NOVEL NEXT Chapter 404: Remember That, Myra Ross
"You don't, do you?" Ren asked.
Myra said nothing.
"I never had a family," his silent voice said. "Not before coming here. I had parents… but not family."
Myra's expression changed to confusion as she wondered what Ren was talking about.
His eyes narrowed. "Here, I found what I'd been missing all my life. I had a father. I had a mother. I had brothers. I now have a wife. And a friend."
Myra's grip on her sword didn't change, but something in her eyes showed she was listening attentively, even if it was to her, the ramblings of a man about to die.
Ren stepped closer, the frost crunching under his boots. "And that's when I realized, if I have to choose between them and everything else, I'll choose them. Always."
He paused. His jaw tightened. "I'm ready to die. To save the world. Even to destroy it… if it means my family will remain unharmed."
"Remember that, Myra Ross."
He didn't wait for her reply.
With a burst of speed, he charged.
Myra met him halfway, the floor cracking under their combined momentum.
Their swords clashed with a ringing impact, sparks scattering in the cold air.
She was faster, stronger, and each blow she delivered ripped him apart, slicing through his torso, severing his arm, cleaving into his ribs, but he kept coming.
Her lightning arced into him, charring his skin, her ice surged to freeze his limbs even as he moved, tearing off skin, but he shattered it each time with sheer force.
Their swords moved in blurs, kicking up a slight wind as they fought, pitting their wills against each other.
Myra's expression was grim. She could tell the end was nearing.
She drove her knee into his gut, sending him staggering back, then carved a line from his shoulder to his hip. She watched him struggle to stay upright.
"Conviction like that," she said, "I respect it."
Ren charged again, and her sword shot forward in a perfect, final thrust.
It pierced through his chest, shattering bone and splitting his heart in two. His eyes widened, the light fading as the world dimmed around him.
Myra's stance relaxed. She stepped closer, placing her hand on his shoulder as she prepared to yank her sword out of him, her guard completely lowered. She believed it was over.
It was exactly what Ren had been waiting for.
The instant his regeneration kicked in, his body exploded forward. Her eyes widened in surprise, but it was too late.
His sword came up from below, angling sharply, and he drove the steel straight through her jaw, the blade punching up through the roof of her mouth and into her brain.
Her body convulsed once. The frost under their feet cracked. Her sword slipped from her fingers.
When he wrenched the blade free, she was already dead.
Both of them collapsed together onto the frozen ground, one dead, and one not.
Ren just lay there, staring at the ceiling, chest heaving as the ache of countless wounds and deaths rattled through his nerves.
Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself up onto his knees. He looked at Myra's body for a few.seconds, mourning the death of a Ross, then reached down.
Her sword was still embedded in his chest.
With a pull, he drew it free, the sound of steel scraping bone lost to the silence.
Blood dripped down the silvered blade as he let his own sword fall from his grip, the chipped and battered sword clattering onto the frost.
Now armed with her weapon, Ren turned his gaze towards the battered district office. His breath steamed in the cold air.
It was time to destroy the Shard of Oblivion.
He began walking, focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
Every step felt like more weight was being added to his shoulders, but his eyes never left the jagged silhouette of the ruined district office ahead of him.
The charred beams and half-collapsed walls looked like the remains of a battlefield, which, in truth, they were.
He slipped through the shattered entrance without slowing, his instincts guiding him deeper inside the husk.
The silence in the building was like a pressure instead of an absence. It was like there was a heaviness that clung to the air like stale breath.
Corridors yawned open on either side of him, coated in dust and rubble. He ignored them all, veering only where his gut told him to.
His boots crunched over broken tiles, and the faint smell of burnt wood and blood mingled in the stagnant air.
Then, there it was, a narrow stairwell leading down into darkness.
The walls here were close enough that his shoulders brushed both sides. His descent was slow, every sense tuned to the possibility of an ambush.
When his boots finally met flat stone again, the air was colder. The basement stretched into a single, circular chamber.
In the center, sitting innocently on a sunken pedestal, was the Shard of Oblivion.
It thudded faintly, like a heart. A pitch black orb shot through with sluggish gray veins, each faint throb sending an invisible ripple through the room.
Ren could feel the pressure immediately, like an invisible hand pushing down on him. With every step towards it, that pressure grew, sapping his strength and making his breathing shallow.
But he didn't stop.
His grip tightened on the hilt of Myra's sword. The cold handle felt almost warm against his palm.
He pushed forward until he stood at the edge of the pedestal, staring down at the relic.
The Shard emanated a suffocating aura, power that had stolen sound from an entire city, that had smothered both powers and Divine Gifts. But Ren refused to look away.
With a long exhale, he raised the sword high.
The first strike rang like a muted bell. A faint crack splintered across the Shard's surface.
He struck again, harder. The cracks spread, gray veins splitting apart into jagged fractures.
The third blow came from the shoulder, every ounce of strength behind it.
The Shard shattered.
It broke apart in a burst of black dust, disintegrating into nothing. The oppressive pressure lifted instantly, and with it, the silence.
Sound roared back into the world.
The faint drip of water somewhere in the room, the distant creak of the ruined building above, even the rush of his own breath in his ears, all of it hit him at once.
Ren dropped to his knees. The sword clanged against the stone beside him.
His vision swam. His body gave in at last, and he collapsed forward, darkness closing in.
The Shard was gone.
And Ren knew nothing more.
A few seconds later, the sounds of slow footsteps echoed down the narrow stone stairs.
A man walked out of the shadows above, his body blurred at the edges as if the air itself refused to hold his shape.
The dim light present in the basement bent around him, failing to fully reveal his features. Each step he took down the staircase seemed to smear his outline further, like a painting brushed over with water.
His gaze swept across the room, until it settled on the lone figure lying motionless at the base of the pedestal.
The Blurred Man descended the final steps, boots touching the cold stone of the chamber.
He moved to the center, standing over where the relic had been, his head tilting ever so slightly as if studying the absence left in its wake.
For a moment, there was only the sound of his own breathing.
Then, his attention shifted back to Ren.
A faint chuckle rolled out from him, the sound low. His voice, when it came, was rich with amusement, every syllable carrying the hint of a private joke only he understood.
"Interesting."