NOVEL NEXT Chapter 86: White Palace
The obsidian corridors ran deeper and did not end. Footfalls went thin, and breath felt counted by the walls. Reflections matched them now, no more lag.
Ace and Seraphina walked a half step apart. "Still good?" he asked without looking.
"Good," she said. "Burn if I must."
"Save it if you can," he said. "Spend it if you have to." Her lips curved once, then calmed.
Chaewon and Tyler followed another branch. "Hands?" he asked.
"They answer," she said. "Your pulse helps." "I will keep it steady," he said.
Alex and Mercer took the third way. "You ready?" Alex asked, rolling his shoulders like a door frame waking.
Mercer checked the buckles on his gloves and the set of his satchel. "I will be," he said. "I stay close."
"Do that," Alex said. "I'll keep things in front of us."
The corridors opened at once, each pair into a cave of lightless width. The air held weight. Dust drifted and never landed.
Shadows stepped forward to measure them. Ace and Seraphina faced two.
Chaewon's shape stood to the left. Alex's bulk to the right, a shield set with a spear-head at its center.
Ace smiled like a knife put away.
"Cross," he said. "Take the shield."
Seraphina nodded once and went right.
Across another cave, Chaewon and Tyler met the opposite truths.
Ace's shadow spun a conjured spear. Mercer's shadow wore a thin guard of sigils across both hands.
Tyler lifted a palm. \\[Command: Measure] thinned false slope, then \\[Anchor] sat clean at Chaewon's hips. "I have you," he said.
Her blade answered by humming.
In the last cave, Alex and Mercer walked into two more doubles.
Tyler's shadow stood with a spear and quiet eyes. Chaewon's shadow let Aquasteel sing along a single blade.
Mercer breathed in, then out. \\[Ward: Ring] opened around Alex's boots like a thin halo. "Thank you," Alex said.
They began. Ace met Chaewon's shadow first.
It fought like the quiet edge of a flood. No waste. No flourish. It wrote small lines that turned into failure a breath later.
Ace did not try to be sharper.
He became small. \\[Armament] took shape in his right hand as a short spear, the butt a palm from the ferrule, the point unadorned.
He let the first cut chalk his sleeve and the second set his guard. Then he walked.
He put the butt where the foot wished to go and the point where the breath opened the rib.
Chaewon's shadow did not bite. It altered.
\\[Aquasteel: Threadline] stitched at his wrist. \\[Aquasteel: Keel Cut] tested his collar.
Ace took the wrist on the flat and turned his neck where the cut would not be.
He smiled without pride.
"Pretty," he said.
The answer was a cut that did not care for pretty.
He let it write on air and not on him.
To his right, Seraphina met Alex's shadow. It was all pressure and crash.
The shield ran a short spear from its center with a ratchet-click that sounded like a trap setting.
She did not flare.
Her flames sat low along both edges, ember-gold with a white heart that did not leak.
The first bind buckled her stance and she rebuilt it.
The second bind tried to fold her hands apart and she welded them with heat between the hilts.
"Hard X," she said, only for herself.
The shield slammed.
Her feet skated a breath and stopped. \\[Command: Step Share] warmed her soles. The gift came from another cave and arrived on time.
"Thanks," she said, without looking away.
She returned pressure with form.
Heat released on the turn.
The spear-tongue hissed and balked. The shield's lip blackened where gold kissed it and did not burn.
Across the second cave, Chaewon met Ace's shadow at close measure. It moved like Ace. It did not talk like him. It did not talk at all.
It took center and let her make the mistake.
She did not oblige.
She wrote her own center and let \\[Aquasteel: Lattice] argue with its ankles.
The spear dipped.
Tyler's voice came low and even.
"Two in the nose," he said. "One out the mouth."
Chaewon obeyed.
Her cuts fell on the out and refused the false beat that the shadow's foot promised.
Mercer's shadow raised a hand.
\\[Seal: Borrow] reached for Tyler's Commands and tried to turn them inside out.
Tyler did not fight the pull.
\\[Command: Split] fed his own work into three thin threads and left one for theft.
Mercer's shadow took the bait and played with a dead wire.
Tyler's real pulse stayed with Chaewon.
In the third cave, Alex took Tyler's shadow's measure. The spear never rushed him.
It made the space slow and honest. It put the butt where his foot wanted to go and asked him to choose worse.
Alex chose once and felt the ask.
He exhaled and lowered his stance. "Keep me sticky," he said.
Mercer lifted both hands.
\\[Ward: Slate] spread a thin friction film across Alex's boots. \\[Ward: Knuckle] set a cushion at the joints that would take impact.
Tyler's shadow set a rhythm that didn't care for strength.
Alex accepted it and punctured it.
He knocked the ferrule with the rim of his shield and used the recoil to step. He pushed the spear out of the line with the same motion.
He did not chase the opening yet.
Chaewon's shadow turned toward Mercer.
It saw a soft target and chose him.
Mercer answered by putting the air in front of him to work.
\\[Ward: Pane] took the first edge and skated it aside. \\[Ward: Sill] caught her foot when she tried to step through.
He did not smile.
His wrists trembled once and then held.
In the first cave, Ace's spear touched the ground. He shortened it a palm and made it a hallway tool.
Chaewon's shadow grew harsher.
It tried to crowd him.
He made doors and stepped through.
\\[Armament: Hook] flicked off the ferrule and snared a wrist for a breath. He did not lunge. He arrived where the wrist returned and put the point into the meat and stopped.
He did not ask it to bleed; he asked it to yield intention.
It did not.
Seraphina kept the shield out of her ribs and away from her throat.
Alex's shadow punished elbows. It hunted wrists. It tried to fold her hands apart and make the hard X into a break.
She refused it.
Heat lived where her blades crossed. She bled the charge forward only when the line asked.
A clean, tight ignition ran down both edges on the bind.
The shield bucked and lost a finger of lip.
The spear tried to trade space for weight.
She took the space and let the weight spend itself.
"Ace," she said, still watching the rim.
"Here," he said.
He took a step without looking and broke the shadow's heel with a point placed like a sentence mark.
The pressure on her left hand dropped a fraction. She used it.
\\[Ashen Skin] cracked thin at the wrists and showed orange for a breath.
She burned by choice and not by anger.
In the second cave, Ace's shadow pressed Chaewon's collar and knee at once.
She accepted the collar and stole the knee first.
\\[Aquasteel: Rill] carried pressure from one old line to another.
Tyler gave her his quiet again.
\\[Command: Borrowed Breath] set the count. \\[Command: Linehold] told the seam where to be.
Mercer's shadow changed tricks.
\\[Seal: Unmake] hunted Tyler's \\[Anchor] and tried to loosen the hips.
Tyler layered \\[Guard Flux] on top and let \\[Anchor] sink out of sight.
The seal fell into nothing and clutched smoke.
Chaewon's edge arrived first.
It did not sever.
It made the earlier math agree.
The spear angle left the collar. The knee left the floor. The hand left the will.
The shadow stood upright by habit and felt the habit fail.
She set the point under the jaw and did not push.
It learned the lesson anyway and thinned.
She turned to Mercer's double and ran the last cut through the last line.
The sigils scattered like wet ash and went out.
In the third cave, Alex let himself be slow enough to feel the spear.
Tyler's shadow tried to make him step where the ring wanted.
He stepped where the ring thought it did not exist.
Mercer let him.
\\[Ward: Margin] thinned the edge of the field and gave Alex a path a palm wide.
Alex took it and hit the shaft with the shield's rim.
Wood shook, and arms shook.
He did not wind up. He took ground in inches.
The spear tried to write patience into him. He wrote and read it both.
Then he punctuated it.
He let the rim ride the shaft, found the hand, and bit down.
He did not break fingers.
He broke decisions.
Chaewon's shadow came again for Mercer.
It came faster to punish what it had misread.
Mercer placed \\[Ward: Pane] lower this time and \\[Ward: Sill] higher.
The first blade kissed the pane and skidded right where he wanted.
The second caught the lip of the sill and stopped where he needed.
He set \\[Ward: Brace] under his heels and did not get blown over by his own thinking.
In the first cave, Ace's duel with Chaewon's shadow turned quiet. It read him. He let it.
He stopped speaking to it with the spear and spoke to the floor.
He put the butt down. He rolled the balance in his palms. He set the point a breath left of center. He walked.
The bind he wanted came to him because his feet wrote it.
He smacked the ferrule into the wrist when it was still deciding to arrive.
He put the point a palm deep into the shoulder seam and stopped again.
"Enough," he said to himself.
The shadow agreed and dropped away.
Seraphina ended her pressure the same way she started it.
She stayed exact.
She did not chase.
She invited.
The shield bit down and met heat placed for that moment and no other.
Her cross-release slipped under the rim and opened the spear mouth a fraction.
She set both tips inside and pressed.
The charge she had been banking for ten binds settled between edges.
She opened the door.
A contained blast shoved both weapons out of true. She cut right to left and then left to right.
The rim smoked and split. The spear-tongue squealed and locked.
She held the last inch. The shadow folded into the floor and was gone.
Across the second cave, Tyler stood with his hands down.
The quiet did not leave.
"Ready?" Chaewon asked.
"Ready," he said.
Across the third cave, Alex looked at Mercer and grinned with half his mouth.
"Good work," he said.
"Thank you," Mercer said, cheeks hot and calm.
The caves did not close. The corridors waited with three new mouths.
They breathed once, then went deeper.