Communion of the Broken

The wind was thick with blood and voided bowels, clawing uselessly at Jabari’s high collar. Below, the shattered gate vomited its discordant symphony: the rhythmic thunder of boots, the shriek of tortured steel, the wet, sucking thuds of finality. A tapestry of violence woven in mud and crimson, a war.

Jabari absorbed it all. His gaze, dark and cold as volcanic stone, fixed on the smaller drama in the courtyard. Amidst the sprawled dead, two figures converged. Jolvuthiz surged upwards, a storm of snapping shadow and manic laughter that tore through the battle’s roar. Towards him walked the silver-haired man, unnervingly deliberate, pristine boots sinking into gore as if treading a marble floor. His navy-blue coat, gold braid catching stray light, crimson lapels stark against grey wool, radiated an immaculate, chilling elegance.

"So," Jabari murmured, the deep rumble barely audible yet carrying the weight of shifting continents. "Balisarda Sumernor wasn't actually in the courtyard." No surprise, only cold confirmation. His focus intensified on Bismarck who crisp white gloves, the vivid red stripes on his dark trousers was authority worn as skin.

Jabari’s massive hands clenched slowly, the dark fabric straining over whitening knuckles. "That person, however" The thought formed like ice in his mind, his eyes tracing the razor-sharp lines of the navy coat, the predatory ease in the man’s stance. "exudes immaculate elegance. I have never laid eyes upon any of Balisarda Sumernor's Principals before" He inhaled, the metallic tang sharpening. "but his action, style and calculated disdain fits. He must be a Principal. The rank of Balisarda Sumernor ten most powerful men."

"Jolvuthiz." Jabari’s voice, when it came, was a low growl carried on the coppery wind, a warning cast towards ears too distant to hear, yet spoken with the force of tectonic certainty. "I know the fire that drives you. I know you stride towards battle seeking only the sharp edge of spectacle, the hot pulse of pleasure found in battle." He pictured the reckless grin, the ecstatic fury. "It forged your rank. That's why within the military you’re master four."

His dark gaze remained riveted on the silver-haired Principal – Bismark. The man stood poised, a sculpture of mocking lethality, his elegant blade a mere extension of his glacial arrogance. The contrast was profound: chaotic, devouring shadow against controlled, razor-edged ice.

"But," Jabari’s voice hardened, each word chipped from the bedrock of experience, resonating in his own chest, "do not mistake the silk for softness. Do not let elegance blind you to the serpent beneath." The image of Bismark’s condescending smile, the effortless dismissal of Jolvuthiz’s hunger for battle burned cold in Jabari’s mind. "That contempt you see is colder than any shadow you wield. Underestimate the viper because it wears velvet, and its strike will be the last sensation you know. That man" Jabari’s gaze didn’t waver from Bismark’s distant, poised figure, "kills with a thought before the steel ever clears its sheath. He is the true shadow here."

The wind carried the butcher-shop reek of the courtyard – iron-rich blood, the sour tang of voided bowels, the pervasive dust of shattered stone – up to Jabari’s vantage point. Below, Bismark stood amidst the carnage, a stark island of navy-blue and gold braid against the mud and gore. His cool, sly blue eyes never left Jolvuthiz as the shadow-wreathed warrior’s manic laughter subsided into that low, dangerous purr. Bismark’s expression remained one of glacial amusement, a slight, condescending curve touching his lips.

Then, Bismark raised a single white-gloved hand. Not a grand gesture, just a precise, almost dismissive click of his thumb against his middle finger. The sound was sharp, clean, cutting through the background clamour of distant steel and shouts like a knife.

Instantly, a ragged volley of arrows hissed through the smoke-choked air. They came not from the embattled military lines, but from Balisarda’s own archers perched on the jagged remnants of the walls. Their eyes, wide with confusion or perhaps fear-induced suggestion, saw not their immaculate Principal, but the crackling, dark energy of Jolvuthiz standing where Bismark was. The arrows flew true, aimed at the spot Bismark occupied.

Jolvuthiz, his vivid amethyst eyes blazing with battle-frenzy, didn't hesitate. The instant the arrows flew, he exploded forward. His boots churned the blood-slick mud as he closed the distance with terrifying speed, the void-forged sword in his grip humming with ravenous energy. With a guttural roar that vibrated in Jabari’s chest even from the hilltop, Jolvuthiz brought the dark blade down in a devastating arc shouting "Necro Grave!"

From the blade’s edge erupted a wave of pure, devouring darkness. It wasn’t merely energy; it was demonic, inhabiting a reality it didn't belong to, roared forward like a black tidal wave. It towered, easily surpassing the height of a siege tower and wide enough to engulf a charging phalanx, tearing through the air with a chilling vacuum that pulled at loose stones and scattered debris. The scent of crushed earth and ozone intensified, warring with the battlefield stench.

Jolvuthiz moved with the strike. As the wave of darkness surged forth, he launched himself over its crest, a shadow propelled by its own destructive force. He landed with jarring impact beside Bismark, mud and gore splattering his dark leathers and the writhing shadows consuming his right side. Without pause, he twisted, swinging the void-blade sideways in a vicious horizontal slash aimed at Bismark’s torso.

Bismark, however, hadn't stood idle. As Jolvuthiz leaped, Bismark’s free left hand snapped out with impossible speed and precision. He plucked a single arrow from the volley meant for him out of the air, its fletching trembling mere finger-widths from his temple. His movement was fluid, unhurried. As Jolvuthiz’s horizontal slash arrived, Bismark pivoted slightly. Not away, but into the attack’s trajectory, using the stolen arrow. His left arm, clad in pristine white fabric, drove the arrowhead not as a projectile, but as a dagger, plunging it deep into Jolvuthiz’s exposed side, just below the ribs.

A wet, choked gasp tore from Jolvuthiz’s throat, stuttering in spasms as blood clogged his windpipe. His sideways slash faltered as searing pain lanced through him. The metallic tang of his own blood flooded his mouth, sharp and coppery. Before he could recover, Bismark’s left hand, still gloved in spotless white, shot forward. It clamped around Jolvuthiz’s throat with crushing force, leather creaking against sweat-slicked, pale skin. Jolvuthiz’s eyes bulged, the predatory grin momentarily replaced by shock as his breath was cut off, the pressure grinding against his windpipe.

“This is your power?” Jolvuthiz managed to rasp, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips, his gaze fixed on Bismark’s impassive face.

With terrifying, effortless strength, Bismark lifted Jolvuthiz completely off the ground. He held the shadow-warrior aloft, suspended in the air like a grotesque puppet, directly in the path of the onrushing wave of Jolvuthiz’s own Necro Grave. The devouring darkness, having crossed the short distance, slammed into its creator.

The impact was brutal. The wave didn't dissipate; it consumed. Jolvuthiz’s body arched violently in Bismark’s grip, wracked by the tearing, chilling power of his own attack. The sound was a sickening thud of force meeting flesh, followed by a tearing, sucking noise as the darkness clawed at him. Bismark held him there, suspended in the maelstrom, for agonizing moments that stretched far longer than any simple count of seconds. Finally, as the wave’s energy began to fade, Bismark released his grip.

Jolvuthiz hit the churned earth like a felled tree, the impact driving the air from his lungs in a wet, bloody gasp. Crimson streamed freely from his lips, painting dark trails down his chin to drip onto mud already saturated with the gore of countless others. The fabric across his chest and side hung in tatters where his own Necro Grave had ravenously torn at him, revealing pale skin marred by deep, shadow-kissed abrasions that wept sluggish blood. The metallic tang of his own life filled his mouth, sharp and coppery, mixing with the pervasive battlefield stench of mud, voided bowels, and distant smoke. Agony radiated from every point of impact, a white-hot counterpoint to the chilling vacuum left by his dark energy’s backlash.

Yet, as his elbows dug into the sucking mire, pushing his upper body upright, his head lifted. The predatory grin that split his angular face was a grotesque rictus, wider than ever before, stretching skin taut over bone despite the pain etching deep lines around his amethyst eyes and the blood coating his teeth like crimson enamel. It wasn’t defiance; it was pure, unadulterated exhilaration, a mad joy burning brighter than the agony.

“Don’t die on me yet,” Jolvuthiz rasped, the words scraping raw from his bruised throat. A thick globule of dark blood, glistening in the weak light, landed with a soft plop beside his knee. His voice was the grinding of stones, guttural and strained. “Let’s keep going, Bismark. Let’s keep dancing. This?” He spat another mouthful of crimson blood onto the mud. “This hasn’t even started!”

Bismark’s response was instantaneous, a blur of immaculate navy blue and gleaming gold braid against the chaotic backdrop. He lunged forward, not with the measured grace of before, but with piston-driven speed. His polished black boot barely disturbed the gore-slick grass as he closed the distance. His white-gloved fist, clenched with brutal efficiency, aimed like a warhammer at the center of Jolvuthiz’s blood-smeared face. The air whistled faintly around it.

Jolvuthiz, still half-kneeling in the mud, reacted not with panic, but with the feral instinct of a cornered beast. Pain was fuel. Fury was focused. As Bismark’s fist descended, Jolvuthiz’s left hand, the one not clutching his humming void-sword, shot to his hip. His fingers, slick with blood and grime, closed around the worn leather grip of the second sword nestled in its long, angled scabbard. He drew it with a single, savage motion, a whisper of oiled leather lost beneath the battlefield's roar.

The blade that emerged was identical to the first: a shard of solidified void, radiating the same chilling, devouring energy. Twin darknesses now pulsed in Jolvuthiz’s grip, their combined hum vibrating the air around him, making the fine hairs on the back of nearby necks prickle. The scent of ozone intensified, sharp and electric, cutting through the miasma of blood and decay. The light seemed to warp and dim around the twin blades, hungry fractures in reality.

Simultaneous with drawing the second blade, Jolvuthiz swept his first void-sword upwards from the mud in a vicious, backhanded arc. He didn't aim for the fist; he aimed for the source. The dark blade, trailing tendrils of ravenous shadow, met Bismark torso just below the ribs. The impact wasn't a clean slice; it was a brutal collision. The immaculate navy wool of Bismark double-breasted coat parted with a sound like heavy canvas tearing. The crisp white shirt beneath shredded instantly. The dark blade carved diagonally upwards, across the chest and abdomen, seeming to cleave clean through the Principal. The elegant figure split apart at the waist, a gruesome dissection rendered in navy blue, white, and crimson for a horrifying instant before the illusion dissolved into shimmering motes of nothingness, leaving only the scent of ozone and a profound, chilling silence where the blow had landed. Jolvuthiz knelt panting, twin voids humming in his hands, staring at the empty space where his enemy had seemed to be.

Jolvuthiz stared, panting, the manic grin faltering into pure confusion. "Did I kill him?" The thought screamed in his mind, echoing the sudden silence where Bismark’s form collapsed. The scent of ozone and blood was overwhelming.

Then, a smooth, mocking voice came from directly behind him. "I bet you’re really confused right now."

Jolvuthiz whipped around, pain lancing through his wounded side. Bismark stood there, utterly untouched, not a thread out of place. He brushed imaginary dust from his crimson lapel. "You’re thinking to yourself, didn't I kill him?" Bismark’s sly blue eyes held pure, glacial amusement. "Well, what you sliced in half was nothing once again."

Simultaneously, another ragged volley of arrows sang through the air. Balisarda’s archers, still ensnared by the illusion, fired at the spot where Jolvuthiz had been kneeling moments before where Bismark now stood nonchalantly. The arrows converged, a deadly cloud of wood and steel, their tips glinting wickedly mere hand-spans from Bismark’s head.

Bismark didn't flinch. His hands became a blur of white leather. He snatched the arrows from the air with impossible dexterity, plucking them like ripe fruit, until he held a thick bundle of shafts fletched with confusion and terror. The scent of ozone intensified around Jolvuthiz as the shadow-warrior struggled to rise, his movements hampered by pain and disbelief.

Bismark closed the distance in three swift strides. Before Jolvuthiz could fully regain his footing, Bismark drove the bundle of captured arrows, points first, deep into Jolvuthiz’s torso and abdomen. It wasn't a stab; it was a brutal, forceful impalement. Jolvuthiz gasped, a wet, ragged sound, his body jerking violently. Blood bloomed darkly across his tattered vest and exposed skin.

Not pausing, Bismark’s right hand

swept the chaotic ground. His white-gloved hand closed around the hilt of a discarded military sword lying near a fallen soldier in blue wool. He hefted it, the plain, bloodied steel a stark contrast to his elegance. With clinical precision, he swung the blade in a wide, horizontal arc. It bit deep across Jolvuthiz’s chest, carving a terrible furrow through leather and flesh, adding a fresh cascade of crimson to the warrior’s front. The metallic scent of blood became overpowering.

Without pause, Bismark shifted his grip on the sword already in his right hand. The blade, elegant yet brutal, tapered from a weathered dark-grey forte to a gleaming silver-grey tip, its hilt a lavish cage of golden filigree. Sunlight fractured coldly along its length. He hefted it once a deliberate, almost contemptuous motion, the refined weapon a jarring contrast to the carnage underfoot. With clinical precision, ignoring the filigreed hilt now slick with Jolvuthiz’s blood, he swung it in a wide, horizontal arc. The blade struck Jolvuthiz’s chest with a dreadful, slicing force, tearing a clean furrow through leather and flesh. Blood poured down in fresh cascades, the metallic scent flooding the air.

Bismark let the elegant sword hang loosely at his side for a heartbeat, its tip dripping red onto the mud. Then, contemptuously, he drew back his white-gloved fist and slammed it into Jolvuthiz’s already bloodied face. The impact snapped Jolvuthiz’s head back brutally.

Jolvuthiz sprawled backwards. Blood painted his face in a grotesque mask, matted his dark hair, and soaked his chest from multiple wounds. He breathed in ragged, wet gasps, the coppery taste thick, cold mud seeping through his clothes. Yet, his eyes burned with amethyst fire. His split, bleeding lips twisted.

"Awaken!!" The word was a guttural incantation ripped from Jolvuthiz core.

The vivid amethyst glow in Jolvuthiz’s eyes deepened, darkening until it matched the pure, devouring black of the energy swirling around his right side. A palpable, ravenous shadow blossomed into an aura. With a surge of unnatural strength, he launched himself off the ground, a streak of darkness hurtling toward Bismark.

Both of Jolvuthiz’s hands gripped his twin void-blades identical in form and terrible in purpose, each humming with hungry energy. His right sword traced a lethal arc with his left sliced with equal precision, the two blades moving in cruel harmony.

For the first time Bismark moved away. He turned and ran, not in panic but calculated, his boots striking fast through blood and shattered stone. Jolvuthiz closed the distance, swinging both blades diagonally, a deadly pincer aiming to rend flesh and bone.

However Just before the dark edges connected, Bismark hand shot out. He seized a nearby soldier, a young man in blue wool locked in a desperate shoving match with a defender and yanked him backwards with brutal force. The soldier's brown eyes widened in terror an instant before Jolvuthiz’s blades struck. The void-edges sheared through blue wool, flesh, and bone with horrifying ease. The soldier’s dying scream was cut short.

[Fake Morph]

In the split second’s distraction, Bismark vanished from Jolvuthiz’s direct line of sight. Jolvuthiz whirled around, scanning the humongously wide courtyard his twin blades poised for another strike, his boots grinding the mud below. Suddenly Bismark or what seemed to be Bismark appeared back into the line of sight lunging towards him from another angle.

Instinctively, Jolvuthiz leaped high, twisting inverted. Both swords rose with him like twin fangs poised for the kill. He plunged downwards in a blur of motion and shadow. His left blade sinking deep into the figure’s left arm.

and then nothing. No crunch of bone. No tearing of flesh. No scream.

Only an eerie, soundless shiver as the figure rippled apart like disturbed water. A faint, warped hiss followed, the kind that makes the skin crawl. His momentum drove the blade through emptiness, the sensation jarring. His body felt it: the absence of impact, the whisper of resistance that never came. And then, silence. The kind that feels too intentional. The kind that leaves the ears straining, waiting for something worse.

Before Jolvuthiz could recover from the disorientation, the real Bismark materialized beside him, the air thickening with chilling pressure. Bismark's polished boot lashed out, connecting with a sickening crack to Jolvuthiz’s left upper arm. Bone shattered. Jolvuthiz 'body cried out as his arm bent unnaturally, his left void-sword clattering to the ground.

Bismark didn’t pause. His right hand still gripping his elegant filigreed sword moved with blinding speed. The gleaming silver-grey blade flickered in the fractured light. It wasn’t a brutal chop but a swift, precise drawing cut, an extension of his cold contempt. The refined edge bit into Jolvuthiz’s right wrist with a clean, chilling slice severing tendon and bone with horrific ease. The filigreed hilt glinted near the wound before Jolvuthiz’s right hand twitched

Jolvuthiz staggered, excitement swallowing the agony. His breath came ragged and shallow. Bismark stepped close, his expression clinical and cold. His free hand shot out, clamping around Jolvuthiz 'jaw, white leather stained with blood, forcing his mouth wide open. Grit, salt, and iron filled Jolvuthiz’s taste buds.

Still holding the jaw open, Bismark bent smoothly, now free of his sword hand. He picked up Jolvuthiz 'severed right hand from the mud already cooling, fingers curled like a broken promise. Without hesitation, Bismark shoved the severed hand, palm first, deep into Jolvuthiz mouth. Cold, stiff fingers scraped the back of his throat. The taste of dirt, blood, and his own flesh filled him.

Bismark clamped his hand over Jolvuthiz’s mouth and nose, sealing off air. His other hand gripped the back of Jolvuthiz’s head, fingers tangling in blood-matted hair. With brutal force, he bent the neck backward unnaturally. Jolvuthiz gagged and choked, his body spasming in the iron grip. The severed hand was pushed deeper.

A final, terrible convulsion shook him. The obscene bulge traveled visibly down Jolvuthiz’s throat. Bismark released his grip, stepping back, his elegant sword now darkened with more than one kind of blood.

Jolvuthiz sank to his knees, trembling violently. His shattered left arm hung useless. His right ended in a ragged stump. Pain consumed his body. His stomach heaved, bile burning his throat along with the bitter taste of blood, dirt, and flesh. Tears streamed from his amethyst eyes, mingling with blood as his eyes opened wider than they were capable of.

He retched, convulsing harshly. Nothing came up. The hand remained lodged inside. Another spasm seized him, body wracked.

It started low, bubbling in his chest that rose, thick and wet, into a choking gurgle. Then it split, warped, and reshaped itself into something terrible: laughter. Ragged and breathless, it tore from his bloodied lips. “Ah ha ha ha” The sound cracked, raw and strained. “Ah ha ha ha!” It climbed higher, wilder, echoing through the shattered courtyard like the cry of a mind unmoored. “Ah ha ha ha!”

He threw his head back, tendons pulled taut like wires, laughing at the sky, at the pain, at the hand plunged deep inside him at the immaculate monster and his elegant, blood-drenched blade.

“Thank you, Bismark,” he rasped between fits of mad laughter. “That was a delicious meal,”

And still, the laughter poured out. It was the only sound left that could keep the abyss at bay.

Jolvuthiz’s laughter rose, a chilling cascade that seemed born from the marrow of the earth. He knelt in the churned mud, the iron-rich scent of blood carried on the warm breeze, mingling with the sour tang of upturned soil. His hair, ink-dark and damp with sweat, clung to his temples, while his eyes—amethyst orbs gleaming with unyielding fervor—reflected the broken light in the courtyard. Around him, fragments of shattered dreams lay scattered: splintered arrows, fragments of steel, and the silent testament of fallen warriors.

Bismark slid backwards across the churned earth, his polished boots leaving dark impressions in the mud. His navy coat billowed behind him, the braided gold catching the dying light in fleeting sparks. With impossible grace, he gathered momentum, the faint scent of ozone and sweat rising from him as he strained toward Jolvuthiz. As he closed the distance, his body became a coiled spring of elegant violence.

At the apex of his motion, Bismark’s leg arced above Jolvuthiz’s head and fell with crushing precision. The strike landed with bone-shuddering force, compressing layers of muscle and bone, yet Jolvuthiz’s expression did not waver. His smile widened, lips curled back over teeth stained red, as if the impact were a curious breeze against his skin.

Blood blossomed across Jolvuthiz’s temple, warm and iron-tanged, but he remained kneeling, a shadow-born statue of defiance. His voice, low and unwavering, carried through the courtyard like a dark incantation. "That fucking hurts what shall I ever do, I ate my right hand, my left arm is broken, my face is covered all in blood, but I am still knees, this is merely a warm-up," he declared, each word measured as the metallic taste of his own life filled his mouth.

Bismark paused, the air around him crackling faintly with unspoken menace. He scowled, breath pluming in the thick air, eyes narrowing beneath the silver slash of his brow. "What even are you, truly?" he demanded, voice edged like a honed blade. "I have repeatedly bashed you, drawning every drop of your strength, yet here you remain, mocking death itself that is not human.”

Jolvuthiz straightened, rising on blood-slicked knees as if drawn by unseen strings. The acrid scent of ozone, born from the clash of energies, crept into his nostrils. He inhaled deeply, savoring the mingled aroma of violence and possibility.

Without shifting his gaze from Bismark’s cobalt stare, he inclined his head once, an elegant bow wrought in defiance. As Jolvuthiz whispered "Observe," that single word resonated across the courtyard before plunging into darkness. The air groaned as it changed, dark purplish energy convulsing around him, the smooth grassy ground rumble at his feet seamlessly pulsing with hungry energy. In that moment, reality itself recoiled. once, then dropped to the mud with a soft, final thud.