Chapter 16: Witness

  No level 3 initiate should be fighting the way Cole Rourke was fighting now.

  Faelen was in pain. Knowing his new friend needed him, he tried to stand.

  That was a mistake.

  The mend potion had done its job as well as could be expected, but the damage was extensive. He got halfway up, his vision flashing white, then his legs betrayed him and he fell back to the stone with a rough breath.

  He lay there, one hand pressed to his ribs, feeling the pain of them. Every inhale pulled. Every exhale stung.

  He looked on, feeling utterly useless.

  Yet he wasn’t sure he was even needed.

  Faelen had lived under the Ethereal long enough to understand the shape of fights. He knew what it looked like when the strong played with the weak. He knew what it looked like when a man clung to life by luck and desperation, praying for a mistake.

  This was neither.

  Cole stood in the middle of the arena with the calm of a man who had found the seam in the world and decided to pull.

  The dungeon boss was still there.

  The spear was gone, broken into ash and ruin. The horse was gone too, ruined the moment Cole erased the runes and turned its leg to ash. Whatever was left of it had not returned.

  But the Knight remained.

  The ember glow behind its visor still burned.

  Faelen watched as his friend muttered something, staring at the dungeon boss which was gathering light again. It was doing it the way it always had, with the runes. With the armor.

  But something was different.

  The spell was weaker this time, as if without its tools, the Knight couldn’t call much of its power.

  Faelen could see it even through pain haze. The light that gathered around the Knight’s gauntlets made the air ripple and his skin prickle.

  A change had occurred in his friend.

  Cole stood calmly.

  His brown hair was matted, having grown in his time in the dungeon. It clung to his forehead in damp strands, and his face looked thinner than it had hours ago. Yet his eyes were the strangest part. His brown eyes had gone almost black. A soft, nearly indiscernible black glow was around his irises, so faint Faelen wondered if it was the torches playing tricks. Then Cole shifted his head, and the glow stayed.

  A black halo hung over his head.

  Made of shadow, it practically swallowed the light around it. The arena was still lit by torches and the sick gleam of runes. But around Cole, the light looked duller.

  Cole’s jacket was in absolute tatters, more of a shift with pockets at this point.

  Despite that, his expression had gone calm. He studied the Knight.

  It was Cole as Faelen had never seen him.

  Faelen swallowed.

  His throat was dry. His tongue tasted of copper and bile. He had been close to death before. He had watched friends die. He had watched elites butcher whole parties.

  He had never watched a level 3 initiate look at a dungeon boss like it was just a problem to be solved.

  What was before him defied everything he knew about the Ethereal. People simply weren’t granted such power.

  There were stories, of course. Every world had its stories. Legendary warriors. Saints. Judges who spoke and armies fell to their knees. Most of it was tavern rot, told by men trying to make their lives feel larger.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  But some stories stayed. Stories like that had the same shape.

  A man with nothing and a moment that demanded more.

  Was that what was happening here?

  Faelen found himself analyzing his friend and the dungeon boss. He did it without meaning to. The habit was too old.

  Cole Rourke: Black Halo-Level 3.

  Valhallen Knight: Dungeon Boss-Level 25

  Faelen almost laughed at the level difference. It was absurd. Just absurd that Cole could stand against a tier two dungeon boss.

  Alone.

  What was more, he was winning.

  Cole was winning because he was taking away what made the boss a boss.

  The Ethereal built monsters the way craftsmen built locks. It stacked tricks. It layered protections. It gave them rules that normal people could not touch.

  Cole was touching them anyway.

  The Knight raised its hands and the light gathered again.

  The stone beneath the Knight’s feet tremble.

  The light fired off, a thick pulse that warped the air around it as it surged toward Cole.

  Cole spoke, his voice calm.

  “Choir of Verdict, Ashen Aegis, Edict: Null Hymn.”

  Cole’s voice was softer now, but with true authority.

  He spoke as Faelen’s father had so often spoke, expecting even the Ethereal to bow.

  This was the first time Faelen had heard Cole string together multiple spells.

  Faelen felt it more than he saw it.

  Wings of shadow appeared behind Cole, his halo gaining more substance. They were quiet. A suggestion. A presence.

  Faelen blinked and suddenly the wings weren’t there.

  Had they even been there to begin with?

  A song rippled through the air.

  Something forgotten seeking to add to its melody by erasing whatever was in its path.

  Then the other feeling came.

  A space around Cole that spoke of a single, undeniable truth.

  No.

  That single word was more than it sounded.

  No, Cole would not be stopped.

  Faelen expected the light to brush past, to tear through and break Cole into bits.

  Instead, it stopped.

  The light quivered, pressing, trying to force its way through. The air screamed with strain. The torches along the walls flickered as if they were afraid.

  Runes on the Knight’s gauntlets flashed, flared, and then vanished.

  Edict: Null Hymn had found the pieces that held the power together.

  The light vanished.

  Cole strode forward, tattered jacket rippling, halo glowing, emanating a sudden hunger.

  Faelen’s breath caught.

  He had seen hunger before. Hunger for food. Hunger for gold. Hunger for revenge.

  This was different.

  This was hunger for a verdict.

  Cole raised a single finger.

  “Edict: Null Hymn.”

  Runes around the Knight’s helmet erased.

  The Knight started to vanish again, that blink trick, that shift in space that made it impossible to pin down.

  But Faelen’s friend was ready for it.

  “Choir of Verdict.”

  The Knight crashed to the ground, knees cracking stone.

  Faelen heard the arena floor fracture.

  “Black Halo Lance,” Cole swept two fingers forward.

  Dark seraphic light cut across the room turning the Knight’s helmet to ash.

  The armor fell away in a brittle sheet, and for the first time Faelen saw what was inside.

  Underneath was the face of a corpse.

  Gaunt. Skin tight. Lips pulled back slightly. Its eyes glowed. They were currently wide.

  Surprised.

  Faelen almost laughed again, but this time it was relief mixed with fear. A dungeon boss could be surprised. That meant Cole was changing the fight.

  It was still a dungeon boss, and it wasn’t done.

  It pushed off the ground, gauntleted fist raised to smash down on Faelen’s friend.

  The motion was fast and brutal. It wanted to crush the small man under its fist and end the problem.

  “Black Halo Lance.”

  Black light rushed across the room to meet the Knight.

  That light hit the Knight’s head.

  It was precise, the spell had finally learned what Cole wanted from it.

  Faelen saw the moment the Knight’s head became ash, and he still couldn’t fully believe it.

  “Ashen Aegis,” Cole said calmly.

  The Knight’s head, right as his friend spoke, turned to ash, but the body kept coming due to the force the Knight had already put behind it.

  It should have still killed him.

  That fist was the size of a barrel. That armor carried the momentum of a falling stone.

  The fist stopped right before Cole’s face.

  Cole’s nearly black eyes regarded it.

  Faelen could not see the barrier, but he could see the way the torchlight bent strangely at the edge of that invisible space.

  The Knight fell to the ground in a heap.

  The armor clanged and shattered as it hit, brittle now, empty of the will that had been animating it. The runes across its chest dimmed.

  Faelen lay there, chest heaving, eyes wide.

  For a single crystalline moment Faelen thought that was the end.

  They had won, the dungeon boss defeated.

  He waited for the Ethereal to speak. Waited for the reward. Waited for the arena doors to open and the world to shove them back into whatever waited beyond.

  Instead, the arena took on a cold that crawled into bone.

  A burst of shadow poured from the doors the dungeon boss had come through.

  It moved with purpose. It surged across the stone in thick ropes, twisting, lashing, and Faelen’s instinct screamed at him to move.

  Chains snapped into existence around his arms and chest, hard and black, biting into his skin. They wrapped him so fast he barely had time to suck in a breath before they jerked him upright.

  Pain flared through his ribs. His vision blurred.

  Faelen's mind raced. The Ethereal tested those who exceeded expectations.

  Unique rewards required unique proofs. Not just strength. Character.

  Cole had just killed a tier-two boss at level 3.

  This was a weapon trial.

  Faelen met Cole's eyes across the chamber and hoped his friend would choose well.

  Faelen’s feet scraped across the floor as the chains hauled him back.

  He gritted his teeth and tried to fight, but his body was still broken. His strength was not there. He was a warrior with empty hands and cracked ribs, and the Ethereal did not care.

  Cole’s head turned.

  Slowly.

  Deliberately.

  His eyes narrowed.

  The calm on his face did not crack, but something else settled into it, something harder.

  The dungeon wasn’t through with them quite yet.