The spire welcomed Lucien once more.
The knight stood unmoved. Unchanged.
Darky's voice slithered in from nowhere. "Die with style, yeah?"
Lucien said nothing.
No thoughts of victory. Just inevitability.
Only the silence.
He raised his hand and held the blade.
The blade came.
This time, he moved first.
He brought his longsword up.
Rather than standing and blocking, he deflected.
Lucien pressed in, sword in hand.
They exchanged strikes, Lucien always on the losing end. Yet he survived. And he survived better than last time.
But it was slowly coming to an end.
Lucien tired. The knight did not.
The knight thrusted.
Lucien, too slow to react, failed to step aside in time, failed to intercept its sword with his own.
The greatsword pierced his skin, then his muscles, then his cervical vertebrae, and went out through the other end.
Lucien woke up.
No screaming, just deep and ragged breaths.
'Dammit!'
Lucien stood up, stretching his arms out.
The storm had weakened. It was still there, but subtle.
The snow cascading into the cave had receded back.
Sunny looked around the cave. There was more light in there, so the deeper parts of the cave could be more easily seen; it was nothing special. The walls were stone, with some protuberances. The ground was relatively flat, and the ceiling at its highest point was barely over two meters.
"How'd you do this time?"
Lucien looked around and saw Luna, sitting with her katana in her lap. She was wiping it with the black undercloth of her armor—near the crook of her elbow.
"Better, though I still lost." He hesitated for a moment, then asked, "You do know that relics get restored in your mindscape. So, why are you cleaning it?"
Luna looked at him for a moment. Then, she turned to look at the mouth of the cave and spoke, "My father…" her voice was wistful, "He always used to do this after we trained."
Then, with pensive reverie, she added, "I never asked why."
The mood turned somber. In the end, Darky was the one to break the silence.
'You should probably say something,' then in a quippy tone, he added, 'to avoid the awkwardness.'
"We should leave early."
In the end, it was Luna who spoke first, breaking her sight from the cave's mouth and facing Lucien.
"The storm ended a few hours ago. If we go now…" she looked up, as if thinking, then continued, "we should be able to cover two-thirds of the way to the mountains."
"But before that," her mood switched, almost chipper, "how did you lose this time around?"
Lucien was taken aback by the sudden shift in atmosphere. He stared at her in confusion for a few seconds before speaking.
"Before that, there was something I realized, about the knight, that is."
"Do tell," Luna spoke, her tone laced with curiosity.
"The knight, it doesn't seem to remember our previous exchanges." Lucien thought for a few seconds, then continued, "It has the same patterns every time I go in, but it adapts as I fight it. And it does so at an inhuman rate." He added, "But that's not the reason I lost. It just doesn't tire. I am sure that thing is no human. It doesn't even bleed blood, just some black glitter."
"Well, it seems to me that you just need to work on your strength." She sounded… cheerful?
Lucien smiled in response. "Yeah."
It was still early morning. The sun was shining brightly—its blinding light directly entering the cave's mouth.
Luna dismissed her sword and stood up. "We should head out now."
Lucien followed suit.
They exited the cave. Snow ran deep, silently crunching beneath their feet.
They didn't speak for a while; they just walked.
"Hey Luna," Lucien spoke, "do you think that Echo is still hunting around these parts?"
She looked around for a moment before speaking. "Highly doubt it. There's not much to hunt here. But if it is…"
Lucien looked at her, waiting for her to continue.
"Then we kill it."
Lucien's eyes narrowed. "We kill it?!" he snapped. "Are you crazy? That thing is at least an Imprint."
She looked at him deadpan. "I know."
Lucien scoffed, "I don't even have a weapon. You're gonna have to fight it alone."
At that moment, Darky's voice resounded, a hint of confusion in it.
"Guys, there seems to be a graveyard up here."
"A what?" Lucien nearly stumbled.
"A graveyard, y'know, the place where dead people are buried."
"What's going on?" Luna asked—summoning her sword—noticing the confused look on Lucien's face.
"There's a graveyard? Up ahead," he replied.
Luna tilted her head at the revelation.
"Guys, I wasn't done. There's also an Echo," Darky continued.
"And there's an Echo too," Lucien continued.
"Alright." Luna responded, her tone was nonchalant.
"Alright?" he said, puzzled, "We just came across a tombsite, in a deathzone. That means people have been here before—wherever here is."
"I know," she replied, earning a defeated look from Lucien. "We'll just kill the Echo, and as for the cemetery, it is irrelevant to our current situation."
Lucien exhaled deeply. "Right. Irrelevant. Sure."
They walked along, quietly trudging through snow.
Then they saw it.
Graves. Crude stone markers. No signs of ritual. No signs of religion. Even the names had faded away over time.
Lucien stepped forward, towards the nearest marker.
Lucien narrowed his gaze forwards.
The Echo stood there.
It was an Echo. Probably a Whispering Shroud.
It looked like a kneeling templar; however, there were no religious markings on its armor. There was a bastard sword embedded in the ground in front of it. A helmet was fused to its face.
"What's it doing?" Lucien muttered to himself.
"Probably waiting," replied Luna as she approached it.
And she was right. As she got closer, the templar stood up, pulled the sword from the ground, and took a fighting stance.
Lucien took a cautious step back.
"Same tactic as before, find the fight time, and make Darky do his thing."
The air changed. Almost heavy now. Like the calm before a storm.
Then it moved.
Faster than it should have been capable of.
Luna met it head-on. Sparks flew as they clashed.
Lucien watched. Waiting. Just him and the splotch of darkness on his palm.
The Echo swung in wide arcs, slow but deadly. Luna gracefully dodged them, her katana glinting under the sun.
Then—clang. A parry. A step too close.
Lucien ordered Darky to wrap itself around its face in an attempt to delay.
No use.
The Echo pommel-struck her. Luna crashed against a gravestone, the stone shattering under the force of the impact.
The Echo raised its sword but didn't charge.
Instead, it watched, as if waiting for a challenge.
Luna stood, wiping blood from the corner of her mouth. "I'm fine," she said before Lucien could speak. "It's just a bruise."
The tension snapped as Luna got up—the Echo charged.
She met its charge—barely. Her strikes were faster now, cleaner.
Lucien circled around, looking for something. Anything.
That's when he saw it, among the gravestones, a lone sword. Rusted. Half-buried.
It was old. Maybe even useless.
But it was better than nothing.
He dashed for it as Luna traded blows.
His fingers wrapped around the hilt of what used to be a shortsword.
It groaned, but didn't crumble.
'Good enough.'
"Hey!" Lucien shouted.
The Echo showed no reaction.
Lucien circled to the side, waiting for an opportunity.
The moment the Echo overcommitted—he struck.
The blade bit into the Echo's neck. No blood, just the sound of bones.
It staggered. Then it fell.
Lucien let the blade drop with it.
Silence.
Lucien let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.
"I'll take the shadow, you take the essence?" he spoke rhetorically.
Luna nodded, waiting for him to go first.
Lucien smirked, recognizing her gesture.
'Please give me a weapon,' he prayed to himself.
Forming a fist, he knelt and touched the fallen Templar.
His Mark lit up. A familiar voice resounded.
[---Echo Slain: Ironfallen Apostate---]
[Once they knelt before unknown, clad in faith and steel. Now, only rust remembers the rites they followed—and the silence that answered."]
[---Relic Received: Vowcleaver---]
[Forged in devotion, wielded in doubt. It remembers the shape of a prayer, but not the words.]
"FINALLY!" Lucien bellowed.
Lucien entered his mindscape. The planetary system was just like before, except now it had a mote of light circling it.
Lucien summoned the Relic. The mote representing the Relic dimmed as it materialized.
A long, broad blade, slightly curved near the tip—designed more for execution rather than elegance. Its grip was wrapped with faded crimson leather. Its steel was dark, with faded etchings along the fuller—half-erased, in an unrecognizable language.
He dismissed it and looked back at the mote that brightened up again.
'Why is this one light and the other one dark?' he pondered.
'It probably has something to do with its relation to void,' Darky's voice resounded in his head.
Lucien looked at his shadow.
Shrugged.
Then exited his mindscape.
'Well, that's a problem for another day.'
He looked at Luna, a smug grin on his face.
"So you got a sword?" she asked.
Without saying a word, Lucien simply summoned his sword, letting its dark steel absorb the sunlight.
Luna stared at him, "That's nice and all, but aren't you gonna eat the shadow?"
Lucien's face turned neutral. "Oh right, I nearly forgot," he said, earning a scoff from Luna.
Lucien turned to face the body laying on the floor.
Kneeling, he dismissed his sword, flexed his palm, and pressed it against the body, this time his intent was colder.
The Mark flared once again—not with light, but with darkness. Cold.
The shadow shifted, moved to his palm, and just like before, it disappeared within it, almost as if finding eternal peace.
The Mark's voice once again spoke in the back of his head.
[Darkness Recognizes Its Own]
He felt it clearer this time—the increase in power—although little, it was something that could very well give him the edge in a life-or-death situation.
He slowly exhaled.
Luna moved in to absorb the celestial essence.
The last of the light faded into Luna's fist. A pulse, soft as breath.
She rose without a word, casting one final glance towards the Echo.
The wind picked up again, sifting snow through cracked gravestones.
Luna spoke first.
"We should move."
Lucien nodded. "Yeah."
Lucien took a few steps forward.
Crack.
The voice—although hushed—echoed loudly around them.
Then they saw it.
All across the tombsite, corpses rose from the graves.