Other-Arden flicked his wrist, and the willowy strings at his fingertips went taut. The strings constraining everyone cut into them, drawing small traces of blood. He glared at Arden and manipulated the strings, forcing Arden in front of him, crucified to the empty air.

  “You’re not the only one with an Archon sponsorship anymore. I’ve been reborn in his grace, the great Archon of Life!”

  Arden grit his teeth as he was drawn closer to his other self. With the threads wrapped around his every joint, he couldn’t resist.

  “God knows what he sees in you,” Arden muttered through clenched teeth. “All I see is a broken man relying on power that isn’t his own.”

  The corners of Arden’s mouth curled upwards.

  “I thought Vera would have taught you better.”

  ‘If looks could castrate…’ Arden thought, seeing his doppelganger’s reaction to his taunt.

  Arden grunted in pain as the strings cut deeper into him.

  “I’ve seen Vera die twice now,” Other-Arden said coldly. “If you don't want to see that as well, you will be quiet.”

  To accentuate his point, he waved his clawed hand, pulling Vera right next to Arden. Arden bit his tongue seeing her current state. She hadn’t stopped resisting, and so she was covered in her own blood from the strings digging deep into her. She was pale, breathing heavily, and her eyes were unfocused.

  “...”

  Arden only glared at his evil twin.

  “That’s better,” the husk said in response. “Now as I said, I’ll be taking your Legacy. Typically, nobody would be able to handle two Legacies, but my patron is benevolent. His power flows through my veins.”

  Other-Arden took his claw, and plunged it into his own chest.

  “Unfortunately, the soul is quite guarded. If you don’t give access, nothing is allowed in.”

  He coughed up discolored blood, and withdrew his claw, holding a tangle of the green threads.

  “There is a workaround though. If ‘Arden’ has the Legacy of Beyond, and ‘I’ want it, then ‘I’ just have to become ‘Arden!’”

  Like revving a lawnmower or a chainsaw, Other-Arden pulled the knot of green energy as far and as hard as he could. When he did, it was revealed that he wasn’t removing the core. It was still connected to his insides by several strands.

  The humming of the green energy joined the hum of the Golden Stargate that lingered just a few meters behind Arden and Vera.

  “Wanna see something cool?”

  With a final pull of the tangle, Other-Arden’s body began unraveling into the singular strands of green energy bestowed to him from his Archon, starting from his chest cavity. Arden and Vera could only watch wordlessly as the rest of its body began to break down.

  Everything was coming undone and unraveled, save for the green threads holding him together, and his claw. In place of his skin and usual human biology was a black shadowy haze teeming with eerie energy, similar to life energy, but something else as well.

  In only a few seconds, only the shadow of Other-Arden remained. More green strings showed themselves in his shadowy form. The threads even came together to form the outline of a pair of eyes and cruel smiling mouth where his head was originally. The shadow spoke with a distorted voice that hurt the brain. It had no vocal chords, but its words pounded into everyone’s souls, forcing them to understand.

  “It is improper for a shadow to roam without a master.”

  It raked its claw across Arden's chest, tearing away a chunk of flesh the size of a hand. However, it didn’t leave a physical wound. Where Arden was struck, black shadows appeared on his skin, and the torn flesh appeared in the same spot on the malicious clone.

  “I’ll turn you into a shadow. You’ll fade away. Then I will be ‘Arden.’”

  Sya strained against the strings and yelled.

  “Get away from him!”

  The shadow closed its claw, tightening the hold it had on Sya. More of her blood spilled onto the threads.

  When she smiled, the shadow realized its mistake. Sya was a Blight Walker, a mobile generator of blight essence. And the Blight was the antithesis of life. Several threads holding Sya in place snapped at once. When they did, Sya flexed her entire body, and the rest of them fell around her.

  As soon as she landed on the ground, she charged forward. More threads rose from the ground to trip her up, but in the face of her Blighted blood, they all fell away. The two opposing energies were inherently incomparable.

  Sya ran towards the shadow, and it braced for her impact, only to realize that Sya wasn't aiming for the loathsome existence, but rather its captives tangled up right in front of it. She rubbed her hands along her arms to gather as much blood as she could. In one fluid motion, she dove between Arden and Vera, smothering the strings that held them in her black blood.

  The shadowy figure surged forward, crashing into Sya, knocking the Blight Walker to the ground. She looked up at the glowing green eyes of her assailant and gasped for air. That attack knocked the wind out of her, and she was having trouble getting any air to stay in her lungs.

  “A valiant effort,” the shadow said, kneeling next to Sya. “Do you think I won't kill you? I may be fundamentally the same as your Arden, but you aren't my sister. I can kill you and feel nothing from it.”

  Sya gave the shadow a sneer.

  “That's not what you said to Arden earlier. I believe you said that if anything happened to me, you wouldn't stop until the person responsible is dealt with.”

  The shadow’s face crumpled into a scowl.

  Before it could retort or retaliate, it leapt away hearing the sounds of tearing from the threads around Arden and Vera, knowing that they would launch an attack immediately.

  The shadow’s prediction was proven correct. Despite their exhaustion and injuries, the duo hit the ground running.

  Podren and Cirai only watched from their suspended state. There wasn’t much they could do. Not even Podren’s scalpel could be used, even though it was a Satellite. He just didn't have the arm room.

  “Hmm,” Podren hummed, coming up with an idea.

  “You got something?” Cirai asked, not willing to strain against her restraints anymore for fear of being torn to pieces.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “I might be able to use my powers on the strings since they’re both filled with life. The flow might be disrupted long enough for us to escape.”

  Arden and Vera launched a simultaneous attack on the shadow, driving it further away from Sya. Arden helped Sya to her feet as she started to regain her breath.

  “Might?” Cirai strained out, watching the fight.

  “Well,” Podren continued. “We either escape, or the strings blow up.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “Fine,” he groaned, turning his head slightly to look at his partner. “But what else can we do? Wait until we somehow get free like them?”

  “Yes,” Cirai said.

  Sya ran up to the pair, and wiped the threads with her blood. With a hiss and a smell like burning blood, the strings melted away.

  Podren grimaced after landing on the ground. The sludge that the strings had become clung to his clothes like sewage and smelled just as awful.

  “If this gives me a disease or something, I’m gonna be pissed,” he said.

  “Better dying than dead,” Sya said.

  *****

  Arden tried collecting his breath, but he was having trouble. Whether it was from the hole in his chest ripped out by his shadow or the accumulated exhaustion of the past few days, he didn’t know.

  He felt cold. It wasn’t the cold that came from standing next to someone with an ice sword. This was a dreadful chill.

  ‘That’s definitely from the shadow attack…’

  A glance at his partner told him that she was doing even worse than him. She was paler than both him and Sya and taking fast shallow breaths. What worried Arden the most was her hair.

  Over the course of the skirmish, her lustrous black hair had begun fading. It was full and beautiful before. Now it had lost its sheen and started growing a colorless grey. It didn’t take a genius to know that the source of her condition was her overusing her powers. Using the second attack of her Dance of the Nine Phases as an Aspirant was too much.

  If Arden had to guess the principles behind it, he would have said that using the sword dance, while not burning through stellar essence, instead burnt through her life force or something like that.

  She was fine before because she was weaker as a pure mundane who regularly used the Usurper’s Throne, a recovery boosting Satellite. Now, she had neither. She was using more power just from being an Aspirant, a half-step higher than a mundane.

  If she didn’t stop, she would die.

  “Vera…” Arden said.

  “I’m fine,” she lied as blood fell from her mouth. She wiped it away and continued. “I’m just a bit tired.”

  The shadow glanced at the pair with heinous glee and it rushed towards them with tis claw outstretched.

  It was gunning for Vera.

  Arden and Vera saw the attack coming.

  Vera brought her sword halfway up to defend when she realized her body wasn’t moving as she wanted it to. Her body was too slow.

  Slow enough for her defense to fail.

  Her eyes widened as the claw came within centimeters of her neck. Before she felt the monstrous claw bite into her flesh, she felt her body being yanked away. She only watched as Arden took her place after pulling her out of the way. His own claw was already up in the air to block the strike of the doppelganger, but it didn’t matter. The shadow’s claw tore through his right Bone Talon like butter, along with his entire arm.

  Vera watched in horror as everything a few centimeters below Arden’s shoulder became wrapped in shadow, and a new right arm replaced the shadowy one on Arden’s other self.

  With its new hand, it grabbed Arden by the throat and threw him to the floor beside Vera.

  She scrambled to his side and tried dragging him away from the doppelganger’s maliciously slow advance. Clearly, it was having fun inflicting this kind of torment. She realized that Arden was looking up with unfocused eyes, a sign of the immense pain he must have been in.

  The only thing to be thankful for was the lack of blood loss. He wouldn’t die of exsanguination anytime soon if all of his wounds were replaced with otherworldly shadows. Arden cracked a worried smile to hide the fear he was feeling. With a weak voice, he spoke to Vera.

  “I can’t do it. I can’t heal.”

  “Are you done yet?” Other-Arden asked. “Done talking I mean. I know both of you very well. You’re not about to stop fighting just because you lost your sole advantage. If it makes you feel better, I only have the Legacy of Life right now. Beyond’s is still up in the air.”

  Vera gripped her sword with renewed vigor. Not because the doppelganger said that it didn’t have Arden’s power, but because she was furious.

  This was the first time in her life, even when training under her spartan-like family, that she wanted to kill something so much.

  No.

  She needed to kill this thing in front of her.

  She would give everything she had if it meant protecting Arden. Even if it cost Vera her life. To her, Arden was worth it. Sya too. They were her friends and the ones that taught her how to live as opposed to just surviving.

  She held her sword in front of her diagonally. White frost lifted from her blade but instead of lifting into the air, it formed a white semicircle with her sword as a focal point.

  Just like a phase of the moon.

  Power surged from inside of her. She felt her soul shudder from the force of the power. It was too much for her to bear. Something shattered inside of her when she yelled out the name of the technique.

  “Third Phase! First Quarter!”

  She brought the sword down just like she taught Arden how to, and the energy that collected at the tip of the blade was pushed out, sending out a wave of destruction. Just before the attack reached the doppelganger, Vera watched it assume the exact same stance. The words she just shouted echoed back to her in a gleeful voice.

  “Third Phase! First Quarter!”

  An identical wave of destruction rushed out to meet the first, resulting in a frosty explosion that rocked the building.

  “I told you,” the shadow said, resting his sword on his shoulder with a relaxed smile. “You taught me how to fight. I’ve seen your Dance of the Nine Phases more times than I can count."

  Vera fell to the ground, just barely holding onto consciousness. In the aftermath, she could only hear ringing in her ears and her own heartbeat.

  It took her a few seconds to realize she was moving, or rather being moved. With blurry vision, she saw that she was being dragged by Arden away from the site of the carnage. Somehow, even with only one real arm, he was able to get her out of there.

  “Made it,” he muttered.

  The icy haze wasn’t enough to hide the dim golden glow of Vera’s Golden Stargate.

  He looked between the stargate and Vera. She would heal once she entered the stargate but before her trial actually began to give her a fair chance. There was no certainty that her trial would be an easy one. In fact, going by how things have been, it was likely going to be hellish.

  But it couldn’t be worse than what was already happening.

  “Arden…” Vera muttered weakly.

  Arden embraced her. Despite the shadowy chills and the ice, he felt himself warm up. She was like the sun, which he thought was ironic considering her affinity with the moon.

  “Come back alive,” Arden said.

  “Only if you do as well,” she answered.

  He smiled.

  “I'll see you on the other side, then.”

  Vera brought her hand up to the stargate, still humming with energy. When she touched it, her body turned into golden sparks and disappeared into the golden maw.

  The frosty mist in the building disappeared with the appearance of countless green threads that whipped around, blowing the mist away.

  With it gone, Arden observed the scene of havoc in front of him.

  Somehow, in complete silence, the shadow defeated the rest of the group. Cirai was lying on her back, hopefully unconscious. Podren was once again strung up by the threads, but all of his limbs were twisted and broken by the manipulations of the thread.

  The only one who was still capable of fighting was a bloody Sya, who was leaning against the wall that Arden busted down before the fight started in earnest.

  “I’ve had a lot of fun today,” the shadow said, looking at Arden. “But I think it's time for the grand finale.”

  With the movement of a single finger on the shadow’s claw, one of Podren’s arms was eviscerated. With its job done, the bloody string dropped Podren to the ground unceremoniously and returned to the doppelganger. The thread floated above all of them, forming a sigil that looked like a tree, with green leaves drenched in rust colored blood.

  “Advent of Life.”