ONLINE: Blades of Eternity

The mist churned, swirling violently around them. Every breath Kaelen drew felt like inhaling cold needles. Kelvin shifted his stance, scythe held low, ready to spring. Beside them, the silver-haired girl stood firm, her blade gleaming faintly against the suffocating gray.

The mist-being moved.

It didn't walk—it glided—one moment still, the next right upon them. A whip-like tendril lashed out from the folds of its cloak.

Crack!

Kaelen barely parried the strike, the sheer force of it numbing his arms through the sword. Kelvin swung his scythe horizontally, carving through empty mist as the creature flowed around his attack like water slipping past rocks.

"They're not solid!" Kelvin snarled, adjusting his grip.

"They are when they strike," Kaelen replied grimly, blood already trickling from a gash on his forearm.

The girl surged forward without hesitation. Her movements were clean, surgical—footwork sharp, blade angles sharper. She met the creature's next attack head-on, parrying a brutal downward slash with her curved weapon. Sparks ignited where their blades collided.

The mist-being was fast. It lashed at her with liquid-like arms that solidified only at the moment of impact. She dodged narrowly, sliding beneath a tendril that would have taken her head clean off, retaliating with a vicious upward slash that cut through the creature's arm—but the limb simply reformed from the swirling fog.

Kaelen and Kelvin tried to flank it, forcing it to divide its focus. Kaelen struck from the left with a series of rapid thrusts aimed at what passed for its midsection, while Kelvin swept low with wide arcs, trying to trip or catch it.

But it was like fighting a ghost.

Their weapons passed through it more often than not, connecting only when it allowed itself to solidify to strike back.

"Useless…" the being murmured, almost pityingly. It flicked its wrist.

Kaelen barely saw it coming.

Whump!

A blow to the chest sent him flying back into a rotten tree, snapping the trunk and dropping him heavily into the mud. Kelvin fared little better, forced into a defensive scramble as the mist-being closed in like a tidal wave.

The girl moved like lightning. Her blade intercepted tendrils that would have skewered Kelvin, her expression cold, calculating. She twisted and spun, every motion smooth, seamless—an artist painting death on a canvas of fog.

But even she was pushed back.

With every second, the mist-being grew more aggressive, pressing its advantage. It wasn't fighting to kill.

It was fighting to wear her down.

Kaelen pushed himself upright, coughing, forcing his battered body to move. His muscles screamed. His sword felt heavier in his hand. But he charged forward anyway, refusing to abandon her.

Kelvin joined him, spinning his scythe overhead before releasing a controlled downward arc aimed at the creature's "head." The attack forced the being to dodge backward for the first time.

The girl saw her opening.

Her blade shifted—not to slash or stab, but to carve. She performed a rapid, whirling sequence of strikes—each cut tracing a precise geometric shape in the mist itself. A triangle. A square. A final, perfect circle.

As the last motion finished, she stamped her foot down with a sharp crack against the earth.

The mist-being screeched—a soundless vibration that rattled their bones rather than their ears.

A visible tear formed in its body where the shapes intersected, the edges of the tear burning with faint golden light.

The creature recoiled, mist trailing from its wound.

"You..." the being hissed, its voice trembling with something that sounded unnervingly like fear. "You bear the brand of the Nullcarvers…"

The girl didn't lower her blade.

"You're marked," she said coldly. "You're not welcome here."

The mist-being's body rippled chaotically. The violet light in its mask dimmed.

"This is not over," it breathed. Its gaze—if it had one—shifted toward Kaelen.

"Pandora… is inevitable."

And then—with a swirling twist of mist and a gust of dead air—the being vanished, sucked back into the jungle's haze like a nightmare dismissed from waking.

Kaelen stood frozen, his blade lowered, his body trembling—not from exhaustion, but from the magnitude of what they had just survived.

Kelvin looked no better. His mouth hung slightly open, blood dripping from a cut above his brow. He wiped it away absently, still staring at the place where the mist-being disappeared.

Kaelen finally found his voice. "What… what the hell just happened?"

Before either could process more, the girl turned sharply toward them, her blade still gripped tight, her golden eyes blazing.

"We don't have time," she said, her voice cutting through the stunned silence. "That thing was a warden. It went back to fetch what sleeps deeper."

She paused just long enough to let the weight of her words sink in.

"If we're still here when it returns, there won't be enough left of us to bury."

She sheathed her blade with a clean, fluid motion.

"Move. Now."

And with that, she sprinted into the mist, leaving Kaelen and Kelvin no choice but to chase after her—deeper into the unknown.

Meanwhile, deep within the heart of the Deadroot Jungle, where no light pierced the canopy and the mist twisted like living snakes, a solitary cave loomed.

The land around it was unnaturally still—no birds, no beasts, no insects dared to tread close. Even the thick mist, so rampant elsewhere, only slithered up to a certain point before recoiling back as if fearful.

The mist-being, wounded and quivering, approached the mouth of the cave.

It knelt—if such a thing could be said of a creature made of fog—and waited, silent as death.

For a long moment, there was nothing but the low howl of the wind dragging itself across the ruined jungle floor.

Then—

A voice emerged from within the blackness of the cave.

Low.

Grim.

It grated against the senses like rusty blades against bone.

"Have you secured what was detected?"

The mist-being, powerful enough to toy with normal humans, now trembled visibly—its form flickering at the edges like a candle struggling against a storm.

In a voice laced with dread, it answered:

"Forgive me, Lord... I failed... The Nullcarver's mark was present... I—"

The apology was never finished.

Without warning, without sound, without even a shift in the air—

The mist-being simply ceased to exist.

One moment it knelt there.

The next—there was only silence.

The mist where it once stood unraveled like the last breath of the dying.

And from the darkness of the cave, the voice spoke again, every word thick with ancient malice:

"Then I shall retrieve it myself."

The jungle itself seemed to shudder at those words. Far off, somewhere unseen, a great tree cracked and fell.

Something was awakening.

Something worse.

---

Meanwhile...

Kaelen, Kelvin, and the unnamed girl burst through the oppressive curtain of mist, their feet pounding against the damp undergrowth. For minutes—hours?—they had sprinted without rest, deeper into a part of the jungle where even the mist seemed reluctant to linger.

And then—they found it.

A small, jagged cave, hidden beneath the gnarled roots of a colossal, dead tree.

The moment they crossed the threshold into the cave's shelter—

Kaelen gasped.

It was as if a dam had broken inside him.

Mana—pure, clear, undistorted mana—rushed back into his core like a tidal wave. His veins hummed. His limbs, exhausted and trembling moments ago, surged with renewed strength.

Kelvin fell to one knee, laughing breathlessly. "It's back... I can feel it! My mana—!"

He twirled his scythe once, experimentally. The familiar ease, the silent power, was back in his grasp.

Kaelen closed his eyes briefly, feeling the mana pulse through him like a second heartbeat. It was like coming up for air after drowning.

But the girl…

The unnamed girl stood at the entrance of the cave, her silhouette outlined against the fading mist outside.

She looked exactly the same.

No aura flared around her. No revitalization. No sign of recovery.

She merely cleaned her blade with a scrap of cloth and sheathed it with a sharp, practiced motion.

Kaelen frowned. Kelvin noticed too, exchanging a confused glance with him.

Kelvin was the first to speak, still half out of breath. "Hey... aren't you gonna, y'know, recharge or something?"

The girl looked over her shoulder at them.

There was no sadness in her expression.

No anger.

Only an emptiness that struck Kaelen deeper than any blade could.

"I don't have any mana," she said simply.

Kaelen blinked. "What?"

She turned fully toward them now, stepping further into the cave's shadows. Her voice was steady—matter-of-fact.

"I was born without it," she said. "No mana. No magic core. Nothing."

The words dropped like stones in a silent lake.

Kaelen and Kelvin both stared at her, wide-eyed, as if she had just sprouted a second head.

"But… that's—" Kaelen started, struggling to even frame the thought since he could say to be in a similar situation. "—that's impossible. Everyone is born with at least a spark of mana."

The girl shrugged lightly, as if discussing the weather. "Not me."

Kelvin shook his head, disbelieving. "But the way you fought... you were faster than anything I've seen, even without mana. You—you even forced that thing to retreat!"

The girl's mouth curved into the faintest hint of a smile. It was not a kind one.

"Mana isn't everything," she said. "It can be taken. It can be corrupted. It can be drained. Skills, though… skills are yours forever."

She walked a few paces deeper into the cave, her footsteps barely making a sound. She seemed… smaller now somehow. Not because she was weak.

But because the burden she carried was heavy.

Kaelen swallowed hard.

There was a deeper story behind her. One etched into her bones. One he knew they had only scratched the surface of.

But before he could ask—

A rumble shook the ground faintly under their feet.

Not from inside the cave.

But from somewhere back in the jungle.

Kaelen stiffened. Kelvin raised his scythe again, looking outward nervously.

The girl tensed too, glancing back toward the mist they had fled.

Her voice was quiet, grim.

"...It's coming."