"You two weren't rats before, I don't think," Commander Sangkara said, a chilling, evil smile spreading across his face.
He stepped into the sacred glade, a silent storm in human form. His war mantle, that black cloak trimmed with gold, rippled like oil over molten armor. All over it, runes pulsed a deep crimson in the dim morning light, making him look like his very body was a forge of pure dread.
He held a ceremonial dagger in his left hand, its blade etched with old Kalderan writing. In his right, a scroll sealed with dried blood. He walked with purpose to the base of the Heart Root—that towering, ancient tree whose bark still glimmered faintly with life—and knelt. It was a gesture that should have been reverence, but it was twisted by pure ambition.
With precise, almost surgical care, he drove the dagger into his own palm, then pressed his bleeding hand to the ground. "Let the forest offer its pulse."
The earth trembled. Crimson light snaked out from his hand, crawling across roots and stone like hungry veins. Trees at the edges of the glade withered. Leaves browned and curled within seconds, dissolving into dust. The horrifying rite had begun, and the forest screamed in a silence that was louder than any sound
A whisper. A shift in the wind. Then—thunk.
A small cloth satchel arced through the air and landed squarely inside Sangkara's blood circle. It burst open, releasing a pungent cloud of crushed Langkasuri herbs.
The magic wavered. The blood glyphs around Sangkara twitched, convulsed, flickered. The dark sorcery staggered like a beast punched in the throat.
Sangkara's eyes narrowed. The glyphs around him warped like rippling glass.
Roots around the Heart Root stirred with renewed defiance. The glade inhaled.
Lara stepped out of the mist like a wraith, bandaged but fierce, her blade already drawn, eyes cold with precision.
"Your magic doesn't belong here," she said, steady. "And neither do you."
Sangkara rose with a grunt, cracking his neck. "You're the one who sliced me. I owe you pain."
He lunged forward, his dagger crackling with residual spellwork. Lara met him head-on.
Clang
Steel clashed with steel. She twisted low, dodged, struck—her blade drew a red slash along his cheek. Sangkara recoiled with a hiss.
He slammed the earth with one fist. A concussive blast of blood force exploded around him.
Lara was hurled into the glade's edge. She tumbled across roots, her cry swallowed by the forest. Her body hit a moss-covered log with a wet thud. She groaned, barely conscious.
"Lara!" Raikha burst from cover and rushed to her side. She stirred weakly, her fingers brushing his cheek, smearing it with dirt and blood.
"I got one good hit..." she murmured. "Go make it count."
Raikha stood slowly. Turned. Sangkara's silhouette loomed ahead, half-lit by the trembling trees. "Another Langkasuri ghost," he growled. "You children never learn."
Raikha inhaled, deep and deliberate. The forest air filled his lungs. His saber felt alive in his grip.
They charged.
Steel crashed. Sangkara's mantle shimmered—its enchantments turning blows into sparks. Runes flared brighter with each clash, feeding on proximity and fury. But Raikha adjusted. He slowed. He listened.
His breath matched the wind. He ducked low, changed pace, pivoted. A silat feint—taught by Gantari, burned into muscle memory.
Sangkara struck high—expecting Raikha to meet him.
Raikha wasn't there. He was already beneath the guard—sliding like shadow—and with one explosive motion, he slashed upward. The blade tore through the underside of the enchanted mantle. The fabric shrieked. Runes cracked like glass. The spell shattered. Sangkara staggered.
"Good," Sangkara hissed, blood running freely from his side. His face twisted—not with pain, but something like dark pleasure.
He dropped to one knee, a sickening grin splitting his cracked teeth, and plunged his fingers into the bloody wound. He was feeding on it. The ground around him instantly blackened. Veins of angry red light burst from the soil, snaking outward. Sangkara's flesh warped, muscles surging. Crimson runes crawled across his skin like living script. His eyes—once merely cold—now burned like twin furnaces. He was becoming monstrous.
Then he charged.
Sangkara struck again and again, each blow a thunderclap. Raikha blocked, dodged, twisted, but not fast enough. A fist slammed into Raikha's ribs. Another raked across his back.
Blood burst from his mouth.
His footing slipped. His saber wavered. Sangkara roared, raising both arms, the runes on his body flaring into a crimson vortex. A final, terrible surge of power.
Raikha stood his ground, but his knees buckled. The force was overwhelming. Roots cracked beneath him. His blade sank low. He couldn't hold.
Then—
The talisman around his neck blazed. It wasn't light, but pure essence, a pulse of harmony. It pushed back Sangkara's storm like a dam against a flood.
The forest responded. Leaves whispered. The wind twisted. Roots hummed beneath his feet. Raikha closed his eyes. One breath. When they opened, the forest was no longer dying. It was watching.
He moved.
His steps rippled with a quiet rhythm. Every parry met Sangkara's brutal swings like water hitting stone—bending, sliding, flowing. His strikes weren't wild; they were inevitable. Like a falling leaf, he couldn't be stopped.
The glade became a living dance. The trees swayed with his motion. The roots shifted to his rhythm. Sangkara roared, but the forest echoed back with stillness.
Raikha wasn't alone. He was the forest.
The glade was a wild mess of light and shadow, and Raikha was like a ghost, tied into the very beat of the Heart Root. Sangkara, huge and enraged, swung his jagged sabit like a wrecking ball, each strike meant to shatter the air itself.
But Raikha wasn't just dodging anymore; he was flowing. He moved like the wind shifting through leaves, like a river current effortlessly parting around a rock. His saber, a silver blur, met Sangkara's blows, not clanging head-on, but glancing off, sliding along the crimson-charged steel.
Sangkara roared, his attacks getting wilder, more frustrated. "Stand still, worm! Fight me!" The runes on his body pulsed faster, a chaotic, angry beat. He lunged, jamming his elbow into Raikha's guard, then sweeping his leg low. Raikha vaulted over the sweep, landing light as a cat, his saber tip just a hair's breadth from Sangkara's throat. He pulled back, not to strike yet, but to watch, to learn.
A strange hum vibrated through Raikha's feet, a deeper rhythm from the Heart Root, guiding him. As Sangkara unleashed another volley of bladed vines, their crimson light blinding, Raikha saw it.
The runes on Sangkara's skin, the very things giving him power, were also burning with an unstable, almost explosive energy. They were like wires, yes, but also weak points. The faster Sangkara channeled, the brighter they glowed, and the more fragile they became. It wasn't about cutting off his power, but overloading it.
Lara, still at the base of the Heart Root, seemed to know what he was thinking. Her eyes, glowing softly with sap-light, met his across the chaos. She pressed her hands deeper into the glowing bark, her lips moving silently, a low hum joining the Heart Root's thrum. A golden pulse, faint at first, began to flow through the roots beneath Raikha's feet, moving towards Sangkara.
Raikha took a breath, letting the forest's energy fill him. He felt the ancient, living network beneath him, connecting him to every leaf, every root. His next move wasn't a simple strike, but more like pulling a thread to unravel something.
As Sangkara lunged forward with a desperate, crushing overhead swing, Raikha didn't block the usual way. He met the sabit with a sharp twist of his own saber, not just pushing it aside, but using its own momentum.
He spun with Sangkara's force, twisting under his guard in a fluid shadow dance. His own blade, now glowing with a faint golden light from the Heart Root's power, didn't aim for flesh. Instead, with a lightning-fast, almost invisible motion, he touched the largest, most brightly pulsing rune on Sangkara's armored gauntlet, then the one on his breastplate. It wasn't a powerful slash, but a precise touch, like a needle finding a pressure point.
FSSSSHT.
The sound wasn't metal on metal, but of overloaded energy, like a small, contained explosion. The crimson runes on Sangkara's body flared blindingly, then convulsed. The golden light from Raikha's blade, boosted by the Heart Root, poured into the red channeling, messing up its delicate, forced balance.
Sangkara recoiled, a gasp of pure agony tearing from his throat. The bladed vines around him shrieked, then withered, turning black and brittle, snapping like burnt twigs.
The black aura around him flickered, wavered, then began to fade, chased away by the growing golden glow. He staggered back, his monstrous form shrinking, his muscles seeming to deflate. The furious furnace light in his eyes dimmed, replaced by a flicker of confusion and disbelief.
"No!" Sangkara choked out, clutching his chest where the rune had been struck, his voice losing its thunder. "Impossible! I am—"
But Raikha was already there, a blur of motion. He didn't deliver a killing blow. Instead, with a final, decisive move, he performed a sweeping TebasAkar—Root Slash—not at Sangkara, but at the ground directly beneath his feet.
His saber sliced through the thin layer of soil, severing the deep, crimson tendrils Sangkara had conjured to connect himself to the earth for his dark ritual.
With a final, desperate cry, Sangkara stumbled backward, his connection to his power violently cut. The oppressive darkness that had clung to him disappeared completely, revealing him as just a man, still fearsome, but suddenly vulnerable.
The ancient dread was replaced by raw, human fury. He tried to raise his sabit again, but his arm trembled, the blade heavy and lifeless.
Sangkara collapsed to one knee, defeated, but his eyes still burned with impotent rage as he looked at Raikha.
Raikha stood over him, saber lowered, but ready. "The glade does not forget," he said, his voice calm but firm. "And it is no longer yours to claim."