Leah was, quite frankly, not having a great evening.

It was supposed to be a celebration, a birthday for her brother, a gathering of nobility and strength, a carefully orchestrated political event but instead, it had spiralled into chaos. A terrorist group had stormed the palace, the deal she had been trying to strike with Jacob had collapsed, and the royal guards, those meant to be her shield were either poisoned, incapacitated, or locked in battles of their own across the hall. And now, as if to complete the farce, she found herself standing alone in the middle of a shattered corridor, face-to-face with a knight wielding a massive, iron-wrapped axe and grinning like this was all some delightful game.

He was a grade ten knight, just like her, or so it should have been.

Leah, for her part, had trained under the most rigorous standards imaginable, sharpened by tutors who expected perfection and tested constantly against elite warriors. Her status as a rank ten knight was no gift of birth but an earned title, hard-fought through hours of sweat and blood. Under ordinary circumstances, she should have been able to handle him, perhaps not effortlessly, but certainly with confidence.

But there was nothing ordinary about this man.

His movements, while not particularly fast, carried a weight and sheer destructive power that didn't make sense. His swings were earth-splitting, bone-rattling, the kind of strength that warped expectation. His aura was sluggish, almost like it couldn't keep up with the force of his body, which only made her more certain that whatever this man was, human or not, he was something unnatural.

As if that weren't enough, her barrier had been compromised during an earlier exchange with a mage, its inner lattice fractured by a well-placed spell which meant one of her most reliable lines of defence was now useless. She was exposed, and she knew it.

The axe came down again, a cleaving arc of raw brutality, and Leah raised her sword just in time to block it, though the impact drove her backward across the polished marble, her boots leaving faint grooves in the floor. Her arms ached, joints protesting the repeated shock, and somewhere in her ribcage she felt something crack but she held firm.

A deep blue aura flickered to life across the surface of her blade, winding around it like fine silk, spinning tighter as she concentrated. With a sharp exhale, she pushed the axe away and regained her footing, but the knight's aura surged in response, a misty green that slithered across the axe head like smoke and then reached forward, touching her sword, pressing against her own aura like a second presence trying to seep in and take root.

It didn't just push back, it tried to consume her.

Leah recognized it almost immediately. Corrupt. That was the nature of his aura, designed not just to clash but to infiltrate, to degrade, to rot. It coiled around her own energy like ivy on stone, pulling, twisting, slowly unravelling the threads of her defence.

Fortunately, while his physical strength was monstrous, his aura wasn't as refined. It lacked subtlety, and that gave her just enough room to resist.

She shifted her weight and redirected the axe to the side, rolling away just as the blade came crashing down again, carving a scar into the floor where she'd been standing moments before. In one smooth movement, she sprang back to her feet and launched a precise slash aimed at his exposed wrist, hoping to sever or at least weaken his grip.

The knight twisted his torso with surprising flexibility, letting the blow scrape across the thick plates of armour protecting his arms. The blade sparked and glanced off harmlessly, and before she could reposition, he spun again, bringing the axe down with both hands in a brutal vertical strike.

She brought her sword up with both hands, caught the weapon's edge at a sharp angle, and deflected it just barely to the side. The steel screeched as it scraped across her blade, and then the axe slammed into the floor with a sound like a crack of thunder, fissuring the marble beneath it.

Wasting no time, Leah stepped in and drove her foot into the man's abdomen, feeling the dense mass of muscle behind the armour but managing to stagger him nonetheless. As he reeled backward, she raised her sword once more and swung it toward his neck in a clean, precise arc, this time fully reinforcing the blade with her aura to ensure maximum damage.

But he was quick, even wounded. He dropped the axe with one hand and brought his left arm up, trying to shield his neck with the flat of his gauntlet. It was a desperate move, and she could see it, it was the kind of defence someone made when they knew they couldn't fully evade.

And so she struck anyway, her blade singing through the air, its edge glowing faintly blue.

But instead of Leah's blade cutting clean through his hand, the blue, thread-like aura coiled around her sword shimmered faintly, and then the weapon passed through his arm as though it wasn't there at all, phasing through the flesh without leaving so much as a scratch. For a split second, the knight's brow furrowed in confusion, then her sword completed its arc and skimmed across the side of his neck, carving a shallow wound that drew a thin line of blood.

The glow around her weapon flickered and died.

Her aura attribute, Phase, was subtle, not suited for brute force but for precision, for bypassing defences and slipping through armour, and for a brief moment it had worked just as intended. When her aura wrapped around an object, she could force it to exist partially outside of the physical plane, flickering in and out of materiality. But the cut she'd landed wasn't deep enough, it lacked weight, lacked stopping power, and though it stunned the knight for a moment, it hadn't slowed him down.

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"Hm," he muttered, rubbing absently at the side of his neck where blood was beginning to bead. "Interesting attribute... rare, elegant even... but weak." His voice was calm, almost clinical, as if he were evaluating a technique rather than participating in a deathmatch. He hefted the massive axe back into both hands, each step he took forward sending a subtle tremor through the floor.

Leah took a step back, tightening her grip on the hilt of her sword, adjusting her stance. She knew better than to try and overpower him, but if she could bait him into wasting energy, she might still have a chance.

And then, unexpectedly, he raised the axe, not in another overhead cleave, but in a single fluid motion and hurled it at her.

She barely had time to react. Her instincts took over, and she ducked low, feeling the heavy head of the weapon rush past, so close that it stirred the air above her scalp. The axe landed with a muted boom somewhere behind her, cracking marble and sending fragments skittering across the ground.

But she didn't have time to breathe.

The moment she looked up, a fist was already slamming into her chest, knocking the air clean out of her lungs. Her body lifted from the ground with the force of it, and for a brief second, she thought she might crash into the far wall, but a massive hand caught her mid-air, yanking her back like a rag doll.

Before she could orient herself, another strike landed, this time across her face, the force spinning her vision sideways. Pain bloomed behind her eyes, and she tasted blood in her mouth, sharp and metallic. Her limbs felt slow, unfocused, but she twisted her body anyway, trying to break free. Her reward was another brutal punch, blunt, bone-jarring that sent stars scattering across her vision like sparks from flint.

She gasped, coughed blood, then lifted one arm weakly and drove her fist into his chest. It felt like punching stone.

"Fuck... you," she managed to croak, barely above a whisper, her voice cracked from the blows.

The knight chuckled, deep, cruel amusement curling through his throat as he held her aloft by the wrist, fingers tightening until she felt the pressure grinding against the bones. "Such language from a princess," he said mockingly, eyes alight with twisted pleasure. "That tongue would serve better in the mouth of someone like me. Allow me to show you what that looks like."

Without warning, he raised her high and then slammed her into the floor. She wrapped her aura around herself out of pure reflex, trying to soften the impact but his own corrupt aura surged forward, coiling around hers like smoke and dissolving it as if it were made of mist. The protection shattered instantly, and she took the full force of the collision, her back crashing into the ground with a sharp crack that stole the breath from her lungs.

"Fuck your title," he hissed through clenched teeth, lifting her again by the arm as if she weighed nothing at all. "Fuck your king and his entire diseased bloodline."

He slammed her down once more, this time with even more force, the floor splintering beneath her as the marble fractured like ice beneath a boot. Then he raised her one final time, holding her high enough that her boots no longer touched the floor, her bloodied face inches from his.

Her arms hung limp now, her legs barely moved, and her vision pulsed in and out of clarity, but she forced herself to meet his gaze, unflinching even now.

"Did you know," the knight said, his voice low and bitter, thick with something that sounded almost like fear, "your father has a fondness for human experimentation. You wouldn't know it, most of you up in the palace don't but I was one of them. One of his projects. An inhuman attempt to fuse a giant's blood with a man's body. I was torn apart and reassembled, tested and prodded like an animal for years until Whisper found me, pulled me out of that hell." He lifted Leah into the air again with one arm like she weighed nothing and slammed her into the floor another time, the impact echoing off the ruined marble.

Leah coughed, blood spattering her lips, and then, to the knight's surprise, she began to laugh, short, breathless bursts of laughter that came from somewhere deep in her gut, not from amusement but from something colder, sharper.

"Oh, is that what all this is about?" she rasped, blinking past the blood trailing into her eyes. "Of course I'm aware of what goes on beneath the palace. We all are. It's annoying, really, that things like you actually managed to crawl out of that filth." She took a breath, her voice shaking, but still filled with disdain. "No wonder you're so freakishly strong... You aren't human, are you? Just a mons—"

Before she could finish, his hand snapped forward and flung her like a ragdoll. She collided hard with a stone pillar, her shoulder twisting painfully on impact before she crumpled to the ground. Her head lolled slightly, barely staying upright as her vision blurred and she watched him advance toward her, the heavy thud of his footsteps pounding in her ears like war drums.

"All you royals of Eterna are the same," he muttered darkly, lifting his axe once more, the blade catching the flicker of firelight in the shattered hall. "You hide behind your bloodlines and your birthrights, drowning in sin because your kingdom turned its back on the divine. There's no repentance for what you've done to me, and to others like me."

He raised the axe higher, steadying it with both hands above her. "But the scriptures still speak of mercy, even for those beyond redemption. So I'll pray for you. May your soul find peace, even if it ends up in hell."

Then, with a grunt of finality, he brought the weapon down.

But it never reached her.

His body jerked mid-swing, his arms seizing for a fraction of a second as a sharp pain lanced through his throat. He staggered, confused, then looked down and saw the slim handle of a knife protruding from his neck, buried deep, straight through flesh and windpipe.

His axe slipped from his fingers and hit the floor with a flat metallic clang. He dropped to his knees, blood bubbling up from his throat, his mouth working as though to speak but all that came were gurgling sounds, each breath shallower than the last. He clawed at the blade, but it wouldn't budge, Leah's aura wrapped tightly around the knife, phasing it just slightly into his flesh so it resisted every attempt to dislodge it.

She had thrown it the moment his guard lowered, timing it with a flicker of aura that let the blade pass cleanly through his axe as it swung, as though the weapon, and for a moment, his whole defence, had simply ceased to exist.

He swayed once, still trying to breathe through the blood filling his throat, but the light in his eyes was already dimming. Then, silently, heavily, he pitched forward and collapsed, face-first, into the broken floor.

Leah didn't speak for a moment.

Then, as she dragged herself upright on trembling legs, wiping blood from her nose with the back of her hand, she muttered hoarsely, "Fucking monster."

Her knees buckled slightly, but she kept moving, staggering across the corridor toward a nearby door. She shoved it open with her shoulder, slipped inside, and slammed it shut behind her. Then, finally, she let herself fall to the ground, her back against the door, her chest rising and falling in heavy, ragged breaths.

She closed her eyes.

The world outside was still roaring, shouts and screams and steel crashing on stone but Leah let it all fade to the background, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to rest.

Just for a moment.

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