The battlefield crystallized into absolute whiteness. Travis' staff disintegrated first, its splinters becoming molten fireflies in the expanding nova. Kael threw himself behind rubble, eyes seared even through closed lids—the afterimage burned crimson through his skull like brandished steel.
Cole's scream pierced the cataclysm. "Fool! Soulburning Forbidden Arts?!"
Travis' flesh sloughed away in the phoenix fire's wake, revealing skeletal fingers clutching at disintegrating reality. The Vermilion Flames—ultimate alchemical taboo—transformed caster and target alike. Kael's teeth cracked from pressure changes as the inferno warped gravity, lifting entire buildings into a swirling pyre.
"Die with me, oathbreaker!" The skeletal mage's jaw clacked, flames jetting from eye sockets. Cole's defensive wards shattered like sugar glass, his cloak igniting into spectral wings of ash.
Kael's retreat became blind flight. The conflagration birthed a demonic avian silhouette—fire given sentience, its shriek unraveling the very concept of "sound." Storefronts liquefied into lava streams, the magic district's towers leaning like drunkards before collapsing into the molten maw.
Through tear-blurred vision, Kael glimpsed the duel's apocalyptic climax: Cole's crystalline staff erupting with counter-flames of void-black, Travis' burning skeleton crumbling mid-leap. The collision birthed a sphere of perfect silence—then shockwaves flattening three city blocks.
When consciousness returned, dawn revealed a glass-plated crater steaming under drizzling rain. No bodies remained—only Cole's snapped staff tip embedded in obsidian ground, its fractures glowing faint crimson.
Kael staggered upright, retching void-black bile. Soulburn residue coated his tongue—bitter almonds and burnt hair. His shaking fingers closed around the still-warm crystal shard.
"Reaper's fee," he rasped, pocketing the fragment. The battleground's silence felt accusatory. Two masters annihilated over forbidden relics, their feud consuming countless innocents... and what lesson remained beyond scorched earth?
He limped eastward, the academy's distant spires mocking his survival. Behind him, twilight's veil thickened over the ruins—or perhaps that was the retinal damage. Either way, Kael vowed this would be his final lesson in others' wars.
The crystal shard pulsed against his thigh, hungry.
The aftermath reeked of charred ozone and burnt pork. Kael edged toward the smoldering crater where Travis' carbonized corpse curled like a desiccated spider. Cole lay motionless nearby, robes reduced to ash-flecked rags. Yet when the youth reached for the crystalline staff fragment, the "corpse" seized his wrist with bone-crushing force.
"Clever mouse," Cole rasped, charred lips peeling back from blackened teeth. His remaining eye glowed faintly through cracked ocular socket. "To skulk through my containment barrier..."
Kael's throat tightened. The mage's spiritual pressure pinned him like a butterfly specimen—helpless before decaying grandeur. Cole's remaining hand gestured weakly, revealing palm sigils still smoking from forbidden magic backlash.
"Witnessed it all, didn't you?" The dying archmage's chuckle sprayed blood-flecked spittle. "My... miscalculation."
Travis' final gambit lay evident in the ruins—Cole's torso bore a fist-sized cavity where phoenix flames had eaten through flesh and bone alike. Yet astonishingly, vital organs still pulsed within the glowing wound, sustained by some dark alchemy.
Kael's gaze flicked to the staff shard. "Your... Twilight's Veil..."
"Gone." Cole coughed violently, ichor staining his chin. "Scattered in the detonation. Fitting end... for stolen power."
The admission hung between them—confession and warning intertwined. Kael noted the mage's deteriorating aura, spiritual pathways unraveling like snapped harp strings. Even now, Cole's remaining mana corroded the cobblestones beneath him.
"Then why reveal yourself?" The youth pressed, fingers inching toward a hidden smoke pellet. "To kill a witness?"
Cole's ruined face twisted in something resembling amusement. "Kill you? Child, I'm composing... epilogue." His clawed hand seized Kael's collar, dragging them nose-to-charred-nose. "Listen well—true power lies not in relics..."
The grip slackened abruptly. Cole's remaining eye dimmed as his body began disintegrating from the feet upward—ashes to ashes in accelerated decay.
"...but in surviving others'... follies..."
Kael staggered back as the archmage's torso collapsed into gray powder. Only the cracked staff tip remained, its faint crimson pulse synchronizing with the youth's racing heartbeat.
Dawn bells tolled across the ruined district. Somewhere beyond the containment barrier, city guards would be mobilizing. The youth pocketed the shard, its warmth whispering forbidden promises.
"Surviving," he echoed hollowly, turning eastward.
The lesson tasted bitter—yet familiar.
Cole's charred fingers trembled against the staff shard. "Twilight's Veil..." Blood bubbled at the corner of his cracked lips. "Not artifact... but burden." His remaining eye fixed on Kael. "You'll learn."
The youth edged closer, wary of deathbed tricks. "Your condition?"
"Deliver it..." A rattling breath. "...to Frostspire Archives." Cole's laughter dissolved into wet coughing. "Let those sanctimonious archivists choke on their prize."
Kael's pulse quickened. This reeked of entanglement, yet the dying mage's gaze held no deceit—only weary spite. "Why me?"
"Because..." Cole's hand shot out, ice-cold despite surrounding heat, pressing a memory crystal to Kael's palm. Glyphs flared as knowledge transferred—ancient maps, encrypted coordinates, and fleeting glimpses of a silver artifact radiating lunar light. "...you'll survive long enough to regret accepting."
The crystal seared Kael's skin before cooling to inert glass. Cole's body crumbled mid-sardonic smile, robes collapsing into ash-gray snow.
Distant shouts pierced the dissolving barrier—city guards approaching. Kael pocketed the shard and memory glass, their combined weight heavier than any relic. Twilight's Veil's secrets now nested in his mind like parasitic spores, whispering of frozen tombs and hungers best left buried.
He turned northward, where Frostspire's jagged silhouette pierced dawn's haze. Survival demanded he honor this pact... for now.
The first guard patrol found only smoldering ruins and peculiar frost patterns radiating from Cole's ashes. By then, Kael had already vanished into morning crowds, the staff shard's faint pulse hidden beneath apprentice robes.
Survival, he reflected, often resembled cowardice. Let history judge—if it ever learned the truth.