Chương 124: The Stolen Weight

Drakhar charged with three weapons and immense joy. The arena floor gave way before he even reached Zayn. The black mace came down first. Zayn raised the fused scythe. The impact nearly tore his shoulders out. The spectral white edge vibrated within the blade, screaming with the voice of the trapped spirit. The black skull opened its jaws wide, furious, amused, starving.

"Too heavy!" the scythe growled. Zayn gritted his teeth.

"Then take up less space."

"I'm a scythe, not an opinion!" Drakhar struck with his serrated blade. Zayn barely dodged. The blade passed close to his face, ripping away part of the reforged mask. A red line opened across his cheek, but the flesh slowly sealed itself again, dirty, painful, almost reluctant. Voragna's regeneration was holding. But every repair stole warmth, breath, lucidity from him. Drakhar saw it.

"Your flesh knits back together, but your soul pays for it. Good. Very good." He struck again. Zayn used the Fang of Vhur in his right hand. The small red-and-black-gold fang, born from the stolen axe and the rings torn away, collided with the General's mace. Impossible. Ridiculous. A fragment against a mountain. And yet, at the instant of impact, the mark of Avarice in Zayn's right palm burned. The Fang did not block the blow. It took part of it. The weight entered the object.

Zayn felt his right arm split open to the elbow. He screamed, but he did not let go. The system pulsed. [Right of Claim: fragment of impact acquired.] The blow still sent him sliding back ten meters. But it did not crush his body. Drakhar stopped. His smile turned slow. Dangerous.

"You're learning to steal my blows." Zayn straightened up. His right hand was trembling. The mark in his palm was open, black, bleeding, like a mouth that had just bitten off more than it could chew.

"No." He raised the Fang of Vhur.

"I take what you waste." Drakhar burst out laughing. Then he attacked harder. This time, he held nothing back. The entire arena turned red. The black mace came down. The serrated blade cut. The hammer broke. The regenerated fist was already driving forward, flesh and bone rebuilding around the severed wrist. Zayn endured. He could not compete cleanly. Not in strength. Not in endurance. Not in mastery of Wrath. Drakhar had been a General for far too long. Every movement carried centuries of battle.

Every strike held the certainty of having shattered challengers stronger, nobler, better prepared. Zayn, on the other hand, survived badly. But he survived. The Fang took fragments of impact. A little. Not enough. Never enough. The fused scythe sometimes cut what matter alone could not reach. The white edge slipped beneath certain defenses, scratching at the bonds between Drakhar and his weapons. The black edge opened flesh. Time in Ruin aged the cracks. But Drakhar kept advancing.

[Drakhar — Estimated soul-force: 247 → 241.] The drop was slight. Zayn, meanwhile, felt his own body becoming a walking ruin. Elyra saw him stagger.

"Zayn, fall back!" He spat blood.

"Not now."

"You're going to die."

"Later." The scythe snickered.

"A very bad appointment to postpone." Drakhar was on him. Zayn tried to take another fragment from the hammer. Too slow. The General changed angles at the last second and drove his knee into Zayn's stomach. The blow knocked the air from his lungs. His body folded. Drakhar grabbed him by the throat, lifted him, then smashed him against the anvil where Elvarin's broken body still hung. The researcher's blood ran down the burning stone. Zayn turned his eyes toward him. Elvarin was dead. Truly dead. No more pleading.

No more answers. No more throat to open. All that road for a corpse that could no longer speak. The mark of Avarice pulsed in his palm. Drakhar leaned close to him.

"You're still looking at him." Zayn did not answer.

"That's good. Keep that feeling. The thing taken from you. The right denied to you. The moment that will never belong to you." The General smiled. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"That's a real forge." Zayn slowly lifted his right hand. He pressed his open palm against the anvil. Into Elvarin's blood. Into the broken chains. Into the remains of the spiritual blade fused into his scythe. The mark of Avarice opened wider. Not to take Drakhar. Not yet. To take what had no master anymore. The blood on the anvil. The heat of the chains. Elvarin's final work. The spiritual fragment already swallowed by the scythe. The stolen right of vengeance. All of it answered. Not like objects. Like remains.

Zayn murmured,"You shouldn't have killed him here." Drakhar narrowed his eyes.

"Why?" Zayn's voice dropped low.

"Because now everything around him knows he was mine." The black mark in his palm closed. The Fang of Vhur absorbed the stolen impact, the chains, the burned blood, the heat of the anvil. A shockwave ran through the arena. Drakhar stepped back one pace. Not wounded. Surprised. Zayn rose. His fused scythe shone in two colors: smoking black and spectral white. The Fang of Vhur in his right hand hung like a mountain's tooth ripped from its owner. His reforged mask smoked across his bloodied face.

Behind him, his black wings slowly reformed. Not beautiful. Not whole. But open. Drakhar looked at that shape and smiled.

"There. Now you look like a sin that found its name." Zayn lunged. Not toward the General's body. Toward his weapons. Elyra understood. She raised her light and struck the ground beneath Drakhar, not to injure him, but to cast a sharp shadow behind him. Lumeï, trembling, bit down on that shadow with all his strength. A fraction. Again. Zayn used that fraction. The Fang of Vhur struck the black mace. All the stored impact burst back out. The mace shuddered. Drakhar's hand opened against his will. The weapon fell.

Zayn placed his right palm on it before it touched the ground.

"Right of Claim." The mace resisted. It belonged to Drakhar. It carried too many battles. But for one beat, it had been dropped. One beat was enough for Avarice. Zayn did not fuse with it. He tore away its weight. The mace suddenly became lighter, almost hollow. The Fang of Vhur, meanwhile, grew brutally heavier. Zayn's right arm dislocated under the burden. He cried out. Then smiled. Drakhar attacked with the serrated blade. Zayn raised the Fang. The stolen weight crashed through his counterblow.

The serrated blade shattered. Drakhar stepped back again. This time, two paces. The warriors of Vhur were no longer shouting. They were watching. Their General had just lost two weapons. Drakhar looked down at the broken blade. Then at Zayn. His smile had not disappeared. But something in his eyes had changed.

"You are not stronger than me." Zayn breathed with difficulty.

"No."

"You are not older."

"No."

"You are not more worthy of Wrath." Zayn raised the scythe.

"No." Then he raised the Fang of Vhur.

"But you have too many things in your hands." The words entered the arena like a perfect insult. Drakhar let out a monstrous laugh.

"Yes! There is Avarice! Not gold. Not coffers. The hand that looks at the world and says: why not me?" He threw his hammer to the ground. Deliberately. The arena froze. Drakhar raised all four arms, one of them still halfway through regeneration.

"Take that one too." Elyra whispered,"It's a trap." Zayn answered,"Yes." Then he charged. Drakhar wanted him to touch the hammer. He wanted to see how much Avarice could swallow before it shattered Zayn's hand. So Zayn did not touch the hammer. He touched the hammer's shadow. Time in Ruin flowed down through the scythe. Right of Claim rose through his palm. The two powers crossed. Sloth wore away the bond between Drakhar and his weapon. Avarice pulled at what that erosion had made available. The hammer groaned.

Not with metal. With memory. Thousands of blows. Skulls split open. Armor shattered. Cities hammered into dust. The Wrath of Vhur, struck again and again until it became doctrine. Zayn nearly got swept away. His right palm split open to the wrist. The system screamed. [Right of Claim: overload.] [Major domain object.] [Fusion impossible.] [Partial claim possible.] Zayn gritted his teeth.

"Partial is enough." He pulled. The hammer did not come. But its first blow, its original weight, something from its birth in the forge tore loose. The Fang of Vhur absorbed it. The small object screamed. Then cracked. Zayn immediately drove it into his own left forearm, where the mark of Wrath was burning. Elyra's eyes widened.

"Zayn, no!" Too late. The Fang of Vhur fused into the mark of Wrath. Not like a new object fusion with the scythe or the mask. Like a graft of claim onto an already opened Downfall. The result was violent. Red lines shot across Zayn's forearm, intertwined with the black traces of Avarice climbing up from his right hand. Wrath received a weight. Avarice received a heat. The entire arm became a weapon of claim. The system displayed: [Unstable interaction: Wrath / Avarice.] [Fang of Vhur partially integrated.] [Temporary effect: strike weight increased according to acquired claim.] Zayn screamed. Not in rage. In pure pain. Drakhar watched with wonder.

"You turn even your failed thefts into weapons." Zayn lifted his head.

"Learned it here." Then he struck. Not with the scythe. With his left fist. The blow hit Drakhar in the sternum. The stolen weight of the hammer, the heat of the Fang, Zayn's Wrath, and the claim of his Avarice all condensed into a single impact. Drakhar staggered back. Again. Three steps. His chest cracked. Brazen blood flowed from his mouth. The system appeared. [Drakhar — Estimated soul-force: 241 → 229.] Absolute silence fell. Then Drakhar smiled. More softly.

"There." He placed one hand over his cracked chest.

"There, you hit me." Zayn swayed. His left arm was smoking. His right hand was almost unusable. His entire body was a debt that regeneration could no longer pay fast enough. Drakhar picked up his hammer. The bond was weakened, not broken. He still had two usable weapons, a General's body, greater soul-force, centuries of war. Zayn had one opening. Only one. Elyra saw it. Drakhar's armor at the sternum was cracked. Not just the material. The bond between his flesh, his weapons, and his domain had been disturbed.

"There!" she shouted. Zayn was already moving. He beat his wings. The motion nearly tore his back apart. He passed beneath the missing axe, under the rising hammer, beneath the regenerated fist. Drakhar tried to smash him into the ground. Zayn planted the fused scythe into the anvil behind him and used it as a pivot. The spectral white edge screamed. The trapped spirit, for the first time, pushed in the same direction as him. Not out of submission. Out of hatred for what had imprisoned it. The scythe turned.

Zayn was flung toward Drakhar's chest like a living blade. His left fist struck the crack. The scythe followed. The black edge opened flesh. The white edge plunged into the spiritual fracture. The mark of Avarice in Zayn's right palm burned one last time. He pressed his ruined right hand against the General's chest.

"I claim." Drakhar gritted his teeth.

"What?" Zayn smiled through the blood.

"The right to finish this fight." Right of Claim did not take his death. Too great. Too strong. But it took something else. The implicit recognition Drakhar had given him by calling him worthy of the arena. The martial permission. The fact that a General of Wrath had accepted this duel as real. That thing had been offered. So it could be claimed. The system trembled. [Right of Claim: martial right acquired.] [Resistance reduced.] The scythe blade sank deeper. Drakhar roared.

His three remaining weapons struck Zayn all at once. The mace crushed his wing. The hammer shattered his shoulder. The fist punched through his side. But Zayn did not let go. Time in Ruin climbed into the wound in Drakhar's chest. The General's flesh cracked wider. The Wrath of Vhur tried to seal it. Zayn's Avarice refused.

"No." The scythe screamed with both voices.

"Cut!" Zayn twisted the blade. Drakhar's sternum burst open. A brazen core appeared, not a heart, but a concentration of war-force, heated by centuries of rage. Zayn bit into it. Elyra looked away. Drakhar, on the other hand, burst into laughter. Even then. Even opened.

"Yes!" Zayn tore a piece of the core free with his teeth. Gluttony deciphered it. Envy drew in the fragments. Avarice locked in the claim. Wrath turned pain into impact. Sloth kept the flesh from sealing too quickly. The Downfalls did not blend cleanly. They fought inside his body like beasts inside a cage. But for one second, all of them looked at the same target. Drakhar. Zayn raised the scythe. And cut through the brazen core. The General of Wrath remained standing. One second. Two. Then his weapons fell.

One after another. Boom. Boom. Boom. The entire arena shook. Drakhar fixed his four ember-eyes on Zayn. He did not look humiliated. He looked satisfied.

"You are still too weak," he growled. Zayn could barely breathe.

"You are still too alive." Drakhar laughed one final time.

"Not for much longer." His body cracked open from the chest. The embers beneath his skin turned white. The heat of Vhur hesitated, as if the forges themselves refused to accept what was happening. Drakhar looked at the warriors in the stands. Then at Zayn.

"Listen well." His voice rolled through the entire mountain.

"This one is not a toy." The warriors of Vhur slowly lowered their weapons. Drakhar smiled.

"He is not king yet." He spat blood-fire.

"But he knows how to take what an arena gives him." His gaze pinned Zayn one last time.

"Go to Ghelkar. The merchant sold your rat. Make him pay the price I did not have time to tear out of him." Then the General of Wrath fell. His body struck the ground. The entire mountain rang like a shattered anvil. The system appeared. [Demon General defeated.] [Drakhar — Wrath: dead.] [Downfall of Envy: exceptional absorption.] Drakhar's force exploded around Zayn. Too heavy. Too hot. Impossible to absorb completely. The system imposed a limit again. [Partial absorption imposed.] [Soul-force absorbed: +28] [Current soul-force: 217 → 245] Zayn fell to his knees. His body could barely تحمل anything anymore. His wings hung in strips. His right hand was open to the wrist. His left arm smoked. His reforged mask was split. The fused scythe trembled as if it were holding back two opposing screams. But he was alive. And Drakhar was not. In the stands, not a single demon spoke. Then one warrior of Vhur struck his weapon against the ground. Once. Boom. Another followed. Boom. Then ten.

Then a hundred. Boom. Boom. Boom. Not a cheer. Not submission. A war rhythm. A brutal acknowledgment. Zayn slowly raised his head. Elyra was looking at him with a mix of horror and relief.

"You killed a second General." Zayn rose with difficulty. He looked at Elvarin's corpse on the anvil. Then at Drakhar's fallen weapons. Then at the road to the west. Ghelkar. Cassiel. The one who had sold his prey. The one who had believed he could move what belonged to him. The mark of Avarice in his right palm pulsed. Zayn smiled.

"No." Elyra frowned.

"No what?" He walked toward the arena exit.

"I took back a second one." The fused scythe laughed softly, its two voices trembling in the metal. And behind him, the Forges of Vhur kept beating the rhythm. No longer to call Drakhar. But to announce that the succession had just lost another pillar.