Chapter 122: A Debt To Be Paid
Darkness erupted from the cracks on the ground.
The courtyard was dead.
Smoke coiled from shattered towers, drifting like black veils across the air, each thread of ash moving as if guided by mourning hands.
The ground bore the scars of Lan’s fury—stones split and blackened, walls reduced to fractured heaps, and the faint smell of blood clinging stubbornly to the air.
Even the light of the rising sun seemed reluctant to pierce the ruin. What little broke through came thin and pale, as though daylight feared trespassing upon this place.
Lan stood at the center of it, Devil’s Lie heavy in his grip, the rusted blade dragging rivulets of Aldric’s lifeblood down its grooves.
The Solaris king had been broken—nearly slain by his hand—yet there was no triumph in the silence that followed. In the arrival of the man who had come.
Karahad stepped forward.
The shadows shifted first. They did not move as natural things should. They stretched unnaturally long across fallen pillars, then folded back upon themselves like pages being turned by unseen fingers.
The darkness rearranged, snapping into unfamiliar shapes, the man himself felt like an outline clad in black that was neither cloth nor armor, a form that refused to accept the presence of light.
He didn’t stride with arrogance.
Or thunder his approach. And yet, as Karahad stepped futher into the broken courtyard, the air thinned.
The ruined battleground, once filled with screams and steel, was smothered into suffocating stillness until the only sound that remained was the irregular pulse of Lan’s own heartbeat.
Karahad’s voice broke that silence.
"You have made a mess of their castle," he said, calm, almost conversational. The sound carried no effort, no emotion, yet it sliced through the hush. "But this rebellion of yours—your crown, your name—it is all noise. Temporary. Meaningless."
Lan’s gaze lifted, pale-grey eyes reflecting the broken courtyard around him. His voice was flat, edged like his sword.
"Then why come here, if I am only noise?"
Karahad tilted his head slightly, as if indulging the question. "Because debts must be paid. A century ago, Solaris blood stained the Council’s hand. That debt still lingers. And I..." His words trailed, shadows flickering at his feet like restless spirits. "I am the one who shall pay it in their name."
The words sank deeper than the cold. This was no assassin sent by a desperate king, no mercenary bought by coin. What stood before him was far more dangerous.
And Lan always knew.
Karahad’s eyes, black as a starless well, settled on Lan with the calm of one observing an insect.
"Do not be mistaken. This assignment is beneath me. Kings, nations, thrones—I have ended them all without the need for such theatre. Yet still the Council sends me. Do you know why?"
Lan’s grip tightened on Devil’s Lie, but his reply was stripped of bravado.
"Because they fear."
The faintest shadow of a smile touched Karahad’s lips. "Yes. They would not send me if you were only a bastard prince flailing in his father’s shadow."
Lan’s answer was colder than the wind. "And yet here you stand. A leash-holder for men too cowardly to act themselves. All that power, wasted—your blade nothing more than their knife."
The courtyard seemed to lean into the silence that followed.
The shadows at Karahad’s feet shivered, as if provoked by Lan’s contempt. Yet his expression never shifted. His reply was level, without heat. "You mistake obedience for waste. The Council’s will is law. I am not their knife—I am a representation of their silence. Do not think your rebellion makes you different. You will fade, as all others have."
Lan did not look away. His words came soft, cruel, unwavering. "Maybe. But unlike you, I fade on my own terms."
The air between them fractured.
Karahad exhaled. With that breath, the world changed.
The Curtain of Silence descended.
It was not true darkness, though the shadows bent so unnaturally that vision faltered.
It was not true death, though the absence of air pressed against lungs until every breath felt like drowning. It was silence—absolute. Sound itself ceased to exist. The distant fires, the groan of falling stone, even the faint rhythm of Lan’s breath—all stripped away.
Lan stood in a void where nothing remained but Karahad.
He did not flinch. From his core, Lan drew up his Spiritual Pressure and let it spill outward. An unseen tide, heavy and suffocating, pressed into the suffocating void.
The ground split under the strain, fissures racing like veins through marble and ash. Though no sound carried, the very air quivered, trembling as though reality recoiled.
Two forces, almost invisible yet undeniable, collided. The ruins of Solaris Castle groaned as if the weight of those wills sought to grind it into dust.
Lan’s pale eyes locked unblinking on the assassin’s form. Karahad stood unshaken, yet the Curtain thickened around him, shadows knotting tighter—as though even he required its shelter against Lan’s crushing will.
A test, without words or blades. A clash of spirits before steel.
When the stone beneath their feet finally split open with a visible shatter, Karahad moved.
From his side he drew Silent Edge.
It was not metal. It was absence shaped into a weapon. A blade darker than shadow itself, drinking in what little light remained. It gave nothing back, not even a glimmer.
Even Devil’s Lie, with its rusted grooves and whispering hunger, seemed almost mundane before it.
Lan lifted his sword in answer. The black-wrapped hilt cut into his palm with familiar weight. Devil’s Lie dripped with the remnants of lies severed, of hypocrisy torn away, and seemed to thrum in anticipation of this next truth it might carve.
No words remained. None were needed.
One step. The Curtain folded tighter.
One step. Lan’s Spiritual Pressure pressed sharper, heavier.
They closed the silence together.
Silent Edge cut through the void like the promise of an ending. Devil’s Lie cleaved through with rusted defiance.
The courtyard detonated as the first blow struck.