[???]
Mikoto's breath hitched. A sharp gasp tore from his throat, his delicate form jolting as something cold and metallic slid through his body.
There it was.
A silver blade, slick with his own blood, protruding from his small, lithe torso.
The wound gaped around the impalement, his armor doing little to halt the deep, unforgiving penetration. His delicate, gauntleted fingers trembled as they gingerly brushed the slick metal. The warmth of his own blood seeped through his fingertips.
("A lung—")
His thoughts stumbled, fragmented. His vision blurred at the edges, his body screaming in protest, but his mind—his mind was still razor-sharp, before his attacker could even consider twisting the blade, Mikoto reacted.
His slender right arm snapped backward in a counter, his elbow driving into the unknown assailant's face, the impact crunched. A sickening collision of flesh and bone. Their skull caved inward, their nose shattered, their cheekbone collapsed like brittle glass.
The assailant made no sound of pain.
But they flew.
Their body launched through the air like a ragdoll, a blur, the force of the strike tearing the embedded blade from Mikoto's flesh as they crashed violently into the debris-littered ground.
Clang.
The blade clattered to the ground behind him, tainted in a crimson sheen—his blood.
Mikoto staggered, barely able to suppress the involuntary shudder that wracked his frame. His gauntleted hand shot to the fresh wound, his fingers pressing against the torn armor and warm, wet, pulsing agony beneath.
("Tch… it grazed a lung. Fuck.")
His breathing hitched—shallow, uneven. His body shuddered, his insides feeling as if they were unraveling, organ by organ.
With sluggish movements, he turned.
His gaze flickered to the sword on the ground. A simple silver longsword, utterly unremarkable. No detailed design. No magical presence. No enchantments.
Yet, it had pierced him.
How utterly pathetic.
If he were not in such disarray, he would have sensed the assailant and could have defended himself. His lips curled in disdain, but before he could dwell further, a voice—a familiar, condescending voice—slithered through the air.
"I got that blade for quite the good price, you know?"
Mikoto's eyes narrowed, tracing upward from the bloodied steel to the source of the voice.
And there he was.
Aelfric.
The Ancestor of Wisdom.
That same unblemished, infuriatingly composed face, the same dark spiked hair framing his ever-present smirk, the same haunting red eyes, mirroring his own yet lacking any true soul.
Mikoto scoffed.
"Of course it's you," he sneered, voice laced with disdain, though his breaths were coming shallower, his body screaming for reprieve.
Aelfric wiped the blood from his face, the damage already undone. His nose, his cheekbone—the injuries that should have left him a disfigured man—gone.
Erased.
As if they had never been there.
Mikoto's delicate features twisted into disgust. How abhorrent.
"Finally crawled out of your hole, eh?" Mikoto drawled, tilting his head, his silky white hair slipping over his shoulder. Even now, even wounded, he refused to look weak. "Of course you couldn't be bothered to fight me fairly."
Aelfric chuckled, his smirk widening, his gaze soaking in the sight of the petite, bloodstained boy before him.
"Why would I bother with what's fair concerning trash like you?" He took a step forward. "And I am the Ancestor of Wisdom, you know. Battling you at full strength is hardly something anyone would consider wise. But the state you are in now? Well you're free game."
Mikoto clicked his tongue, already calculating, already thinking ahead. But no matter how sharp his mind, his body... his body was failing him.
("Guinevere and Lyra should still be busy looking for that. I didn't exactly make the location easy, so I can't expect backup.")
He grit his teeth. No magic. No backup.
The absolute worst possible scenario.
"That power you unleashed..." Aelfric murmured, his tone almost mockingly intrigued, as if dissecting a fascinating specimen. "It took a toll on you. A mortal could never contain such force, not even with a fabricated vessel. It likely even scarred your very soul."
Mikoto's jaw tightened.
"Your magic is unstable. You couldn't sense me approach. That's why an ordinary blade was enough to wound you. That's why—"
Aelfric smiled, slow, taunting.
"I surmise you cannot even summon that pesky little sword of yours."
Mikoto remained silent, because he was right. Something was wrong. His magic was fraying. His very essence felt off. He could feel it slowly repairing, but time was a luxury he did not have.
"You seem pretty confident." Despite it all, despite the pain, despite the dire situation—Mikoto smirked. "I might not be able to summon Sabre or use magic right now, but my physical strength is more than enough to deal with a pissant like you."
"Do you truly think you can last?" Aelfric's voice was smooth, almost pitying. "Your body is still paying the price of that form. You will crumble before me."
Mikoto chuckled. "You don't sound so sure and I know exactly why."
Silence.
Mikoto's rosy lips curled wider, his eyes gleaming with something triumphant.
"Lyra told me about your ability. And your Ancestor buddy? Told me something real convenient."
Aelfric's gaze sharpened.
"Your future sight—it's superior to conventional clairvoyance, yeah? But it follows the same principle. Fate and the future are one and the same. That means..."
Mikoto tilted his head, grinning.
"You don't know what I'll do next, do you?"
A flicker of something dangerous passed through Aelfric's eyes.
"And with me being directly tied to Lyra and Guinevere... their futures are in disarray too. Meaning—"
Mikoto leaned in slightly, his breath ragged yet laced with laughter.
"You. Are. Blind."
"You're correct..." Aelfric's voice, always so measured, so composed, was a whisper of certainty edged with something dangerous. "These eyes of mine know not your fate."
And yet, despite that admission, a slow smile began to stretch across his lips, the corners pulling ever so slightly as if he were relishing the challenge. His black robes swayed in the wind, speckled with Mikoto's blood.
"But even so, everything is in my advantage. As such, Mikoto... I shall kill you."
Mikoto... simply tilted his head.
He had been idly rubbing his delicate chin, the ghost of a thought flickering in those molten-red eyes before something cruel—something awful—lit within them. A lightless hint of amusement. His lips, delicate and deceivingly sweet, stretched into an impossibly wide grin, one that should have never belonged on a face so ethereal. So beautifully inhuman.
"Tell me..." His voice was soft, a prelude to something terrible. The pause that lets fear fester. The breath before the plunge. "What would your wife and child think of such talk?"
The world stopped.
The shifting winds ceased to howl. The red-stained ground beneath them suddenly seemed colder. Everything felt like an afterthought.
Aelfric's expression—composed, amused, so sure of himself—shattered.
His pupils shrank. His breath caught in his throat as though the weight of the past had suddenly wrapped its cold, dead fingers around his neck. His entire frame stiffened, rigid, unprepared, as if the words had struck something deeper than any blade ever could.
"What...?" The word barely left him, strangled, uncertain. "How...?"
His fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white, then unclenched, then clenched again—like a man trying to hold onto something that no longer existed, that had already slipped through his fingers eons ago. His body betrayed him in that moment, every twitch, every minuscule movement screaming of something long buried and suddenly unearthed.
Mikoto saw it.
And oh—
Oh, how he relished it.
A sharp, manic sound tore from his throat, a bark of laughter so unhinged, so delightfully cruel, that it echoed through the air, filling the void with something far worse than silence. His petite frame trembled, not from pain, not from exhaustion, but from sheer, unadulterated glee.
"Gyahahahah! Now that's one hell of an expression... ha...hahahaha!!"
He doubled over, delicate shoulders shaking, hands on his knees, breathless from his own amusement. His cheeks were flushed, a soft pink hue against his porcelain skin, as though he were witnessing the greatest joke ever conceived. His white hair fell messily over his eyes as he threw his head back, savoring every second.
"You act... haha—oh fuck, you act all scheming and shit, and now look at you."
His body trembled, red eyes gleaming through strands of white.
"You... you!!"
Aelfric's voice cracked, not with fear—no, not yet—but with something volatile, something unrefined, something he hated. His hands shook, his breathing shallow, his immortal body betraying him in the only way it could. His chest rose and fell in uneven intervals, his lips slightly parted as though he wanted—needed—to say something, anything, to deny what had just been spoken into existence.
But Mikoto wouldn't let him.
"Aww~", the boy purred, straightening up, running a gauntleted hand through his wild white locks, his rosy lips curling into something sweet. "What happened to all that spunk you had, hm?"
Mockery dripped from every syllable.
"Come on, help a guy out," he cooed, tilting his head, voice honeyed with false concern. "I need a little laugh... and you're just the perfect laughing stock." His grin stretched wider, his canines glinting like fangs.
Aelfric snapped and the ground erupted.
Like a volcano spewing forth, tendrils of void-dark, fathomless, writhing like a nest of unholy snakes—exploded out from beneath Aelfric, spiraling in all directions. They twisted through the air like living things, snapping, wriggling and hungry, the essence of Death itself.
The ground beneath them, the once-firm earth beneath them collapsing into the void like it had never even been there.
And through it all—
Mikoto only laughed.
"Ohhh, did I strike a nerve?~"
A tendril lashed toward him, faster than an arrow, a black whip of unmaking aimed straight for his beautiful, smug little face.
Mikoto's body barely shifted, a single, fluid motion. A tilt of the head—as if dodging the concept of Death itself was nothing more than a casual inconvenience. The tendril passed so close that it sliced a single lock of his wild white hair, sending it drifting into the void.
"Gyahahaha~! That all you got, old man?!"
Aelfric roared, something primal and violent bursting from his throat as he lashed out again—again, again, again.
Tendrils shot toward Mikoto from all angles, whipping through the air with a horrifying screech, aiming to erase him from existence itself. Mikoto moved through them with ease, his attacks were much too telegraphed.
A pivot—his delicate frame twisting out of harm's way. A hop, light and effortless, dodging a tendril that ripped the air apart beneath him. A lean, letting another pass just inches from his cheek.
"You're fighting like a drunk, Ancestor!—Come on, put in some effort!"
Another tendril shot toward his midsection—he flipped over it.
"My God....Pathetic, you're making me feel bad, man," he chuckled mockingly. "You can't die, right? Guess this means your little sad showing is gonna continue forever, huh?" He snorted.
Aelfric's teeth gritted together hard enough for them to crack, only to quickly heal. His fingers twitched, snapped, and the tendrils doubled—tripled—the sheer number of writhing Death weaving a web that should have made escape impossible.
But Mikoto did not escape.
He advanced.
He slipped between the gaps—under, over, through the threads of Death, closing the distance between them too fast.
Aelfric barely had time to see him before—
CRACK.
A fist clad in black slammed into his jaw, the force was inhuman. His head snapped to the side, his entire body lifting slightly from the impact.
Mikoto did not stop, he twisted midair, momentum carrying him into a roundhouse kick to Aelfric's temple. Another impact—another—so brutal that it sent the immortal stumbling, his feet skidding across the ruined ground.
"What's wrong, Aelfric?" Mikoto purred, wiping nonexistent dust from his knuckles. "You're looking a little... lost?~"
Aelfric snarled, his head snapped back up, lips pulled into something between rage and disbelief—
CRACK.
Mikoto was already there.
Another punch—straight to the gut.
Then an uppercut—his fist colliding with Aelfric's jaw with enough force to send shockwaves through the air.
Then a kick—a brutal, skyward snap of his leg straight to the ribs, sending Aelfric soaring before crashing back down into the bloodstained ground.
But even as his body broke—
Even as his jaw snapped, his ribs cracked, his skin caved beneath Mikoto's onslaught—
It all healed in seconds.
Bone reformed, flesh stitched back together, pain meaningless in the face of an existence that refused to end.
"Enough!"
Aelfric's tendrils erupted from the ground, faster, thicker, spiraling like a nest of snakes as they lashed toward Mikoto in a frenzy. Mikoto leapt back, dodging them with the same effortlessness, twisting midair as he landed on the ruined ground.
And yet beneath the mockery—
A thought flickered.
Verence's words.
"His wife and child..."
Mikoto's eyes narrowed slightly, thoughts weaving together, slotting into place like a puzzle. Aelfric—this man who loathed Octavia with a hatred that ran deep enough to go after her spawns—
This man who played the role of the all-knowing—
Had lashed out at the mere mention of them.
Why?
Mikoto took a slow step forward, eyes sharp beneath the wild strands of his hair.
"You know," he murmured, softer now—still taunting, still cruel, but digging. "It's funny, really."
Aelfric's fingers twitched, but he said nothing.
"All this anger. All this hate. Makes a guy wonder..." A slow grin spread across Mikoto's lips, but there was something dangerous behind it now. "What exactly did she take from you?"
Aelfric stilled.
Mikoto leaned forward slightly—
"What did Octavia take, Aelfric?"