It was nearing sunset and Azrael stepped backwards, narrowly letting the stick in Mors’ hand whistle by, as he summoned a handful of fiery sparks.

Taking advantage of the briefest of openings in Mors’ defence, Azrael threw the sparks at Mors’ face like a blazing handful of dirt. The expert sword fighter sidestepped to avoid his attack and Azrael grinned.

In the next moment the sparks exploded, like a hundred fireworks, as the fire mana that was compressed into the smallest of spaces forced its way out.

“Boom” said Azrael, still grinning, while changing directions and charging at Mors to take advantage of his distraction. He never saw the fist coming.

Mors punched through the flames, ignoring the heat, and catching Azrael in the shoulder. The blow caught him with force and sent him spinning through the air. With [Dramatic Flair] Azrael brought himself into an acrobatic manoeuvre, his hand briefly touching the ground before spinning and righting himself. He landed nimbly on his feet, resummoning one of the daggers that he’d been forced to discard.

Mors never gave him a chance to summon it, charging through the remainder of the dispersing flames. His feet traversed the ground like lightning, each step leaving a small crater in the ground. Then, all of a sudden, he came to a jerking stop, just short of Azrael. Mors’ body snapped forward as he suddenly found himself unable to move.

He looked down to find his foot sinking into quicksand. Azrael had set the trap when his hand had briefly touched the ground. Mors ripped his foot out, but that delay was all the time Azrael had needed.

Using Mors’ own footwork, Azrael rapidly manoeuvred around the man, striking at his unprotected back. The stick flashed around and without looking Mors deflected Azrael’s dagger.

A handful of dirt flew through the air, in a familiar tactic, and Azrael was forced to close his eyes to avoid it. All of a sudden, he was on the defensive.

One strike of the stick landed on his wrist, disarming him. The next landed against the side of his knee, bringing him down. In a desperate attempt to locate his attacker while blind Azrael let out a blast of pure mana, activating [Search]. He narrowly avoided a third strike to his face and pushed off backwards, using a blast of [Wind] to further increase that distance.

Flying through the air, Azrael used the brief pause in combat to blink the remaining dirt out of his eyelashes and regain his vision. What he saw was Mors’ face right above his, the old man having pounced after him.

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Azrael tried to bring up his dagger to block the inevitable strike, but knew he wouldn’t make it in time. Closing his eyes he recalled a memory of when the Beast had taken over. It had been dark, it had been soft, it had been…

Azrael vanished into his own shadow as his body touched the ground. Mors’ strike only hit the hard dirt. Azrael had used [Shadow Step] to escape.

Blanketed in soft silence Azrael opened his eyes. There seemed was no change, because there was no light. He was in a world of shadows, a realm that bordered the rest of reality. Here everything was painted in shades of shadow, each darker than the last.

It was a chilling realm, not in the sense that it was cold, but that Azrael knew he would die if he got lost here. Like a shadow, the third dimension lost its meaning. There was no up, nor down.

He paused, frowning. His innate sense of the skill, and by extension of this shadow realm, let him feel that there was still movement. Up and down still existed, yet at the same time they didn’t. The concept of three dimensional movement seemed to lose its order, as all the principles of space were compressed into a wild mess. Up was down, down was left and left was back.

It was only here and there that he noticed patches of white, so blindingly bright that they may have been invisible. These patches, these holes in the realm, were the windows to the other side. They were the windows back to the right side of reality.

Azrael began moving towards the nearest one on his right, only to find it on his left. He moved back the other way and all of a sudden Azrael found himself so far away from it that he wasn’t sure it was there anymore.

Azrael felt the slow chill of promised death breath down his neck. He knew that if he lost sight of that point, even once, then he was unlikely to make it out of here alive. Even now the oppressive shadows, an endless array of swirling black, were pushing against his mind. He could feel his sanity slowly eroding it at the edges.

Normally Azrael wasn’t one to panic, but even he couldn’t help himself from hyperventilating. The shadows were simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, both stiflingly close to him and so dizzyingly far from him that he might have been in a void.

Quashing the feeling Azrael did the only thing he could. He listened to the silence. And the silence thundered. It was overwhelming in a way he’d never experienced. Where the shadows left him effectively blind, the silence left him deaf. Neither was there anything to taste, smell or feel in this shifting void. Still, Azrael listened.

The thunder raged, the billowing darkness danced with darker shadows and in that unchanging void that deprived him of his senses he felt something move, a pattern, a flow.

With a single shuddering breath Azrael closed his eyes again and took a single trusting step backwards.

“You died” Mors said, pointing his stick at Azrael’s throat, when he emerged from out of the tree’s shadows.

Azrael could only acquiesce.

He collapsed onto the ground, drinking in the sights, sounds and smells. He smiled, the ordeal already only seeming half as bad. Though the [Shadow Step] Skill had definite potential it was equally hazardous. The shadow realm was not a hospitable environment for the living, devoid of logic and depriving him of his senses. Still, it was good to be alive.

Above, the nearly full moon looked down, while the first stars of the evening twinkled in agreement.