Ragnarök, Eternal Tragedy.
Chapter 108: They sang.

Chapter 108: They sang.

The forest didn’t rustle. It flinched.

A low wind crept across the branches as three silhouettes breached the treeline, boots crunching leaves, blades already half-loose in their scabbards. They moved with the false confidence of soldiers who hadn’t yet realized they were prey.

Then they saw him.

One figure on a branch above. Still. Watching. Masked.

Below him, tied to the bark and silent, was a girl they’d all seen on wall sketches and rebel briefings—the princess, the ghost of a war that hadn’t finished starting.

The first man cursed under his breath. "That mask... wait—"

The second narrowed his eyes. "You think that’s one of them?"

"No way," muttered the third, fingers tightening on his hilt. "Those are just stories. The Demon Six aren’t real."

He looked again. The golden eye-slits. The jagged lines. No insignia. No banner. Just presence.

"...Right?"

Amari didn’t move.

He dropped from the branch in one slow motion, coat fluttering just enough to suggest not weightlessness—but precision. He landed in front of the girl, between her and them, his posture saying nothing but: you go through me, or you don’t go anywhere.

The first man stepped forward, sword half-drawn. "Whoever you are, this doesn’t make sense. You’ve got her tied up like cargo. That’s not robbery. That’s something else."

The second man, older, didn’t move. "There’s no bounty on kidnapping royalty. There’s just war."

No response. Not even breath.

The mask did not blink.

One heartbeat.

Two.

Steel sang from a scabbard.

Amari shifted. Just slightly.

The first man struck like a warning—wide swing, desperate edge. Amari tilted sideways, the arc of the blade slicing air instead of skin. He didn’t draw fully at first. He didn’t have to. A flick of the wrist turned his blade enough to slap a second attacker’s sword off-course while sliding past the third, who came in low with a boot aimed at Amari’s knee.

It didn’t land.

Because Amari vanished again—no smoke, no trick.

Just gone, until he reappeared behind them, coat sweeping like shadow stitched into motion. His left hand remained empty. His right moved like punctuation.

The flat of his blade cracked one man across the back, sent him sprawling into dirt. The second turned too late—caught the butt-end of the blade to the throat and dropped with a barked curse.

Amari pivoted, fluid as wind made solid.

They weren’t weak. That wasn’t the problem. They were coordinated, trained.

But he was something else.

The third one backed up, sweat flickering along his brow. "This... this ain’t right," he muttered, circling. "That style—he doesn’t talk. And that mask—look at it, man."

The one who’d been hit first scrambled up, coughing. "I’ve heard the stories. Silent blades. All dressed different, but the same fighting flow."

He paused, breathing hard.

"Demon Six. They’re real."

The last man, maybe the youngest, scoffed but not without nerves. "Then if we drop him here? We don’t just save the girl. We kill a ghost. That name buys power. Money. Respect."

Amari moved again—no warning.

He surged forward with a short burst that blurred the leaves behind him, slicing at just the right angle to force two of them into collision. They rebounded off each other, falling into half-defensive stances.

Amari didn’t speak.

Didn’t blink.

He sped up.

Every attack now came at twice the pace—feints and punishing parries folded together like notes in a song only he knew the rhythm to. He started dismantling their stances—knocking shoulders off-angle, forcing regrips, dragging the tempo into chaos and making it his.

Blades clashed, bark shattered, dirt rose.

The first man’s stance broke.

He staggered back as Amari’s blade slid along the outer curve of his pauldron, carving a deep groove and sending sparks across the clearing. The second raised his axe overhead—Amari pivoted under it and kicked the man’s knee sideways. A pop. A shout. He dropped low to finish, but the third was faster now, adapting. A spear crackled with kinetic glyphs as it drove toward Amari’s flank.

He turned with it. Let it pass. Redirected the momentum and drove the flat of his sword into the third man’s back.

Three enemies, and still they were tripping over each other to survive him.

"Split him!" barked the leader, voice tightening. "Stop taking turns—circle him!"

They moved like trained soldiers now—less bravado, more fear born of clarity.

It wouldn’t save them.

Amari leapt forward, struck low, then immediately reversed the blade behind his back—knocking the spear into the air with such force it tumbled from the wielder’s hand. He ducked a slash, rolled over his shoulder, came up just behind the man he’d downed earlier, and swept the pommel across his skull. A grunt. Collapse.

Two left.

One bleeding. One rattled.

The second man blinked hard, raised a glowing hand.

"Forget the rules," he hissed. "Use it."

A silver glyph spun across his palm, and the dirt beneath him cracked. Energy burst from his boots as he surged forward—his Unco lit fully now, trailing heat and frost along one shoulder. The spear rematerialized mid-swing, now burning blue along its shaft.

The third followed, arm burning with golden lines that spiraled into the veins of his knuckles. His Unco activated mid-stride—kinetic compression. Ground cracked with every step as he charged. His whole body was a battering ram of compacted force.

Now it was real.

Now it was three lives clinging to desperation, not duty.

Amari moved through them like silence sharpened to a needlepoint.

The spear came first—he blocked high, parried off-center, then redirected the force into a vaulting flip that brought him heel-first into the chest of the third man mid-leap. That one went crashing into a root, groaning. Amari turned while still airborne, dragged the point of his blade across the ice-glyph man’s shoulder mid-spin, then landed light, close, elbowing his jaw and sending him stumbling into the brush.

Both upright.

Both Uncos lit.

But neither had a plan anymore. Only urgency.

Amari looked threatening to all of them, and enlisted a bit of fear in them.

Exactly like the legends whispered when people thought the Demon Six were just stories built from fear too stubborn to die.