Blood Shadow moved with the sinister grace of a nightmare given form, his grotesquely misproportioned limbs stretching and bending in unnatural ways as he closed in on Cypher. Dave’s axe cleaved through the air, carving a crimson arc into reality itself.

“Cutis Harenae, Harena Ferrea,” Cypher intoned, summoning a shield of defensive sand and hardening it to the strength of iron. The axe slammed into his shoulder, the force nearly breaking through the armored layer and coming dangerously close to splitting the flesh beneath.

“Malleable,” Cypher commanded, and the metal axe head turned soft and rubbery in an instant. Without hesitation, he aimed his wand at Blood Shadow’s heart, extending the weapon with the intent to impale the masquerading vampire. But Blood Shadow flowed backward, his body moving with an unnatural fluidity before he settled some fifteen feet away.

Blood Shadow examined the now-rubberized axe with a mixture of amusement and disdain before casually dropping the useless weapon to the floor.

“Not bad, Runelord,” he drawled, his voice dripping with condescension. “I sense an Earth Mage foundation with a specialization in metallurgy. You must be at least level twenty.”

“Correct on the first count, wrong on the second,” Cypher replied, his voice as cold as iron. “I’m level twelve.”

Blood Shadow’s expression twisted with genuine confusion, his eyes narrowing.

“Level twelve? But I was level fifteen when—”

Cypher didn’t give him the chance to finish. With a swift gesture, he activated the Detonation rune embedded in the axe’s wooden haft. It was a cheap trick, he knew, but it was one that had saved his life on more than one occasion. The rune detonated with a thunderous blast and an electromagnetic pulse that reduced Blood Shadow’s lower body to a pulped mass of flesh and bone.

His agonized screams reverberated through the void as the destabilizing field clawed at his very soul, attempting to tear it free from its mortal vessel.

What remained of Blood Shadow was a grisly stain and a writhing, incomprehensible black mass on the floor. In any other battle, this would have marked the end. But Cypher knew he was treading into unknown territory. Blood Shadow had not only committed the ultimate transgression by activating a second MetaTEC, but he had also ascended—whatever that meant.

“Lumos Lux,” Cypher whispered, and the tip of his wand flared with the blinding white light of burning magnesium.

“Blood Shadow,” Cypher continued, his tone measured and cutting, “you are a man of outrageously limited understanding if you think that levels have any correlation to skill.” He hoped the words would keep the unstable amalgam off balance, buying him precious moments as the battle raged on.

“Power,” Blood Shadow corrected, his voice slithering from the darkest recesses, thick with malice. “Levels are a measure of power.”

Cypher saw an opening and decided to prod further, conceding the flawed logic with a sneer.

“So what, were you just too weak to grind those levels? Too lazy to put in the work? Or maybe too cowardly to try?”

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“Yes,” the darkness hissed, the word drawn out in a sibilant tone that made Cypher’s skin crawl. “Too weak... too human. There are too many monsters… too many. I always knew they were there, lurking. Now I see. I was right. Too many monsters. I needed power to survive.”

“So you aligned yourself with the enemies of mankind?” Cypher spat, his voice thick with disgust.

“Perhaps,” Blood Shadow replied, his tone calm, almost contemplative. “But in this moment, my enemy is you.”

Crimson-black spears of nightmarish matter erupted from the shadows, lashing toward Cypher from all directions. Each one was a deadly blur, seeking to impale or devour—Cypher couldn’t be sure which. But he dismissed the thought, focusing only on survival.

Thanks to Captain Marshall’s training, Cypher had learned the value of proactive movement, and he was already in motion before the first dark spike closed in on him.

“Translate All,” he called out, twisting and dancing around the lethal projectiles. With a flick of his wrist and a deft twitch of his fingers, Cypher traced a glowing sigil of protection in the air with the tip of his wand.

The first spear struck the luminous symbol and shattered harmlessly, dispersing into nothingness. Cypher couldn’t suppress the grin of triumph that spread across his face. His experiment had worked. Most magi, like Warren, preferred to use spells one at a time, like a simple call-and-response. And while that method could yield impressive results, Cypher had seen its limitations early in the apocalypse. Encounter a scenario without the right spell, and you were rendered nearly useless. It was a weakness Blood Shadow—once Cable the Blood Mage—had likely recognized as well. But unlike Cypher, he had chosen the easier path.

Cypher’s path had been more arduous. It required deconstructing the linguistic components of the spell system and reconstructing them to produce effects the MetaTEC had never intended. Translating Latin spell prompts into English was challenging but manageable as Cypher delved deeper into Hasimoto’s source code. The real challenge lay in crafting a written script that could instantly activate spells in the heat of battle, like the one against Blood Shadow now.

The MetaTEC’s original source code permitted a language of sorts, a runic script composed of intersecting lines at either ninety- or forty-five-degree angles, mimicking the esoteric circuitry within. Discovering a spell that made metal glow like a sparkler, leaving afterimages in the air, had sparked the idea in Cypher’s mind—to create a battle script that would grant him access to spells he technically shouldn’t be able to use. But speed and precision were critical in battle, and writing words quickly enough to be viable seemed impossible.

Until he considered Arabic.

The flowing cursive script of Arabic letters lent itself to speed, a gift Cypher had unwittingly been prepared for since childhood. His parents, ever mindful of their cultural heritage, had ensured he learned to read and write in Arabic, a skill that now proved invaluable. Translating the spell names within the MetaTEC system into Arabic had been a revelation, each curve and line of the script allowing him to cast spells faster than any of his peers.

As wicked spikes ricocheted off the protective sigils he had hastily drawn in the air, Cypher gave silent thanks to his parents for the language skills that now kept him alive. The Runelord’s mind raced, eager to pause and dissect the chaos unfolding around him. So much of what he was witnessing defied Hashimoto’s fundamental rules of Mansfield that it almost made him giddy with the possibilities. But the amorphous, black blister on reality that had once been Cable loomed as a grim reminder of why those rules existed in the first place. Rules could be bent—Cypher knew that better than most—but breaking them was a path to madness.

No time for reflection. Cypher scrawled the Arabic word for “cut” in the air. If Blood Shadow was merely testing his limits in this new, twisted form, it wouldn’t be long before he decided to end Cypher’s life for good. He needed to strike first. The glowing word lingered in the air, tethered to the tip of Cypher’s wand by a thin trail of light. With a deft flick of his wrist, he severed the tip of an oncoming tentacle. Then another. Each appendage fell to the ground in a spray of dark, ichorous rain.

Blood Shadow screamed in agony, the sound an unholy, otherworldly screech that made Cypher’s skin crawl. But it was good to know that the abomination could feel pain.

Cypher pressed the advantage, carving a path through the writhing darkness as he charged toward Blood Shadow. His plan was simple—drive a stake into the heart of this blackened blob and hope there was something vital to pierce. As he closed in, the surface of Blood Shadow’s form rippled with anticipation, the creature sensing the imminent threat. A geyser of darkness erupted, and from it emerged a snarling, twisted face—a grotesque amalgamation of Blood Shadow’s vampiric features and the skinless monstrosity that Davies had become.

“Consume!” Blood Shadow hissed, his voice a sibilant whisper laced with otherworldly static. Cypher barely had time to register the change, but it was clear that Blood Shadow was losing control of his fractured identity. The sprite side was taking over, and that was something Cypher could exploit.

Moving on pure instinct, Cypher raised his free hand and spoke a single, potent word.