The Fall

Jari charged like a maddened bull, roaring as if rage itself were his shield. His blade flashed, a flurry of wild, furious cuts meant to butcher, not duel.

Eljas met every stroke.

Steel rang like hammer on anvil. The bastard hardly flinched. Calm as a monk, confident as a king, he turned aside each blow as though Jari were a drunken farmhand waving a hoe.

They broke apart for a breath, blades low, boots scraping stone.

Eljas struck first—fast, sharp, testing.
Jari caught the blow on his sword and shoved back with his shoulder, swinging hard, but Eljas caught that too. They traded strikes—one blocked, the next dodged, another parried. A soldier’s grind. A stalemate.

But Jari could not afford a stalemate. He’d lost too much already—his mother, his place, Sapphire, even Raollin’s loyalty. Eljas had stolen all of it, and Jari would not let the bastard steal the last thing he had left: his purpose.

Eljas swung again. Jari ducked, snatched a clay bowl from the ground, and hurled it at Eljas’s crotch. The bowl shattered, Eljas folded with a gasp, and Jari did not waste the moment. He leapt forward and hammered his blade down onto Eljas’s cuirass. The steel dented with a deep, ugly crunch.

Jari barked a mirthless laugh.
“New armour, Eljas? Fine work.”

Eljas grimaced but still found breath to sneer. “Already improving Veyorun’s armories. Something your idiot father never managed.”

He lunged with renewed fury. Jari twisted aside only just in time, Eljas’s blade singing past his belly. Jari swung back, but Eljas turned the attack aside again and again, as though he had grown a warrior’s skill overnight.

“What devil taught you to fight?” Jari spat between blows.

Eljas’s smile was a serpent’s. “King Aberardus of Dravengarde. We’re rather close. Like we used to be.”

Jari snarled. “You? And a god of war? You always were a liar.”

He pressed harder, each swing heavier than the last. This time Eljas faltered—only a heartbeat, only a crack in his guard—but Jari seized it. A fist smashed into Eljas’s jaw. Another caught his ribs. He followed with a savage slash that bit through armor and into flesh.

Eljas staggered back, clutching his chest… but he laughed.

And only then did Jari feel the warmth on his own chest—blood soaking through his tunic, bright as a banner. His rage had hidden the pain and hidden the wound.

He spat blood, blocked a slash, then another. Eljas pressed with cold efficiency, forcing Jari back step by step until Jari rammed himself into Eljas like a charging boar.

More swings. More blocks. Every clash a burst of sparks. Every breath a grunt. Their blades became little more than shields between clenched teeth and hatred.

Jari ducked another swing, struck Eljas’s knee with his fist, then leapt and hewed downward—missing by inches. Eljas countered, the blade carving a deep gash across Jari’s shoulder. Jari crashed against the bridge railing, fingers gripping sandstone slick with his own blood.

“Is… that all you’ve got?” he rasped through the pain.

Eljas shrugged. “Says the man bleeding like a stuck hog.”

Jari slashed again, but Eljas’s counterblow struck so hard Jari’s sword spun from his grip and arced over the edge into the gorge.

He stared in shock at his empty hands, breath ragged, but readied his fists all the same.

Eljas came again—Jari ducked—and Jari’s fist landed deep in Eljas’s gut at the same moment the traitor’s blade raked across Jari’s back. Both men cried out.

Jari swung again and missed. Eljas snarled, “How are you not dead!?”

“Because I don’t die,” Jari growled, “till you do.”

He hammered Eljas’s chest, smashed his head, swept his legs. He seized a crate-lid and used it as a shield, blocking Eljas’s blade before smashing the wood across the man’s shins. Half the crate shattered. Jari used the broken plank to sweep Eljas down again.

Eljas dropped his sword. Jari snatched it.

“No weapon left, Eljas?” he taunted.

Eljas grinned. “I came prepared.”

He drew a short sword and a small buckler. A rat’s weapons—quick, dirty, treacherous.

“That won’t save you,” Jari spat.

“We’ll see.”

Eljas rammed forward, trying to bowl Jari over, but Jari leapt aside. His stolen sword clanged against the buckler, jarring Eljas’s arm. Jari struck upward, sending Eljas’s stolen crown tumbling along the stones.

Then Jari hacked him. Again. And again. A flurry of brutal cuts that forced Eljas back, tore the buckler from his grip, and sliced across his cheek.

Eljas fell, rolled, rose, snarling like a dog. He swung three times—each blow beaten away. Jari cuffed him in the arm, then shoved a palm into his face, staggering him.

Another slash. Then another. Jari drove Eljas backward with the relentlessness of a storm tide.

“I’VE HAD ENOUGH!” Eljas roared, and with a furious swing knocked the sword from Jari’s hand—again sending it spinning into the abyss.

Eljas’s next stroke carved across Jari’s chest. Another hacked into his thigh. Jari reeled, struck the pillar hard enough to see sparks behind his eyes.

Eljas’s blade descended again. Jari twisted aside, but not cleanly—the cut tore another line of fire across his leg.

He crawled backward, gasping, vision fogging. Eljas stalked him like a wolf.

Jari’s hand closed around a clay vase. Eljas’s blow shattered it. Shards scattered. Blood spattered. Jari’s breath rattled.

He ducked a wild swing and battered Eljas with his fists, with the fury of a man who had nothing left to lose. He grabbed a nearby bucket, blocked another cut—steel split the wooden pail in half—but Jari kept fighting like a cornered beast.

Another slash. More blood. Jari felt the stones vanish beneath him—he dangled over the bridge, clinging by fingertips slick with blood.

“Eljas…” he wheezed. “We were friends.”

“Not anymore,” Eljas said, and shoved.

Jari fell.

Instinct grabbed the world—his fingers caught the bridge edge. Sandstone tore his skin but held.

He dangled, staring at the long drop toward the river that once fed him, once kept him alive those two empty, lonely years.

He climbed.

He climbed.

But Eljas waited. The moment Jari raised his head above the ledge, Eljas swung. The blow struck like a hammer, and Jari felt himself thrown backward into air.

“NO!! JARI!!” Raollin’s voice—raw, terrified—echoed above him.

The sky swallowed Jari whole.

Blue. Endless blue. No storm. No cloud. Only the quiet heaven he’d stared at as a boy, imagining his death would come from its heights.

The wind tore at him. The world rushed up.

Then the water hit him like stone, and darkness swallowed everything.