Not the Hero, Not the Villain — Just the One Who Wins
Chapter 46: Face Off 3

Chapter 46: Face Off 3

The battlefield was breathless.

Mud clung to boots. Smoke curled upward like fading memories. Trees stood half-burnt and trembling, the scent of ozone and blood thick in the damp air.

Rayne staggered to one knee, his glaive buried in the dirt to hold himself upright. Blood trickled from his temple, his breath ragged. Across from him, Layla stood barely taller, sabers drooping, frost magic sparking weakly at her fingertips.

Nyx still stood with eerie grace, her void aura a flickering shadow around her body. Her eyes remained sharp, calculating—but even she couldn’t mask the fatigue in her trembling hands. "I could keep going," she muttered, "but only because stubbornness is a curse."

Seraphina knelt beside Liora, who had drained her last glyph stabilizing Lucielle’s injuries. Rin’s coat hung in tatters, his movements sluggish as he fended off Lucielle’s final lunges, both fighters barely conscious of the fight they continued to enact on muscle memory alone.

They were all past their limits.

And yet, none of them gave in.

Crashes still echoed. Arrows still flew. Swords still clashed.

But it was desperate.

Slower.

As though every breath was borrowed.

Then, the sky changed.

The clouds trembled as a low, haunting cry pierced the battlefield.

Every head turned.

A pillar of black flame erupted from a distant ridge.

Ashen descended.

Cloak rippling like a shadow given life, his eyes locked on the battlefield below. No words. No warning.

He raised one hand.

"Volkyn."

The sky screamed.

The phoenix emerged—blazing, enormous, a spectral titan of crimson and gold. Its wings unfurled with enough force to flatten trees and scatter debris. The moment it appeared, heat surged across the battlefield like a tidal wave.

Everyone staggered.

Even Nyx took a step back.

Ashen pointed forward.

The phoenix obeyed.

Its first pass was a burning crescent across the enemy line—Rayne and Rin diving for cover as flames carved through the earth, turning dirt into molten glass. Layla threw up a shield of frost that shattered under the heat but saved Seraphina and Liora from the blast.

Lucielle dragged Nyx back, just in time for the phoenix to crash where they had stood. The impact was a meteor strike, vaporizing the ground in a halo of fire.

Rayne roared, trying to launch a wind barrier.

The phoenix’s beak collided with it, and the gale exploded backward, sending Rayne sprawling.

The forest around them began to burn.

Ashen stepped into the chaos, calm, centered.

He wasn’t directing the phoenix.

He was the phoenix.

Every pulse of its wings mirrored the flow of shadow from his back. Every screech matched the flicker in his eyes.

And then—

A tremor.

His breath hitched.

The shadow at his feet flickered.

The phoenix stuttered in flight.

Its form rippled.

The inferno it carried began to fade.

"No—" Ashen muttered, sweat beading on his brow. "Not yet."

But the shadow pool beneath him buckled.

And with a mournful cry, the phoenix collapsed into embers mid-air and scattered like stars across the battlefield.

Ashen dropped to one knee, coughing, his eyes dim.

The battlefield, scorched and silent, stared in awe.

The shadow king had arrived.

And now he stood alone.

Drained.

Vulnerable.

Every warrior—friend and foe—grasped that truth in the same heartbeat.

But none moved.

The embers still floated.

They drifted lazily across the battlefield like fireflies, the last remnants of the phoenix’s wrath. Blackened soil hissed beneath falling ash, steam curling in the air. Warriors from both sides stood frozen, bodies battered, weapons lowered but not yet dropped.

In the eye of the storm, Ashen knelt, breath shallow, steam rising from his shoulders. His cloak was nearly burned away, and his shadow flickered erratically like a dying flame.

Layla was the first to reach him.

She dropped to her knees, grabbing his shoulders. "Ashen! Can you hear me?"

"I’m... alive," he muttered. "Just... drained. The phoenix—its power overwhelmed my shadow reserve. I couldn’t hold it longer."

Lucielle and Liora rushed to his side, both bruised but moving. Liora immediately raised a ward glyph, drawing a shimmering veil around them. "We’re still in combat territory. Keep alert."

Lucielle knelt by Ashen, brushing burnt hair from his face. "You summoned a damn calamity, and now you look like you fought ten gods. Idiot."

Ashen smirked faintly. "It worked, didn’t it?"

In the distance, Rayne struggled to rise. His uniform was torn, face marked with ash and dried blood. His glaive’s edge was cracked, mana field sputtering. "Worked? You scorched half the arena. That wasn’t a summon. That was a declaration of war."

From behind Rayne, Nyx slowly stepped forward, her void cloak flickering with instability. Her expression unreadable. "And yet none of us died. That phoenix... It obeyed you for a time. That means something."

The battlefield had not recovered.

The scorched terrain still glowed in places, steam rising from cracks in the earth. The air pulsed with residual heat and raw mana, charged and unstable. Silence had returned—but it was not peace.

It was the breath before a storm’s second wind.

Nyx moved first.

She appeared in a blur of shadow, flickering from one scorched tree stump to another. Her eyes locked on Seraphina and Liora, both shielding Ashen as Layla stood guard over him.

"No more mercy," Nyx whispered, her voice layered with void resonance.

Seraphina reacted in an instant. She fired three arrows in rapid succession, each glowing with embedded sigils—disruptive, blinding, piercing.

Nyx flickered.

The arrows passed through an afterimage.

She reappeared midair, flinging two daggers of condensed void at Liora. Liora raised a radiant prism glyph, intercepting both with a crackling burst of light. The explosion rattled the ground.

Seraphina rolled to the side, notching a heavy burst arrow and firing it directly at Nyx’s landing zone.

Nyx smirked.

She fell short on purpose.

The arrow struck the ground, detonating prematurely. Dust exploded upward—Nyx used it. She vanished into the haze.

From the smoke, tendrils of void burst forth.

One caught Seraphina’s leg.

She twisted, slashed it with a mana-dagger, but another grabbed her bow. She let go before it shattered and rolled back.

Liora’s hands flashed. She summoned four linked radiant chains from the ground, all targeting Nyx’s energy source.

"Bind her!"

The glyphs flared.

One chain caught Nyx’s arm.

Another her leg.

But Nyx whispered something under her breath—and the chains withered as if decayed.

Seraphina drew a short blade from her hip, dashing forward.

She and Nyx clashed in a blur—blade against dagger, radiant flickers against flickering shadow.

Liora circled, laying more glyphs, every step pulsing with golden light.

"Left!" Seraphina shouted.

Liora fired a radiance beam. Nyx dodged, but Seraphina caught her mid-spin with a shallow cut across her shoulder.

Nyx grinned.

"You’re both good."

Then she exploded.

Void magic erupted from her body in a dome, flinging Seraphina and Liora away. Dust and smoke swallowed the battlefield again.

Seraphina coughed, barely rising, her arm limp.

Liora’s ward shield flickered. She dropped to one knee, exhausted.

Nyx walked through the dust, dragging her blade.

"This ends now."

Seraphina leapt once more.

Nyx met her midair.

The blade pierced Seraphina’s stomach.

Her teleport glyph lit beneath her.

Gone.

Liora screamed and raised her hands.

A radiant burst—her strongest, purest light—erupted upward like a sunbeam.

It struck Nyx directly.

She staggered.

Burned.

Bleeding.

But still standing.

Liora fell forward, drained.

Nyx stood over her, breath ragged.

"I didn’t want to kill you," she said.

"But I did want to win."

Her dagger fell.

The glyph activated.

Liora vanished.

Eliminated.

Elsewhere, the wind howled.

Lucielle faced Rin in the center of a torn grove, where every tree had been split or burned by prior magic. Her blades gleamed, coated in a light barrier from Liora’s last glyph. Rin stood opposite her, drenched, burned, and smiling.

"I didn’t want to use this," he said. "But you left me no choice."

He stepped forward.

And the air bent.

Water spun around him, not as a shield—but as an extension of him.

His body glowed with faint markings—blue sigils across his chest and arms.

"Divinity unlocked: Tidesoul Ascension," he whispered.

Lucielle lunged first, both blades slashing for his sides.

The water shifted—perfect counters to every move. She struck six times. None landed.

He raised a hand.

A pulse of water struck her squarely, lifting her into the air.

She flipped, landed, slid—stabbed forward.

Rin moved sideways like mist.

His hand struck her gut. Not a blow—an infusion.

Water flooded her magic channels, disrupting flow.

She gasped.

He raised his other hand and spun once.

A vortex encased her, lifting her off the ground.

She screamed, slashed wildly—one cut grazed him, leaving a line of red.

His gaze turned sharp.

The water surged.

Her teleport glyph activated.

Gone.

Rin dropped to one knee, breathing heavily.

But victorious.

Only four remained.

Layla.

Ashen.

Rayne.

And Nyx.

And the war was not over yet.

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