Ragnarök, Eternal Tragedy.
Chapter 107: Backfoot.

Chapter 107: Backfoot.

Amari sat stone-still, the cracked bark of the tree digging into his gloved palms. The girl—her ankles still bound, face streaked with smoke—watched him from the corner of her eye. She couldn’t see beneath the mask. Couldn’t read the tension in his jaw or the guilt sharpening behind his quiet. But she could feel it.

The way he didn’t speak.

The way he couldn’t.

Below, the forest whispered.

The checkpoint still burned in the distance.

And Amari hadn’t stopped watching her since he got there.

Shylo’s Fight — North Wing Collapse: "We Bury Our Mistakes"

Kael towered at the edge of the cratered hallway, his body now a mass of evolving armor, bone, and blade. His Unco—Malform—had bloomed into full monstrous glory. Plates shifted across his chest like tectonic armor, jaws opened on his ribs, and new limbs had grown—not just arms, but spine-ripping claws that bent forward, dragging behind him like scythes still learning how to walk.

"I’m done dancing," Kael snarled, voice layered with growl and crackle. "Time to bury you, shadow man."

Shylo didn’t answer.

He stood with one knee down, panting. Blood dripped from his side in slow rhythm, a shallow gash across his ribs flaring each time he moved. His Umbra Spire—the sleek black spear—was gripped in his hand, pulsing faint obsidian light. It trembled. Not from fear.

From restraint.

He pressed the blunt end to the ground and whispered:

"No light. No sound."

☁️ The Shift

The torch flames in the hallway dimmed.

Then vanished.

The shadows poured inward—racing toward Shylo like ink flooding dry paper. They coiled around his boots, soaked up the blood, and clung to the edges of the Umbra Spire.

Kael lunged—blade arms extended, teeth in his palms bared to bite.

Shylo vanished.

Gone into silence.

Kael struck empty air. Screeched. Spun in a circle—but the sound didn’t carry. The sound was gone.

Then pain. A gash across the back.

Shylo emerged from the shadows behind him, spear extended to full reach, obsidian tip slicing across Kael’s shifting armor.

He faded again.

Reappeared on the ceiling.

Drove the spear downward in a silent arc.

Kael blocked—barely—grunted, and retaliated with a spinning lash of his tail, but it hit nothing.

"Stop hiding!" Kael shouted, but the words fell into the black like stones dropped into a lake.

Shylo moved again—his timing not just unpredictable, but soundless. His shadow manipulation pulled light downward, reshaping the space around him like a weighted veil.

He summoned binding tendrils now—whips of darkness that lashed around Kael’s ankle and forearm.

Kael tore through them—but that fraction of a second?

It cost him a shoulder spike.

The Umbra Spire bent mid-strike, slicing around a curve of shadow, hitting where no spear should reach.

Kael stumbled.

Shylo stood behind him now, chest heaving, blood dripping into silence.

The hallway was a graveyard of failed strikes. Shadows coiled through the cracks in the ceiling like smoke retracing its own death. Shylo crouched behind a half-crumbled column, his breath shallow, ribs tightening around pain. Blood trickled past his eyebrow. His fingers clutched the Umbra Spire, now dimmed—but not dead.

Kael’s shape loomed just beyond the veil of darkness—massive, shifting, patient. Claws scraped gently across stone, leaving trails like molten glass. He wasn’t rushing anymore.

He was waiting.

"Running again," Kael growled, voice like wet gravel. "You always vanish before the real pain comes."

Shylo didn’t reply. Not out loud.

Instead, he looked around.

No windows. One broken lantern. Ceiling exposed. One light source: Kael.

That was the pattern.

Kael was strong, shifting, brutal—but his body generated light. The faint glow leaking from the seams in his chest and spine created harsh shadows wherever he stepped.

Which meant...

Shylo blinked.

I’m not losing shadow—I’m borrowing it.

🕳️ New Tactic: Shadow Parasite Technique

He didn’t need to retreat into shadow.

He just needed to steal Kael’s.

Shylo pressed the shaft of the Umbra Spire into the ground and whispered something older than language. The obsidian crystal glowed deep purple, like a bruise catching starlight.

Kael turned at the sound.

Too late.

The shadows beneath Kael’s feet snapped upward—binding chains of darkness lashing around his knees, his right shoulder, one wrist. Not fully anchored. But enough.

Kael roared and twisted. Broke one chain.

But that wasn’t the point.

The real point was that Shylo had used the glow of Kael’s own Unco to summon those bindings. He was playing inside Kael’s light radius now, not hiding from it.

Kael surged forward, smashing one hand through the pillar Shylo had crouched behind.

Shylo vaulted upward—into a spin, spear shifting in midair.

As he dropped—

FWUMP.

He plunged the Umbra Spire directly into the sliver of shadow beneath Kael’s jaw, a binding glyph flaring silently along its edge.

Kael staggered.

The spear bent with the shadows—lengthening—hooking around Kael’s neck and dragging him sideways.

A crash.

Kael hit the floor, carving a deep scar into the stone.

Shylo landed hard, rolled, and came up—barely standing. But standing.

For the first time in minutes, Kael didn’t charge.

His eyes narrowed, molten gold flickering in the cracks of his morphing skin.

"You’re... using me?"

Shylo smiled through blood and grit.

"No one’s immune to darkness."

Kael’s growl deepened.

So did the silence.

And for a breathless moment, power balanced again—light from the monster, shadow from the blade. Hunter and hunted blurring.

What once felt like inevitability had become tension, sharp and ticking. Maverick’s boots scraped across cracked tile as he readjusted his grip on the Bastion Blade, sweat streaking down his neck, chest rising with each heavy breath. The firelight along the ruined corridor guttered wildly, casting both fighters in flickers of gold and crimson.

Across from him, the village warrior who had come burning with grief stood tall again—shoulder bleeding, jaw bruised, one eye swelling fast—but his spine straightened like something deeper than muscle held him up.

"You think I’m done?" the man rasped, spitting blood to the side. "You think loss folds a man like parchment?"

Maverick gave no reply. Just circled. Sword lowered but not relaxed.

The warrior’s Unco flared.

Flames burst from his boots as he lunged, reborn in momentum. The gauntlets on his arms flared again—pulses of solar heat with every motion. He came hard, direct—no flourish. Just pressure in its rawest, most focused form.

Maverick blocked the first blow—metal screamed—and twisted under the next, his blade humming with stored energy. He moved sharper now, more reactive, like something in the man’s resolve had lit something in him too.

Steel met fire.

Strike met grit.

Punch after slash, kick after block—the fight turned even. Every time Maverick tried to press, the warrior pushed back harder. Every time the defender looked like he might break, he snapped into another angle, his fire not flaring wild but precise, like it obeyed mourning now more than rage.

There were no clever lines now.

No smirks.

Just silence broken by breath and impact.

A fist wreathed in flame almost cracked Maverick’s temple—he ducked, slid low, swept the warrior’s legs—but the defender caught himself with a burst of flame mid-fall, rolled, and came up with a strike that singed Maverick’s coat.

They reset.