The Last Godfall: Transmigrated as the Young Master-Chapter 161: It would be disrespectful

The illusion held. To any watcher, this fit. Darkened eyes meant a bond. A known frame. An explanation that closed questions instead of opening worse ones.

Whatever came next would be filed under familiar rules, not anomalies whispered about later.

The drain spiked again as the One-Armed Man tested him, heat flaring and thinning under the water’s bite.

Vencian did not resist it this time. He let it pull, let the ache deepen and the cold bite harder, right up to the edge where his knees threatened to fold.

Then he triggered the pact.

The pull changed shape. The bleed did not stop, but it shifted, sliding away from collapse and into something narrower and controlled. Color leeched from the world in a thin wash, the river dulling, the stone flattening, depth losing its edge.

He stayed upright.

The river still shoved. The Arche still fed. The ground still betrayed him by inches.

But the choice had been made, and the cover was set.

The manifestation hit like a rupture.

The double-ended blade tore into his hands with a jolt that locked his elbows and seized his shoulders. The world washed further toward gray, color thinning until the river and stone flattened into dull planes.

His muscles clenched hard enough to tremble, forearms burning as the weight settled in.

This held for a sliver of time only, a narrow span measured in breaths that scraped short and shallow.

The drain sharpened. Power kept flowing out of him even as the pact fed the blades into shape. His knees shook. His back bowed under the load. This was a window, not something he could carry.

He moved.

The first strike went nowhere near flesh.

The One-Armed Man stood mid-feed, blade angled into the river, heat cycling fast as he tried to stabilize what the water stripped away.

His focus split between drawing more and forcing it to hold. Vencian drove the forward blade straight into that cycle, edge crossing the line where heat folded back into itself.

The cut snapped the flow.

The backlash detonated inward. Heat collapsed on itself with a sharp hiss, steam flashing and then thinning as temperature dropped in a rush.

Frost flashed along the man’s blade and died. His face twisted as something false flickered across it, eyes unfocusing for a blink as the Arche bucked under the interruption.

His sword slipped from his fingers. It struck stone once and skidded into the river, carried away immediately.

Vencian’s arm sagged.

The second strike came slower than it should have. His shoulder protested as he lifted the blade again, muscles screaming under the strain. He stepped into the river’s shove and angled low, letting the current carry the edge upward instead of forcing it through.

The blade slid under the ribs where resistance was least. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

The cut went wrong. Bone caught. The edge scraped and bit again, tearing deeper as Vencian’s shoulder wrenched under the effort. His grip faltered but held long enough to finish the motion.

The One-Armed Man convulsed, body jerking as the broken cycle tried to feed again. Heat flared in short, useless bursts, spilling straight into the river where it hissed and vanished. The water swallowed it without pause, surging harder as the remaining glow guttered and died.

The One-Armed Man fell first.

His knees buckled and he pitched forward into the river, body twisting as he hit the water chest-first.

What little fire clung to him guttered out on contact. Steam hissed once and thinned. The river closed over his shoulder and dragged at him until he went still, half-submerged, head turned to the side.

There was no flare, no last surge. Cold took what remained, and the current carried the rest away.

Vencian followed moments later.

His legs gave without warning and he hit the stones hard, shoulder slamming down as his grip failed. The weapon vanished the instant his fingers opened, gone as if they had never been there. His left arm lay where it fell, slack and useless, weightless in a way that meant it would not answer him again soon.

His vision had bled almost entirely to gray. The river and rock blurred together, edges smearing as his breath came shallow and wet.

Each pull of air rasped in his chest, bubbling faintly before he forced it out again. The water caught his boots and tugged, dragging at his calves and knees with steady insistence.

He rolled onto his side and dug his good hand into the stone.

Fingers slipped once, then found a crack. He hauled himself higher an inch at a time, teeth clenched as blood smeared across slick rock. His shoulder screamed as he pulled, then dulled as sensation faded unevenly.

The river surged again and nearly took him. He hooked his elbow around a broken edge and held, chest pressed to stone, until the pull eased enough for him to crawl another half-body length out of reach.

He collapsed there, sprawled and shaking, one arm tucked uselessly beneath him. The water slapped against the rocks below, close enough that spray dampened his boots.

He did not look back at the body for more than a glance. Keeping his eyes open already cost more than he could spare. He focused on breathing, on staying where the river could not drag him under, and let the rest wait.

The One-Armed Man lay half in the river, unmoving, heat gone, blade lost. The current worked around him without resistance.

Vencian registered the change with the same detached clarity he used to track footing. One presence had stopped correcting itself. The space where pressure and intent had pressed against him no longer pushed back.

It felt final without feeling clean, a narrowing of outcomes until only one remained on the stones.

The recognition slid straight into cost.

His left arm still failed to answer. He tried once more and felt nothing beyond a dull drag at the shoulder. His vision hovered close to blank, shapes reduced to rough blocks with edges that bled together.

The pact’s warning had already run its course. There was nothing left to trade. The thought came dry and precise. If another threat arrived now, there would be no escalation. He had already spent it.

A voice spoke beside him.

"Well done," it said, calm and near. "I never liked that man. Thanks for killing him for me."

There was no sound of footsteps, no change in the air, and no disturbance in the river to account for how someone had crept up so near. The words landed calm and level, as if the speaker were commenting on weather rather than the body half-submerged a few steps away.

Vencian turned on instinct.

Pain flared across his ribs and shoulder as his torso twisted, sharp enough to make his vision pulse darker for a beat.

He forced the movement through anyway and got his feet under him by inches, bracing with his good hand against stone. The shock came less from the voice than from the fact that it had been there at all.

Someone had stood through the entire fight without being noticed.

The man was familiar.

Gundal stood a short distance up the bank, hands loose at his sides, posture easy. He wore the same plain coat Vencian had seen him in before, the same unremarkable cut that made him fade into a room. The memory of this man arriving at Seris’ place and Lucian following him came back to him.

The familiarity brought no relief.

Gundal’s gaze flicked once toward the river, then back.

"But even if I disliked him," he said, "leaving his work unfinished would be disrespectful."

He did not explain why he had watched instead of acting. He did not comment on the blades or the river or the blood on the stones. He simply stood there, unhurried, as if waiting for the next step in a process already in motion.

Vencian understood the consequence without dressing it up.

The task had not ended. It had transferred.

Gundal took a step closer.

The river hissed behind him, and the ground under Vencian’s feet did not promise to hold.