Chapter 87: Enemies in the Dark

The silence in the Whispering Canyons was absolute, broken only by the crackle of the blue alchemical fire and the low, oppressive hum of the ironwood cage’s suppression runes.

Arthur stood a few paces away, casually spinning the heavy steel key around his index finger. He watched the Saintess through the thick wooden bars.

She had not moved an inch. Her back remained perfectly straight, her golden eyes burning with a mixture of divine outrage and stubborn pride.

"I will not beg a rogue who assassinates from the shadows," she stated, her voice carrying the crystalline resonance of a temple bell.

"I didn’t ask you to beg," Arthur replied smoothly, leaning against a jagged outcropping of obsidian. "I asked you to say please. It’s basic manners. Did the Holy Church forget to teach you etiquette between all those sermons on eternal damnation?"

A flicker of genuine irritation cracked her pristine mask. She looked at the frozen corpses littering the camp, then back at Arthur.

She could feel the heavy, localized gravity of the runes pressing down on her core, draining her reserves. She knew the Extractor was coming.

She inhaled a slow, deep breath, closing her eyes for a fraction of a second. When she opened them, the golden light was sharper, colder.

"Please," she forced the word through gritted, perfect teeth, pronouncing it as if it were a physical curse. "Open the cage."

"See? That wasn’t so hard." Arthur stepped forward, abandoning his casual posture. He slid the heavy steel key into the runic lock. With a sharp twist, the red suppression runes etched into the ironwood abruptly powered down, fading into dull, lifeless gray.

The heavy door creaked open.

The moment the suppression field vanished, a shockwave of raw, unadulterated mana exploded from the girl.

Arthur had to physically brace himself, crossing his arms and digging his boots into the dirt as a gale-force wind of pure Light mana swept through the camp.

It wasn’t an attack; it was simply the natural pressure of her core expanding after being compressed.

The ambient temperature spiked. The shadows in the canyon were violently pushed back by a blinding, golden radiance that poured off her skin like liquid sunlight.

She stepped out of the cage, ascending into the air for a brief moment before her bare feet touched the bloody dirt.

"Impressive," Arthur said, his eyes narrowed against the glare, quickly calculating the sheer density of her aura. "Now turn it off. Unless you want to signal every Equinox scout in a fifty-mile radius that you’re free."

The Saintess shot him a look of absolute disdain. With a subtle flex of her will, the blinding radiance retracted, sinking back beneath her skin, though her silver hair still seemed to catch non-existent light.

"I am Seraphina," she declared, her tone expecting him to drop to his knees. "Saintess-Elect of the Holy See. You will address me with the reverence my station demands."

"I am Arthur," he replied deadpan, turning his back on her. "And I don’t care. Don’t step on the frozen pieces of the elf, they’re slippery."

Seraphina’s jaw dropped in sheer indignation, a sound of offended disbelief catching in her throat.

She watched, horrified, as Arthur walked over to the massive, frozen corpse of the orc mercenary. Without a shred of hesitation, Arthur crouched down, patted the dead man’s pockets, and unhooked a heavy leather coin pouch and a runic compass from the mercenary’s belt.

"What are you doing?!" Seraphina demanded, her voice rising an octave. She gathered her white silk robes tightly around herself, horrified by the proximity to the gore.

"Looting," Arthur answered simply, moving to the next corpse and checking a dead man’s knapsack for rations. He pulled out a block of dried wyvern jerky and tossed it into his own pack. "They don’t need it. We do."

"You are defiling the dead!" she hissed, stepping forward, her hands glowing with a faint, warning light. "Grave-robbing is a sin against the Divine. Leave their possessions to the earth!"

Arthur paused, looking back at her over his shoulder. His expression was completely blank. "Your Holiness, if you want to march through the Whispering Canyons with no water, no map, and no supplies, you are welcome to do so. I prefer to survive. Now, put this on."

He picked up a heavy, dark grey wool cloak from one of the tents and tossed it at her.

Seraphina caught it instinctively, then held it away from her body as if it were woven from spiders. "This belongs to a mercenary. It is stained with the stench of violence and cheap ale. I will not soil the garments of the Church with this filth."

"Your garments," Arthur pointed out coldly, gesturing to her glowing white and gold silk dress, "are a beacon. You look like a walking flare. Put the cloak on, hide your hair, and lower your mana signature, or I will leave you here for the Extractor."

They locked eyes. The air between them crackled with immense, conflicting pressure. The dark, freezing pragmatism of the Frost Sovereign met the burning, unyielding pride of the Holy Saintess.

After ten agonizing seconds, Seraphina snatched the cloak. She wrapped it around her shoulders with sharp, angry movements, pulling the hood up over her silver hair. "The Church will pay you a bounty in gold for my safe return, rogue. But do not mistake my compliance for submission. Your soul is steeped in shadow. I can feel the rot of your magic."

"My magic kept your core in your chest," Arthur retorted, turning toward the steep canyon trail. "Keep up, Saintess. If you fall behind, I won’t carry you."

They moved out of the basin, ascending the treacherous goat paths that wound through the upper ridges of the Whispering Canyons.

Arthur set a brutal pace. He knew Equinox operatives operated on strict check-in schedules.

The Extractor would be arriving within the hour, and when he found twelve frozen corpses, he would release the hounds.

Seraphina, despite her immense magical power, was clearly not accustomed to manual exertion. Her soft, silk-slippered feet were entirely unsuited for the jagged obsidian rocks.

Within the first mile, her slippers were shredded, and the sharp stones began to bite into her soles.

Arthur heard her stumble behind him. He turned just in time to see her catch herself on a sharp outcropping, tearing the palm of her hand.

He took a step toward her, extending a hand to help her up.

"Do not touch me!" Seraphina snapped, slapping his hand away with surprising force. "Do not place your hands—steeped in murder and frost—upon the vessel of the Light."

Arthur slowly retracted his hand, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "Suit yourself."

He watched as she stubbornly pushed herself up. Her palm was bleeding freely. Instead of wrapping it in cloth, Seraphina closed her eyes.

A brilliant, warm gold light enveloped her hand. The torn flesh instantly knit back together, leaving behind pristine, unblemished skin.

Arthur stared at her, genuinely appalled by the tactical inefficiency. "You just expended enough mana to incinerate a troll to heal a scratch. And you lit up the canyon doing it."

"The image of the Church must remain immaculate," Seraphina replied haughtily, brushing the dust from her borrowed cloak. "Pain is a mortal failing. The Light does not bleed."

"The Light is going to get us killed," Arthur muttered, turning back to the trail. "Stop wasting your reserves on vanity. If we run into a tracking pack, you’re going to need that mana for something that actually matters."

"I have more mana in a single breath than you possess in your entire dark, fractured core," she fired back, matching his pace despite the rough terrain. "I felt your magic when you killed them. It is cold. Devoid of life. It is the magic of an executioner, not a protector."

"Honor gets you killed," Arthur said smoothly, not bothering to look back. "Those men were professionals. If I stepped out and challenged them to a duel, they would have filled me with armor-piercing bolts. I fight to win, Seraphina. Not to look good on a stained-glass window."

"There is no victory without righteousness!" she argued passionately.

They continued their grueling trek, the verbal sparring escalating with every mile. They were oil and water.

Arthur’s ruthless, calculated pragmatism deeply offended her deeply ingrained sense of divine superiority.

To Seraphina, Arthur was a dark, opportunistic peasant with no moral compass.

To Arthur, Seraphina was an arrogant, sheltered liability who had absolutely no idea how the real world operated.

By the third hour, the moon had reached its zenith, casting long, skeletal shadows across the gorge. Arthur finally signaled a halt, ducking into a deep, narrow fissure in the canyon wall that offered cover from aerial scouts.

"We rest here for ten minutes," Arthur said, dropping his pack and pulling out a waterskin. He took a measured drink, then offered it to her.

Seraphina looked at the leather waterskin, then at his mouth, and sneered. "I will not share a vessel with you."

Arthur shrugged, capping the skin and tossing it back into his bag. "More for me."

She slumped against the stone wall, the fatigue finally cracking her pristine posture. Her breathing was heavy, and despite her healing magic, the physical exhaustion of the hike was catching up to her.

"Who are you, really?" Seraphina demanded, her golden eyes piercing through the gloom of the cave. "You wear no house crest. You fight like an assassin, yet your mana control is the most precise I have seen outside the High Inquisitors. Who sent you?"

"Nobody sent me," Arthur replied, leaning against the opposite wall, closing his eyes to rest, though his Dream Weaver senses remained fully extended. "I was hunting Equinox. You were just a highly visible, highly annoying bonus."

"I am the dawn of a new age for the Holy See," Seraphina corrected, her pride flaring instantly. "Equinox expended hundreds of thousands of platinum coins and dozens of lives just to breach my temple’s outer wards. They know what I carry."

Arthur opened one eye, feigning mild disinterest. "Oh? And what do you carry that makes you so valuable, besides an inflated ego?"

Seraphina stood up straight, her aura pulsing with a sudden, overwhelming heat that banished the chill from the cave. She looked at him with absolute, undeniable superiority.

"I am the first Saintess in a century to successfully resonate with a relic of the Old World," she declared, her voice dropping into a reverent, powerful cadence. "I am the vessel of the Aegis of the Morning Star."

Arthur’s heart skipped a single, imperceptible beat. His external expression remained completely bored, but internally, his mind was racing at light speed.

Aegis of the Morning Star. He had read the name in the forbidden archives of the Academy. It was a Tier 9 Grimoire.

Tier 9 magic didn’t just bend the elements; it bent the fundamental laws of reality. It was a tier of magic so destructive, so absolute, that most scholars believed Grimoires of that level had been entirely wiped from existence during the ancient wars.

If this arrogant, sheltered girl possessed a Tier 9 Grimoire...

Arthur’s eyes tracked over her, no longer seeing a haughty noblewoman, but a walking, talking treasury of unimaginable power.

His unique mana core allowed him to copy any Grimoire he could fully analyze through sustained physical contact.

He currently held the Tier 7 Frost Sovereign and the Tier 8 Dream Weaver.

If he could copy a Tier 9 Light-affinity Grimoire and make it permanent... he would become practically untouchable.

Before Arthur could formulate a response, the shadows at the mouth of the cavern twisted.

A low, guttural snarl vibrated through the stone, dropping the temperature in the cave by twenty degrees.

Arthur was on his feet instantly, twin blades of condensed ice forming in his hands. His Dream Weaver senses screamed in warning.

Stepping out of the darkness were three massive hounds. They were the size of warhorses, but they had no flesh.

They were constructed entirely of shifting, coalesced shadows, their eyes glowing with a toxic, sickly purple light.

Shadow-Hounds, Arthur recognized instantly. High-tier tracking beasts. The Extractor had found them.

"Stay back," Arthur ordered, stepping in front of Seraphina, his body coiled like a spring. "Physical attacks will pass right through them. I need to freeze their cores simultaneously."

Seraphina did not stay back.

Offended that this dark rogue thought she needed his protection, she stepped out from behind him, dropping her heavy wool cloak to the cave floor. Her white silk robes practically glowed in the darkness.

"I told you, rogue," Seraphina said, her voice echoing with a terrifying, divine resonance. "I do not need your protection."

The three Shadow-Hounds lunged, their jaws opening to reveal rows of ethereal, soul-shredding fangs.

Seraphina simply raised her right hand and snapped her fingers.

Arthur’s vision went entirely white.

It wasn’t just a flash of light. It was a physical manifestation of absolute, undeniable authority. A massive, intricate geometric spell circle, glowing with blinding gold runes, erupted beneath the three hounds.

Radiant Censure.

A pillar of pure, concentrated holy fire descended from the roof of the cavern, ignoring the stone entirely.

The heat was so intense it instantly vaporized the moisture in Arthur’s eyes. He threw his arms up, summoning a thick shield of Frost Sovereign ice just to prevent his own skin from blistering.

The Shadow-Hounds didn’t even have time to howl.

The holy fire struck them and utterly eradicated their existence, burning away their shadow forms, their mana cores, and their very souls in a fraction of a second.

The pillar of light vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

The cave was silent. The stone floor where the hounds had stood was melted into a pool of glowing, bubbling lava.

Arthur slowly lowered his melting ice shield, his ice-blue eyes wide as he stared at the sheer destruction.

The density of the mana she had just unleashed made his own cores ache in resonance. It was terrifyingly beautiful. It was absolute power.

Seraphina turned to him, her silver hair floating around her head, her golden eyes burning with divine supremacy. She looked like an avenging goddess descended from the heavens.

"Do you understand now, Arthur?" she asked, a cruel, triumphant smile curving her lips. "I tolerate your presence because I require a guide through these canyons. But do not mistake yourself for my savior. I am the Dawn."

Arthur stared at her, the blinding light reflecting in his cold eyes. The hostility between them was palpable, a violent clash of two utterly incompatible forces.

But as Arthur looked at her, his pragmatic, ruthless mind made a decision.

He didn’t just want her to survive. He was going to take that Grimoire. No matter how much of her insufferable pride he had to endure, and no matter how close he had to get to the burning fire of the Saintess.

"Understood, Your Holiness," Arthur said, his voice dropping into a dark, dangerously smooth cadence. "Lead the way."