Chapter 5: The Duel in the Dark
Vane spun around with surprising speed for a man of his bulk. The machete whistled through the air, but Kaelen wasn’t there. He had already stepped back into the shadow of the turbine.
“Thorne?” Vane growled, his eyes scanning the gloom. “Show yourself, you little gutter-snipe!”
“The gutter is where you put me,” Kaelen’s voice echoed from three different directions. This was a trick he’d discovered—moving his voice through the shadows. “I’m just making myself comfortable.”
Vane roared, slamming his cybernetic fist into the turbine. The metal buckled, and a spark of electricity lit up the room for a split second. In that flash of light, Vane saw Kaelen’s silhouette.
He lunged. Vane was fast—mana-infused muscles gave him the explosive power of a lunging leopard. He caught Kaelen by the throat and slammed him against a wall.
“Got you,” Vane sneered, his grip tightening. “Where is it? Where’s the Essence?”
Kaelen coughed, but he didn’t struggle. He looked Vane in the eye. “You made a mistake, Vane. You brought me into the light.”
“What?”
“In the light,” Kaelen whispered, “shadows are the longest.”
Kaelen’s own shadow, stretched long by the flickering sparks of the turbine, suddenly rose from the floor. It didn’t look like Kaelen anymore; it looked like a tall, faceless knight with a spear of solid darkness.
The shadow-knight drove the spear through Vane’s cybernetic shoulder. The metal shrieked as the void energy ate through the circuitry. Vane screamed, releasing Kaelen as his arm went limp and dead.
“What… what are you?!” Vane gasped, stumbling back.
Kaelen stood up, rubbing his neck. “I’m the Sovereign.”
He raised his hand, and every shadow in the hub—the shadows of the barrels, the crates, even Vane’s own shadow—began to converge on the Lieutenant. They wrapped around his limbs like oily chains, dragging him to his knees.
Vane struggled, his mana-reinforced body straining against the darkness, but the more he fought, the tighter the shadows pulled. The void wasn’t just holding him; it was draining him, siphoning his meager mana into Kaelen.
[Subjugation Imminent…] [Drain Initiated: +10 Mana recovered]
“Please…” Vane wheezed, his bravado completely shattered. “I have the key. The elevator to the Mid-City. It’s yours. Just… let me live.”
Kaelen looked at the man who had bullied and robbed him for years. The System pulsed in his mind, demanding a choice.
