I continued walking along the length of the hall, my footsteps echoing softly beneath the towering pillars as the murals unfolded one after another along the walls. Each one depicted a different being standing before the sword, their forms captured in exacting detail, their presence frozen at the moment of confrontation.
Then I reached the final mural.
My steps slowed.
This one was different.
It showed a man with wings.
Black wings.
They extended outward behind him, vast and unmistakable, their form identical to the wings I had seen in the vision. He stood at the peak of the mountain, facing the embedded sword. His posture carried no hesitation, no reverence, no submission. He simply stood there, as though the sword and he existed within the same reality.
A crack ran diagonally across the mural.
It began at the upper corner and cut cleanly downward, splitting both the winged figure and the sword above him. The fracture was old, its edges worn with time, but it had not been part of the original carving.
I stepped closer.
The moment I passed in front of it, the crack deepened.
A faint sound echoed through the hall.
Stone shifted.
Dust fell in thin streams from the fracture, drifting downward through the air before settling onto the floor.
The mural had reacted to me.
A quiet pulse moved beneath my feet.
Then the ground ahead trembled.
I stopped.
A circular section of the floor directly in front of the mural began to sink, its edges separating cleanly from the surrounding structure. Ancient mechanisms, untouched for an immeasurable span of time, activated without resistance. The stone platform descended slowly, revealing a stairwell hidden beneath the surface.
Darkness waited below. Something stirred within it. Before I could extend my perception further, shadow surged upward from the opening. It condensed rapidly, taking form as it rose, shaping itself into a humanoid figure that stepped onto the edge of the stairwell. Unlike the previous shadows, it did not carry a staff.
It held a sword.
The weapon was perfectly formed, its edge sharp and straight, its structure stabilized by dense internal Essence generation. The shadow did not hesitate. It attacked.
Its blade moved.
A sword aura erupted from its swing.
The slash crossed the distance between us almost instantly, its speed exceeding expectation by a margin that forced immediate reaction. My body moved on instinct, space folding beneath my will as I flashed sideways, barely clearing the path of the attack as it tore through the air where I had stood.
The slash did not stop.
It continued past me and carved into the distant wall, slicing through ancient stone as though it offered no resistance.
Another slash was already coming.
The shadow’s blade moved again, its motion fluid and continuous, releasing a second sword slash that adjusted to my new position as though it had anticipated my evasion.
Time rippled outward from me. The incoming slash slowed. Its edge distorted as temporal resistance pressed against its motion, buying me the fraction of space needed to shift my position again. I flashed forward and to the side, clearing its trajectory as it passed.
The shadow did not pause.
Its sword moved a third time.
Another slash formed.
Closer.
Faster.
This one I met directly.
My fist drove forward.
Force exploded outward from the strike, the shockwave tearing through the incoming sword aura and shattering it completely. The released force continued forward without losing momentum, traveling directly toward the shadow.
It struck.
The shadow’s body split cleanly down the center, bisected by the shockwave. For a brief moment, it remained standing. Then its form dissolved.
I narrowed my eyes.
That was too easy.
The presence vanished completely. My Psynapse expanded instantly, scanning the surrounding space.
Nothing.
Then—
Pain.
A blade pierced through my back. I felt the edge enter, pass through flesh, through bone, and emerge from my chest. My body froze.
I looked down slowly. The tip of a shadow-forged sword extended from my torso, dark Essence flowing along its surface.
The shadow stood behind me. Its presence was absolute.
Its speed—
Beyond expectation.
I chuckled softly.
My body dispersed instantly, breaking apart into countless lightning particles as I activated Absolute Elemental Shift. My physical form ceased to exist in its conventional state, collapsing into pure elemental motion. The particles surged outward along the path of least resistance, traveling directly through the shadow’s weapon and into its body before it could withdraw the blade.
Then they converged.
BOOM!
The explosion tore through the hall, the force of the detonation sending the shadow’s body flying backward. It collided violently with one of the massive pillars, the impact cracking the ancient structure and sending fragments of stone raining down around it.
My form reassembled a short distance away, lightning condensing back into flesh. The wound in my torso no longer existed. Essence flowed smoothly through restored channels, repairing the damage completely as though the strike had never occurred.
But my focus was not on my own recovery.
It was on the shadow.
Or rather—
On what it had done.
Its speed had not been normal movement. It had not displaced space the way I did when I flashed. It had not bent time the way Chronostep allowed. There had been no transitional distortion. No detectable shift.
It had simply appeared behind me.
And pierced me.
The shadow’s body, which had been embedded against the pillar, began to disperse, its structure dissolving into drifting darkness. It faded rapidly, breaking apart into nothingness until no trace of it remained.
My Psynapse expanded outward instantly, sweeping across the entire hall, analyzing every layer of space, every fluctuation, every possible anomaly.
Nothing.
No Essence fluctuation.
No spatial distortion.
No temporal ripple.
No presence.
And yet—
My danger sense erupted.
Every instinct screamed at once. I did not hesitate. My body dispersed again, collapsing into lightning before conscious thought could intervene. In the next instant, a sword passed through the exact point where my neck had been.
The blade cut through empty air, its motion clean and silent, its path absolute. Lightning particles scattered around its trajectory as my dispersed form avoided complete destruction by the smallest margin.
I reformed several meters away, my eyes narrowing sharply. The shadow stood there again. Its sword extended from the completed strike.
It had not emerged.
It had not formed.
It was simply there.
My perception locked onto it completely, analyzing every aspect of its existence. And only one thing made sense.
It was not moving through space. It was moving through sequence. It did not travel from one position to another. It existed at the next position directly. Which meant conventional prediction was useless.
=================
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