Shadow Slave - Time Dilation

Before we start, a few things;

Firstly, I have lost sight of the fic... I'm too busy these days, and SS has lost it's appeal, but fret not, for I will end the fic. (Maybe) So yes, a quality drop is to be expected

***

A ragged breath.

"W—What?"

The bulky man didn't flinch.

Didn't blink.

He just looked down at the malnourished boy—

not with cruelty,

not with sympathy.

Just apathy.

The kind that killed slower than any knife.

"You heard me right, kid. If you want medicine…"

He peeled his eyes away from the bloodied bandage he was wringing out—

too red to save.

Too wet to bury.

"Fight."

Lucien didn't answer.

He turned away—

not out of defiance.

Just fatigue.

Luna's fever was rising.

Her lips were cracked,

her breath shallow.

She needed him.

And he…

he still had a pulse.

That would have to be enough.

He stepped toward the circle of broken children.

The kind with swollen jaws,

split knuckles,

eyes that no longer flinched.

There was no bell.

No ref.

Just the sound of a steel gate dragging shut behind him.

…

The boy across from him was older—

barely.

But his fists were wrapped in wire.

His nose had been broken so many times it looked sculpted wrong.

He didn't hesitate.

Lucien did.

Only for a second.

Only long enough to remember—

Luna's ribs rising slower each night.

Then the world snapped forward.

The first punch knocked a tooth loose.

The second cracked his lip wide.

He tasted copper.

The crowd cheered—

not in joy,

but in boredom.

They only woke up for blood.

Lucien ducked the next swing, barely.

Drove his elbow into the boy's throat.

Kicked out his knee.

A crunch.

A gasp.

No pause.

They rolled in the dirt like animals—

biting, clawing,

fighting not to win

but to exist.

Fingers gouged for eyes.

A shard of glass scraped past his cheek.

He bled.

The other boy bled more.

And when Lucien's fist finally landed in just the right angle—

a twist, a snap—

the boy stopped moving.

Not dead.

Just quiet.

Lucien stood, breathing hard.

The man outside the circle shrugged, tossed him a half-empty bottle of antibiotics.

It landed near his feet like a bone thrown to a starving dog.

No praise.

No word.

Just—

"Next."

Lucien picked up the bottle.

His fingers were shaking.

Not from fear.

Not from pain.

From the knowledge that tomorrow,

he'd have to do it again.

And again.

And again.

Until one of them didn't get back up.

…

A gate clicked shut behind Lucien.

Without hesitation, he walked across the rust-bitten floor,

his steps quiet,

like he didn't want to wake a sleeping world.

In the far corner, beneath a crooked vent,

Luna lay curled atop a pile of threadbare rags—

blankets in name only.

Her hair clung to her forehead, damp with fever.

Her breath wheezed like wind through a broken flute.

Lucien knelt beside her,

knees hitting cold concrete.

He moved gently, like memory itself might shatter.

He lifted her head with slow fingers

and placed it in his lap.

Cradled it like it was made of glass.

Her eyes fluttered open.

"Hey," she rasped,

a ghost of a smile playing on her chapped lips.

"You look like hell."

Lucien smirked.

"Speak for yourself."

Her laugh was barely a breath.

Still—

for a moment,

it was a moment.

The room felt warmer.

The rot of the air didn't bite so hard.

He brushed a strand of hair from her face and whispered,

"Got you something."

He held up the bottle like a stolen treasure.

Luna blinked at it.

"You win?"

"…Sort of."

She nodded, tired.

Then her hand reached up,

fingers touching his cheek—

finding the cut,

the bruise.

Her voice was smaller now.

"I wish you didn't have to."

He didn't answer.

Didn't need to.

The moment hung like dust in golden light.

But the warmth didn't last.

From the hallway outside,

a scream rang out.

Cut short.

Wet.

Lucien flinched.

Luna's fingers curled in his shirt.

He held her tighter.

Head bowed.

Eyes shut.

The light faded.

And the cold crept back in.

Lucien stayed there a while, holding her.

Listening to the silence build.

Letting it settle like dust on old bones.

Then… something strange.

A whisper.

No—less than that.

A shift in the air, like breath held too long.

His eyes flicked sideways.

By the wall, just beneath the crooked vent—

a loose tile in the floor. Warped.

Misaligned.

He reached out, careful not to move Luna.

Bloodied fingers pried at the edge.

It lifted with a groan.

And underneath…

Cloth. Wrapped tight, yellowed with age.

He pulled it free—slowly, warily.

Unraveled the binding.

A book.

No title. No author. Just blackened leather and brittle pages.

The cover felt colder than the floor.

He opened it.

A single symbol scrawled across the first page,

drawn in something darker than ink.

And all of a sudden…

His eyes reflected a void.

…

It had been a long time.

Since the colosseum.

Since the screaming.

Since the part of him that bled never stopped.

What had happened then—

what he'd done—

"Luci…"

Her voice barely shaped the name.

The wind answered for him,

a rasping hush that pulled at their cloaks with fingers made of ash.

It smelled of old bone. Forgotten dreams.

All around them—

sand.

Soft, endless.

A graveyard stretched to the horizon.

They weren't the first.

They wouldn't be the last.

Once, others had walked with them.

Steps beside theirs.

Laughter. Firelight. Names spoken like spells.

But the world had peeled them away.

One by one.

Lucien never spoke of them.

Didn't need to.

Some absences were too loud to forget.

Only Luna remained.

For now.

He turned to her—

shadows under his eyes too deep to name.

Her voice stirred again, so faint it might have been the wind.

"Do you feel it?"

He nodded.

A single, slow motion.

Like conceding to gravity.

They were Supremes now.

The world bent when they walked.

It knew them.

Luna bore the weight of Heart.

Lucien, the inheritance of Shadow.

But power had not saved anyone.

Not yet.

Maybe never.

The wind had changed.

The sand tasted of rust.

The silence rang.

They had wandered for days that bled into years,

or years that dissolved in seconds.

Time no longer asked permission.

But today—

Today felt different.

Sharper.

Thinner.

As if something ancient had stirred in its grave,

and the sky held its breath.

Was there any meaning left in resistance?

After centuries of ache,

after names lost like sand slipping between cracked fingers,

after every promise undone by the silence that followed—

They stood, tattered by time,

threadbare souls barely stitched to flesh,

at the edge of something older than gods.

And it waited.

A god.

Twisted.

Unspoken.

A thing that bled divinity but reeked of ruin.

They had no prayers left.

Only memory.

Only each other.

Lucien glanced at Luna.

Not as comrades.

Not as champions.

But as the last pieces of something that once dared to be whole.

She took a step.

So did he.

Their eyes met—

tired, unsheltered things.

No masks left to wear.

No lies left to hide in.

Not warriors now.

Not wielders of relics or fate.

Just two worn souls

standing at the edge of the quiet.

Lucien lifted his hand,

brushing the side of her face like it might vanish.

His fingers trembled—

not from fear,

but memory.

She didn't flinch.

Their foreheads touched,

and for a moment,

the weight of the world bent around them.

A breath.

A stillness.

And then—

A kiss.

Not hungry.

Not desperate.

Just… farewell.

A letting go

dressed as a final touch.

A whisper exchanged through silence:

I remember.

I stayed.

Forgive me.

Then the sand stirred.

It rose slow,

like dusk seeping into bones.

As it wrapped around them,

Lucien spoke—

soft as dust,

fragile as regret:

"It's… Promised to Darkness.

I'm sorry… for never telling you."

No cries.

No defiance.

Just the solemn hush

of surrender.

The desert drank them in,

patient as eternity.

And when the wind passed—

there was nothing.

No footprints.

No names.

No proof they had ever stood there at all.

Only silence.

And the aftertaste of something sacred…

Lost.

---

Luna's blade rose,

quivering in her grasp.

Her breath hitched, her voice—barely audible.

"…Please,

Lucien."

But there was no soul left to reach.

Only a void, staring back.

Eyes that once drank starlight, now drank only silence.

The black fire dripped from his hands,

curling like ink spilled in water—

elegant, slow, inevitable.

It gathered,

grew,

forged itself into a blade that wept death.

He raised it.

And then—

The world split.

A shriek of shadow tore through the shadows,

and a figure mainfested into existence—

a storm wrapped in silence.

Sunny.

His form shrouded in shadows,

his face unreadable,

his eyes hollowed by things long buried.

One hand drew a blade from darkness—

not forged, but born. Serpentine in nature.

An odachi as long as grief,

Black met black.

Lucien's sword came down—

and Sunny's rose to meet it.

The clash wasn't sound.

It was subtraction.

The wind died.

The sky turned pale.

The earth cracked beneath their feet,

the ground splintering as if rejecting their existence.

Light bent sideways.

Clouds fled.

The flames roared,

but Sunny's blade held,

its edges flickering with ancient, tenebrific hunger.

He stood firm—

barely.

Shadow clawed at his arms,

gnawed at the stone,

peeled the world around them like bark from a dying tree.

And still,

he didn't move.

Didn't falter.

"…That's enough,"

Sunny whispered,

his voice cracking like bone beneath weight.

Lucien didn't speak.

Couldn't.

There was no language left in him.

Only purpose.

Only death.