"You were destined to come here. Destined to die here." The smile stayed on her face. Always the smile."It’s kinder this way. Don’t fight. Just give up. I’ll make it quick."
"Sure."
Lor put his glowing hands on the floor.
The stone responded immediately.
It moved up his body in overlapping plates, layer over layer, flowing across his arms and chest and back and up over his shoulders and down his legs.
Not rough or jagged. Smooth. Fitted. Interlocking.
The plates sealed together at the joints, flexing slightly as they set, shaped by his mana to follow the exact contours of his body.
The process was quiet except for the soft grinding of stone against stone.
Dust rose in thin trails around him and settled again.
He stood up.
The stone armor covered him completely from boots to collar.
Dense. Dark. Thick enough to matter.
He rolled his shoulders once, testing the weight.
The plates shifted with the motion and locked back into place.
His hands remained free at the fingertips — enough to manipulate. Enough to cast.
Aurora stopped walking.
She looked at him for a long moment.
Something genuine moved across her face — not the warmth, not the darkness behind it.
Something closer to actual surprise.
And under that, something else.
Interest. Real interest.
"You are full of surprises Lor," she said. "I’ll admit that." Her head tilted. The silver braid slid further over her shoulder.
"It doesn’t feel like the Guiding Light is guiding you anymore. Were you hiding your abilities this whole time?" A pause.
"Is the Guiding Light even real?"
Lor said nothing.
She watched the silence. The light sphere above her palm continued to pulse. The bone sword remained still at her side.
"Nevermind," she said after a moment, her tone returning to its usual pleasantness.
"There is something very particular about you. I intend to find out what it is." She raised the bone sword. "From your corpse."
She released the light sphere.
It crossed the distance between them in less than a second. Lor took it directly on the chest plate.
The impact hit him like a battering ram.
The force drove him backward several feet across the floor. The armor ground against the stone, leaving shallow grooves.
The plates held.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the chest piece but did not break through. He found his footing and stopped.
Dust drifted off the armor in thin clouds.
She was already moving.
The bone sword came in a diagonal slash.
He caught it on the armor’s forearm.
The impact sent a shock up through the stone and into his shoulder, but the plate did not shatter.
He shoved her arm aside with a burst of wind from his palm and stepped back, resetting his stance.
She spun with the force of the shove and came back with a horizontal cut aimed at the neck joint — the seam between the chest plate and the collar.
He ducked under it.
The blade passed over his head close enough that he felt the displacement of air. He drove an armored shoulder into her ribs.
The collision was solid.
She absorbed it.
Moved with it.
Rolled away and landed cleanly on her feet several paces back.
Her breathing was slightly harder. The warmth in her eyes had completely receded now, replaced by something focused and alert.
She was genuinely engaged.
"Better," she said. "Much better."
The light sphere formed again — two of them this time, one above each palm.
They pulsed in unison, bright enough to cast hard shadows across the arched ceiling and the chains on the far wall.
She sent them simultaneously from different angles.
Lor dropped to one knee. He slammed both palms flat against the floor.
Water.
He pushed mana downward, finding the water table deep beneath the palace foundations.
The stone resisted for a fraction of a second, then yielded. He pulled the water upward through the rock.
The floor cracked in a jagged line across the dungeon.
Water burst through.
It spread rapidly across the stone in a thin, continuous sheet, flowing into every crack, covering the entire floor in seconds.
The cold of it soaked through the seams of his armor at the ankles.
Aurora stepped back instinctively as it reached her boots. The black leather darkened where the water touched it.
The bone sword was still in her hand. Both light spheres were reforming above her palms.
She looked at the water around her feet.
Is he trying to compromise my movements?
Then at Lor, kneeling in it, both palms flat against the stone beneath the surface.
Something crossed her face — the first trace of actual uncertainty.
"What—"
Lor pressed down.
Lightning.
It detonated through the water in every direction simultaneously.
A white crack of electricity that had nowhere to go but outward across the conducting surface, branching and splitting and covering every inch of the flooded floor in the same instant.
The sound was not a crack. It was a detonation.
It shook dust from the arched ceiling. The torches on the walls guttered violently. The air filled with the sharp smell of ozone and wet stone.
The lightning found Aurora through the water at her feet.
The current seized her.
Her body locked rigid.
The bone sword clattered from her hand and hit the water with a flat splash. Every muscle contracted at once.
The light spheres winked out. She shook, violently, for one long second. Her silver braid flew. Her jaw clenched.
Her eyes, wide and unfocused, found Lor’s face across the room for a fraction of a second.
Then her legs gave.
She went down hard — full body, no control, hitting the stone floor and the shallow water simultaneously.
The impact sent a small wave outward. The electricity was already gone. The dungeon settled back into silence.
The water continued to spread slowly in the sudden stillness, carrying small chips of stone and dust with it.
Lor stayed kneeling, hands still flat on the floor, breathing steadily.
Chapter 330: The Weeknd Evening 6
5 min read