of the battlefield into itself and leaving behind a crater-like impression of negative existence.

Sylvathar appeared beside him midair without motion—he had willed himself into that space. His fist drove into Aesmirius’s ribcage, forcing the air out of the Primordial’s borrowed lungs. The impact wasn’t just physical—it came with a jarring dissonance, Sylvathar’s myst vibrating at a pitch that attempted to unbind Aesmirius from Liam’s flesh.

Aesmirius twisted his body around the strike. His shoulder collapsed inward unnaturally, absorbing the blow as if his bones had momentarily liquefied. He spun under Sylvathar’s arm and placed his palm against the demon’s spine.

The space behind Sylvathar cracked like shattered glass.

Time collapsed into it and Aesmirius pushed.

Sylvathar was launched through the spatial fracture and hurled across five different fragmented realities stitched momentarily in tandem—each one dragging at his body with different gravity, friction, and air density. He emerged again a mile off, tumbling, slowing mid-spin, and catching himself by halting time for his own mass.

He floated there, breathing once, adjusting his coat, and a grin slowly bloomed across his face.

"You’re quite strong for someone just using less a fraction of their power," he muttered.

Aesmirius, still in the air, ran a hand through his hair. "You’re still standing. So I’m disappointed."

Sylvathar laughed once—a real laugh this time. Then he vanished.

From behind, his scythe appeared—wrought from bone, light, and solidified hatred. Its edge glimmered with threads of cursed lineage. He didn’t swing it in a simple arc; it dragged through space, cutting through laws as it approached Aesmirius.

Aesmirius leaned back, his body horizontal. The blade missed by inches. But the drag it left behind tore a long line through his aura, revealing the true form hidden beneath: violet skin laced with ancient script, glowing softly.

He planted his foot against the invisible floor and pushed off. The two clashed midair—blow for blow.

Fists met arms, knees crashed into ribs, and palms collided with shoulders. Every strike was deliberate and every motion economical. Each of them reacted not just to movement, but to intention—reading micro-tells in one another’s posture, aura shifts, even slight contractions in the myst that surrounded them.

Sylvathar feinted a downward slice. Aesmirius didn’t dodge. He grabbed the handle mid-swing with both hands and turned it, forcing Sylvathar to rotate alongside it. A burst of myst exploded between them as they locked in a grapple mid-sky, spiraling.

Aesmirius, eyes narrowing, took control.

His forehead slammed into Sylvathar’s face—not with brute force, but with a surge of energy that passed from skull to skull, overloading Sylvathar’s frontal perception and darkening his senses momentarily.

Sylvathar released the weapon.

Aesmirius tossed it aside, spun midair, and unleashed a downward slam of his elbow into Sylvathar’s sternum. The demon was sent spiraling down toward the ground, carving a trench through a ruined spire.

But Sylvathar didn’t fall unconscious. As his body struck the earth, roots of emerald myst burst from the crater, forming sigils and glyphs in the air. From those glyphs came constructs—bladed knights of myst, faceless and perfect. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Aesmirius landed softly between them, his feet never touching the dust.

The constructs lunged.

He didn’t evade.

He walked through them, each strike aimed at him missing by milliseconds. He redirected blades by angling his fingers, tapping wrists, shifting feet with microscopic grace. And when he struck back, it was with precision—targeting joints, cores, and glyph-marked limbs.

Each construct fell in a single motion.

Sylvathar rose from the other side, coat torn, and blood dripping from his mouth. His eyes were wild now—not with fear, but excitement.

"You really might kill me," he whispered. "But we both know that won’t happen."

Aesmirius stepped forward, the world trembling slightly beneath his approach.

"Only one way to find out."