Stumbling up, Orion rubbed the dust out of his eyes. Deafening thuds surrounded him, and yet for some unexplainable reason, he was certain he would not be hit. Still, perhaps it was not so much a certainty as a hope as he desperately tried to see past the towering clouds of dust, although to no avail.

Kneeling, he put his palms to the ground and sent waves into the earth. Through this, he found Eira standing tens of metres from him. Her figure was turned towards him and it seemed she was watching him. Through the dust at that.

Practically tasting her contempt, he cackled. His insanity did little to deter her but rather the opposite as she strode towards him. So it be, he thought. Breaking into a sprint, ice crackled around him like bolts of lightning, each of them shooting towards her.

From the other side, she sensed them and slapped them out of the air with ice-gloved hands. He leapt at her like a wild dog and in turn, she caught him by the collar and tightened her grip. As he yelped in pain, she saw the bright glint in his eyes. Realising what was wrong in that split second, she released him and immediately elbowed his left hand away. It was too late, however, as his palm touched her forearm.

Her flesh parted like the ground had underneath them, skin spreading to reveal thick and thin lines of crimson. In response, she struck like a coiled snake, whipping her leg across his stomach, sending him flying and crashing into rubble. While stroking her broken skin, she realised this was a deathmatch.

She had hoped it to be a tutor teaching the student a lesson, leaving him whipped and crying to toughen him. Instead she now figured he was an equal to her: he had seemed exhausted and out of energy after using Szu to collapse the plains above, but it seemed Giah still supported his body with a steady influx of energy. Regardless, she knew his body would betray his thoughts soon enough and break down. The real question was whether she would be dead by that time…

Casting her right fist to the ground like a hammer to an anvil, her eyes gleamed a brighter white than before as she drained the ground around her. In a moment, a large spherical barrier made of pure ice sprouted around them, trapping them both in a circle with a radius a few metres wide.

She did this just in time too as Kora clashed against it in the next second, recoiling back as the ice bit at her flesh. Kora stared at barrier-cum-prison with wary eyes as she paced around it, looking for weaknesses and finding none. Seeing no other option, she steeled herself and moved against the barrier once more.

Inside, Eira sneered as she felt the force against her creation. It had been made with her lifeforce, and couldn’t be broken in just a few moments. And by the time it was, only one would come out. Flicking her black ponytail to the side, Eira eyed Orion, who similarly faced her off.

Not for long, though, as her cousin made another wild charge towards her, only this time ice spikes rising out of the ground behind her as she stepped back. Suddenly aware he had created them despite no contact with the ground, she rushed forward and grappled him, eventually releasing with flaky skin.

He came out likewise but seemed to be overcome with a primitive anger as he continued despite the burning pangs, striking her once and once more with an ice sword while a pointed rock formed below her feet to trip her up. But despite his best efforts, they proved useless as her icy suit of plate armour brushed his attempts off.

She watched him behind her armour with an odd giddiness as she saw him growing frustrated and exhausted, his leaden limbs falling like metal. The gleam from his white eyes had also dimmed, the power simmering at his fingertips disappearing by the second.

It was in that second an overpowering force pummelled against her barrier, sending her rocking across her feet. Taking advantage, he immediately placed his left palm across her plated armour and finally held on for long enough to crumble it down. It sloshed to the ground like snow.

She hastily tried to recreate her armour, and by a miraculous turn of events, he struck her into the air away from himself. As she rolled over the ground, dodging his next attack, she realised he hadn’t even attacked. Righting herself, she noticed he was focused on her with a slack jaw, drawing rapid breaths as if he was convulsing. The edges of his eyes were trembling, and his hands were balled up with blood-letting tightness.

She only realised what he was doing when her armour fully formed as lines of pain raced up her arms. She intuitively thickened her ice armour but noticed it did nothing as the pain deepened as if cutting trenches into her flesh. Then the pain became a familiar one; it was the same pain that burned bright when one’s skin was cracked and flesh torn by Szu.

Realising he was somehow doing this to her without contact, she turned her fangs to him, attacking with such ferocity it shook the ground. But it didn’t. Instead, she shook in pain as chains of ice slushed out, replacing the tides of thorny ice she had anticipated. It was as her power faltered, leaving her defenceless, that she noticed the strain across his face.

Nonetheless, it seemed the gods were through with her either way as she fell to the ground before he broke his focus, her arms deadweights by this point.

Then, the words she had both feared and wished for spluttered out of his mouth feebly. “Why? Why did you murder your own family?” he begged, faint sobs following.

When she didn’t answer, she felt the pain start again, only this time past her arms and into her chest. He was intent on destroying her…

“Fuck, fine. You’re Orion, right?” she asked, somehow finding calm despite the knowledge this was her deathbed. Perhaps it entirely because it was her deathbed since she had foreseen this coming months before, only then she had expected it for years in the future. “No one else has marks like that on their face,”

All she heard in response were wet but wild groans.

“You’ve got no idea, Orion, none at all. Our family is as power-hungry as they say we are, as bloodthirsty as the rumours tell. Fuck, the other Houses banded together against ours and fucking banished ours to the harshest lands for a reason,”

His groans turned into growls at this, but she gave him no time to respond, releasing the words that had drowned her heart for so long.

“Of course you don’t know. You’ve lived in the House your whole life: how could you know how we truly are when you buy into our justifications all the same,”

“Hearing that from you makes me sick,” he roared, his voice awakening Eira’s true self. She was no victim of the Zakaris.

“Why? I’m a Zakari, it flows in my blood and is ingrained in my bones to do this. They told me to open the capital to them, let the Empire be purged of inferior blood. Some upstart called Yhaoli had convinced them they could now stand up against all 3 Houses and win, and maybe they could if I let them.

So, I dealt with them the way my blood told me. I had everything to lose and nothing to gain from their betrayal, and the Empire had no reason to fall for a delusional power fetish,”

“You massacred your own family,” Orion shouted, accusing her of trivial truth.

“I’m a Zakari,” she replied, “I had my best interests at heart,”

This silenced him, and for good reason, she thought, as maybe the innumerable examples over his lifetime were finally making sense to him.

“Why di—“?

“I let you live? Because our blood is too good to lose over my interests. I had all of you taken far away from our grounds so you could grow,”

“You razed through reflections of yourself and let the rest of us live,” he replied, accusing her once more. Only, this time, she had no answer.

“I didn’t think any of you would power up so fast to take me down, especially not you,” she eventually said.

He didn’t reply.

“Well then, end the job. Prove you’re a true Zakari, not some weakblood,” she said, lowering her head and letting it rest on the ground. She faced the ice barrier above pensively.

Orion wanted to release her, prove his blood didn’t make him alike her, nor like his deceased family. And yet as he looked down at her prone figure, then deeper down at the grief and pain she caused him, at the blood she had spilt, he heard another opinion in his mind. It had always been there but too quiet to fare as resistance, and yet now it seemed so loud it faced no resistance.

Placing his right hand on the ground, he waited as the last of his teardrops rolled down his face. Then, he let his passions free, ice exploding around her body, sealing her in a transparent grave. But she wouldn’t die, he knew, with just that. Striding up to her, he placed his left hand on the cube of ice.

Shockingly, he felt energy coursing through the cube towards him. No, not energy, power. Somehow, the power from her body was leaking into his. No, not leaking. From the gentle smile on her face, he knew she had done this on purpose. He waited for the stream to end, his heart weighing down on him as she finished.

Nodding to her body, he used Szu. As the cracks spread, splitting her body, he wondered if his family had left the world similarly, knowing it was all to strengthen the Zakari line. As much as wanted to deny his blood, the power that entered him made him feel different, as if her interests and his family’s interests had suddenly intruded onto his own.

He formed ice over her shattered remains and repeated the process until the splinters of her flesh were hard to see amongst the shards of ice. As he looked down upon the woman who had ruined his life, his tears flowed out once more.