Chapter 338: Merged
the shadow mind, stretching farther than the eye could easily follow. Every one of them was connected to him. Every one of them waited for a command.
In front of him, alone, Shadow stood with his hatred pouring off him in waves, eyes locked on Aren and burning with it.
The darkness around him seemed to react to his emotions, twisting and writhing as though eager to answer his anger. Even standing still, he looked dangerous.
Shadow couldn’t summon shadows of his own here—not in this place. He could only manipulate the ones already present, unless he stepped outside this body, or unless he held full control of it. That was the problem. The body still belonged to Aren. Even this shadow-soaked space the two of them stood in was Aren’s own, down to the last inch of it.
For several seconds neither of them moved.
Neither looked away.
Neither spoke.
The tension stretched tighter and tighter until it felt ready to snap.
Aren raised his hand and pointed forward.
At once every shadow he’d ever summoned surged ahead of him, a black tide rushing toward Shadow without sound, without hesitation. The ground trembled beneath their charge. Countless forms flooded forward from every direction, enough to drown an army several times over.
Only one of them stayed back—the celestial warrior of Jotnar, shrunk down now from its towering true form into something closer to human size, standing quiet and waiting behind him.
Aren didn’t hesitate.
He turned and merged with it.
Light exploded outward, red-tinged and blinding, swallowing the shadow mind whole for a single heartbeat. Aren screamed as the merge tore through him—every nerve lit up at once, the sheer force of binding himself to something so powerful nearly enough to unmake him on the spot.
For an instant he thought he would fail.
Thought he would break apart.
Thought the celestial warrior would simply overwhelm him.
Then the power settled.
When the light finally faded, he stood there changed.
Shadow armor wrapped him now, pristine and compact, a faint reddish glow bleeding out from the seams between each plate like embers under black glass. A helmet sealed shut over his head. A long cape of shadow trailed from his back, fading to red at the very edges, drifting like smoke that refused to settle.
In his hand was a sword that pulled every eye toward it whether they wanted to look or not—black as night, a single red glow burning low at the hilt.
The shadows around him recoiled instinctively.
Even the darkness of the shadow mind seemed uncertain of him.
Shadow felt the surge of power rolling off him and knew immediately how much stronger Aren had become.
It didn’t matter.
He wasn’t losing.
Not to him.
Not ever.
Aren struck first.
Shadow answered with a wave of his own, raw shadow tearing through Aren’s summoned army in one motion, scattering them aside like they weighed nothing at all, clearing the ground between the two of them in an instant.
The force of it swept across the battlefield like a storm.
Aren’s Shadows that had survived countless battles were ripped apart and thrown aside. Others dissolved completely, erased before they could even react.
The moment the path opened, Aren shot forward, faster than he had ever moved, fast enough that the whole shadow mind shuddered around him like the air itself couldn’t keep up.
Shadow threw up walls in his way, slab after slab of solid darkness rising out of nothing, each one costing him more than the last to raise.
Aren didn’t slow down.
He hit the first wall and it cracked down the middle.
He hit the second and it shattered into pieces around him.
’Keep going.’
A third wall rose taller than the rest and he tore through it anyway, fragments scattering like black shrapnel in every direction.
The impact rattled his entire body.
Pain shot through his shoulder.
He ignored it.
I can do this.’
A fourth wall came, then a fifth, each one thicker, each one harder, and he smashed through every single one, the impact rattling up his arm and into his teeth.
The resistance grew heavier.
The walls weren’t just obstacles anymore.
They were becoming fortresses.
A sixth wall stopped him for the briefest instant before he forced his way through.
A seventh exploded beneath a downward slash from his sword.
An eighth nearly knocked him backward.
’I’m getting close.’
Shadow simply waited on the other side of it all.
Reaching.
Patient in a way that should have unsettled Aren far more than it did.
Watching.
Waiting.
As though the charge itself was part of his plan.
It happened fast, in the end.
Shadow boxed him in before he even saw it forming—walls rising on every side at once, no room left to dodge.
The darkness folded inward.
The trap snapped shut.
Several spikes of shadow shot forward from every direction and drove straight through him.
Aren died.
For a moment there was nothing.
No pain.
No sound.
No thought.
Then the thread snapped again.
His eyes flew open.
Air rushed into his lungs.
The connection to the shadow mind reformed around him.
He was already moving before he’d even finished the breath.
Again.
He took the merged form a second time, and this round of the fight turned into something else entirely.
Every exchange landed harder than the last.
The two of them crashed across the battlefield, colliding over and over again. Shockwaves tore through the darkness. Great cracks spread through the ground beneath them. Entire sections of the shadow mind twisted and warped under the pressure.
Shadow’s attacks tore through the armor piece by piece, cracking plates, opening gaps that bled red light, wearing Aren down with every hit that connected.
Aren kept closing the distance anyway.
Kept pushing through blows that would have ended anyone else twice over.
Every strike cost him more than it should have.
Every step forward was earned the hard way.
His breathing grew heavier.
His body felt like it was coming apart.
Still he refused to stop.
The shadow mind itself seemed to bend under the weight of it, shadow and light tearing at each other in great violent sweeps, neither of them giving an inch they didn’t have to.
Finally, an opening.
Aren saw it.
A tiny mistake.
A fraction of a second where Shadow’s defense wasn’t perfect.
He moved immediately.
Aren drove his sword forward with everything he had left, the black blade punching clean through Shadow.
For one long moment, he thought it was over.
Shadow stared down at the sword buried in his chest.
Then he started laughing.
The sound echoed through the shadow mind.
Slow at first.
Then louder.
And louder.
Until it became impossible to ignore.
"You think it’s that easy? Aren?"
