The darkness was not just the absence of light, it pulsed around me like the beat of an ancient heart, as if this place was nothing but a prison they had made to keep me shackled. I could see them in front of me, three men who thought they could stop me—Kailen, Elyas, and Alenius.
But they were not my true enemies.
They were just obstacles, stones in my path toward reclaiming what had been stolen from me.
I saw the shield in Kailen's hands, and I felt a faint tremor in its energy, as though it knew I was here for it. It was a part of me, another piece of my power that they had torn apart and scattered across the thirty worlds.
I took a step forward.
"Did you think you could keep it, Kailen?"
The young man tightened his grip on the shield, though I saw the hesitation in his eyes.
"It's my family's legacy!" he said, his voice trying to remain steady, but it wasn't quite there.
I laughed, a slow laugh like the whisper of wind on a cold night.
"Your legacy? This is not a legacy, boy. This is just a fragment of what I once was."
I turned to Elyas, who had been watching me silently, his eyes trying to pierce through me as if he could see what lay beneath the shadows that surrounded me.
"You've seen things, haven't you, Elyas?" I asked him in a quiet voice.
He didn't answer, but I could see in his eyes that he understood what I meant. Perhaps he didn't know the whole truth, but he felt it, just as a person feels the power of a storm before it begins.
Then Kailen moved.
He was fast, faster than I had expected, rushing at me with his sword attempting to strike, while the shield glowed with a strange energy, an energy that didn't belong to him.
But I didn't need to see the strike.
I was the shadow itself.
Before it could reach me, my hand formed from the void, stretching as if it were part of the darkness surrounding us, and I gripped his sword, stopping it before it could touch me. He didn't realize yet that I was no mere man.
I was something far greater than that.
I looked into his eyes and whispered in a voice barely audible:
"You are not my enemy."
Then I pushed him away, as easily as if he were a leaf in the wind.
Elyas, the more cautious one, didn't charge like his brother. Instead, he moved slowly, measuring his steps, searching for a weakness. But I had no weakness here.
"You don't understand," I said, slowly raising my hand.
The shadows began to move, no longer just a curtain hiding what was beyond, but something pulsing, twisting as if it were a creature of its own. The ground beneath their feet trembled, the air thickened.
Alenius felt it.
"Kailen, Elyas, fall back!" he shouted in his deep voice.
But it was too late.
In an instant, everything had changed.
I raised my hand and released part of my energy, not to break them, but to break this place, to make it understand who I was. The walls trembled, the doors exploded outward, and all the torches extinguished at once, leaving the darkness to swallow everything.
Kailen fell to his knees, gasping for breath. Elyas was staring into the void, as though he had seen something he couldn't fully comprehend.
As for Alenius?
He had seen the truth.
"This isn't possible…", he muttered in a voice barely audible.
I walked slowly toward him, my eyes fixed on the shield.
"Oh, but it is." I extended my hand, pointing my palm toward the shield. "And you know that very well."
The shield trembled, as if it were a living being that had finally realized who it truly belonged to. The golden paint that had covered it began to crack, revealing beneath it a black metal that shouldn't have existed in this world.
"No…!" Kailen tried to cling to it, but the shield was no longer his.
With a surge of energy, it rushed toward me, returning to its rightful owner.
The moment I touched it, I felt the other broken part merge with me, I felt an ancient power return, a power that had been stolen from me long ago.
Something inside me broke, or perhaps, something that had been broken returned to complete me.
I smiled, not at Kailen, nor Elyas, but at the world itself.
I had reclaimed the second part.
And now, my journey toward the rest had truly begun.
I looked at them—Kailen on his knees, gasping as if he had lost everything he had; Elyas standing still, unable to act; and Alenius, who stared at me in silence, with the eyes of a man who knew that his battle had ended.
Then I looked at the rest of the crowd, the soldiers and servants who had frozen in place, witnessing what had just happened.
I smiled.
"Killing you now serves no purpose," I said calmly, but everyone in the hall heard it clearly.
I turned and extended my hand into the air, tearing the fabric between worlds.
A massive gateway of black energy formed before me, a swirling vortex of moving darkness, a path to the next world, where the third part of my power awaited me.
I turned to them one last time, looking into their eyes, one by one.
"I have taken what is mine at last."
Then I stepped into the portal, leaving this world behind me.
And behind me, there was nothing but silence.