Single for Eternity
Chapter 113: Owed her Again

Chapter 113: Owed her Again

I stretched my arms, feeling the residual force of aether still flickering through my veins.

The sensation was intoxicating — an electric, ecstatic pulse that seemed to breathe life into every fiber of my being.

For a long moment, I simply basked in it, letting the power settle into my bones.

But then, reality snapped back.

Seren.

The name crashed into my mind like a tidal wave. She hadn’t returned.

Even when the very fabric of reality had trembled and fractured during my Awakening, she hadn’t shown up.

The realization struck me with growing unease.

Without wasting another second, I bolted out of the crystal room, my mind already racing ahead to the next segment of the Malthorn trial.

The door groaned open with a heavy screech — and what greeted me beyond it froze me in place.

Bones.

Mountains of them.

Skeletal remains littered the ground like discarded trash, piled high and wide, covering every inch of the cracked floor.

And there, in the heart of the battlefield, was Seren.

She sat amidst the carnage, her slender frame wrapped protectively around her weapon — Dissonance.

The black blade glimmered faintly, wreathed in a subtle, silvery sheen.

It was like a lone star clinging to light in a realm where death reigned supreme.

Seren’s usual playful smile in the dreamscape was nowhere to be found. Her face was calm, distant, and eerily still — a sharp contrast to the ferocity she must have unleashed moments before.

I approached her silently, taking careful steps across the crunching bones.

Her gaze remained unfocused, almost as if she were in a trance, resting with her body but still fighting somewhere far deeper — in mind and spirit.

Then, without warning, she moved.

Her hand shot up reflexively, and Dissonance cleaved through the air, aiming straight for my throat with frightening precision.

The symbiote within me hissed, reacting faster than conscious thought.

Black and crimson armor bloomed across my body, shielding me just in time as I raised my arms instinctively to catch the strike.

"It’s me, Seren! Einar!" I barked, my voice slicing through the tense air.

Her crimson eyes fluttered open slowly, hazy at first, then sharpening as recognition set in.

The tension bled out of her shoulders. The tip of her blade dipped lazily to the ground.

I exhaled in relief, lowering my guard.

Turning my back to give her some space, I said gently, "Go rest. I’ll stand guard here. If anything happens, I’ll deal with it."

For a moment, I thought she would argue.

Her crimson gaze lingered on me, assessing, weighing. But eventually, she sighed — a sound full of exhaustion and quiet resignation — and padded silently back into the aether crystal room.

Once she was gone, I allowed myself to survey the battlefield properly.

The bones weren’t just remnants. They were coated in a faint, ghostly mist — undead aether, spectral energy still clinging desperately to decayed matter.

My newly Awakened senses could perceive it easily now.

It painted a grim picture.

Malthorn’s forces had attacked during my Awakening — of that there was no doubt.

It wasn’t a coincidence. It was a trap — offering me the aether crystals to force an Awakening, making me vulnerable, distracted.

A cold fury settled into my chest.

And yet... it had failed. Because of Seren.

She alone had stood against it all — an endless tide of skeletons, revenants, ghouls — and had obliterated them.

Their shattered remains were now all that lingered.

I knelt, running my armored fingers over a fragment of rib bone, watching the spectral aether wisp away into nothingness.

The scale of the battle... the sheer numbers she had faced... It was humbling. And terrifying.

She fought for me.

She exhausted herself for me.

Again.

I clenched my fists.

Another debt I owed her. Another weight to carry.

I took a deep breath, forcing the bitterness and guilt down.

There was no point in self-pity. She hadn’t asked for gratitude or promises.

She had fought because that’s who she was.

All I could do now was stand guard and make sure her efforts weren’t in vain.

I rose to my feet, armor clinking softly, and turned my gaze outward to the endless shadows.

I would repay her.

One way or another, I would repay her.

Until then, I would watch. I would protect.

Because that’s what she had done for me.

...

The world around me was unnervingly still.

The brittle clatter of distant bones occasionally echoed through the hollow air, but otherwise, silence reigned supreme.

A heavy, unnatural silence — as if the battlefield itself were holding its breath.

I stood guard, my hand resting lightly on the hilt of my blade, symbiote armor pulsing faintly across my skin.

Minutes passed.

Maybe hours.

Time felt warped here.

The aether in the air was thin, unstable — as if something had scraped reality raw.

A sickly smell drifted up from the piles of bones, like burnt marrow and rotting magic.

I let my senses extend outward, brushing the edges of the void-like darkness that pressed against this fractured world.

And that’s when I felt it.

A ripple.

A disturbance — subtle, but there.

I straightened instantly, my body tensing.

The aether in the bones stirred.

No, something stirred within the bones.

The heaps shifted, twitched, groaned.

I took a cautious step forward, watching warily as the skeletal remains — those that should have been long defeated — began to twitch and convulse, as if some hand beyond the veil were puppeteering them back into motion.

"No way," I muttered under my breath.

I shifted into a battle stance, letting the symbiote flare out in a tight, reactive layer of armor.

Red veins of light coursed through the black exoskeleton.

Before my very eyes, bones started slamming together with sickening cracks.

A ribcage here. A skull there. Shattered arms and spines weaving together in grotesque formations.

This wasn’t simple necromancy.

This was desperation. A final, hateful curse left behind by Malthorn.

The monstrosity that rose from the skeletal sea was unlike the neat, humanoid skeletons Seren had slain.

It was chaotic.

Cobbled together from dozens — maybe hundreds — of corpses, fused into a towering abomination.

Its head was a knot of skulls, all screaming silently.

Its limbs were a mess of tangled femurs and splintered ribs, forming jagged, crude weapons.

The thing writhed as it stabilized, shrieking in a soundless wail that vibrated against my soul.

And then it lunged.

I barely dodged the first swipe — a massive, bladed arm of bones carving a deep trench where I had stood a heartbeat before.

The impact sent shockwaves through the ground, rattling the dead.

"Perfect," I grunted, summoning my aether into my legs and leaping backward, gaining some distance.

The abomination didn’t pause.

It charged like a starved predator, fueled by blind hatred.

I couldn’t let this fight drag out. Seren was still resting. She needed time.

I couldn’t let her wake up to this nightmare.

Planting my feet firmly, I channeled the aether within me.

The symbiote stirred faintly, sharpening the world into agonizing clarity.

I saw it.

The weak points.

The unstable joints where magic barely held the abomination together.

With a roar, I surged forward, low and fast like a bullet.

The first blow came from below — I ducked it, my fist flashing in a vicious arc that severed one of its support legs.

The creature screeched, stumbling.

But it didn’t fall.

Instead, it morphed — absorbing nearby bones, reconfiguring its body on the fly.

"Tch—adaptation?" I cursed.

Another heavy swing came from its newly formed appendage. I parried it barely, skidding backward under the force.

The symbiote hissed, its surface fracturing slightly from the impact.

No good.

At this rate, it would keep growing, keep adapting.

I had to finish it now.

I shifted my grip materializing a sword through the symbiote, narrowing my stance.

No hesitation.

No fear.

Focus.

The abomination roared, charging once more — but to me, it might as well have been moving in slow motion.

One breath in.

One step forward.

I weaved through its strike effortlessly, sliding between its lumbering limbs.

My blade flashed once — twice — thrice.

Precise cuts.

Surgical strikes.

Severing the anchors holding its mass together.

Aether howled through my veins as I channeled everything into the final blow.

With a battle cry, I leapt high, twisting mid-air, and brought my sword crashing down onto the core — a black, pulsating mass at its center.

The blade sank deep.

A crack like thunder split the air.

The abomination convulsed violently, shrieking with a thousand silent voices, before exploding into a rain of bone shards and corrupted aether.

I landed hard, panting, my armor flickering.

The battlefield fell silent once again.

Bones — true, inert bones — rained down around me like macabre snow.

I straightened slowly, grimacing at the dull ache settling into my muscles.

Glancing toward the crystal room, I saw that Seren had not stirred.

Good.

I disintegrated my blade, exhaling a slow breath.

The threat was gone — for now.

But Malthorn’s malice lingered still.

I turned my gaze skyward, toward the endless darkness above.

This trial...

It wasn’t over yet.

And I had a feeling the worst was still to come.

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