They came at me from both sides—classic pincer. I didn’t let it happen.

  I charged the one on the right. Better to deal with one up close than let them box me in. He met me with a fluid twist, runed scimitar raised. My twin blades came down like executioner's hammers. He parried—once, twice. A practiced hand. His offhand was empty, probably kept free for casting.

  Behind me, I heard the other move. Fast.

  I pivoted hard, a tight roll off my back foot, just in time to dodge a strike that would’ve run me through.

  Now both of them were in front of me. Perfect.

  I activated the runes on my Coldian blade. With a heavy swing, I sent a gust of Sheer Cold energy screaming toward them. One raised his hand—arcane glyphs sparked, forming a violet barrier that devoured the frost air. The other used the distraction to charge.

  I caught him.

  Dullness met his blade with a metallic clang—but his strength didn’t hold. He faltered. Not much, but just enough.

  I switched angles, dragging my Coldian blade toward his side in a diagonal cut. He leapt back, the edge just missing his plated torso.

  That’s when the push came.

  A burst of invisible force struck me square in the chest, lifting me off my feet and hurling me back a few meters. I landed clean, no damage—but my eyes were already back on them.

  The mage stood there, hand still outstretched, face twisted in confusion.

  He didn't understand.

  But I did.

  Dullness hummed at my side, a low, hungry growl. It had consumed the spell—rendered it ash before it even took form. That magic was gone, dead. He just didn’t know why yet.

  I couldn't hear Manach anymore, not clearly—just the faint sound of metal on metal behind me, somewhere in the distance. Thirty meters, maybe. That meant I had to finish this. He wasn’t at full strength, and these elves weren’t cannon fodder.

  They were elite. And they fought like it.

  The first elf approached again—alone this time. Stupid.

  We clashed—our blades screamed against each other. I forced him into a deadlock, both my blades crossed against his single weapon. He braced.

  Then, he muttered something in Elvish. “Now.”

  Nothing happened.

  I saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes.

  I snapped my Coldian blade free and slammed my boot into his midsection. He staggered. Good footing, strong legs, but his grip loosened just enough.

  That’s all I needed.

  Both swords came down in a mirrored arc.

  He panicked—tried to lunge forward in a desperate pierce.

  Too slow.

  My Coldian blade sliced through his arm. Dullness cleaved straight through his chestplate—Obsidian edge finding no resistance as it bit into flesh and cracked ribs like dry branches.

  He went rigid, eyes wide, then crumpled to his knees. Blood streamed in rivulets. I watched his ally—frantically trying to cast again. Glyphs sparked. Died. Sparked again. Dead.

  Useless.

  He didn’t know what was happening, only that his magic kept failing.

  The dying elf turned to him, as if begging for aid.

  None came.

  I drove both blades into his skull. A wet crunch, and the weight of him sagged forward, pooling crimson at my boots.

  I turned to the second one—the mage. He froze.

  Another glyph. A desperate attempt.

  Nothing.

  He didn’t understand why. His magic wasn’t being resisted—it was being devoured.

  His lips started to move—some arcane syllable.

  Too late.

  I surged forward and drove Dullness clean through his heart. The obsidian blade slid in without a sound. His mouth opened—but no words came out. Just the glimmer of realization.

  He died with my smirk burned into his vision.

  The blade hummed.

  It was pleased.

  It wanted more.

  A single whisper echoed through my mind like a gust in a hollow cavern.

  “Release.”

  It wasn’t a suggestion. It was an order. But not in a commanding sense. It was like instinct that suddenly remembered itself.

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  I turned.

  Manach was being outmaneuvered. Still fast, yes, but slower than usual. His strikes were fierce, but he couldn’t break their rhythm—the two elves were working in tandem. One supported the other, weaving in arcanic flows of speed and strength, forming a fluid dance of death. They were pushing him to a corner, foot by foot.

  That’s when the path opened.

  I raised Dullness, the obsidian blade still humming like it was alive, starving. I didn’t know how I knew what to do—but I did. The moment I pointed it at the elves, something changed.

  The blade began to glow—not bright, not holy, but a shadowed, pulsing throb of magic devoured. It shimmered in wrongness, like light bent the wrong way.

  The elves froze mid-step.

  Then they screamed.

  Their hands reached for their temples as if their skulls were splitting from the inside. Their eyes—previously cold, calculating—now wide in horror.

  Manach stood his ground, blades still raised, unsure whether to strike or stand back.

  The elves dropped their weapons with metallic clinks.

  They didn’t run. They walked. Slowly. Toward me.

  Their gait was sluggish, broken. Puppets with cut strings still somehow standing. Their eyes… empty. Their faces, drained of all intent.

  Then they knelt.

  In perfect synch, as if they had rehearsed it a thousand times.

  And in one voice, they spoke:

  “Feed the Dullness.”

  Manach didn’t move. Just stared, disturbed.

  I didn’t flinch. Not because I wasn’t disturbed—because I was—but because this wasn’t about control. It was about purpose. This wasn’t mind control. Their minds were gone.

  Still, I had to ask.

  “What war was this?”

  No answer. Just the same, in unison.

  “Feed the Dullness.”

  That was their answer.

  And so I did.

  The blade sang as it cut through them—diagonal slashes that severed them from skull to sternum. No pain. No struggle. They were already gone.

  Their bodies slumped over like sacks of flesh. A thick puddle of blood pooled beneath them, the warmth of life stolen in a blink.

  And Dullness... hummed. Not a sharp pitch or growl, but a deep, guttural purr. It was content.

  A surge of energy rushed through me. Cold, then hot, then centered. The fatigue in my limbs vanished. My joints loosened, my muscles relaxed. My injuries—minor as they were—gone.

  Manach stepped beside me, face torn between disbelief and discomfort.

  “What the fuck was that?” he asked.

  “Something that saved your ass,” I replied with a smirk.

  “Sure. But I saw the rest escape. Portals. They ran.” Manach didn’t try to joke again. “I like your new powers. You might even get some respect now.”

  “Yeah, right,” I muttered, sheathing both blades.

  “What’s next?” I asked, letting the subject drop.

  “No clue,” Manach said, glancing at the devastation. “Let’s check the stronghold. If anyone’s alive, they’ll be there. Maybe they can explain what the hell just happened.”

  So we moved.

  The stronghold loomed ahead—scarred, breached, but still standing in some twisted form. The doors were caved in. Arrows littered the ground. Cracked stone and shattered metal was everywhere.

  But what gave me pause… were the bodies.

  High elves. Dozens. Lying sprawled like discarded toys, most cut down at close range. They fought—and they died here. That meant someone gave them hell.

  Coldians, maybe.

  Hope flickered.

  We stepped inside.

  The interior was… gone. Not just wrecked, not just burned. Gone. The shape of rooms remained, the shell of a hall here or a corridor there. But it was like some force had chewed through it all. Furniture was ash. Walls scorched to bone.

  No signs of life.

  Yet.

  We stepped deeper into the ruins, and I felt something. A distant tug. A warning.

  And Dullness… began to hum again.

  "Manach," I hissed, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him back with a jolt.

  "What?" he muttered, his eyes flicking to mine, already alert.

  "Something’s off," I said, low and sharp.

  He nodded once. No questions, no hesitation. We trusted each other when it counted, and this was one of those moments. Instinct ruled the battlefield more than blades did.

  We held for just a breath, stepping back from the center of the ruin, our boots crunching softly over shattered stone and splintered wood. I scanned the broken skeleton of the stronghold—every plank, every scorched stone, every twisted support beam and collapsed rafter. Searching. Waiting for something to move, to breathe, to reveal itself.

  Nothing.

  Then the ground shifted beneath our feet.

  It wasn’t subtle. Not like a tremor, not like something beneath the soil waking up slowly. This was violence. The earth groaned, cracked, and heaved. A brutal shudder tore through the ground, rattling the stones and making the bones of the ruin shriek as they settled. Gravity went wrong. My boots scraped against sliding dust. Manach and I stumbled, reaching out blindly for anything solid.

  Then came the chorus—windows shattered like popping bones, timbers splintered like screams, and walls collapsed under the pressure of unseen hands. The entire ruin began to groan like a dying giant.

  We bolted from the structure before it brought itself down on our skulls. Out in the open, the world wasn’t any better. The quake was still going. Nothing made sense. No epicenter. No magic storm or sorcery quake to explain it. Just pure, raw, earthen rage.

  The towers—those stone sentinels that watched over the docks—started collapsing one by one. Houses folded in on themselves like kicked-in ribs. The air was thick with dust and panic, but no people. Just ruin.

  Manach fell, landing on his back with a dull grunt, barely catching himself from sliding. I kept my footing, barely, as the last tremors rippled through the ground like the last beats of a dying heart.

  Then silence.

  But the collapse didn’t stop. Stone still fell. Timber still cracked and groaned. The death of the village wasn’t tied to the shaking—it was a consequence of something bigger.

  "An earthquake?" I asked, not believing it even as I said it.

  Manach gave a useless shrug, brushing dirt from his shoulder, lips tight.

  Then—a groan. Low, guttural, and pained. It came from a house nearby, or what was left of one. A collapsed wreck of ash and rubble, half its flooring fallen into a gaping cellar.

  We moved. No hesitation now. Whatever was happening, we needed answers—and this was the closest thing to a voice we’d heard since arriving.

  We reached the wreck. I dropped to one knee, while Manach plunged into the debris without a word. Beneath a chunk of fallen beam and a cracked stone slab, there he was. High elf. Pale. Broken. His silver-plated armor was scorched and torn, and his face was bleeding from a line across the temple. Alive, though. Barely.

  He opened his mouth, just about to thank us—or so I guessed—when Manach punched him in the face.

  Hard.

  The elf dropped like a sack of wet sand, unconscious before he hit the floor again.

  “We get the answers out of this fucker,” Manach grunted, wiping his knuckles on his cloak.

  I nodded. “Agreed. But we should report this, whatever it was. That wasn’t natural. It felt... off.”

  “One thing at a time,” Manach muttered. He reached down, grabbed a fistful of the elf’s silver-blonde hair, and hauled the limp body upward before shoving him toward me. “Here. Take him. I’ll check on Leliana. That quake might’ve brought half the hillside down on her.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Going after a girl? Go. Be a hero.”

  Manach stopped in his tracks, turned with that cocky grin he always wore when he knew he had the last word. “You? Koch? You can fuck that elf there.”

  He vanished around the corner before I could throw a stone at him.

  Maybe he liked her. Maybe he just wanted to play knight. Whatever. I had work to do.

  I dragged the unconscious high elf to the only tower still standing. Half its roof was gone, but the interior remained mostly intact. A single room, stone-walled and dust-filled. I dumped the elf onto the floor, hard. Let him feel it.

  Before I started my interrogation, I activated the runic relay built into my helmet. A whisper of Coldian sigils danced in my vision, and I sent a tight-burst emergency signal straight to the Citadel. No code word. No formality. Just pure priority—Distress. Immediate.

  Then I turned to the elf.

  Time to get some answers.