The Weight of Judgment

A gale heavy with the slaughterhouse stench of distant blood and the sharp, burnt-metal tang of their colliding powers clawed at the figures hanging in the scorching sky. It found no purchase. Tattered leather flapped violently against Jolvuthiz's shadow-wreathed form; the crimson lapels of Bismark's grey overcoat snapped like pennants, yet neither warrior yielded an inch to the buffeting air. Below, the bruised heavens deepened towards violet.

Bismark retreated through the churning sky. His polished black boots tread empty air as if descending an invisible staircase, each step measured and precise. The wind snatched at his attire: the immaculate navy-blue double-breasted coat flared like the wings of a storm-dark raptor, gold braid along cuffs and seams fracturing the fading light into shards. Crimson lapels flashed against the charcoal-grey overcoat like fresh wounds.

As he withdrew, the atmosphere behind him shivered. A duplicate Bismark coalesced, same silver hair, same spotless white gloves, same predatory stillness. Then a second. A third. Three identical Principals hung suspended in his wake, their navy wool and crimson accents perfect mirror images. For one frozen heartbeat, they existed as a quartet of elegant menace. Then the first replica frayed at the edges, dissolving into wind-scattered ash. The second blurred, its form bleeding into mist. The third simply winked out, leaving only the true Bismark descending, his expression untouched by the vanishing specters.

"Cease this fucking charade and fight me!" Jolvuthiz's roar shattered the air between them. Tendons stood like cables in his neck, jaw clenched so tight the bone threatened to splinter beneath pale skin. Spittle flew from lips peeled back over razor-sharp teeth, catching the bruised light. His amethyst eyes, vivid as fractured gemstones within the frame of layered jet-black hair, locked onto Bismark's silver-haired form with predatory fixity. No trace of the afterimages remained in that burning gaze.

The darkish-purple energy devouring his right side convulsed. Tendrils thick as pythons snapped free from his tattered vest and torn trousers, lashing the charged atmosphere. Shadow-substance boiled off his corrupted flesh like steam from acid. Then he detonated forward. One moment he hung in the twilight; the next, he warped across the intervening space – a streak of tattered leather, whipping hair, and ravenous shadow. Air screamed in the vacuum of his passage.

His void-forged blades, a shard of solidified absence that warped light around its edges, swept upwards in a vicious diagonal. Its trajectory aimed unerringly for the precise point where the gold-braided hem of Bismark's navy coat met the immaculate line of his dark trousers – a killing arc designed to sever spine from pelvis. The hum radiating from the dark metal vibrated in the teeth, tasting of wind and frozen iron.

Twin shards of solidified void screamed towards Bismark. The blade in Jolvuthiz's right hand – wreathed in lashing tendrils of darkish-purple energy – grazed the brass button on Bismark's navy coat. Its sister blade in his left, similarly sheathed in devouring light, carved upward toward his floating ribs.

Bismark’s spine became a drawn bowstring. Vertebrae aligned with liquid precision as powerful legs pistoned downward against empty sky. He inverted in a single, seamless motion, a backflip that transformed grey overcoat and navy wool into a swirling dark blossom, gold braid fracturing the light. At the apex, suspended upside-down, his right leg snapped straight. The reinforced toe of his polished boot connected flush with Jolvuthiz's temple.

Bone met leather with brutal finality. Jolvuthiz’s head whipped sideways. Amethyst eyes vanished behind rolling whites. A fine crimson spray misted the air from his bitten tongue. Momentum died. The writhing shadows devouring his right side convulsed violently. The hungry energy sheathing both void-blades flickered and dimmed. Gravity seized him, dragging the stunned warrior and his sputtering blades earthward like a stone wrapped in dying lightning.

Jolvuthiz struck earth. Back-first. Frozen mud cracked beneath him like thin ice. A plume of half-frozen slush and congealed blood erupted skyward, raining down on his tattered leathers and the seething dark energy consuming his right side. The impact hammered the breath from his lungs in a silent, agonized convulsion – ribs flexed against leather, mouth gaping soundlessly before a ragged, wet gasp tore free. Ice crystals and gore plastered his layered jet-black hair to his temples.

Before that gasp finished, Bismark blotted out the bruised sky above him. The Principal descended like a guillotine blade finding its channel – absolute, vertical, inevitable. One polished black boot landed without sound beside Jolvuthiz's head, sinking a finger's width into the crimson-stained slush. The other boot drove downward. Reinforced leather sole met unprotected solar plexus. A visible shockwave rippled up Jolvuthiz's torso, snapping his spine into a bow. The sickening crunch of stressed cartilage vibrated through the frozen ground. Jolvuthiz folded, knees slamming into his own chest, a choked, bubbling scream spraying flecks of blood across Bismark's immaculate trouser leg.

Bismark didn't pause. He used the yielding resistance of Jolvuthiz's abdomen as a springboard, pushing off with the effortless contempt of a man brushing lint from his sleeve. He arced backward, a dark comet in reverse, grey overcoat flaring. He landed five precise strides distant, the twin silver scabbards at his hips holding their hungry, void-forged blades utterly still. His boots settled on the frozen mire without leaving a smudge. The crimson lapels of his overcoat lay perfectly flat against the dark wool. He stood poised, the elegant filigreed hilt of his own sword resting lightly in his white-gloved hand, his cool blue gaze fixed on the crumpled shadow-warrior like a collector observing a shattered, yet fascinating, specimen.

Agony radiated from Jolvuthiz’s skull and core, a white-hot counterpoint to the icy fury burning in his amethyst eyes. Ignoring the shrieking protests of bruised muscle and cracked bone, fueled by adrenaline and pure, unadulterated battle-hunger, he surged upwards. He planted his boots firmly in the sucking mire, hauling himself upright with a convulsive heave. Blood streamed from a split lip, matting dark strands of hair to his temples. His gaze, burning with defiance, locked onto Bismark’s cool, sly blue eyes.

“PANDORA BOX!”

The command tore from Jolvuthiz's throat not as sound, but as a distortion in reality itself, a guttural vibration that warped the air molecules around him. The devouring energy consuming his right side convulsed like a living thing in agony. Ropey tendrils of darkish-purple lightning snapped free from his flesh, whipping violently through the charged atmosphere. What had been contained torment erupted outward with tectonic force, a flash-flood of pure void-substance that shredded light and space in its wake.

This was no mere energy discharge. The darkness solidified as it expanded, crystallizing into towering walls of absolute negation. Fifty meters of hungry absence slammed downward, encasing both combatants within a cylinder of churning anti-light. The courtyard's carnage vanished, replaced by a suffocating pocket dimension where the only illumination came from the walls' own internal lightning—fractal patterns of violet-black energy that pulsed like diseased veins. Air thickened into syrup, carrying the taste of frozen battery acid and the prickling static of overloading circuits. Bismark's polished boots sank slightly into earth that now felt like graveyard soil.

Within this self-made prison, Jolvuthiz moved with ritualistic precision. His right boot ground into the mud, heel digging a crescent trench. Spine aligned into a predatory curve as his center of gravity dropped low, hips coiled like springs. The matte steel gauntlet drew back, elbow tucked tight against ribs, knuckles bleaching white around the void-blade's grip. His corrupted right arm extended forward, sword held parallel to the earth—tip unwavering as a compass needle pointed at Bismark's navel. Every tendon stood in sharp relief beneath sweat-slicked skin, trembling with contained annihilation.

No breath. No warning. Jolvuthiz detonated upward.

Tattered leather and whipping shadow merged into a single lethal blur. The void-blade carved upward in a vicious diagonal trajectory—left hip to right shoulder—its passage displacing air with a subsonic hum that vibrated teeth. Frozen mud crystallized in the wake of its dark edge, the very ground recoiling from its hunger. Bismark's reflection warped across the onyx metal as it screamed toward its destination, close enough to kiss the brass buttons of his immaculate coat.

High above, in the shattered quiet of his throne room

Balisarda Sumernor stood amidst the settling dust motes dancing in shafts of light piercing the hole Jabari had torn. Gwen’s headless corpse lay forgotten nearby, the dark stain on the white marble spreading slowly. His glacial blue eyes, devoid of the momentary annoyance Jabari had provoked, flickered with detached assessment towards the courtyard far below. His gaze pierced distance, settling unerringly on the cylinder of churning darkness that had erupted amidst his domain – Jolvuthiz’s Pandora’s Box.

A faint, almost imperceptible shimmer played across the ancient bronze scales on his chest. He raised his right hand, palm upturned, fingers relaxed. The air before his palm condensed. Not with heat, but with an intense, localized cold that stole the warmth from the surrounding stones. Frost bloomed instantly on the polished marble floor at his feet. From the coalescing mist of super-cooled air and raw power, a blade formed. It was long, straight, and impossibly elegant, forged not of metal, but of solidified glacial ice so dense it appeared a profound, luminous blue – a Hallstatt Sword. Intricate, fractal patterns shimmered within its depths like captured lightning. It hummed with a silent, bone-deep vibration, radiating an aura of absolute zero.

Balisarda’s fingers didn’t grasp it. They merely flicked, a gesture of utter dismissal. The ice sword shot forward like a comet cast from a glacier’s heart. It tore through the jagged hole in the throne room wall, a silent streak of blue-white death descending with impossible speed and unerring precision. It ignored the chaotic air, the intervening structures, homing in on the open top of Jolvuthiz’s energy prison far below.

Within Pandora's Box

Jolvuthiz’s void-blades were a hair’s breadth from shearing through navy wool and flesh. Twin shards of hungry darkness screamed towards their target.

Then the Hallstatt Sword struck. It pierced Pandora's Box’s open apex – a blue-white meteor of condensed arctic rage. It found its mark: the back of Jolvuthiz’s right heel. There was no tearing of leather or flesh. Instead, a high, crystalline screech echoed through the dark cylinder as the glacial blade punched through tendon and bone like a diamond drill meeting stone, pinning the Achilles tendon deep into the frozen earth. The shock wasn’t impact, but instantaneous, soul-deep cold. A thousand needles of absolute zero stabbed upward through marrow and nerve.

Jolvuthiz’s roar died, strangled by the cold locking his throat. His forward momentum died mid-swing. The void-blades’ hungry hum choked off as his leg buckled like rotten timber. He crashed face-first into the gore-slicked mud, breath exploding in a frozen plume.

Instinct drove his free hand. Fingers slick with blood and filth clawed for the luminous blue hilt protruding from his heel. Skin tore on contact, freezing instantly to the impossibly smooth, frigid surface.

Then the blade reacted. The intense cold within its luminous core surged. It wasn’t passive seepage; it was a wave of aggressive, crystalline conquest. Visible frost exploded outward from the wound – jagged patterns of hoarfrost crawling up his mud-stained trousers with terrifying speed. Tendons in his calf seized with audible cracks, snapping rigid. Muscles beneath locked into immovable stone. Blood vessels turned to brittle blue tracery beneath paling skin. Within two agonizing heartbeats, seamless, glass-clear ice encased both legs from thigh to frozen earth, fusing leather, flesh, and soil into a single, immobile mass. The cold was beyond pain – a burning numbness that devoured sensation, leaving only the terrifying certainty of paralysis. He was no longer a warrior, but an insect trapped in glacial amber, raging silently within his own collapsing darkness.

Bismark, who hadn’t flinched during the assault or the descent of the ice blade, took a single, deliberate step forward on the frozen ground. His cool, sly blue eyes swept from the immobilized Jolvuthiz to the glacial blue sword pinning him, then upwards towards the hole in his box, as if tracing its origin back to the distant throne room. A subtle, utterly condescending smile touched his lips, not reaching his eyes. His voice, when it came, was smooth, resonant, and laced with chilling certainty that echoed in the unnatural silence of Pandora's Box.

“A decisive intervention, wouldn’t you agree?” Bismark purred, his gaze settling back on Jolvuthiz’s contorted face, the predatory grin now warped by pain and shock. “It seems Master Balisarda Sumernor deemed this little performance between you and me worth an intervention, wanting a conclusion. He sent a rather chilling message straight to your Achilles. I suppose,” he added, the false sympathy thick as oil, “this rather freezes your options, Jolvuthiz. The dance, it appears, is finally over.”

Bismark’s words hung in the frigid air, thick as the wind stench of Jolvuthiz’s dying power. A subtle shift fractured the pain and fury contorting Jolvuthiz’s face. His amethyst eyes, burning like trapped stars within the ice-encased ruin of his body, flickered. Not with rage, but pure, icy disbelief. The predatory snarl froze mid-curve. How? The unspoken question screamed in the minute trembling of his bloodied lips, the slight widening of his pupils. His name – Jolvuthiz – spoken with such casual certainty by this immaculate enemy in this desolate prison… it was a key turning in a lock he hadn't known existed.

Bismark saw it. A slow, predatory grin stretched across his face, utterly devoid of warmth, revealing the glint of perfect teeth against pale skin. It was the grin of a cat revealing the mouse’s nest it had known about all along. He took a single, deliberate step closer, the polished toe of his boot crunching faintly on frozen blood-slush mere inches from Jolvuthiz’s ice-encased knees.

“Confusion becomes you, shadow-dancer,” Bismark purred, his voice smooth as chilled oil. He tilted his head, a mockery of curiosity. “Wondering how a Principal of Balisarda Sumernor knows the name of Military Master Four? I also know of the sacrifice sent skulking through his Lord’s halls.” He tapped a white-gloved finger thoughtfully against the gleaming filigree of his sword hilt. “The stench of your camp was… memorable. Sour sweat, rotting bandages, despair thick enough to choke on. And firelight. Always firelight dancing on broken men.”

A flicker of sensory memory pierced Jolvuthiz’s pain-fog: the reek of festering wounds, the crackle-pop of burning logs, the oppressive weight of doomed men avoiding each other’s eyes.

“I walked among you,” Bismark continued, his cool blue eyes locked onto Jolvuthiz’s widening amethyst gaze. “Not as myself, of course. My power ensured they saw only another hollow-eyed soldier, grime masking my face, fatigue slumping my shoulders. Just another ghost waiting for the pyre.” He gestured vaguely with his empty hand. “I heard the brave speeches. The call for sacrifice.” He spat the word like a rancid seed. “I watched your Commander, Jabari, play his little game of thrones with the man in the obsidian armor, Mephistopheles, wasn’t it? ‘You’re not like the rest’,” Bismark mimicked Jabari’s resonant growl with chilling accuracy. “‘This is about breaching those walls’.”

Jolvuthiz’s breath hitched, a raw scrape in his frozen throat. Images flashed: Jabari’s granite face in the firelight, Mephistopheles hefting Bloodshed like a promise of vengeance, the obsidian blade slamming into the earth before the black-armored knight vanished into the dark.

“A man sent to kill Principals from within,” Bismark stated, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper thick with malice. “To undermine Lord Balisarda’s stability. A noble sacrifice, truly.” His grin widened, razor-sharp. “As soon as that little performance concluded and your ‘weapon’ stalked off towards his glorious death, I ceased being a ghost. I returned. I reported everything. Names. Ranks. The pitiful military plan laid bare.” He leaned down slightly, bringing his face closer to Jolvuthiz’s, the scent of bergamot and cold steel cutting through the blood-ice stench. “Including yours, Master Jolvuthiz. Master Four of the Military.”

He straightened, brushing imaginary dust from his crimson lapel. “And that man in black armor? Stalking our halls right now?” Bismark’s smile turned glacial, devoid of even mock pity. “He bleeds out as we speak. Fighting someone considerably beyond his weight class. Your Commander's grand infiltration? Your Commander's sacrifice?” A soft, humorless chuckle escaped him. “It’s already ash in the wind. This war was lost before your first blade cleared its sheath. Jabari gambled with pawns against a god, shadow-dancer. And you never even saw the board.”

Bismark took a step back, his gaze sweeping dismissively over Jolvuthiz’s frozen form, a broken doll encased in its own failed ambition. “Your options,” he concluded, the false sympathy returning like a thin veneer over triumph, “are quite literally frozen. The dance, Master Jolvuthiz, is irrevocably over.” He raised his elegant sword slightly, its point glinting coldly in the gloom of the Pandora’s Box, not as an immediate threat, but as a period marking the final sentence.