Niko stood at the edge of a cratered ruin, smoke and silence hanging heavy around him. His body trembled, barely upright—wounds from the wind-forged blades still fresh, blood soaking through the tatters of his cloak and shirt. The ground where he had landed was fractured, lined with splinters of steel and bone, yet the Dark Tower stood far in the distance, black and unwavering—almost surreal against the burning skyline. A needle piercing a bleeding world.
He guessed it was at least 600, maybe 700 kilometers away now. The city's size no longer surprised him. The Sanctuary was truly a world all its own.
Then—
"Where did you go!?"
Mena's voice echoed into his mind, calm but strained.
Niko staggered upright, wiping blood from his mouth. He chuckled, bitter and sharp.
"Ah, I was just thrown across this war-ridden city by a lunatic prince," he replied, scanning the sky. His tone shifted slightly, softer. "Are you safe? He hasn't noticed you helping me, has he?"
"I'm safe," Mena replied. "He's still focused on you. I will continue assisting from afar… Just stay alive, Niko."
Niko didn't respond immediately. The word stay hit him harder than expected.
And then, as if summoned by the very thought—the wind cracked.
Lancer descended with a quiet boom, a pressure shift that rattled loose glass from the few ruined windows still standing. His body hovered inches above the debris, cloaked in spiraling winds that curled like blades. His face had changed—calm now, but too calm. Unsettlingly so.
"Much better place to end this, don't you think, Niko?" Lancer asked, eyes narrowed, his voice strangely hollow.
Niko scoffed and rolled his shoulder, brushing dirt from his face.
"I guess it is… little prince."
But his tone had no fire. He was tired. Not just from pain or fatigue—but tired of how everything seemed just out of reach. The House. Escape. Peace.
And that description…
"Sparks of one banished by the gods… blessed by—"
It haunted him. What the hell does it even mean? Sparks? Blessed? That wasn't clarity. That was a riddle with broken words.
But maybe it didn't matter. Not now. Not here.
Niko breathed in.
He didn't know what his full ability was yet. But he knew one thing.
He would escape this place.
He would tear down the House.
He would not die here.
Something surged within him—his core igniting like a furnace. Lightning-blue veins lit up along his arms and neck. His breath hitched as the pressure inside his body shifted, coiling, ready to burst. His irises shimmered, losing their dull blackness for a piercing, glinting navy blue.
His hair lifted, tugged skyward by invisible winds, his aura humming and crackling like an unstable star.
And then—he whispered it:
"Surge Path."
A radiant blue aura exploded around him. Lightning danced across his skin like tattoos made of thunder. The ground fractured beneath his feet, not from weight—but pressure. Every atom in his body turned into a spark of energy, this way he wouldn't have to fall into the lingering punishment called burnout.
Lancer raised a brow, amused.
"What is this, a manga arc? Gonna talk about friendship now?"
But Niko didn't answer. He didn't flinch. He didn't even blink.
He vanished.
Not stepped. Not dashed.
Gone.
And then—crash. A sudden sonic boom echoed as Niko reappeared above Lancer, upside down mid-flip, his heel descending like a guillotine.
Boom.
The dropkick slammed into Lancer's temple, sending him spiraling through a collapsing building nearby. Stone exploded outward as Lancer's body carved through it like a missile, dust and glass trailing behind him.
Niko landed, crouched low, crackling with blue lightning.
"You think this is a joke?" he muttered, wiping blood from his nose.
"I'm not here to entertain your goddamn delusions."
The wind wasn't weather anymore.
It was breath. A presence. It howled like a prophecy unraveling.
The crater still smoked around Niko, and blood still trickled down his forearm—but he didn't feel the pain. His focus was deeper now. Anchored. Something inside him had broken, but it hadn't shattered. It had sharpened.
From the dust, Lancer rose.
Not with rage.
Not with glory.
But with clarity.
The rubble parted like cloth, expelled by a concentrated cyclone. A pressure wave split the ruined street as Lancer walked forward, shoulders relaxed, each step light yet certain—as if gravity had stopped applying to him properly.
His eyes met Niko's. There was no fire in them.
Just finality.
"No more speeches," Lancer said quietly, his voice somehow louder than the wind. "Just truth."
Niko's grip on the Jian tightened. The tendrils behind him flickered like coiled lightning—quieter now, but charged with purpose.
"Then say yours," Niko said flatly, stepping forward. "Before I tear it apart."
The air cracked.
They vanished.
⸻
It wasn't a clash—it was a collapse.
Sound disappeared for a moment, replaced by bursts of raw Essence colliding midair. Blue arcs and slicing wind interwove like a deadly dance, too fast to register, too violent to frame.
Lancer exhaled sharply—
"Pulse of the Gale."
A series of focused pressure bursts exploded in concentric circles around him, launching slicing blades of wind outward in all directions.
Niko skated backward, one tendril catching pavement and yanking him to safety. He didn't hesitate. Energy coiled around his right arm as he pointed.
"Chain Arc!"
A bolt of blue lightning arced from his palm, snaking midair like a living whip before snapping toward Lancer's chest.
The prince spun, redirecting the attack mid-dodge.
"Ring of the Gale!"
A sphere of circulating air formed like a shield, reflecting the lightning outward—and yet, some of it licked his side, burning deep.
He flinched.
Niko saw it.
"Crack's showing," Niko muttered.
"I've just begun," Lancer replied—and took to the skies again.
⸻
Above the clouds, Lancer hovered. But there was something… different. His expression had softened. A quiet grief replaced his rage. Not regret. Just the weight of being.
Niko's voice rang out from the ground.
"You're not fighting for approval anymore, are you?"
Silence.
"You're fighting because you don't know who you are without it."
Lancer didn't reply.
Instead, he raised one hand.
"Arrow of the Gale," he whispered.
But it was different now.
The bow didn't form like before—it breathed. The very sky pulled into its shape, as if the atmosphere itself had been waiting for this command.
Niko stepped forward, placing his Jian against the cracked ground.
The lightning around him began to ring—softly. Pure. Each tendril uncoiling like the petals of a metal flower.
"Surge Path," he whispered again—not to activate it.
But to remember who he was.
"Storm Crown."
Behind him, the tendrils shaped into a regal arc—five-pointed, crackling with azure glow. It didn't give him power. It reflected what was already there.
"I don't want to kill you," Niko muttered, eyes narrowing. "But this is the only language you'll understand."
He vanished again, reappearing mid-air. His Jian lifted, burning with essence-light.
"Surge Path: Azure Slash."
He slashed downwards—not at Lancer—but at the oncoming arrow.
The impact met halfway.
Explosion.
Sky turned to lightning. Wind shattered into light.
Everything paused—
—and then the blast radius expanded for miles in every direction.
⸻
When the wind cleared, both of them fell—
Lancer first. Niko slower, his tendrils digging into buildings to stop his descent.
They faced each other across a valley of destruction.
Lancer's breath was ragged. One knee dipped. His shirt was torn. And the air around him was no longer swirling—it was still. Like he had nothing left to give.
Niko's Jian buzzed quietly in his hand. His arm trembled, but his gaze did not.
"I kept trying to figure you out," Niko said, his voice low. "But I was wrong."
"You weren't a prince seeking power. You were a prisoner building a cage to feel safe inside it."
Lancer blinked, but said nothing.
"And you know what the worst part is?" Niko added, stepping forward. "You could've been more. But now you've torn a hole in this city that will never heal. And for what?"
Still, Lancer was silent.
Niko stopped three paces from him. The lightning behind his back dimmed to a soft shimmer.
"You don't deserve mercy."
His tone hardened—ice wrapped in sorrow.
"But I'll give you peace."
He lifted the Jian.
"You're free now, Lancer.
So let me liberate you."