Midnight winds knifed through Kael's robes as he exited Simon's estate. Channeling mana through his veins barely dulled the cold's bite—a crude remedy for nature's indifference. He cursed under his breath, breath fogging moonlight, when the energy signatures struck.
Two. Colliding.
He froze mid-step, arcane senses flaring. The duelists' power dwarfed his own—a lethal storm rolling toward his position. Pressing against frost-rimed bricks, he stilled even his pulse.
"Cole!" A voice like grinding blades split the night. "Yield Twilight's Veil, and I'll grant quick death!"
Through narrowed eyes, Kael watched a gaunt mage materialize. Travis—sharp-featured, eyes like poisoned needles—leveled an obsidian staff crackling with violet energy. His quarry emerged from shadows: the cloaked enigma from the alchemy trials.
"Your threats bore me, Travis." Cole's retort dripped frost. The crystalline staff in his grip hummed, air warping around its tip. "Alone, you're but a yapping cur."
Travis snarled. A jagged bolt of dark lightning lanced forth. Cole's counterstroke split the attack midair, detonation rattling nearby shutters. Kael's hiding place trembled—ice patterns shattering across windows.
The cloaked figure didn't flinch. "Your masters should've sent an army."
"Armies draw attention." Travis' smile revealed filed teeth. "But worry not—your corpse will make fine bait."
Kael's nails bit into stone. Twilight's Veil—the legendary artifact said to bend moonlight into weapons? What game had he stumbled upon?
Cole's laugh held winter's edge. His staff traced sigils in the air, frost blooming across cobblestones. "Let's see your pitiful flames withstand true cold."
The temperature plummeted. Travis' next spell froze mid-cast, dark energy crystallizing before shattering. Ice tendrils snaked toward the attacker's boots.
Kael pressed deeper into shadows. Two master mages clashing over forbidden relics—this was no spectator sport. Yet escape meant movement, and movement meant death.
As glacial winds howled, he made silent vow: survive tonight, and never again wander moonlit streets unprepared.
Kael's breath stilled. Cole's crimson lunar sigil blazed above his staff—Sacred Glyph's second tier: Blood Moon Manifestation. Ethan's teachings echoed—this tier marked only elite mages who compressed incantations into split-second activations.
"Shadowblight!" Cole's spell coalesced before the final syllable faded. The night itself seemed to curdle as obsidian mist engulfed Travis, corrosive particles screeching like damned souls.
"Impossible!" Travis' scream pierced the vortex. "Half a year... Twilight's Veil did this?!"
Kael's nails bit into stone as recognition struck—the cloaked stranger from the trials wielded power rivaling archmages. Travis countered with tier-one Silver Star glyphs, his "Aqua Bastion" conjuring swirling water barriers that sizzled against the decaying darkness.
Air warped under conflicting domains—Cole's decaying void versus Travis' pressurized hydrosphere. Cobblestones between them powdered instantly, the invisible boundary line etching smoking trenches across the street. Kael's hiding place trembled as stray energy tendrils vaporized nearby lampposts.
The youth analyzed through slitted eyes. Cole's motions flowed with lethal economy, each gesture birthing fresh horrors: necrotic chains from pavement cracks, screaming banshee wraiths torn from moonlight. Travis deteriorated rapidly—his barrier fracturing under onslaughts that liquefied stone and metal alike.
"Pathetic." Cole's chuckle carried over the maelstrom. His staff traced an inverted pentacle. "Let's end this farce."
The Blood Moon sigil pulsed. Reality itself seemed to inhale—then vomited forth a black sun.
Kael's instincts screamed. He flattened as the miniature singularity tore through Travis' final defenses. The scream lasted precisely 0.7 seconds before being erased from existence, along with twelve meters of street and three adjacent buildings.
When the afterglow faded, Cole stood amidst smoldering ruins, examining his undamaged sleeve. "Waste of time," he murmured. "The Veil's power remains untapped."
Ice crystallized in Kael's veins as the victor's gaze swept his direction. Every muscle locked—revealing himself meant death, yet remaining meant...
Cole's lips quirked. The crystalline staff tapped once.
Silence.
Then—footsteps receding into night.
Kael didn't move until dawn's first light revealed the battleground's true devastation: a glass-smooth crater where city blocks once stood, edges fused into obsidian waves. Travis existed only as charcoal smears on surviving walls.
The youth stumbled from his refuge, vomit burning his throat. Power's true face had been unveiled tonight—not glorious, but grotesque. Yet amidst revulsion, darker embers glowed: hunger to wield such might, tempered by oath-sworn restraint.
He touched the hidden vial at his breast—Saint Dragon's Blood, still warm from recent triumph. "Different paths," he whispered to the ruins. "Better ones."
Whether belief or delusion mattered little. Survival demanded conviction.
Cole's laughter slithered through the maelstrom. "Blocking my strike? Improved, Travis. But against *this*..."
The obsidian tempest swelled—a fifty-foot vortex devouring cobblestones and century-old oaks alike. Travis recoiled as recognition dawned. "*Calamity's Breath?!*" His scream barely pierced the howling winds.
Desperation transformed the mage. Abandoning defense, he tore at the ambient mana, veins bulging black with overloaded power. "If I burn..." Travis snarled, skin cracking like desiccated parchment, "...you burn with me!"
Kael's hiding place disintegrated. He scrambled backward as the duelists' conflicting energies birthed a third horror—Travis' body distending into a glowing humanoid star, gravitational pull warping the battlefield.
Cole's mocking poise finally fractured. "Madman! You'd—"
The detonation erased sound. Light. Perspective.
When vision returned, three city blocks had become a glass-floored crater. Travis existed only as charred boot soles fused to the molten ground. Cole staggered at the blast's periphery, cloak smoldering, crystalline staff snapped mid-shaft.
"Worthless." He spat blood-black phlegm onto the vitrified earth. "All that theatrics for..." A coughing fit interrupted. "...a child's tantrum."
The victor's gaze swept the ruins, lingering on Kael's half-exposed position behind a tilted foundation stone. For three heartbeats, predator assessed prey. Then—a dismissive snort. Cole limped northward, each step etching bloody footprints into still-cooling glass.
Dawn revealed the cost. Embedded in the crater's edge, Kael found them—Travis' final spell components: warped silver vials labeled *Astroworld Festival • VIP Access*. The engraving mocked the morning light.
He pocketed one absently, mind churning. Power's true lesson tonight wasn't destruction, but consequence. Cole's retreating figure had trembled. That broken staff...
Kael turned east toward the academy. Let warlocks feud over relics and pride. His path required subtler tools.
Yet as first bells tolled across the city, the youth glanced back. Somewhere in those smoldering ruins, *Twilight's Veil* waited.
And waiting things, he knew, seldom stayed buried.