ShadowBound: The Need For Power

The winds in Zone 16 shrieked now.

Not as mere gusts, but as deafening roars—an orchestra of ruptured air and crumbling dimensions echoing the escalating battle. The ground, already a graveyard of fractured stone and scorched sigils, now trembled beneath the shockwaves of each exchange.

Aesmirius blurred forward in a burst of raw velocity, space warping around him like rippling silk. His body shimmered with violet luminance, every inch of Liam's vessel burning hotter than it ever should. He weaved through the sky, leaving afterimages stitched with collapsing time distortions. With a thunderous pulse of myst, he appeared at Sylvathar's flank, fingers already shaping a sigil mid-movement.

Sylvathar pivoted without looking.

His leg extended in a spinning heel kick, coated in a ribbon of emerald myst shaped like a crescent blade. Aesmirius tilted just enough to let the attack pass inches from his jaw, his fingers completing the glyph and activating it. A spatial seal opened beneath Sylvathar like an obsidian flower—an attempt to trap his motion for half a second.

But Sylvathar didn't resist. He went with it.

The demon's body twisted unnaturally as he dove into the distortion—through it—twisting around reality's seam. He came out upside down behind Aesmirius, claws now extended with myst vibrating across them like atom-thin threads. They sliced forward, aiming for Aesmirius's spine.

But Aesmirius had already rotated, planting a foot midair on nothing and using the momentum to spin into a devastating roundhouse. The kick clashed with Sylvathar's claws, the impact displacing clouds, tearing trees from distant ridges, and creating a visible pulse of distorted vision.

They vanished.

To the onlooker, there was nothing but strobing bursts of light and darkness, streaks of violet and green zipping through the air in unpredictable paths, forming constellations of destruction. Each clash sounded like colliding stars and each movement carved pieces out of the battlefield.

Sylvathar's scythe returned—drawn from a glyph behind him like it had never left. He grabbed the weapon mid-motion and arced it forward, the blade dragging behind with the weight of law-breaking myst. Aesmirius spun his arm, manifesting three temporal shields layered like petals—each one a reflection of different possible futures.

The scythe broke the first.

Cracked the second.

And shattered the third in a cry of shattering time.

But Aesmirius had anticipated this. He ducked low, drove his elbow forward—straight into Sylvathar's abdomen—and followed up with an upward knee that cracked through layered myst.

Sylvathar coughed blood but smiled.

"You're adapting," he murmured before using that very blood to trace a circle in the air. It flared green and exploded outward with a scream—resonating glyphs that exploded like mines, each one targeting Aesmirius's nervous system directly.

Aesmirius recoiled, shielding himself, but the delay gave Sylvathar the opening.

He surged forth with clawed hands glowing brighter than ever. Each swipe released compressed slashes that carved through mountains in the background. Aesmirius blocked, dodged, parried—his hands moving faster than thought, eyes glowing with hyperawareness. But he was slowing—just a touch. A minor lag in reaction and even slightly heavier breath.

Sylvathar noticed it all.

And pressed.

A downward cleave of his scythe. Aesmirius caught the shaft with both hands—but his arms trembled. A fracture formed in his right shoulder—just a flicker of pressure too much. He gritted his teeth and shoved Sylvathar back with a pulse of repulsive myst.

They separated, hovering opposite each other like gods in stalemate.

Blood trickled from Aesmirius's lips. He wiped it away.

Sylvathar narrowed his eyes.

"You vessel is reaching it's limit," he said plainly, voice as calm as stone.

Aesmirius didn't respond—he couldn't afford to.

Instead, he moved.

With reckless speed and precision, he conjured dozens of sigils mid-dash—spheres of folded time, blades of hyper-condensed spatial force, and chains that warped probability itself. Sylvathar responded in kind, matching him glyph for glyph, assault for assault. They clashed again—and again—falling faster and deeper into a frenzy that distorted gravity itself.

Mountains bent sideways.

The sky cracked open, revealing stars not meant for this realm.

At one point, Aesmirius tore through five layered versions of Sylvathar's scythe illusions and headbutted him hard enough to collapse a hundred-meter radius into an implosion of silence. Sylvathar coughed again—this time hurt. Truly hurt.

Aesmirius drove forward.

Fist to face. Knee to ribs. Elbow to throat. Myst exploding from every pore. His eyes—violet fading slightly back to red now—blazed with something terrifying. Not just power but will. The absolute refusal to lose. The unrelenting drive that defined gods and madmen alike.

Sylvathar stumbled, blood pouring freely now.

Aesmirius grabbed him by the face, slammed him down through the atmosphere, dragging him across a city-sized slab of land, then hurled him through a dimension-stitched wall that collapsed into spirals of color.

He hovered above the wreckage, breathing hard and arms trembling.

Sylvathar didn't rise at first.

Aesmirius descended slowly, boots touching nothing as he hovered.

"I told you," he growled, voice rough, raw. "You'd die by my hand."

He raised his arm.

A vast ring of violet sigils formed behind him—hundreds layered like gears within gears, rotating with the creaking groan of the universe acknowledging its own reconfiguration. The attack was massive and lethal. And clearly irreversible.

Sylvathar lay in the crater, bleeding and smirking—but silent.

The rings locked.

Aesmirius launched forward, fist drawn back and cloaked in enough myst to erase continents.

And then—

He stopped.

Very abruptly and violently.

His knees buckled.

Both legs collapsed beneath him like broken scaffolding. His arms dropped and his eyes widened in sudden horror.

Then instantly, blood sprayed from his mouth in wet, chunky streams.

His nose followed.

His ears.

Then, horribly, his eyes began to bleed as well.

He fell—onto both knees, shaking. The violet aura around him flickered, hissed, and began to distort.

The rings behind him broke one by one, cracks running through each sigil like glass spiderwebbing. His hand reached forward, still trembling. He tried to breathe—but only ended up choking.

Then slowly, Sylvathar stood up and calmly approached Aesmirius. He moved like a man walking toward a grave he had already dug.

Coming to a deliberate stop, he stood above the kneeling Aesmirius, the glow of his emerald myst pulsing softly. His scythe hovered at his back silently.

Aesmirius didn't look up.

He couldn't. All he could do was cough again and again. Blood spilled over his chin and onto the ground beneath him.

Sylvathar stared at him for a long time, a flicker of something which looked like disappointment in his eyes.

Then he spoke up, his voice cold and utterly devoid of any pity.

"I told you before this started, you are javelin the power of a god and a vessel of a mortal… and because of that, you can never win against me, Aesmirius."

"You should have heeded my proposal and used me as a vessel instead… yet you foolishly claimed this boy's body is the only one that can house your power. Now look where you are… utterly pitiful and defeated," he added.

Aesmirius coughed more blood now, barely even holding Liam's body up in his kneeling posture.

"Well, guess this is the end of the road for you. I'd have liked to steal your power, but judging from what you said, I somehow find myself truly believing that no one indeed can house your power. Maybe my father could, but that would only give him more power—and I, for one, don't need that.

"But before I kill you, I must retrieve the princess first. Since you are no longer something I need, I'll just consume the rest of her divine light and head back to the demon realm… this filthy realm is beginning to disgust me more and more.

"So let's hop to Ilis, shall we?"