Kai ran. Adrenaline shot through him like lightning, driving his legs across the warped terrain. Mud and grass tore beneath his boots as he darted over ridges and leapt over embedded weapons, each one a potential trap, each one whispering false promises of power. The Leviathan shrieked behind him, its roar splitting the sky like a god's wrath. Then came the storm.
A flurry of blade-like projectiles screamed through the air, slicing through the atmosphere with impossible speed. Shhk! Shhk! Shhk! One nicked his thigh, another grazed his shoulder. Kai twisted mid-stride, diving behind a double-bladed glaive half-buried in the ground. The barrage pelted the area around him, throwing up dirt and flower petals like shrapnel. But the momentary cover didn't last. A crushing thud signaled the Leviathan's charge. The beast tore across the field like a missile of muscle and hate, limbs digging violently into the earth, tail lashing behind it like a whip of raw power. "Shit!" Kai hissed, breaking from cover and running again.
His breath came in ragged bursts. Blood mingled on his skin, his body moving on sheer survival instinct now. The terrain betrayed him with every step: weapons jutted at odd angles from the soil, threatening to trip or impale. His boot snagged on the shaft of a pike and he stumbled, nearly falling. A projectile slammed into the ground beside his head, embedding itself inches from his cheek. He pushed off the ground, rolling hard to the left as the Leviathan's tail cracked the earth where he'd just been. The air boomed from the impact. Kai didn't look back. He couldn't afford to. Weapons passed in a blur, glinting halberds, ancient katanas, serrated twin daggers. None of them felt right. None of them felt alive. But then....
There. His eyes locked onto it. A sword, half-buried in the soil, glowing faintly with that same familiar azure light. Jet-black metal, elegant and curved, its edges traced in ethereal blue. His heart jumped in his chest. "Umbra..." he breathed. The moment of recognition rang like a chime through his soul. The Leviathan shrieked. It was already lunging again, mouth open wide, fangs dripping with sizzling venom. The ground shuddered beneath its impossible momentum. Kai sprinted.
Time blurred. The world became motion and instinct. Blade-shards cut across his path, he rolled under them, hands scraping raw on the ground. A claw slammed down beside him, the impact sending him sprawling. He sprang up and kept moving, muscles screaming in protest. Ten feet. The air thickened with pressure. A barrage came in from his left. He twisted, a blade slicing across his bicep. The sting only fueled him. Five feet. The Leviathan was almost on him now, he could feel the ground trembling, the air vibrating with its fury. It would reach him before he reached the blade. "NO!" he roared, eyes blazing.
Kai dove forward, arms outstretched. His fingers closed around the hilt. It was cold. Too cold. He yanked the blade free from the soil, stumbling to his feet as he turned to face the incoming monster. The sword felt familiar in weight, in shape, in memory. But as he raised it.....nothing stirred. No whisper. No pulse of light. No voice. "Hey Umbra?" he rasped, holding the blade before him like a lifeline. "Umbra, come on! Say something!" Silence. The wind howled past him, taunting. The Leviathan roared, closing in like a tidal wave of death. But the sword remained lifeless, an empty husk, void of the presence that once danced within it.
A chill cut through Kai far deeper than the wounds. This isn't her. This isn't my HEX. This blade is just pretending. "No... no, no, no-!" he backed a step, disbelief carving across his face. The Leviathan struck. Instinct screamed. Kai swung the false Umbra with all his strength. The blade collided with the creature's armored claw.....and shattered. A jagged crack! echoed across the field. Fragments of the sword burst into the air like dying stars, raining down around him. Kai froze, eyes wide, stunned.
Then pain, unbearable and raw, ripped through his body as the Leviathan's claw tore across his torso, slicing him open like paper. Flesh and blood parted in a spray of crimson. He staggered back, breath hitching.....and then the tail came. WHAM! The blow hit like a comet. Kai's body launched into the air, flung like a ragdoll across the battlefield. He slammed into an elevated ridge with bone-jarring force, the wind ripped from his lungs. Cracks spiderwebbed across the stone beneath him as he collapsed, motionless for a heartbeat. Then agony returned.
His body glowed faintly, the Blessing of Regeneration kicking in. Skin knit. Bone mended. The pain dulled just enough to let him breathe. He coughed violently, blood spilling from his mouth and down his chin. He was alive. But barely. Kai's hands trembled as he pushed himself up, slick with blood and dirt. His stomach was still burning, tight with phantom pain even as the wound sealed. And yet, beneath the shallow relief, deeper dread took root. One more time. He stared down at his healing skin, at the cracks of blue light that were now faint, flickering. He could only survive one more hit. Just one.
His heart pounded like a war drum. The Leviathan roared in the distance, enraged, unrelenting. Kai clenched his jaw. "I need the real Umbra..." he whispered, voice broken. And the battlefield offered no answer. Kai raised a trembling hand to wipe the blood from his chin. His fingertips came away slick and red.....but something else caught his eye. A glint. He blinked, frowning, and looked down at his palm.
A single glowing thread, azure and alive, was unraveling from the center of his hand. It shimmered faintly, flickering like starlight, and drifted upward through the air...trailing toward the top of the ridge behind him. Then the world shifted. His vision tunneled, time bending inward like an hourglass snapping shut. His surroundings blurred, colors bleeding into one another until only motion remained. And in that moment.....he saw himself. Scrambling. Bleeding. Clawing his way to the ridge's peak.
His hands, his real hands, grasped something at the summit: a dagger, the blade black as a void, the shape was an exact replica of his broadsword. It had a deep violet cross guard with a navy blue hilt and a jet-black pommel. The weapon, despite it's size, had extraordinary radiance. It was wedged deep into the stone as if waiting for him alone. As his fingers closed around it in the vision, the azure glow blazed with new intensity, like a spark meeting oxygen. Then the vision melted away as his conscience snapped back to reality.
The wait of the situation slammed back in. Kai staggered, gasping, his pulse thundering in his ears. The Leviathan shrieked. Its limbs reared back as it opened it's giant maw, dark green energy swirling up from it's throat. A moment later, a new storm erupted. SHHK! SHHK! SHHK! Hundreds of blade-shards screamed from its body, slicing the air like razors. The ridge exploded around him as shrapnel tore into stone, cleaving trenches, flattening boulders.
Kai moved. He didn't think. Didn't hesitate. He ran like his life depended on it....which, it did. Each footstep was a gamble. Each breath a countdown. He sprinted towards the top of the ridge, leaping over jagged debris as the sky rained steel. A shard sliced past his face, another scraped down his thigh, but he kept going. He had to. ".....Almost.....there!" he hissed, dragging himself over a cracked ledge as another burst of projectiles hammered the rocks behind him. Dust and sparks exploded around him in every direction.
He reached a jagged overhang, clawing at the loose earth. His muscles screamed, fingers torn and raw as he scaled upward. A final volley slammed into the cliffside with a mighty BOOM!, sending him lurching sideways. But he didn't fall. He gritted his teeth and hauled himself the last few feet, eyes wide, heart burning. As he clawed his way to the very top, there it was. The dagger. Jet-black blade, traced with living azure light, humming like a tethered heartbeat. Wedged into the stone like it had always been there, just waiting for his touch.
Kai's hand reached forward, hesitant, hopeful, as the Leviathan roared somewhere behind him, preparing for the kill. Time, for a breath, stood still. Kai reached out with a trembling hand, every muscle in his arm taut with desperation, pain, and something deeper.....faith. His fingers hovered over the hilt of the dagger, now pulsing with faint azure light, as if sensing him, calling him. One heartbeat. Two. His hand closed around the hilt. CRACK!
A jolt of pure energy surged through his arm like lightning striking from within. It shot up his veins, igniting his nerves, racing across his body in a shockwave of raw power. His back arched, eyes wide as light flared behind them, his blood thrumming with impossible force. The pain vanished. The exhaustion evaporated. It was as if time itself had acknowledged him. With a cry caught between awe and fury, Kai wrenched the dagger free, lifting it above his head. And then, the sky answered.
KRAK-THOOM! A colossal bolt of azure lightning split the heavens and slammed into the blade. For a few moments, the world turned blue. Light exploded outward from the point of impact, blasting back dust, debris, and even the shrieking winds. The very air vibrated. Kai's cloak snapped in the sudden shockwave. His hair whipped wildly around his face as he stood tall atop the ridge, bathed in cascading threads of time-bound radiance. He closed his eyes.
The moment stretched, suspended in the breathless eternity between seconds. When his eyes opened again, his left eye blazed with a fierce, unrelenting azure light, brighter than before, ancient and wild. The dagger now burned with deep azure energy, its once-cold metal now alive: glowing, pulsing, howling with Temporal Power. Bolts of energy lashed off it in sharp, crackling bursts, arcing around Kai's arm, over his shoulders, down his spine. The air around him warped with every pulse, time fraying and restitching itself in momentary fractures.
He didn't need to ask this time. He knew. "...Umbra?," he whispered, as a warm sensation spread across his chest.