The man stood silent for a heartbeat longer, his face unreadable—until something behind his eyes sparked, as if a switch had been flipped and awareness poured in like light into a long-abandoned chamber.
"I am a Sworn," he said at last, voice low and mechanical. "My oath is my life. I shall never reveal a contract, nor the ones who call upon my blade."
His words carried a ritualistic finality, spoken like scripture. His eyes, though now bright with eerie clarity, stared into Thane's with an unnerving calm—more machine than man, more duty than will.
"However," the Sworn continued, "if you truly wish to discover who has placed a mark on your soul… in my death, you will find what you seek."
Thane tilted his head, curious. The mana pulsing along his staff intensified, causing the vines wrapped around its core to shimmer with verdant light.
"Are you encouraging me to kill you?" he asked, tone cool but inquisitive. "Do you not value your life?"
"My life is my Oath," the Sworn replied without hesitation. "And I have sworn to shepherd your soul into another plane."
With that, he reached behind his back.
The soft rasp of metal sliding against leather echoed in the charged air. A second later, his hands emerged, each holding a gleaming chakram—twin rings of polished steel, edges honed to surgical precision. With a single fluid motion, he clashed the two together. The impact sparked—a sudden flare of blue fire erupting from the contact, leaping across the rings and licking up his arms like a living flame.
Spellblades, Thane noted, momentarily fascinated as he felt the signature of enchantment woven into the weaponry. The fire wasn't conjured—it was bound. Mana flowed in elegant currents from the wielder to the steel, forming a perfect circuit of destruction.
The air between them warped with heat.
"Tell me, Sworn," Thane murmured, unable to suppress his growing intrigue. "If I send you to your grave, will your death teach me how you came to possess weapons like these?"
For the first time, the Sworn's expression flickered—something passed across his face. A ghost of memory. A trace of humanity quickly smothered.
"In my death," he repeated, "you'll find all that you seek."
The words rang like a ceremonial toll.
Then the moment for words ended.
The blue flames engulfed him entirely, wrapping his body in a swirling aura of searing brilliance. The ground cracked beneath his feet as his aura surged, setting the very air alight. Mana bloomed like wildfire. Muscles coiled like drawn wire.
With a barely perceptible flick of the wrist, the Sworn launched a chakram—its edges wreathed in searing blue flame—as it carved through the air with deadly precision, spinning toward Thane's neck like a guillotine guided by fate itself.
The average British wizard might have panicked. Most, bred on a diet of wand work and incantations, had no concept of defending against physical weapons—let alone enchanted ones flying faster than thought. But Thane was not most wizards.
Planting his feet into the earth, he shifted into a fluid martial stance, honed by countless nights sparring with Elara beneath the moons of the Conservatory. As the spinning blade closed in, a smile crept onto his face—part memory, part thrill.
Seems her lessons weren't a waste after all.
In a blur of motion, Thane spun his staff in a tight arc. The vines spiraling down its shaft glowed as the weapon connected with the incoming chakram in an underhanded sweep. There was a sharp crack—an eruption of force and fire as the spellblade was deflected skyward, whistling harmlessly into the distance.
But there was no time to celebrate.
The Sworn was already upon him.
He appeared from the smoke like a phantom of wrath, trailing fire and fury. With unnatural speed, the assassin brought down his second chakram in a diagonal arc, the burning metal carving a path through the night like a falling star.
Blue fire danced along its edge, spectral and hot enough to melt through mana itself.
Thane's eyes locked with his opponent's—one filled with blazing purpose, the other alight with icy calculation.
With a thunderous bang, Thane caught the incoming chakram, halting its fiery descent cold.
The burning spellblade ground against the vine-etched wood of his staff, sparks flying, but the metal couldn't cut through, and the flames—blue and wild—licked hungrily at the surface to no avail. The wood refused to burn. It couldn't burn.
The Sworn's eyes narrowed, surprised by the stalemate. He leaned in, trying to brute-force his way through with his enhanced strength, muscles surging with ritual-augmented power. But Thane stood firm, his stance rooted as if the very earth lent him its spine. He shoved back just as hard—no words, just will and raw force meeting head-on.
For a heartbeat, they were locked together, two titans frozen in a moment of perfect opposition.
Then Thane saw it—that subtle flicker of realization in the Sworn's eyes. The assassin understood he couldn't win in a contest of strength.
He let go.
The second his fingers released the weapon, the chakram surged to life, spinning violently in place as if enraged by the sudden freedom. The flames intensified, erupting in a brilliant spiral around the whirling disc. It hovered midair like a demon's halo, rotating so fast the air shimmered from the heat, distorting space around it.
Thane's arms trembled as tremors surged through his staff, the chakram now transformed into a vortex of relentless force. Instead of pushing him back, it began pulling him in—dragging at his body, at the air around him, as though reality itself was unraveling into its spinning heart.
Across the scorched ground, the Sworn flipped onto his hands, using the momentum to launch himself backward with impossible agility. His boots left behind streaks of fire as he skidded in a low, fluid arc. Then, with a sharp thrust of his left hand, he cast something—silent, invisible.
For a moment, the air was still.
Then Thane felt it—heat flaring behind him, quick and sharp like the hiss of a blade through breath. He didn't need to look. With practiced instinct, Thane reached backward, and his robe tore apart at the elbow as his arm transformed. Silver scales cascaded across his skin like molten armor, and talons extended from his fingers—sleek, lethal, unbreakable.
CLANG!
His draconic hand clamped around the second chakram, the one he'd deflected earlier. Now, it screamed like a beast enraged, spinning with murderous velocity under the assassin's control. But Thane's scaled palm held firm, the blade grinding uselessly against a defense no mundane force could breach.
In the center of a storm of fire and steel, Thane stood—one arm gripping his staff as it braced against the blazing chakram in front of him, the other holding back the ambushing weapon behind him.
Rather than strain or falter, Thane smiled.
His blood boiled. Not in fear, but in exhilaration.
"You know," Thane began, his voice low, almost contemplative as the burning chakrams strained against his strength, "I had assumed I was the only person left on this planet with ambition. But I see now... I was simply judging the world through the lens of this godforsaken country and its people."
His arms trembled, not from weakness, but from the growing power coiling through his limbs. Slowly, steadily, he began to push back—inch by inch—against the blazing blades.
"They understand nothing," he continued, his voice rising with contempt and revelation. "To them, magic is a trick—static, sterile, confined to motions and syllables. Wave your wand,say the words, and pray the spell behaves."
The flames licked his silver-scaled arm, casting rippling light across his eyes.
"And god forbid," Thane snarled, teeth flashing as a growl rumbled in his chest, "God forbid you try to show them there's more. That there are paths beyond the ones carved by dusty old men clinging to fear and tradition. They mock what they can't control… and destroy what they can't understand."
The chakrams shuddered as Thane's power surged. And with one final push, he flung both weapons wide—one sparking into the earth, the other ricocheting into the air with a screech of protest.
Thane then turned to stare at the Sworn who looked at him with an unreadable gaze, "But now I see that there are others out there who understand, I just have to find them."
The Sworn said nothing for a long moment before making a symbol with both hands and in a flash both chakrams returned to hover by his side, "In my death, you'll find all that you seek."