Chapter 28: Last Man Standing

The silence in the chamber was a physical presence, thick and heavy, pressing down until each deliberate breath felt like a struggle.

The air was stale, tasting of dust and iron. Around me, the ground was a testament to the chaos, a landscape of twisted forms and dark, drying stains.

The arena had consumed its fill, leaving only the echoes of betrayal and fury hanging in the void.

And I stood at the center of it all, untouched. Unmoved.

Evelyn was the last. She knelt a dozen paces away, her hands pressed flat against the cold stone as if begging the earth for an answer it wouldn't give.

Her delicate frame shuddered with silent sobs.

The healer's light in her eyes, the gentle compassion that had defined her, was extinguished, leaving behind a hollowed-out shell.

Her staff lay discarded beside her, just a piece of wood now.

I watched her, waiting. I felt nothing, no triumph, no sorrow, not even the cold satisfaction of survival.

This was simply the final state of the equation.

The system, or the thing pulling its strings, had whittled us down to this.

Her gaze lifted, meeting mine. For a fleeting second, a desperate, impossible hope flickered in the depths of her tear-filled eyes.

"Allen…" My name was a fragile whisper, yet it seemed to scream in the suffocating quiet. “Why? Why did all this happen?”

The question hung between us.

Why a low-level raid? Why this senseless carnage? What happened to logic?

I had no answer. The machinery of this place was beyond my understanding, its cruelty its own justification.

Evelyn’s staff clattered softly as she fully surrendered her grip, her fingers curling into the dirt.

She looked so small, so broken. The ghost of the person who had offered a quiet prayer over a fallen goblin was there, but just a ghost.

"We… we were supposed to survive together," she breathed, her voice cracking under the weight of the shattered dream. "I thought… I thought we’d make it through. But now…” A sob choked her. “Now, we are the last ones standing, and I can’t do this. I can't kill you.”

The confession was her surrender. She was too good, too pure for this hell.

The will to fight had been scoured from her.

I took a slow, heavy step forward. The crunch of debris under my foot was the only sound.

She flinched but held her ground, her tear-streaked face a mask of helpless dread.

For a heartbeat, something ancient and human stirred within me, a phantom limb of empathy.

I smothered it. Mercy was a luxury for the weak, and this place tolerated no weakness.

I stopped before her. She looked up, confusion and a final, fleeting hope warring with the fear.

“You don’t have to do this,” she whispered, the words a fragile plea. “Please, Allen...”

I stared down at her, into the depths of her despair.

It was a profound, moving sight. And it changed nothing.

“I know,” I replied, my voice soft but utterly steady.

I took a step back, my gaze still locked on her.

I wouldn't be the instrument of her death.

My focus shifted, lifting over her head to the far shadows, to the throne only I could see.

The figure sat there, a silhouette of absolute stillness, its burning coal eyes fixed on me.

The solution isn't here.

I realized with cold clarity.

It's there.

The puppet master. If I could reach it, if I could break its control… It was a desperate theory.

Just because I could see it didn't mean I could touch it.

But it was the only variable left to test.

Ding!

The sound was a spike of pure malice in my mind.

[You have been tamed by the Sixth Orc Lord]

Ding!

[The Sixth Orc Lord is now your master]

Ding!

[Your will is now in his hand]

My eyes widened. A cold, foreign terror, sharper than any I'd felt in the Null, seized me.

Tamed?

The concept was an abomination. I was a human, a being of will and choice.

This was a violation on a fundamental level.

On the throne, the figure, the Sixth Orc Lord, tilted its head. A subtle, mocking gesture.

Then, my body moved. It was no longer mine.

My limbs were heavy, responding to a will that was not my own.

I turned, the motion jerky and unnatural, back toward Evelyn.

"Al... Allen, are you ok..okay?" she stammered, her eyes wide with fresh horror as she saw the blankness in my gaze.

I couldn't answer. I was a prisoner behind my own eyes.

Damn it!

I screamed internally, throwing every ounce of my will against the invisible chains.

It was like trying to hold back the tide with my bare hands.

I should have acted sooner. I should have seen this.

My hand rose, fingers splayed. Blue-white lightning, my lightning, crackled to life around them, its energy making the very air in the chamber hum and shake.

I was walking toward her, a puppet on a string, forced to deliver the killing blow I had just refused.

Evelyn scrambled backward, a terrified whimper escaping her lips.

The lightning intensified, gathering into a sphere of incandescent death in my palm.

The chamber trembled, dust raining from the ceiling.

And then, a deafening, shattering 'CRASH' tore through the chamber.

It didn't come from me. It came from above.