The Path of Ruin

If Kael wanted to describe the state of the town in one word, it would be... chaos.

People were shivering inside their homes. There were bodies of some people who had been caught in the flood. Some houses made of wood seemed to have been completely destroyed.

But Kael didn't care about any of that. He just walked.

He didn't know why, but no soldiers tried to stop him. He had expected the man in black to grab him by the neck and throw him back, but that didn't happen. And... he kept walking.

Finally, when he came to one of the clearings that could be called the center of the town, his steps slowed down.

He saw a man. The raindrops seemed to be especially concentrated around him. His eyes sparkled with a light blue glow. His gray hair was wet and disheveled, but he was not extremely old. He must have been in his thirties. His body moved and danced as if it were a liquid. With each movement, the speed of the rain changed and the dragons moved in different ways.

He didn't know, but the dragons didn't seem abnormal for some reason. He couldn't feel as if they were unnatural when he looked at them. It was as if... they were a natural part of the storm from which they were created. They were constantly fed and strengthened by the incessant rain. They were accompanied by each of the lightning bolts that came down from the dark clouds.

Harmony, perhaps that was the word he was looking for. Dragons and storms... he had never seen them so in harmony with each other.

And at the center of it all was one man, the man who caused it all... the man who controlled it all.

He was the man named Tharon, the one all these soldiers... the Empire were looking for.

But... in the midst of it all, a large cut suddenly appeared on the raindrops that surrounded him. The thin barrier standing in front of him, as if it were a shield, split. Not only that, but a cut appeared on the shoulder of his clothes. The blood slowly soaked over it.

And the person who caused it was at the other end of the opening.

Dragons, large and small, were constantly circling around him, but he was slaying each one with the long sword in his hand. If Tharon's body resembled a liquid, this man's body was... simply a sharp blade.

His black hair, graying in places, was wet, sticking to his face. His face was wrinkled, he was old. There were serious-looking bruises on certain parts of his body, but he didn't seem to care about them. His sharp eyes, shimmering with a green glow, were focused on one thing, his opponent... Tharon.

Maybe he didn't change the entire weather like Tharon, maybe he didn't cause storms or big things like Tharon...

But he alone was enough to be a 'change'. The air he gave off, his stance, his attacks... everything about him was like an elegant yet devastating sword. Just standing where he was alone was a natural disaster, he didn't need a visual change.

Kael paused for a moment.

'Ah, the green eyes...'

Kael remembered those eyes. It was the man who had first spotted him in the forest when he first noticed the Imperial soldiers, despite the distance between them.

A dragon momentarily came between Kael and the man. But then... it was sliced right down the middle, his body of water disintegrating, unable to maintain its integrity. And not only that.

Kael felt a force graze the sleeve of his clothes, followed by a gust of wind that scattered all the raindrops on his side. It was as if... the man had cut not at the dragon, but directly where Kael had been.

In the midst of all the scattered raindrops, the wind blowing his hair, Kael and the man's eyes met for a tiny, fleeting moment.

The man did not react. His sword, which had sliced the dragon in two, twisted in his hands. Then he twisted it slightly to the left and swung it at a wide angle to the right.

The world stopped once more. The winds, the raindrops, the image... everything followed the man's sword. And they were all cut. Another dragon, which would have ridden him with tremendous force if he had been a moment later, was also cut in half, as was everything else.

But the man still did not stop. His sword twisted again, changed direction at an abnormal angle, and cut down another dragon. A shockwave so powerful that it was hard for Kael to stand spread around.

But... he still held himself, he kept watching.

Kael's eyes focused on the sword for a moment. And when he did... his eyes widened again.

The sword was long. It was sharp only on one side and had a very slight curve. But what surprised Kael was something else.

No, not because the sword was so beautiful... but because it was so terrible.

It was full of cracks as if it would turn to dust if he touched it. The leather on the hilt was peeling off in places in a way that was quite disturbing. Kael would rather use his fists than a sword like this.

But... this man could not only wield this sword, he could swing it as if nothing was wrong with it.

'Oh, no...'

This man... did not swing his sword in a normal way at all.

It was as if... each movement was meticulously precise, smooth, no matter how fast and sudden it seemed.

It was mesmerizing, spectacular. Kael... felt almost ecstatic looking at the way the man wielded his sword.

But after a short time, he realized something.

The man... was moving, even if slowly. Sometimes, parts of the dragons hit his body, creating the bruises he could see. Some of the smaller ones, like a snake, would slip through and bite his limbs, causing bleeding wounds.

But with every dragon he slayed, with every slash of his sword, the man was closing in on Tharon, step by step.

With difficulty, Kael tore his eyes away from the swordsman and turned them toward Tharon. He didn't know why, but the man was doing nothing but standing still. He wasn't completely still, since he controlled the dragons, the rain... But he wasn't moving from where he was.

He must have realized that his opponent was approaching him, but he still made no attempt to run away or move away from him.

Why, then?

'Ah, he will lose control if he moves...'

And the moment he lost control was the perfect moment for his opponent to attack.

So, the only thing he could do was to keep doing what he was doing and hope to stop his opponent. He had no choice.

And... they kept going.

Kael watched with a fascination he couldn't help but admire as the town was destroyed with every passing second, a mesmerizing canvas of the collision of two beings whose powers he could hardly imagine the limits of.

He came close to death several times due to the effects of the two clashing. But, still, he kept watching.

And... as he watched them, he realized something else.

The raindrops that brought the dragons together, the impacts of the swordsman's attacks... Every change in the battle of these two had a trace of something. A trace that felt all too familiar, a feeling he had himself.

A feeling of warmth that he could build up in his heart, that he could use to strengthen himself.

'Huh...'

As Kael looked at the men, their attacks, their bodies, he saw something he hadn't noticed.

There was something like that warmth he could generate in his heart, coursing through their bodies too. It was not only in their bodies, in their attacks... in their clothes... in everything.

It wasn't just on them, it was affecting their surroundings. It even affected them more than they affected themselves.

'Why...?'

Kael couldn't understand. But... he wanted to know.

So he focused even more. He gave everything he had towards this duo, fighting each other to the death. He watched their every move, how they controlled that 'warmth' they had, just like him.

But then... he finally realized that what had seemed inevitable all along was happening.

The rain suddenly became faster than it had ever been, the lightning struck one after the other, ear-splittingly.

The man with the sword was in front of Tharon. He was readying his sword for a final strike, and Tharon was... still unmoving. But there was no panic in his light blue glowing eyes. He was still calm, there was no hesitation or hitch in his movements.

But then his dance to control the rain, to control his dragons, came to an abrupt halt. He took a deep breath as his eyes squinted slightly, his palms facing each other as he stepped back on his left foot. He rotated his hands in front of each other as the sword that would take his life descended in slow motion. He shifted his palms fluidly and twisted his body. He bent the fingers of his left hand inward and pushed forward as if drawing something from his right palm.

Just as it had happened just before their fight began, all the raindrops suddenly paused. Then... they began to gather with tremendous speed in the direction of his left hand. Lightning bolts descended from the dark clouds, leaping from raindrop to raindrop, heading towards the duo. It passed through Tharon's body and joined the current that was heading towards the man with the sword.

As Tharon and his opponent's final attack met each other, the world lit up with a brilliant glow, all sound replaced by a resounding clang that seemed to burst the eardrums of everyone in the area.

And Kael watched everything. Every movement of the men, how they channeled that power in their bodies... everything.

Even as a tremendous wave of heat and shock washed over him, sweeping him off his feet, his thoughts were of their movements.

And... how he could use what he saw for himself.