NOVEL NEXT Chapter 81: Against Her Shadow
Seraphina's Shadow didn't wait long, though.
"You don't want to answer me? You're so weak. I will show you how weak you are," the Shadow said, clenching their dual swords.
The obsidian corridor swallowed the words.
No torches, no doors. Just black walls that held a faint, warped reflection and a floor that drank every footfall.
They ran.
Twin blades crossed at their chest, an X flashing with a violet sheen, then broke apart as the Shadow cut straight down the narrow passage.
Seraphina raised her guard and braced against the slick stone.
Steel met steel. A clean, thin ring vibrated through the corridor and vanished as the dark ate it.
The Shadow's high blade crashed down. The low blade slid for her ribs.
Seraphina caught the high cut and rolled her hip, letting the lower edge scrape her off-hand guard instead of skin.
The Shadow flowed around her like water running downhill.
Left sword flipped to a reverse grip and stabbed for her hip. Right sword arced for her temple.
She ducked the arc, caught the stab on her off-hand blade, and shoved off the wall to buy a breath.
"Block. Block. Block." The Shadow's smile didn't reach their eyes. "Is that all you have?"
They pressed the tempo.
High, low, high, thrust. No wasted motion. Each cut set the next.
Seraphina gave ground on instinct, heels skimming the glass-smooth stone.
The corridor tightened around the rhythm, black angles ticking like a metronome.
A double pommel strike snapped forward. She tucked her chin and took one on her forearm, the other grazing her crown.
Stars popped at the edge of her vision and died just as fast.
Blades bound. The Shadow rolled their wrists and dragged Seraphina's blades down, trapping her guard against her own weight.
"Too slow," they whispered, close enough that her reflection curled in their eyes.
A knee shot up for her gut. She twisted and let it glance her hip, wrenching free and resetting her blades.
The Shadow ran her down before the breath finished.
Right blade jabbed for her throat. Left blade scissored low for her thigh.
Seraphina pinned the jab, then barely caught the scissor with her off-hand blade. Shock bit into the bone and kept going.
The swords began to smoke.
Not heat. Not light. A thin black vapor unwound from both edges and curled back toward the guards, as if the steel exhaled the corridor itself.
The air cooled. Her breath came out white and thin.
A flick of the Shadow's wrists and the smoke took flame: black with a violet heart, shadow-flames coating tip to base.
Her next parry hurt.
Steel touched steel and a cold sting leapt the gap, needling the web of her thumb and forefinger.
She hissed. The pain stayed, ink-dark and growing.
"Feel it," the Shadow said. "Truth has a bite."
They cut again, a windmill of edges carving tight circles in the narrow corridor.
Left blade pulled her eyes high. Right blade skimmed low, then rose in a cut that would've taken her ankle.
She hopped, then lifted her guard too square and took the high blade on the flat.
Shadow-flames spilled over and kissed her wrists. Cold burned. Nerves sang the wrong notes.
She broke left. The Shadow slid with her, steps whispering on glass.
A toe drag, then a low sweep meant to take her calf.
Seraphina skipped back; the edge missed by a whisper and still hurt, as if the air had teeth.
"Run," the Shadow said, not unkindly. "You're good at that."
They closed and made the world small.
Figure eights and broken beats: high, then a steal for the shins. A half-beat feint tugged her guard and punished the space she left.
Seraphina kept both blades moving. She made doors where there were none and kept stepping through.
Shadow-flames spread.
Each bind left a smear of black-violet fire along her guard that refused to die. It climbed the fullers like ivy, sleek and hungry.
The corridor mirrored fragments of them in the walls. A dozen thin Seraphinas blocked. A dozen thin Shadows drilled her guard.
Her arms went heavy. The cold sank to the bones of her wrists.
Her hands felt wooden. The blades lagged a finger's width behind her will.
The Shadow changed the rhythm and watched where she broke.
High, then low. A pause. The left blade snapped for her cheek through that tiny gap.
She brought her guard across late. The edge kissed skin and wrote a quick line from cheekbone to ear.
Warmth bloomed, then cold threaded into it and made it worse.
She tasted iron and kept her feet.
The right blade rang off her right-hand blade and spun, dragging her guard wide. The left hammered the flat and drove her two steps down the corridor.
Once. Twice. A third beat that rattled something behind her breastbone.
They lifted both blades like a falling gate.
Seraphina crossed her blades in a hard X and took the weight. Shadow-flames rolled over knuckles and into the gloves.
The pain hit late and mean. Her fingers twitched and wouldn't stop.
The Shadow leaned in until there was only steel, breath, and the echo of their voices dying in the stone.
"You're learning," they said. "Hold it."
They broke the bind with a dual-wielder's twist, one blade levering the other.
The sudden slack pulled her forward, and a boot snapped at her knee.
Pain shot up her thigh. The left blade flicked for her ribs.
She jammed her knee into the incoming hilt and turned the thrust into a grazing line. Shadow-flames crawled into it and made a hive of cold under the skin.
The corridor did not change. She had to.
She planted, rolled her wrists, and rebuilt the wall.
The Shadow watched her hands instead of her face.
They stepped through her guard with a hook of the crossguard and sent her blades wide. The backhand fell for her collarbone in a clean, merciless line.
Seraphina snapped her left blade into it; steel screamed, and shadow-flames licked along both edges.
Her arm went numb to the elbow, but the strike stopped.
The Shadow's face brushed hers, their voice soft and plain.
"Stop pretending you're anyone else."
They tore free. The left blade led, the right already rising, both drenched in that black, hungry fire that bent what little light there was.
Dust hung slowly between them, catching violet on the edges.
Seraphina's pulse found the beat.
She lifted both swords with dead hands and set her feet on dead nerves.
Block or break. Those were the only choices.
The Shadow tested rather than killed.
A thrust for the shoulder seam slowed for a breath before it landed, just enough for her to read it and meet it.
A cut that shaved cloth instead of muscle, leaving fire to teach where steel did not.
"Name the shake," they said, tapping at her high guard. "There."
Her blades steadied a fraction, and the corridor echoed them back.
Another chain came, cleaner and faster. She met three and bled on the fourth.
Shadow-flames crawled into a new line above her hip. The cold planted a flag and claimed the ground.
She did not retreat.
The floor tilted in her mind. The corridor stayed level.
A high cut tried to buckle her. She slipped it outside the line and let the weight skim away.
The Shadow nodded once, almost proud, and raised the pace.
Steel wrote lessons that only she could read.
Where she flinched, the Shadow drew blood. Where she breathed, the Shadow let her through.
"Meet yourself," they said, quiet as falling ash.
Her grip changed, not tighter but truer.
She set her hilts low at her hips and took the next blow on purpose.
The bind held. The flames bit. The numbness did not win.
Stop hiding.
The thought did not ring. It settled, like a stone on water that refused to skip.
The Shadow saw it in the way her blades no longer lagged.
They smiled without teeth and shifted the angle, testing the new line.
High, then low. A thrust. She did not chase the pause this time.
Her guard stayed honest. The bleeding cheek didn't turn away.
The Shadow's edges burned brighter for a beat, then sank back to steady black.
"Again," they said, and the word wasn't cruel.
They came on.
Seraphina met them.
Their shadows stitched along the obsidian, doubled, as if the corridor kept a second set of blades. Frost-smoke curled from her gauntlets whenever shadow-flames grazed, leaving spider-sheen on metal that rang duller each bind. Her breathing evened into short, measured pulls, while the floor's chill seeped through boots and set her stance like pins in glass.
The blades answered, steady, like winter rain on slate. Embers breathed along steel; her grip stayed true.
The corridor did not widen. The dark did not lift. The only light lived on those blades and in the one place where she finally stood her ground.