The Sacrifice of Many

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.

The erratic sound between Jolvuthiz and Bismark ceased, a silence as heavy as the blood-stained grass and fallen bodies followed the word fading resonance. Jolvuthiz was a broken sculpture of pain, blood painted on his face as a constraint mask, drenched his dark hair and left large crimson wine stains on his clothing. His left arm was shattered, bent at an unnatural angle with jagging bone gleaming through torn flesh. His right arm was consumed by writhing, shadow-like energy, with blood darker than charcoal leaking from his severed hand. Each shallow breathed a croak that scraped his throat that carried the lingering coppery taste of his own flesh.

Then, terrifying stillness. The mad laughter that echoed tremendously moments before vanished, extinguished like a candle in a void. The light in Jolvuthiz amethyst-black eyes cooled, replaced by a chilling, predatory focus. Drawing a long unsteady breath, that scratched like stone, filled his nostrils of the iron-rich stench of the war and his own decay.

With a surreal, nearly mechanical grace that defied his broken state, Jolvuthiz pushed himself up onto his knees. Ignoring the sickening scraping of bone against chilly mud from his ruined left arm, as it hung lifeless and useless, with white protrusion gleaming wetly against torn flesh and dark leather. Mud and drying blood clung to his cheek, with plastering strands of sweat against his forehead. Slowly, but deliberately, he raised both arms diagonally upwards, positioning them high above his head. His shattered left arm maintained its impossible angle. His right arm, however, ended not in a simple stump, but in a seething shadowy vortex.

Where Jolvuthiz 'hand should have been, a mass of writhing, shadow-like energy consumed the terminus of his limb. It pulsed with a deep, internal rhythm of gears shifting, darker than the smoke sky above, snapping and coiling like serpents forged from a pure void. From within the churning darkness, rivulets of blood welled, instead of a bright crimson soaking the courtyard but a material darker than charcoal. It emerged sluggishly from the shadow-mass, dripping with unnatural weight onto the churned mud below, leaving small, ink-black stains. The air around it hummed with a deep, resonant frequency that vibrated in the teeth and tasted sharply metallic, like licking a live wire, undercut by a faint, acrid scent of scorched stone.

Bismark stood precisely distant from Jolvuthiz, an island of immaculate navy-blue and gold braid amidst the gore. His elegant sword, its silver-grey blade streaked with Jolvuthiz’s normal blood with its ornate golden filigree hilt smeared in crimson. His sly blue eyes, usually pools of glacial contempt, widened by a fraction. A minute crack appeared in his polished marble composure. His perfectly sculpted lips, curved in condescension, parted slightly. A sharp, involuntary intake breath, hissed between his teeth, a sound utterly foreign to his existence, shattering the heavy silence.

"HUH?" The word escaped Bismark, sharp, clipped, stripped bare of usual smooth mockery. It was pure confusion, a rare profound crack in his impenetrable facade. His gaze, suddenly razor sharp, focused between Jolvuthiz’s raised, ruined arms and the unnervingly calm, blood-streaked face beneath. The air prickled intensely, the scent of ozone warring with the metallic tang emanating from the writhing shadow-limb.

Within the tar-bleeding blackness consuming Jolvuthiz's right arm, the chaos began to take shape. It was not light that began to form, but a darker, more absolute darkness into distinct shape. Stark white bone, phalanges, metacarpals formed from the nothingness, intertwining with dreadful speed. They were smooth and polished like ivory, as though sculpted from the heart of a starless night. Around this spectral skeleton, strands of muscle and sinew spun themselves, glossy red and pale white fibres pulsing with crude, unnatural life. Tendons snapped taut with palpable tension, a presence sensed in the chest cavity more than it was ever heard. Finally, skin, pale and immaculate, flowed like liquid obsidian over the new musculature, merging seamlessly at the wrist. The entire gruesome ballet of regeneration was completed in a few ragged breaths. The new hand flexed, curling and uncurling its fingers in smooth, predatory ease, perfectly uninjured. The twisting shadow-energy dissipated like smoke, leaving only the regrown limb and the sharp tang of ozone and cold stone behind. The black, charcoal-thick blood ceased to flow.

Without a flicker of pain crossing his blood masked face, Jolvuthiz’s newly formed right hand reached across his body. It grasped his shattered left upper arm, just above the grotesque bend where jagged bone pierced leather and skin. His touch was firm, clinical, utterly detached from the ruin he touched. There was a muffled, wet grinding sensation transmitted through the air, a primitive feeling of bone fragments shifting beneath the skin, setting teeth on edge. Then, a sharp, decisive click resonated, unnaturally clear and precise against the backdrop of distant battle clamour. The unnatural angle vanished instantly, the arm snapping back into perfect alignment with brutal, efficient finality. The protruding bone end vanished beneath rapidly knitting flesh, leaving only smooth, unbroken, pale skin. Jolvuthiz rotated the arm at the shoulder, testing the joint. It moved smoothly, fluidly, as if the devastating fracture had been nothing more than a phantom. No scowl touched his lips. No gasp escaped him. Only the faintest, residual shimmer of dark energy, like heat haze over sun-baked rock, clung to his right side.

He lowered both arms, whole and functional once more. His amethyst-black eyes, burning with cold, predatory fire, locked onto Bismark. The silence stretched, thick with the coppery stench of fresh blood from his regenerated limbs, the tang of dark power, the fading scent of scorched stone, and the profound, unsettling absence of expected agony. Jolvuthiz stood amidst the gore, a testament to unnatural resilience, his gaze promising only the resumption of a nightmare Bismark had thought concluded. The immaculate Principal remained frozen, his expression momentarily unreadable, the faintest tremor visible in the hand clenched around the hilt of his elegant, bloodied sword. The air crackled, charged not just with energy, but with the chilling realisation that the ground had irrevocably shifted beneath their feet, and the predator they thought broken had shed his wounds like an old skin.

As Jolvuthiz stood with his newly regenerated right hand held up before his face, flexing fingers that skin was swirling a darkish purplish energy unblemished against the blood smearing his skin and tattered clothes. A hauntingly patronising smile stretched his lips as he addressed Bismark, whose immaculate navy-blue form stood a few distance away with the only sign of disturbance was a minute tightening around his cool, sly blue eyes and the whitening knuckles gripping his elegant sword’s filigreed hilt.

"See," Jolvuthiz began, his voice a smooth, mocking scrape that carried over the distant din of battle, thick with the lingering taste of his own swallowed flesh still coating his tongue and the faint scent of his dark power clinging to the air, "if you never force me to eat my hand after you slice it off," he emphasized, slowly turning the flawless hand, admiring its unnatural smoothness in the chaotic light, "I wouldn’t have been able to regenerate my hand back" He paused, letting the implication hang in the blood-scented air thick with dust and the sharp tang of voided bowels, his amethyst-black eyes locking onto Bismark’s with predatory amusement, "like a ghoul can." The final words dripped with derision, a stark contrast to the horrifying resilience displayed in his perfectly restored limb.

Bismark’s cool blue eyes snapped wide, locking onto Jolvuthiz’s with the intensity of a man staring into an abyss. The scent of air and blood thickened between them. His voice dropped to a resonant, icy vibration: "You’re not human. Just a lost soul from another race that wandered into the military’s grasp, being used as their pawn." The words hung, sharp as the blade in his hand.

Jolvuthiz’s newly formed right hand and his left snapped downwards, fingers closing with predatory certainty around the hilts of his fallen void-blades lying in the gore-slick mud. The dark metal felt unnaturally cold and alive against his regenerated palm, humming with ravenous energy. In one fluid, terrifying motion, he became a whirling vortex of darkness. His body spun with lethal grace, arms outstretched, each blade carving a blurred, full-circle arc through the heavy, blood-scented air. He completed five blinding rotations, the displaced wind whipping strands of blood-matted hair across his face, his power intensifying with each pass. On the final spin, he snapped both arms forward in a vicious, simultaneous thrust, the twin points aimed squarely at Bismark’s retreating form.

From the converging tips of the void-blades, a torrent of pure, devouring shadow erupted. It wasn't a wave; it was a focused, lancing bolt of condensed absence, tearing through the space between them with a silent scream that vibrated in the teeth and left a trail of distorted, heat-haze air. The ground beneath its path seemed to wither momentarily, the churned mud darkening to pitch.

[Mashing Strike]

But Bismark was already moving. The instant Jolvuthiz began his spinning assault, the immaculate Principal had pivoted on the hill of one polished boot. He didn't run in panic; he flowed backwards with unnerving speed and precision, his navy-blue coat flaring like dark wings, putting significant distance between himself and the epicenter of the impending blast. By the time the Mashing Strike lanced forth, Bismark stood well beyond its immediate reach, observing its devastating trajectory from a position of calculated safety. The chaotic light glinted coldly off his golden braid and the filigree of his own elegant, bloodied sword held loosely at his side.

Jolvuthiz watched the dark energy streak past its intended target, his burning amethyst-black eyes fixed on Bismark’s distant, composed figure. A feral grin split his blood-smeared face. "Why are you running?" he called out, his voice a sharp, mocking blade cutting through the battlefield's din, thick with the taste of his own swallowed flesh and the metallic tang of his power. "Come on and fight me!!" The challenge hung in the ozone-charged air, a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the retreating serpent in silk.

Jolvuthiz didn’t hesitate. His burning amethyst-black eyes tracked Bismark’s retreating silhouette. With a guttural snarl that tasted of blood and digested horror, he snapped both void-blades forward again.

[Mashing Strike]

The twin swords of devouring darkness rippled through the air, vibrating the ground beneath their path, leaving trails of heat-distorted emptiness. But Jolvuthiz didn’t stop. He repeated the motion four times in rapid succession – left, right, left, right – each thrust sending another focused demonic dark energy bolts of annihilation screaming towards the fleeing Principal. Five converging lines of pure shadow erupted, fanning out to cover an eighty-degree arc ahead of Bismark, aiming to cage him, to leave no avenue of escape. The air itself groaned under the pressure, thick with the scent of scorched earth and the metallic tang of Jolvuthiz’s dark power.

Bismark, already moving with preternatural speed, didn’t falter. As the first Mashing Strike seared past, nearly skimming him, he became a streak of navy blue and gold. His polished boots barely touched the crimson-slicked ground as he curved with impossible agility around the outermost bolt on the far right, the devouring energy humming past close enough to stir the crimson lapels of his grey overcoat. A bead of sweat, stark against his pale forehead, traced a path down his jawline. Bismark didn’t slow; he shifted his momentum instantly, his form blurring as he accelerated into a dead sprint directly away from Jolvuthiz, his muscles coiling like springs beneath the tailored fabric, breath hissing sharply between clenched teeth as he poured every ounce of speed into widening the gap, putting maximum distance between himself and the converging storm of shadows. The disciplined lines of his uniform remained impossibly crisp against the backdrop of carnage, though the faint dampness now glistening at his hairline betrayed the extreme exertion.

CLICK

The sharp, precise sound of his gloved fingers snapping cut through the roar of the dark energies.

[Fake Morph]

One moment, Bismark was a dwindling figure sprinting straight ahead. The next he simply ceased to exist in that space. There was no blur, no fade, just an absolute, jarring absence replaced his form.

Immediately, the air warped directly in front of Jolvuthiz’s face. Bismark materialised as if stepping through a tear in reality, his cool blue eyes inches away, his immaculate features devoid of exertion. His right fist, encased in pristine white leather, was already driving forward with driving force, aimed squarely at Jolvuthiz’s nose. The displaced air whipped strands of blood-matted hair across Jolvuthiz’s cheek.

Jolvuthiz, however, didn’t flinch, standing still infront Bismark materialise form. Not a muscle twitched. No blade rose in defense. Instead, a feral grin, wide and mocking, split his blood-smeared face as his amethyst-black eyes locked onto Bismark’s cool blue gaze, burning with pure, predatory defiance. "Go on, Principal Seven," his voice was a low, taunting scrape, thick with the lingering taste of copper and swallowed horror. "Hit me as hard as you can." He didn’t just let the punch connect; he invited it, leaning infinitesimally into the trajectory of Bismark’s piston-driven fist.

Bismark’s white-leathered knuckles drove forward, aimed squarely at Jolvuthiz’s nose. Which met nothing. No jarring impact of bone on bone. No spray of blood or cartilage. The fist passed through Jolvuthiz’s head as if through thick fog. There was only a chilling distortion in the air, a ripple like heat hase where Bismark body should have been, accompanied by the faint whisper of displaced air and the unsettling absence of any tactile sensation for Jolvuthiz’s.

The frontal assault dissolved into silent distortion as Bismark's fist passed through empty air revealing the attack itself as his own [Fake Morph] illusion, a decoy conjured to mask his true position. Jolvuthiz hadn't moved an inch from his original stance. A cold smirk touched his lips as Bismark illusion vanished, leaving only a ripple of heat haze and the faint scent of scorched ozone where it had been. His amethyst-black eyes, burning with predatory focus, never left the space behind him Jolvuthiz sensed the real threat coalescing there: a subtle pressure drop in the air, an unnatural chill gathering at his back.

Simultaneously, the real Bismark, stepping from fractured light directly behind Jolvuthiz. His form solidified with lethal intent, cool blue eyes locked onto the base of Jolvuthiz's skull, his fist already arcing forward in a blow meant to shatter bone.

But Jolvuthiz was already uncoiling. His boots ground into the blood-soaked earth as his body whipped around. Where he had faced the dissolving illusion, his back was now squarely towards its last position. His shoulders, hips, and feet spun in one violent, unified motion, a back-to-front reversal executed with the speed of a striking serpent. Tattered leather ripped against the air, and the dark energy writhing across his right side flared like agitated smoke. Momentum carried him, not as a stumble, but as a lethal redirection.

As his spin slammed to a halt, facing the space where his back had been a heartbeat before, his right arm was already a blur. Muscles corded beneath blood-slicked skin, driving the void-blade forward in a vicious thrust. The humming black point speared towards Bismark, an interception timed to pierce flesh before the descending fist could crush his skull. The blade's path was cold, certain, aimed to turn Bismark's lethal ambush into a fatal miscalculation.

Bismark’s left hand shot out with viper-strike precision. Not to parry the thrust, but to intercept its deadly path. White leather closed around the humming dark metal of the void-blade’s flat, just below its razor tip, arresting its forward momentum with jarring, bone-deep force. The devouring edge sizzled against the pristine glove, emitting thin tendrils of acrid smoke that carried the sharp scent of scorched leather and molten metal, yet failed to pierce through. Inches separated their faces Bismark’s cold blue eyes, now narrowed with intense focus and a sheen of exertion visible on his forhead, locked onto Jolvuthiz’s snarling visage. In those depths, beneath the icy calculation, flickered a hard-won spark of comprehension, a predator recognizing another predator’s nature.

"Your rank is known to me," Bismark stated, his voice a low, resonant vibration that cut through the air, devoid of its usual silkiness, thick with the coppery reek of blood and the static charge of their clashing energies. "I'm starting to understand your agency." He leaned his weight into the downward pressure on the blade, the muscles in his neck standing out like cords against his starched collar. "However understand this," he hissed, his breath warm against Jolvuthiz’s blood-smeared cheek, "I shall not allow you to stab my flesh with that blade again, even if the form is an illusion."

While his left hand pinned the void-blades down, Bismark’s right fist, still clenched, whipped forward in a short, brutal arc. It connected solidly with the side of Jolvuthiz’s jaw. The impact resonated not with a single sound, but with a sickening, wet crunch of compressed tissue and shifting bone that echoed dully in the immediate space. Jolvuthiz’s head snapped sharply to the side, his neck tendons standing out like cables. Blood and saliva sprayed from his lips, adding fresh crimson to the grotesque mask already staining his face. He staggered half a step, the feral grin momentarily replaced by a rictus of shock and fresh pain, the taste of copper flooding his mouth anew.

Bismark’s lips formed two silent words – [Dreaming Lance] – as his elegant sword traced a subtle arc through the blood-scented air. Instantly, a wave of distorted perception rippled outward. Balisarda’s archers perched on shattered battlements lowered their bows, their dirt-brown faces slackening before twisting into identical masks of snarling hatred, all eyes locking onto Jolvuthiz amidst the carnage. Below, soldiers in dark blue who moments ago grappled with rust-red defenders abruptly shoved their foes aside, their disciplined gases narrowing with identical contempt as they too turned weapons towards the shadow-wreathed master. The courtyard became a sea of hostile eyes and bared steel, a unified front of misplaced fury. The air filled with the guttural roar of dozens charging and sharp hiss of arrows knocked and loosed, all converging on a single target.

Jolvuthiz became a vortex of focused violence amidst the roaring tide of misdirected fury. Arrows hissed past his ears, blades flashed towards him from all sides – blue uniforms and brown leather united in their illusion-fueled hatred. He ignored it all. His world narrowed to Bismark, inches away, hand still locked on his blade.

In one fluid, brutal motion, Jolvuthiz dropped his center of gravity, coiling like a spring. His left leg was a piston, snapping upwards with devastating speed and precision. The worn leather of his boot connected not with torso or limb, but with shocking, intimate force squarely at the apex of Bismark’s thighs, right beneath the tailored line of his immaculate navy trousers.

CRUNCH.

The sound was sickeningly dense, a muffled impact of leather meeting vulnerable flesh and bone beneath fine fabric. Bismark’s entire body jolted. His cool blue eyes bulged impossibly wide, shock obliterating calculation. All breath exploded from his lungs in a strangled, wet gasp. His face, always composed, contorted into a rictus of pure, unadulterated agony – mouth a silent scream, skin draining to a corpse-like pallor. His grip on Jolvuthiz’s void-blade vanished instantly, white-gloved fingers splaying wide as if electrocuted.

Propelled by the brutal force of the kick, Bismark was lifted clean off his feet. He didn't fly; he was punched upwards, legs instinctively drawing up, body curling into a fetal ball of excruciating pain. The pristine lines of his navy coat and grey overcoat flapped uselessly around him as he ascended like a broken puppet yanked on a string. A thin, involuntary whimper escaped his clenched teeth, followed by a ragged, breathless rasp that scraped the air "Shit… fucking hell..." His voice was thick, choked, laced with a nausea so profound it vibrated in the words. One hand clutched his lower abdomen, knuckles white beneath the glove; the other flailed wildly, seeking purchase in empty air. "I feel like... I'm going to vomit." Tears of pure, involuntary agony welled in his wide, unseeing eyes. The scent of his own sudden, acrid fear-sweat cut through the battlefield reek.

Before Bismark could align himself in his painful ascent, the air shifted behind him. Jolvuthiz hadn’t merely jumped, he’d launched himself from the churned earth with impossible force. From his left shoulder blade, a single, jagged construct of pure, devouring darkness – like a fractured night given wing – flared into existence, snapping taut with a sound like tearing velvet. It propelled him silently, a shadow against the bruised sky, closing the distance in a heartbeat. He hung suspended for a fraction of a second directly behind the doubled-over Bismark, his blood-soaked form a stark horror against the battlefield panorama below. His tattered clothes were saturated crimson, plastered to his skin, his face a grotesque mask of drying gore beneath the matted dark hair. His amethyst-black eyes burned with cold fire.

"Hello." The word slipped from Jolvuthiz’s lips, not a shout, not a snarl, but a soft, almost childlike murmur, devoid of malice yet dripping with unsettling incongruity. It carried clearly to Bismark’s ears, cutting through the distant battle din and his own ragged breathing.

The sound struck Bismark like physical ice water. A violent shudder wracked his frame, deeper than the pain from the kick. Primal terror, cold and absolute, flashed across his refined features – a widening of the cool blue eyes into panicked saucers, a momentary slackening of his jaw, the scent of his own fear-sweat suddenly sharp and acrid. It was the horror of the utterly unexpected, the monstrous delivered in a timid whisper. The state lasted only a fractured moment, shattered by sheer force of will. Bismark’s eyes snapped back into focus, the terror replaced by blazing fury and a drenching cold sweat on his brow. He wrenched his body around in mid-air, twisting to face the source of the nightmare whisper, coming eye-to-eye with the blood-drenched specter that was Jolvuthiz, hanging effortlessly on his dark wing, a chilling smile playing on his gore-streaked lips.

The duel of shadows and silk raged near the ruined keep, the greater slaughter within the courtyard walls continued unabated, as grim tapestry woven in mud, steel, and screaming flesh. The air hung thick and cloying, an unpleasant scent of iron-rich blood, the sour tang of voided bowels, churned earth, and the acrid bite of fear-sweat. It coated the tongue, stung the eyes, and pressed down with physical weight.

The brutal meeting of steel was a constant, jarring percussion. A defender's rust-red cleaver, heavy and notched, crashed against a military shield of reinforced blue-lacquered titanium. The impact reverberated up the defender's arms, visible in the violent tremor of his brown-leather-clad shoulders and the grunt forced from his lips. Sparks, brief and vicious, spat where the edges scraped, their fleeting light illuminating strained faces locked in a death-shove. The shockwave traveled through the tightly packed blue ranks behind the shield-bearer, a ripple of compressed bodies.

A young soldier in dark blue wool, his face a mask of desperate concentration, suddenly arched backwards. A spearhead, slick with gore and driven with desperate force by a dirt-brown clad defender, punched through boiled leather beneath his arm and deep into his side. A wet, choked gasp escaped him, more a bubble than a scream, his eyes wide with shock before the light fled them. He folded, dark blood spreading rapidly across the pristine blue fabric, soaking into the thirsty mud beneath him. Nearby, a defender reeled, clutching at the ruin of his throat where a military sword had found the gap in his rusted gorget, bright arterial blood fountaining in shocking crimson arcs to splatter the grim faces of comrades and foes alike. The sound was a horrible, wet gargle, lost beneath the din.

From the jagged remnants of the walls, arrows whispered down like malevolent insects. They were unseen until impact. A soldier charging through the shattered gateway, shield raised high, suddenly jolted as if struck by an invisible hammer. A feathered shaft protruded grotesquely from the gap between his helmet rim and gorget. He collapsed like a puppet with severed strings, his shield clattering over him. Another man, scrambling over a pile of rubble, took an arrow high in the back. He stumbled, confusion warring with dawning agony on his face as he looked down, perhaps expecting to see the fletching vibrating against his blue wool, before his legs betrayed him. The air hummed with their passage, a deadly music punctuated by the wet thuds of impacts finding flesh or the brittle crack of striking stone.

The ground was treacherous, slick with mud and churned into a bloody mire by thousands of frantic boots. Bodies lay tangled in grotesque embraces, slumped against broken masonry, blue uniforms stained dark purple, rough-spun brown tunics soaked black with crimson. Faces, moments ago contorted with rage or terror, slackened into the terrible, empty peace of death, eyes reflecting the indifferent, smoke-hazed sky above. The banners, what few remained, hung heavy and sodden, their colours muted by dust and the pervasive reek. It was a charnel pit, a grinding machine of flesh and metal where the only victor was the reaper, harvesting his grim crop beneath the broken teeth of the gate. The flood of disciplined blue met the desperate shards of brown and rust-red, and the mud drank deep.

It wasn't merely a skirmish unfolding between Balisarda Sumernor forces and the Military soldiers, you understand. No, this was a full-blown war, echoing through the very courtyard of the castle and spilling violently beyond its walls. And the cause? Chris. With desperate precision, he redirected all of the remaining swords from Takemikazuchi's wrath before they could fall. Sending them not upon the combatants, but crashing into the massive fortified wall. That wall, arching protectively around the courtyard until it met the castle's southwest flank. Its destruction was instant and catastrophic. The sole gateway, the only entrance through Balisarda Sumernor impenetrable castle gateway. Became Utterly demolished. And all around this cataclysm, if you'd been there, you would have heard it: the relentless hiss of arrows, the ceaseless metallic shriek of swords clashing, and beneath it all, the piercing screams of men in agony.

It wasn't merely a skirmish unfolding between Balisarda Sumernor forces and the Military soldiers, you understand. No, this was a full-blown war, echoing through the very courtyard of the castle and spilling violently beyond its walls. And the cause? Chris. With desperate precision, he redirected all of the remaining swords from Takemikazuchi's wrath before they could fall. Sending them not upon the combatants, but crashing into the massive fortified wall. That wall, arching protectively around the courtyard until it met the castle's southwest flank. Its destruction was instant and catastrophic. The sole gateway, the only entrance through Balisarda Sumernor impenetrable castle gateway. Became Utterly demolished. And all around this cataclysm, if you'd been there, you would have heard it: the relentless hiss of arrows, the ceaseless metallic shriek of swords clashing, and beneath it all, the piercing screams of men in agony.

However, far away from the war on the top of a hill stood the leader of this war, Jabari, watching the death of men taking place, but the sound of the present dissolved beneath the relentless echo of the past within his mind.

The wind clawed at his high collar, thick with the distant butcher-shop reek of blood and voided bowels, a physical manifestation of the slaughter below. Yet, it was drowned by spectral voices, sharp as shrapnel in his memory:

“You keep counting the bodies you’ve sent to their deaths, Commander. I’ll keep counting the ones I’ve cut down myself. The difference is, that mine were enemies. Yours? Just pawns on a board you’re too scared to stand on.” Mephistopheles’s voice, cold and accusatory, cutting through years, landing with the force of a physical blow. Jabari’s jaw tightened, the memory tasting like ash and failure on his tongue

“No, Jabari. It’s not illogical for him. He’s already accepted his death. To him, it’s the only way to give the rest of us a chance to live. You think he’s reckless? He’s the only one brave enough to act while the rest of us argue over strategies and politics.” Chris' earnest defense followed, a counterpoint that offered no comfort, only the sting of perceived hesitation. The scent of old campfires and desperation seemed to ghost past Jabari’s nostrils.

"Where do you think all this destruction is coming from, huh? You stand here, a pillar of strength, yet you can’t even see what directions the root of this attack is coming from." Jolvuthiz’s mocking rasp, recent yet echoing like the others, scraped against his nerves. The phantom sensation of dark, devouring energy seemed to prick Jabari’s skin, a remembered pressure from Jolvuthiz’s earlier confrontation.

“You know, Jabari, it’s as if you’re working for Balisarda Sumernor! At this point, you’re no better than him just as he betrayed the Ultimate Bloodshed User, you’re going to betray the military! I see it already!” Chris’s voice returned, raw with betrayal, a blade twisting in an old wound. The accusation vibrated in Jabari’s chest, a cold weight beneath his starched white shirt and precisely knotted black tie.

Yet, one voice resonated deeper, clearer than the chaotic chorus of doubt and blame: “I want you to wage war on Balisarda Sumernor for me, he killed my father and you are indeed the highest rank of the ten masters, right?” Mephistopheles. Not the cold accuser, but the younger man, driven by raw, desperate grief. The memory wasn't just sound; it was the remembered pressure of Mephistopheles’s hand gripping his arm, the heat of fury and unshed tears in his eyes, the scent of rain and damp stone from that night in Military Central HQ. That plea, that charge, was the bedrock beneath the carnage unfolding below. It was the unyielding stone upon which Jabari stood. However there was one more reason for war that even Jabari didn’t tell anyone including Mephistopheles, it was an order given to him.

Jabari stood immobile on the hill, the distant screams a muffled dirge beneath the storm in his mind. Wind clawed at his collar, thick with the iron stench of sacrifice. Dew glinted like frozen tears in his cropped hair.

“I lied to everyone,” the truth echoed coldly within him. “I told them all I was looking for one individual to be a sacrifice. I was lying.” The faces of the dying soldiers below flashed, pawns in the Military design. Ash coated his tongue.

“So I picked Mephistopheles.” The memory surged, rain-lashed stones, damp wool cloaks, a hand gripping his arm with desperate strength. “It was a part of the plan. Me and Mephistopheles got into an augment in front of everyone. It was an act.” He recalled the staged agument, the harsh words meant to isolate. Ice traced his spine. “to ensure no one knew the real plan.”

His volcanic gaze swept the slaughter. “Every single individual beside Mephistopheles is a sacrifice.” The admission was a blade in his gut. The copper scent of their blood thickened. “so we would gain the focus of Balisarda Sumernor army and his ten principals.” He saw Bismark’s elegant cruelty below, a distraction.

“While Mephistopheles would fight Balisarda Sumernor one on one.” The gambit. Hundreds dying for one blade’s chance. Dawn light caught his brass buttons cold, unblinking eyes witnessing the cost. The hill’s weight pressed up through his boots, mirroring the lie crushing his shoulders.

However, there was one more detail left out. as to why the military waged war on Balisarda Sumernor and his kingdom………