A Banner Torn (Book 1 Complete)

Kairnleid - During his assault into enemy territory towards the fortress :

The wind was a razor across the high battlements, its edge honed by altitude and the desolation of the place. It screamed through arrow slits choked with the white dust of ages, a fine, gritty powder that coated everything, a shroud over the bones of this dead fortress. Kairnleid moved against the gale, a shadow clinging to the vertical ruin. His ascent was a grim communion with decay, fingers seeking purchase in the fractured, weeping stone. Each handhold was a negotiation, a test of crumbling mortar and weathered rock that threatened to betray him to the long fall below.

The dust worked its way into the raw scrapes on his knuckles, a constant, abrasive reminder of the fortress's resistance.

He climbed not with agility, but with a relentless, grinding persistence. His muscles, corded and dense beneath worn leather, bunched and released in a rhythm born of countless such ascents. This was familiar territory, the hostile verticality of forgotten places. Beneath his heavy cloak, the twin burdens strapped to his back were a palpable presence, a dense, cold weight that seemed to anchor him to his brutal purpose. The primary was a titan of a blade, less a sword and more a declaration of war forged into steel. Its unadorned surface drank the thin moonlight, offering no reflection, only a flat, menacing darkness. Its edge, an impossible rumour made real, whispered of severance, of endings absolute and swift. Its silent, waiting sibling pressed against it, a secret held close, another layer of lethal intent.

These were not weapons for a soldier. They were instruments of judgement, shaped for moments when survival was measured in the obliteration of obstacles.

The sheer physics of them felt wrong, a defiance of balance and practical warfare, yet they were extensions of his will. Their weight was a constant companion, a reminder of the path he walked, the choices made, the lives unmade.

The fortress clawed at sky, a jagged silhouette against the gloom. Each breath rasped, thick with dust and the metallic tang of exertion. The wind threatened to peel him from the wall, but he narrowed his focus to the next handhold, the next shift of weight. A flicker of memory surfaced—warm sun on stone, echoing laughter—but he crushed it down. Memory was a traitor. Survival demanded focus. Ghosts had no place on these heights.

The final few feet were a treacherous scramble. The stone here was rotten, flaking away under his questing fingers, the mortar turned to sand. His boots skidded, seeking purchase. A surge of strength, a grunt, fingers digging into a precarious lip of rock. He hauled himself upward, muscles screaming, the immense weight on his back threatening to pull him back into the abyss. Then, solid stone beneath his hands, the rough texture of the battlement floor. He rolled over the edge, landing in a crouch, the impact jarring through his bones.

He stayed low for a moment, the wind whipping his cloak around him, his pulse a frantic drum against his ribs. Dust swirled at his feet. He took a slow, deliberate breath, allowing his senses to adjust to the new perspective. The weight on his back shifted as he rose, rolling his shoulders, settling into a balanced stance, ready for whatever waited in this high, lonely place.

That's when he saw him.

A figure carved from the same twilight shadows that clung to the ruins. He leaned with deceptive casualness against the crumbling curve of a broken archway, arms folded across his chest. He wasn't hiding, wasn't preparing an ambush. He had been watching Kairnleid's entire ascent, a silent observer to the struggle against stone and gravity. There was no surprise in his posture, only a profound stillness, an unnerving patience. His eyes, dark pools in the gloom, held their gaze for a beat, then flicked, just once, almost imperceptibly, to the worn scrap of blue cloth tied around the hilt of the monster of a primary blade. A silent acknowledgement. A shared, unspoken history hanging heavy in the air between them.

The wind moaned through the gaps in the stonework, stirring the dust into ghostly eddies that danced around their boots.

Kairnleid didn't move, his initial readiness hardening into a focused assessment. The swordsman hadn't drawn his weapon. He hadn't shifted his weight. The stillness was absolute, deliberate. He had *allowed* the climb. He had waited for Kairnleid to gain the battlement, to find his footing, to stand ready. Not an ambush, but an appointment. A grim courtesy extended in this place of endings.

His gaze dropped to the weapon resting loosely at his oponents side. It was a stark contrast to the brutalist architecture of his own armament. He recognized that blade.

The Dancer in the Ash, Vakhtan. This would be a much more dangerous encounter than he was expecting. He would still crush the man, but it would take effort.

The graceful sword possessed an elegance born of lethal purpose. Longer than a standard arming sword, shorter than a true greatsword, it was a blade designed for a deadly ballet, its lines clean, its balance perfect. Subtle etchings, visible even in the poor light, spoke of a master smith's dedication, artistry fused with function. The guard was a graceful curve of dark steel, protecting the hand while allowing for intricate wristwork. And tied there, mirroring the cloth on Kairnleid's own hilt, was another piece of faded blue fabric. Not hidden, but worn with a quiet pride, a visible declaration. A symbol of an oath sworn, perhaps, or a memory cherished.

It marked the weapon as belonging to a warrior, someone who lived and breathed the deadly craft, someone who still clung to the echoes of a code in a world that had forgotten the words.

Silence stretched between them, thick and taut, broken only by the keening wind. The moon, a sliver of bone-white indifference, cast long, distorted shadows across the ruin, painting the scene in stark monochrome. The air crackled with unspoken tension, the weight of what was about to happen pressing down like a physical force.

Then, Vakhtan moved. Not abruptly, but with a fluid grace that belied the killing intent. He straightened from the archway, the motion economical. The dust swirled around his boots as he stepped clear, his hand finding the hilt of his sword. The blade left its sheath with a whisper of steel, a sound swallowed almost instantly by the wind, yet it resonated in the charged air.

The moonlight caught the polished surface.

Kairnleid matched the movement, his own hand closing around the worn leather grip of the colossal sword on his back. The sheer act of drawing it was a statement, a commitment. The weapon slid free with a heavy, grating sound, the sound of finality being drawn from its rest. It felt impossibly heavy, a burden willingly shouldered, its dark steel seeming to absorb the very light around it. He settled it before him, the point kissing the dusty stone, the weapon a grim promise made manifest.

The wind howled, a rising crescendo over the skeletal remains of the fortress. Two figures stood poised, shadows against the dying light, the space between them vibrating with imminent violence. The world seemed to hold its breath.

Then, the first ring of steel shattered the stillness.

Vakhtan initiated the deadly dance. It wasn't a reckless charge, but a calculated probe, his blade flickering out like a viper's tongue, tracing a swift, diagonal path aimed at Kairnleid's exposed side as he settled his stance. It was a question asked in steel, testing reach, reaction, commitment. Kairnleid offered no conventional answer, no clang of parrying metal. Instead, he moved with deceptive speed for a man burdened by so much, stepping *into* the attack's path, a subtle shift of weight, a lean that let the razor edge slice empty air mere inches from his ribs. The closeness was intentional, a contemptuous dismissal of the threat.

Then came the reply. Not a riposte, but an obliteration. The slab of sunless metal, swung in a devastating downward arc. It wasn't merely swung, it was *unleashed*, gravity and muscle combining to create a wave of kinetic fury. The air itself seemed to groan under the pressure, the wind momentarily silenced by the sheer force displacing it. Dust and grit exploded upwards from the stone floor where the impact was aimed. But Vakhtan was already dissolving, a phantom evading the inevitable. A blur of motion, a twist from the hips, a wolf's pivot toward his prey, he let the crushing momentum carry the weapon past him, the wind of its passage tugging violently at his tunic.

The stone where he'd stood a heartbeat before simply ceased to exist, cratered into rubble by the blow.

No pause. No reset. The counterstrike was immediate, flowing seamlessly from his evasion. His own blade, the elegant instrument of precision, snapped forward in a rapier-fast thrust, aimed low, targeting the perceived overextension, seeking to punish the commitment to the missed blow. It was textbook swordsmanship, exploiting the opening created by massive force.

Kairnleid met it not with finesse, but with implacable presence. The colossal blade, defying any reasonable expectation of recovery speed, surged upwards. Both his hands locked onto the hilt, transforming the weapon into an advancing wall of absolute defense. He didn't deflect the thrust, didn't attempt to guide it aside. He simply drove *through* it, his entire body behind the movement, meeting the incoming point with the flat of his blade in a head-on collision.

The sound was not the musical ring of swordplay, but a brutal, jarring *thump*, like a hammer striking an anvil the size of a tombstone. The impact resonated through the very stone beneath their feet, a shockwave felt deep in the bones. Vakhtan was thrown back, his boots scraping desperately for purchase on the fractured flagstones, the force of the block nearly tearing his sword from his grasp. His arms screamed in protest, ligaments strained by the impossible inertia he had just arrested. Blocking that thing… it wasn't like blocking a sword, it was like trying to stop a battering ram swung by a giant. The sheer, brute weight was obscene.

How could any man wield such a thing with anything resembling speed?

Disbelief was a luxury Vakhtan couldn't afford. Kairnleid gave no quarter, no breath. He pressed the attack, instantly transitioning from defense to offense. The mountain of scarred iron became a relentless engine of destruction, each swing a collapsing wall, each step forward claiming ground. Step. Cleave. Step. Hammer-blow. The air filled with the shriek of tortured metal and the concussion of near misses. There were no subtle feints, no intricate exchanges, just a continuous, overwhelming assault that sought to pulverize, to shatter, to simply erase him from existence. The sheer scale of the weapon negated conventional tactics, its reach immense, its power undeniable. It didn't cut the air, it brutalized it.

The swordsman found himself fighting not an opponent, but a natural disaster. He wasn't dueling, he was surviving. His own sword, a formidable weapon by any normal measure, felt like a needle against a falling monolith. He couldn't block consistently, the impacts were too jarring, too damaging. Trading blows was suicide. His only recourse was evasion, redirection, staying perpetually just outside the kill zone. His footwork became a desperate art, weaving, dodging, letting the storm of steel pass him by, seeking fleeting moments to score, to disrupt the relentless rhythm.

He was a blur against the backdrop of the implacable advance, his lighter blade a flickering counterpoint to the crushing weight of the other.

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A low sweep, designed to scythe through legs, came whistling across the ground, kicking up a spray of stone shards. Vakhtan reacted instinctively, launching himself upwards, a desperate vault over the horizontal death sentence. Mid-air, suspended for a fraction of a second against the bruised sky, he saw the trap spring shut. Kairnleid hadn't overswung.

The low attack was bait.

The edge of the world-breaker was already rising to meet him. Momentum reversed with impossible speed, the massive blade arcing upwards in a perfect, calculated executioner's stroke. There was nowhere to go, no air to push against. Vakhtan twisted violently, contorting his body in a spasm of pure survival instinct. He avoided the full, cleaving impact that would have split him from groin to throat, but the sheer displaced air, the shockwave of the near-miss, slammed into him like a physical blow. It threw him off balance, his trajectory ruined. He hit the ground hard, shoulder first, the impact stealing his breath, rolling desperately away as Kairnleid reset for another attack. He came up skidding, his sword arm numb, dust coating his tunic.

He heard it then, faint beneath the wind's howl, a slight quickening in Kairnleid's breathing. Not exhaustion, not yet. But effort. The first sign that the man wasn't merely an automaton of destruction. He was calculating, adapting, learning the patterns even as he sought to overwhelm them. The realization sent a chill down his spine.

He forced a slow, deliberate exhale, trying to calm the frantic pounding in his chest. He'd faced giants before, berserkers fueled by rage or stimulants. But this was different. This was controlled power, focused intent wielded with impossible strength and surprising agility.

This wasn't a wild beast, it was a master predator.

The next assault came without preamble. A two-handed overhead cleave, Kairnleid putting every ounce of his formidable strength into it. No subtlety, no feint, just the promise of absolute annihilation descending from above. The air split before the edge. Vakhtan saw it coming, knew he couldn't dodge laterally in time, knew sidestepping was impossible given the width of the impending doom.

So, he did the unthinkable. He stepped *inside* the arc.

Steel blurred as he surged forward, closing the distance, moving beneath the point of maximum leverage. Instead of receiving the full force, he met the descending weapon closer to the hilt, his own sword raised high, both hands locked, stance braced. It was a desperate gamble, meeting overwhelming force with structure and precise timing.

The collision was apocalyptic. A deafening *CRACK* echoed across the battlements, louder than thunder. It wasn't just the sound of steel on steel, it was the sound of the very stone beneath them fracturing under the impact. Dust and debris erupted outwards in a blinding cloud. The ground shuddered, a visible ripple spreading from the point of impact. Kairnleid's blade stopped, its descent arrested inches from his own head.

Vakhtan had blocked it. *Held* it.

Agony screamed up his arms, a blinding white fire threatening to rip sinew from bone. His vision fractured into shards of light and shadow, the world dissolving into pure sensation, the jarring impact vibrating through his teeth, his skull, down his spine. His legs were trembling, muscles shrieking under a load no man should bear. Yet, somehow, through sheer will, he held. For one, stretched, impossible heartbeat, the universe balanced on the straining steel between them, he held the avalanche at bay. Pride warred with terror. He had met the impossible force. He had *stopped* it.

And in that frozen moment of disbelief and agony, the true nightmare began.

Kairnleid shifted. Not his stance, not the crushing pressure. His *grip*.

With a speed that was an obscenity given the mass he controlled, his left hand released the hilt of the descending death.

Every fiber of his being locked in the desperate struggle against the primary blade, felt the shift more than saw it. A subtle change in pressure, a flicker in his peripheral vision. His mind, lagging instinct, struggled to process the impossible. Kairnleid's free hand… it wasn't bracing. It wasn't adjusting balance. It was reaching *back*, towards the second great weight strapped beneath his cloak.

A cold dread, colder than the grave, seized Vakhtan's heart. Then came the sound, a heavy, grating rasp of steel sliding free, a sound that echoed the first draw but carried a new, terrifying resonance. His blood turned to ice water in his veins. He saw it emerge, a second silhouette against the gloom, a mirror image of the first monstrous slab. A twin. A shadow made solid. An impossibility given form. The world lurched beneath his feet. The rules of combat, of physics itself, shattered. This wasn't a man.

This was judgement itself, wielding twin instruments of the end.

Physics screamed in protest. Anatomy howled betrayal. No man should be able to wield one such weapon effectively, let alone two. The strain, the balance, the sheer physical demand, it was beyond human limits.

It wasn't a flourish, not a transition to a different fighting style. It was the unveiling of the true threat. The fight until now, the overwhelming pressure, the impossible weight, it had all been with *one hand* occupied merely in holding the first sword aloft after the block.

This was the execution stroke.

The second blade, the shadow twin, came around in a vicious, horizontal arc aimed at Vakhtan's exposed side, the side unprotected while both his arms were committed to the life-or-death block overhead. There was no time to think, only to react on the rawest edge of instinct. Muscles bulged unnaturally beneath leathers, sinews standing out along his forearms. Each motion should have torn human tendons from bone, yet this man wielded the twin monoliths as if they were extensions of his own body.

Vakhtan couldn't disengage from the overhead block without being instantly crushed. He couldn't dodge. All he could do was attempt a desperate, awkward parry with the side of his already engaged blade, twisting his wrists, trying to angle his sword to intercept the incoming death.

It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.

Steel bit deep. A searing, white-hot agony exploded just below his ribs on his left side. It wasn't a clean cut, but a brutal tearing impact, the sheer mass of the weapon doing as much damage as the edge. Warmth, thick and viscous, instantly soaked his tunic, spreading rapidly. The force of the blow spun him partially around, breaking his overhead block, sending him stumbling backward, gasping, his sword nearly falling from nerveless fingers.

He clutched at his side, teeth gritted against the wave of nausea and pain. It wasn't fatal, not immediately. But it was bad. Deep. Bleeding heavily. A game-changer. The carefully controlled dance had just devolved into a bloody brawl, and he was wounded.

He forced himself upright, adjusting his grip on his sword, his breath hissing through clenched teeth. The fight he had anticipated, the contest of skill and endurance against a uniquely powerful opponent, had been a prelude. He hadn't even been facing the real Kairnleid until this moment.

Kairnleid pivoted, angling his shoulders perpendicular to Vakhtan's line of attack, reducing his profile while bringing both blades to bear.

One monstrous blade in his right hand, its identical sibling in his left. He didn't fight with technique anymore, he fought with sheer, overwhelming presence. A whirlwind of destruction, a continuous, hammering rhythm where each swing flowed into the next, right feeding left, left setting up right. High, low, diagonal, thrusting, cleaving, a relentless storm of steel that left no openings, no pauses, no space to breathe or recover. It was like fighting two opponents, each impossibly strong, impossibly fast, their attacks perfectly coordinated.

Vakhtan was drowning in steel. Driven back, step by agonizing step, the world reduced to the shrieking passage of metal, the jarring impacts that numbed his limbs, the coppery taste of fear and blood in his mouth. Analysis dissolved into pure survival instinct. Strategy evaporated under the relentless, two-pronged onslaught. His elegant swordsmanship, the art honed over a lifetime, was reduced to a desperate, frantic scramble against annihilation. He blocked, parried, dodged, each movement fueled by dwindling reserves of strength and sheer terror. The air thrummed, thick with lethal intent. The stones beneath his feet became treacherous, slick with his own blood, littered with chips of fractured rock kicked up by the storm of blows.

He felt like a swimmer caught in a brutal undertow, pulled inexorably towards the crushing depths.

Another blow, impossibly fast, impossibly strong. He couldn't block it cleanly. He twisted, turning his blade, letting the flat slide along his own, deflecting the crushing force just past his body. A hair's breadth escape. A gasp for air in the suffocating tempest. A fraction of a second bought at the cost of balance and position.

Useless. The second blade, the shadow-twin, was already descending, a dark comet aimed at his head. He threw his sword up, a reflexive, desperate guard born of pure instinct. The impact was catastrophic. It drove him down, smashing him to his knees as if struck by a giant's fist. The shock ripped through his already battered body, jarring his spine, making his teeth ache. His sword arm went numb, buzzing with phantom pain, the weapon nearly torn from his grip. His wounded side pulsed with agony, sending waves of blackness swimming at the edges of his vision.

The world narrowed to a tunnel of pain and the terrifying presence of his opponent.

It wasn't just physical exhaustion setting in. It was the dawning, crushing realization. His skill, his training, his discipline, the artistry of his carefully honed form… it was fundamentally useless against this. This wasn't a duel between swordsmen. It was a force of nature attempting to scour him from the earth. Kairnleid didn't tire, didn't falter. He was an engine fueled by some grim, inexhaustible source.

This wasn't a fight. It was an erosion.

And he was losing ground, bleeding, his strength failing against the relentless tide.

Kairnleid saw the shift in his opponent's stance, the slight waver, the fraction of a second delay in recovery. The wound was taking its toll. The relentless pressure was breaking through the formidable defense.

Enough.

One of the blades, a blur of motion, came down in a final, full-bodied cleave, all restraint abandoned, aimed to end it. Already off balance, wounded, knew he couldn't dodge, couldn't parry effectively.

With the last dregs of his strength and resolve, he lunged *inside* the attack again. Not to block this time, there was nothing left to block with that could withstand the force. He lunged to attack, a final, desperate gamble. His own sword carved a sharp, upward diagonal arc, aimed at Kairnleid's exposed armpit as the cleaving blow descended.

Steel screamed past his ear as Kairnleid, surprised by the suicidal counter-lunge, instinctively twisted to avoid the desperate thrust. Vakhtan's blade sliced through leather and cloth, drawing blood, but missing anything vital.

Kairnleid's descending cleave, thrown slightly off course but still carrying immense momentum, couldn't be fully stopped. Instead of meeting flesh, it met his rising sword arm.

Not the blade. The arm itself.

There was a sickening crunch of bone, a choked cry torn from the injured man's throat. His sword flew from his shattered hand, spinning end over end. As the sword deflected off of the jagged wall, the blue cloth caught on a jagged stone, tearing loose from the fallen sword. It fluttered once in the bitter wind, then disappeared into the darkness below, a small fragment of what once was, claimed by the void. The naked sword now lying to the side, like a discarded thing.

He staggered back, clutching the mangled ruin of his right arm, his face pale, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cold wind. Defeated. Disarmed. Broken.

Kairnleid stepped forward, the twin blades held loosely at his sides, their dark surfaces stained with Vakhtan's blood. He raised one, the point hovering inches from his throat. The killing blow. A clean finish to a brutal contest.

But he paused.

The proud but broken swordsman met his gaze. Through the haze of pain, there was no fear, no pleading. Only a profound weariness, the weight of a lifetime of battles, and perhaps, a flicker of understanding.

Kairnleid looked from those eyes to the fallen sword, a reminder of a different time. The wind whipped around them, carrying the scent of blood and dust.

Then, with a sudden, decisive movement, Kairnleid reversed the blade in his hand. The strike fell, swift and precise.

Not the edge. The heavy, unadorned pommel.

It connected sharply with Vakhtan's temple. His eyes rolled back in his head. He crumpled without a sound, collapsing onto the unforgiving stone, unconscious before the dust settled around his still form.

The wind moaned through the ruins, a mournful dirge. Kairnleid stood over the fallen warrior, the twin swords heavy in his hands. He looked down at the man, at the still figure, at the broken arm, the spreading pool of blood. He looked at the discarded sword, its elegant lines a stark contrast to his own brutal implements..

*Dancer in the Ash*. The name echoed faintly in his memory, a ghost from a time before the world burned, before honor became a liability, before survival was the only creed left. He hadn't forgotten. He had fought with the ghost of that code, even here, at the end.

Kairnleid let out a long, slow breath, the air rasping in his lungs. His muscles screamed from the exertion, the adrenaline leaving behind a deep, bone-weary ache. He slid the twin blades back into their sheaths on his back, the heavy grating sound unnaturally loud in the sudden stillness. The weight settled, familiar, terrible.

He didn't spare another glance for the unconscious man. He turned, his heavy boots crunching on grit and debris, and walked away from the site of the battle. The ruins stood silent, indifferent witnesses.

The moon cast cold light on the fallen sword.

Kairnleid moved towards the narrow passage leading away from the fortress, a dark fissure in the rock leading down into the shadowed hills. He didn't look back. Each step carried him further away, the distance measured not just in yards, but in the widening gulf between who he was now and the man Vakhtan perhaps still remembered.

His breathing was steady, controlled, but inside, a storm raged. Not regret. Not satisfaction. Just the hollow, familiar echo of violence done, of choices made, and the gnawing weight of unfinished histories refusing to stay buried.