Kaspars lunged, a guttural snarl tearing from his throat. The rusted slab of iron, heavy with fresh viscera, swept in a wide, unpredictable arc. Voldis sidestepped, his footwork calibrated for the precise, pre-programmed attack patterns of the game. But this wasn't *Hollows of Oskol* anymore. This was raw, untamed fury. Kaspars’s blade didn’t follow the expected animation frames; it twitched mid-swing, altering its trajectory with a sickening squelch of flesh and sinew. The cadence was alien, an unholy bend of physics that scraped against his speedrunner intuition. [ANOMALY DETECTED: UNREGISTERED ABILITY PROTOCOLS. THREAT LEVEL: UNCALIBRATED.] “My ring!” Kaspars shrieked again, his voice cracking like dry kindling. He spun, the blade a blurring weight, and Voldis barely dodged a backhand slash that gouged a furrow in the stone wall where his head had been. Black, viscous liquid seeped from the wound in the rock. The stench of copper intensified, burning Voldis’s nostrils. This wasn’t a mob. This wasn’t even a corrupted NPC. This was Kaspars, unmoored from his code, fueled by something chaotic and self-destructive. Voldis glanced toward the massive, faceted prism Jurgis had provided, still pulsing faintly on the polished pedestal. Kaspars’s eyes, pits of absolute darkness, locked onto it too. A grotesque grin stretched his face, revealing teeth that seemed too long, too sharp. “You think you can outpace me, thief?” Kaspars hissed, lunging not at Voldis, but at the pedestal. His blood-soaked blade cleaved down with a wet thud, shattering the iridescent mineral into a thousand sparkling fragments. A faint, almost imperceptible *whine* echoed as the magical energy dissipated into nothingness. [LEVELING ROUTE IMPAIRED: PRIMARY EXPERIENCE SOURCE DESTROYED. META-PROGRESSION HALTED.] Voldis felt a cold, empty ache in his chest, a sensation far more profound than any physical wound. The core of his desperate race, the accelerant to his impossible goal, was gone. Kaspars stood amidst the glittering dust, chest heaving, a triumphant, blood-laced laugh bubbling from his throat. “That’s what you get for stealing what was mine! I was destined for glory, Voldis! The Fated Hero! The game bends to *my* will, not yours! You’re just a glitch, a mistake!” The sanctum door, already splintered, suddenly exploded inward, showering the room with more dust and debris. A blast of frigid air slammed into Kaspars, coating his arm in a rime of instantly crystallizing ice. He recoiled with a howl of pain, dropping his heavy weapon with a clatter that reverberated through the stunned silence. Zemyna stood in the ruined doorway, her layered Alderkin robes hemmed in silver rime, pale hair swirling around her shoulders. Her irises, usually a calm, glacial blue, outshone the sputtering ritual lanterns. A shimmering aura of frost radiated from her, turning her breath into white plumes. “You dare touch what is mine, you… you common ruffian?” Her voice was a whip-crack, laced with an aristocratic disdain so potent it could freeze blood. Kaspars, clutching his iced arm, gaped at her. “Yours? What are you talking about, Alderkin witch? He’s a cheat! A thief!” Zemyna stalked into the room, her gaze fixed on Kaspars with an unsettling possessiveness. “He is *my* challenge. *My* obsession. *My* eventual humiliation to inflict. But he is *not* yours to break, you hear me? His ruin is reserved for me alone.” She raised a hand, and needle-sharp shards of ice materialized in the air, humming with latent power. “Now begone, before I turn you into a frozen monument to your own insolence.” Voldis watched Zemyna, a strange, complicated knot tightening in his gut. He hadn't asked for her intervention, didn't want it. Yet, her presence here, her bizarre declaration of ownership, had bought him precious seconds. It was a chaotic variable he hadn't accounted for, a wrench thrown into the predictable gears of fate, just like himself. Kaspars, momentarily stunned by Zemyna’s unexpected ferocity and the biting cold, was now trying to rally, his black eyes darting between her and Voldis. But Voldis saw something else, something critical. Kaspars’s skin, already mottled, seemed to be flaking at the edges, small, dry patches appearing where the black veins pulsed. His breathing was ragged, shallow. Each of his blood-powered strikes, each surge of unnatural strength, had come at a cost. The deep blood wasn’t a limitless well. It was a siphon. *He’s burning himself out.* The thought was a sudden, sharp clarity in Voldis’s mind. The erratic lunges, the raw force – it was all fueled by his own life force. He had to be taking damage, draining his HP with every action, every shriek of rage. The Echo Log might not have registered it as a conventional debuff, but the physical signs were undeniable. [PLAYER STRATEGY: BLOOD-MAGIC DRAIN EXPLOITATION. SUGGESTED: PACIFIST-TAUNT LOOP. TIME TO EXHAUSTION: UNKNOWN. RISK: HIGH.] Voldis smirked, a quick, almost imperceptible twist of his lips. “You know, Kaspars, for a ‘Fated Hero,’ you’re awfully slow. Maybe the ‘deep blood’ just made you stupider. Is that what true power feels like? A slow suicide?” Kaspars roared, the sound thick with blood and fury. He ignored Zemyna, lunging at Voldis again, his remaining un-iced hand reaching for the grip of his dropped sword. The ice on his arm hissed, cracking slightly, but he paid it no mind. His swings remained erratic, but Voldis caught the slight drag in the boy's left heel. The self-damage was accumulating. “Give me your core!” Kaspars shrieked, fumbling for the weapon. His eyes, though still black, betrayed a spark of panic beneath the rage. “Still can’t hit me, can you?” Voldis dodged, a casual half-step to the left, allowing Kaspars to stumble past him. “And you think you were meant to conquer the Hollows? You can’t even catch a low-level mob. Pathetic.” Kaspars roared again, his voice thinner now, more strained. He swung the notched iron in a wide, wild arc, tearing through the air, but Voldis was already behind him, sliding clear across the flagstones. Zemyna, observing this strange, one-sided dance, lowered her hand, her icy expression softening into a peculiar fascination. She didn’t interfere, simply watched. Voldis continued his dance, never attacking, always evading, weaving through Kaspars’s increasingly desperate lunges. Each taunt, each perfectly timed sidestep, chipped away at Kaspars’s rapidly diminishing reserves. The black veins on Kaspars’s neck became more pronounced, then seemed to recede, drawing inward, consuming something from within him. He was a candle burning from both ends, melting at an alarming rate. His screams were now punctuated by choked gasps, his gait growing sluggish, his footing unsure. “You… you just stand there…!” Kaspars wheezed, stumbling, his crossguard scraping uselessly against the floor. His entire body was shaking, his skin a sickly gray-green. The deep blood had consumed his strength, leaving him hollow. Voldis watched him fall, a puppet with severed strings. Kaspars hit the floor with a wet thud, sprawling amidst the crystal dust, his chest heaving, black foam bubbling at his lips. He tried to push himself up, but his limbs refused to obey. His eyes, still pits of black, darted to Voldis, filled with a hatred so pure it was almost blinding. “You… you took everything…” Kaspars coughed, a spray of dark blood staining the stone. He gathered what little strength remained, his voice a ragged whisper. “This isn’t over, glitch. You’ll never escape… the curse of the true protagonist!” He spat, a final, concentrated globule of black blood arcing through the air. It wasn’t aimed at Voldis’s body, but at his face. Voldis dodged back, but the projectile was too fast. It struck not his skin, but the very edge of his sight, where the Echo Log interface burned into existence. The black blood splattered across the archaic, blood-red text, sizzling like acid. The familiar, comforting lines of information contorted, fractured, then exploded into a storm of red static. The blood-red text shattered, dissolving into a blinding flash of digital debris, leaving Voldis’s internal vision utterly blank and silent.

The Blood-Magic Duel