The battlefield had gone still.

  The broken remnants of Severus’s first blade lay scattered across the cracked stones, glinting faintly beneath the swirling ash. Not even the wind dared to move them. The raiders surrounding the ruins trembled in their frozen circle, breaths shallow, eyes wide with a fear they could not name.

  Because Pyrope was no longer a boy.

  He was a trembling silhouette of rage.

  White fur streaked with soot. Crimson eyes glowing like broken glass. His breaths hitched and snarled, too fast, too uneven, each one scraping out of his throat like an animal forcing its lungs to keep going.

  Severus stood opposite him—unmoving, unbothered, watching with a sharp and delighted stillness.

  “You grow more exquisite by the second,” he murmured, voice quiet enough to be mistaken for the breeze. “Such raw hunger. Such instinct.”

  Pyrope didn’t wait.

  He lunged.

  A white streak across the ruins, fists ripping through the air with the force of a collapsing wall.

  Severus shifted by a hair.

  Not a dodge.

  Not a technique.

  Just a step—as effortless as drifting fog—and Pyrope’s strike cracked the ground instead, sending stone shrapnel bursting outward.

  The shockwave rattled the raiders closest to them. A few staggered, legs buckling. One nearly fell to his knees entirely, eyes wide with something like animal terror.

  The air had grown hot.

  Not magical.

  Not supernatural.

  Just heat brought by raw, violent motion—like the ruins themselves were warming under Pyrope’s ferocity.

  Above, clouds drifted dark, heavy, swollen with unfallen thunder. It made the light feel thinner, sharper, as if the world were narrowing around the duel.

  Pyrope spun, teeth bared, breath snarling.

  He lunged again.

  Severus stepped back once. Twice. Slow. Leisurely.

  He was enjoying this.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Pyrope’s knuckles grazed Severus’s sleeve—close enough to tear the fabric—but Severus merely tilted his head as if impressed by a dancer’s footwork.

  “You truly are becoming something remarkable,” he whispered.

  Pyrope’s only response was a hoarse roar.

  Another strike. Another shockwave.

  Another miss.

  Severus exhaled, soft and pleased.

  “…Enough warm-up.”

  He lifted his right hand.

  Not toward Pyrope.

  Toward the air.

  His fingers curled around something invisible at first—then dragged a shape free from his sleeve.

  A hilt.

  Nothing more.

  Black metal wrapped in worn leather, plain and silent. A simple grip with no blade attached.

  No glow.

  No energy.

  No sound.

  Just emptiness.

  Pyrope froze mid-breath, instincts shuddering.

  Something was wrong.

  Severus held the bladeless hilt loosely between two fingers, his posture almost lazy.

  “Let me show you,” he said quietly, “what true weapons look like.”

  A pause.

  A single breath.

  Then he whispered:

  “Eleventh.”

  The air did not shake.

  The ground did not crack.

  No smoke, no aura, no supernatural ripple.

  Nothing.

  At first.

  Then—

  A line of black simply appeared.

  Perfectly straight. Perfectly silent.

  A blade made of pure absence, as if someone had taken a knife and carved a piece of night out of the world. No shine, no reflection. Just darkness shaped like a weapon.

  The Eleventh Blade.

  One of the Twelve.

  The raiders trembled harder, not from what they saw—there was nothing flashy to see—but from something older. Instinct. A primal memory.

  Bones recognizing a predator.

  Severus raised the silent blade.

  Pyrope moved.

  Faster than before.

  A blur of white fury slamming forward with reckless abandon.

  Severus met him.

  CLANG—!

  The Eleventh Blade held.

  The impact rang out—metal on bone, bone on shadow—echoing through the dead kingdom. Pyrope staggered back, stunned by the abrupt halt of his own momentum.

  He roared and struck again.

  CLANG.

  Again.

  CLANG.

  The blade blocked every blow.

  The weapon that should not exist endured strikes that shattered the previous sword to dust. Pyrope’s fists throbbed, bones screaming under impact, yet he did not feel pain. Only rage. Only the need to break Severus apart.

  Severus advanced.

  Calm.

  Precise.

  He thrust. Pyrope twisted away.

  He slashed low. Pyrope jumped, vaulting off debris with unnatural height.

  Another cut—this time aimed for the throat.

  Pyrope bent backward, sliding under the black arc with feral flexibility, landing on one hand and launching himself upward again.

  The world blurred.

  Claws of wind slashed through loose ash.

  Stone cracked beneath each landing.

  Pyrope’s instincts sharpened with every dodge—each movement faster, cleaner, higher. Even in madness, his body learned. Adapted. Grew.

  Severus noticed.

  Severus adored it.

  “In delirium you still evolve,” Severus crooned. “How extraordinary… what a creature you are becoming.”

  Pyrope lunged—this time with something close to intent, aiming directly for Severus’s ruined throat, eyes burning with a murderous clarity.

  But before his fist reached—

  Something cold closed around his ankle.

  Pyrope froze mid-air.

  A shadow.

  His own shadow.

  It wrapped him like a living chain, binding his leg with an unnatural stillness. Not magic—nothing so dramatic. Just darkness obeying Severus’s will as if it were a limb.

  Pyrope snarled, muscles straining, body twisting violently.

  The bind held.

  Severus stepped forward.

  Calm.

  Silent.

  The Eleventh Blade hovered inches from Pyrope’s chest.

  “Time to finish this…” Severus murmured. His ruined mouth curled, soft and delighted. “…my delicious prey.”

  Pyrope fought—wild, frantic—heart pounding so violently the raiders winced at the sound alone.

  Severus simply lifted the blade.

  A black line aimed for Pyrope’s heart.

  And the ruins fell into breathless silence.