Ragnarök, Eternal Tragedy.
Chapter 112: Left to burn.

Chapter 112: Left to burn.

Kenneth’s breath came slower now. Not ragged. Not panicked. Just... deliberate. As if each inhale had to be weighed against what it cost to take.

His gauntlets pulsed dimmer than before. The usual crimson glow had retreated behind thick plating, like embers cooling under ash. A faint hiss leaked from the seams—steam from the pressure that hadn’t fully discharged.

His opponent wasn’t faring any better.

The brute’s left gauntlet—jagged, home-forged, lined with crude Unco channels—shook as he flexed his hand. The glow along his biceps had faded, replaced by the dull throb of strained mana veins. He spat blood into the dirt and grinned through cracked lips.

"Running out?" the man asked.

Kenneth didn’t answer. Just rolled his shoulders and lifted his fists.

They clashed again, and this time it wasn’t beautiful.

No grace.

Just weight.

The brute drove a punch into Kenneth’s ribs—half power, less precision. Kenneth caught it against his forearm and twisted, dragging the man forward into a headbutt that snapped cartilage. The world reeled around them. Mana sparked on contact but faded quickly—just residue, not function.

They were too deep into the draw now. Their Uncos still responded, but slowly. Hungrier than before. Every use had a cost now, and both were close to overdraft.

The brute tried again—forcing his Unco one more time, pushing for a kinetic burst through his boot—but the soil crackled with a half-fizz and collapsed under him.

No release.

Just strain.

Kenneth advanced and slammed his shoulder into the man’s chest, driving him back three paces. The Breaker Gauntlets lit, then flickered. He aimed for a follow-up, but the heat surged wrong—too much residual pressure. The discharge wasn’t clean.

He aborted mid-swing.

And the brute capitalized, tackling him around the waist and dragging him down in a roar of shifting gravel.

They hit the ground hard, both grunting, fists lashing with less technique now, more memory than form. Each blow was slower. Each Unco ping of energy weaker than the last. Kenneth could feel his mana channels running dry—not completely, but thinning at the edges like worn rope.

They broke apart again—barely standing, both bloodied, breathing like men pulling air through broken masks.

The air warped around them.

Not from Unco—not anymore. That power was threadbare now, fraying at the edges with every breath. What remained between Kenneth and the brute was something older than technique. Older than the crafted metal on their arms.

What remained was force.

Kenneth’s gauntlets hissed quietly—one venting steam, the other sputtering like an engine asking too much of its own design. His arms hung low. Muscles torqued against strain. Every movement now was a debt.

His opponent wasn’t better.

The brute’s chest rose in sharp jerks. Blood darkened the seams of his armor. His Unco—reinforcement-based, bone-hammering and rage-fed—had burned itself hollow. Each punch had cost him more than the last. Now his limbs shook in recoil.

Still, they circled.

Still, they didn’t stop.

Then—without warning—the brute charged.

No feint. No hesitation. Just raw weight and a roar that cut through the trees.

Kenneth didn’t dodge.

He dug in.

He took the hit full-on—braced heel to shoulder—and let it land. The force cracked across his ribs, lifted him half off the earth. But his arms snapped shut around the man’s waist before he could retreat.

The gauntlets screamed.

Then glowed.

White.

Not red. Not orange. White. Pressure exceeding limit. Mana fusing not by discipline—but necessity.

Kenneth’s mouth opened—not to yell, but to breathe the sound in.

And he slammed his forehead into the brute’s nose.

Then again.

Then drove a knee into the thigh—felt something pop—and spun, dragging his opponent through the motion and planting both gauntlets against the man’s sternum.

The glow didn’t pulse now.

It surged.

And released.

A crater blew outward—earth folding in shock. Trees bent away from the explosion. Stone cracked like glass underfoot. The shockwave wasn’t clean. It was angry. Fragmented. Wild.

When the dust settled, Kenneth was on one knee.

Steam peeled from his gauntlets.

The air around him shimmered as if it remembered the blow more than he did.

Across from him, the brute lay on his back, chest heaving, arms sprawled wide.

Alive.

But unmoving.

Kenneth’s fingers twitched. His gauntlets sparked once, then fell silent.

Had he won?

Maybe.

But as he rose—slow, careful—his leg gave once beneath him. Just once. He caught himself. Stared at the body ahead.

...

(Milo)

Milo tilted his head.

Not out of confusion—he just liked watching his opponent guess.

Across the shattered grove, the fighter spun around, panting. His sword arm dragged. His forehead bled from a shallow cut that hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago.

"Coward," the man hissed. "Come fight me yourself."

"Been here the whole time," a voice said sweetly behind him.

The man spun—blade flashing through air—and sliced only smoke. The silhouette behind him flickered, shimmered, and broke apart like steam.

A clone.

Of course.

The fifteenth, maybe sixteenth? He’d lost count.

And that was exactly Milo’s point.

Up in the trees, crouched along a crooked branch like a perched shadow, Milo watched him. Quiet. Still. One of his real selves. A Veil Knife spun lazily between his fingers. He didn’t throw it yet. Not yet.

This wasn’t about the kill.

This was about watching something confident decay into doubt.

Earlier in the fight, Milo had been reactive. Testing. Dodging. Mirroring his opponent’s moves with uncharacteristic restraint. At first, the man thought he’d figured him out—a skirmisher with tricks and fast footwork. A nuisance.

But then the clones began.

Echo Forms blinked in and out like afterimages—just wrong enough to make the real Milo look like the mistake. First they darted in tandem, distracting the sword. Then one dove from a tree, another rolled beneath a strike, another whispered too close to the ear before vanishing.

Now, the field was full of memory scars.

Places the fighter had almost struck.

Sounds that shouldn’t have been there.

Cuts that bled without source.

Milo dropped silently behind a trunk, letting the knife hover in his palm.

His opponent stood in the center of the clearing now, chest heaving, eyes wide, turning every few seconds like a man trying to spot ghosts underwater. His Unco—some kind of perception enhancer, maybe a spacial anchor—was short-circuiting. Too many targets. Too much echo.

He was yelling at shadows now.

"Milo!" he barked. "Stop hiding!"

Milo obliged.

He dropped from the trees—real this time—and landed soundlessly in a crouch five meters away. Echoes flashed beside him—two clones running wide arcs, one slipping behind the man’s flank.

The fighter lunged at Milo’s center.

Right choice.

Wrong Milo.

His blade passed through the clone.

The real Milo was already past him, gliding low, slicing behind the knee with a flick of his wrist.

A gasp. A stagger.

Milo stood to his full height. Calm. Breezy.

"You’re bleeding too fast to keep shouting," he said, almost conversational. "Maybe sit?"

The man turned in fury, swinging wide.

Milo backflipped away. The two clones converged—one struck the elbow, the other the hip—and vanished on impact. The man collapsed to one knee.

He tried to push himself up.

Another Veil Knife pinned his sleeve to the dirt.

Another embedded in a tree above.

Another hovered in Milo’s fingers.

The fighter looked up—sweat, blood, disbelief pooling behind his eyes.

Milo took a step forward. No swagger now.

Just inevitability.

"It’s not that you were too slow," he said softly. "It’s that you kept thinking I was ever where I stood."