Vorden paced silently along the rear of the viewing chamber, the shadows cloaking his restless movement like a veil. Each step was measured, deliberate, yet the tension mounting in his shoulders betrayed a storm brewing beneath the surface. He cast a glance down toward the floor, where the sterile stage below remained too still, too quiet—completely dark.
"Something's wrong," he muttered, more to himself than to Raten. "Sil hasn't come back yet. This is taking too long."
Raten leaned casually against the wall, his arms crossed, one brow raised in idle amusement. "So what—you want to go down there? Grab the broad?" He jerked a thumb toward Bliss, his voice low, and edged with dry sarcasm.
Vorden stopped pacing mid-stride and turned to face him. "No. We can't just go charging out there—" he outstretched his arm, pointing towards the window, at the room beyond. "Waltzing out, all— exposed— and, and visible? We don't even know where they are, or where Sil is! He told us to wait!"
His voice spiked, cracked, emotion finally piercing through his normally composed exterior. He took in a ragged breath, chest rising and falling like a bellows fanning flames, as his frustration crested into anxiety. Raten watched him silently now, not mocking for once, not saying a word, simply listening. Raten could easily recognize when his level-headed other half was coming undone. He knew better than to tug at the loose seams.
Then, without warning, the overhead lighting in the chamber below snapped on with a blinding flash. The sterile brilliance flooded the room like a scalpel's edge, cutting through the shadows with a violent gleam.
Vorden and Raten both froze.
Suddenly and acutely aware of how loud Vorden's voice had just been, they immediately dropped into silence. Their reflexes, mostly dormant but never forgotten, muscle memory laying in wait just beneath the surface, took over. Centuries of finely honed instinct resurfaced, old battlefield habits returning like long-lost comrades.
They both melted backward into the shadows without a word, their breath shallow, and limbs locked in calculated stillness. Their eyes focused, sharpened by the light now illuminating the space below.
Two cold, commanding voices shot through the thick air. The words themselves were indistinct, but their tone— sharp, clinical, devoid of empathy—needed no translation.
Bliss stirred.
Her head, bound by the weight of exhaustion and shackles, lifted slowly. Recognition bloomed in her eyes—horror and disbelief colliding in a singular, devastating instant.
"No... no, NO!" she screamed, the sound raw and feral, born from the deepest depths of desperation. "SIL!!!" She let out a single sob before calming herself, attempting to regain her composure.
The echo of her voice crashed upward, shattering the momentary silence. Her sobs followed, wild and inconsolable, her form wracked by each breathless cry. It wasn't simply grief—it was the sound of someone who had nothing left to lose.
Vorden's stomach turned. He glanced at Raten, and for once, even his ever-volatile brother looked stunned.
"What the hell is happening?" Vorden whispered, barely audible, hardly even able to speak through the rock lodged in his throat that swelled with tension, he swallowed it down. It fell like a stone, with a plunk it made his shoulders drop from the weight of it, now tying his stomach into knots.
Then came Oriun's voice, sliding into the chamber like venom through a wound. Cool, composed, every syllable deliberate and cutting. Each word just dripping with a venomous disdain.
"Calm your hysterics, you vile female," he said. The smugness in his tone was unmistakable. A pause followed, then the smirk sharpened into words. "Your lover is merely unconscious."
For a moment, it didn't register what exactly those words meant.
The words filtered through the singular speaker in distorted fragments— warped slightly by some audio artifacts or other distortions in the audio system. The echo stuttered unnaturally, as if reality itself flinched at the sentiment. The interference gave his calm cruelty a nightmarish cadence, and a demonic-like doubling from echos, making the message all the more grotesque.
As the lifeless form of Sil casually drifted into their line of sight, guided by Vespera as he floated, suspended in mid air, those words finally landed. There he was, the godslayer Sil Blade, Agent of The Ancient Ones— Rulers of the Celestials and the genesis of all creation— Earth's mightiest champion. The historically significant, Blade Family's own, Sil The Great. Best friend of The Mighty Hero Quinn Talon. The slayer of the once feared Hilston Blade.
In that moment, all the titles, all the distinctions, all the acolytes and news headlines one could ever imagine didn't mean shit to Vorden or Raten. With his lightly salted blonde head lolled with his chin toward his chest, resting on the metallic shackle around his neck, and his powerful, muscled, arms shackled alongside his neck, his broad, defined back slumped forward, and the eerie way his lower body dangled, lifted only high enough so that his toes still dragged along the floor beneath him as they moved, none of his heroic facade crossed either of their minds.
Vorden just saw a sixteen year old young man, hiding from the world because it was too painful to face. Sitting in the darkness, tears streaming down his face, hugging his knees, and rocking back and forth, chanting heartbreaking things about Caser. It felt like Vorden's heart had been placed into a vice. The only person Raten saw in front of them now, was a frightened little eight year old, towheaded child, sobbing his eyes out because he was afraid of being alone.
Raten's eyes widened first. His jaw locked. Shoulders rose. A flush of crimson burned its way across his face. The rage took him all at once—no gradual crescendo—just a single, volcanic ignition. A nuclear missile, with the launch already set in motion.
Vorden saw it first. He always watched for it. He had unknowingly spent centuries in training for moments exactly like this. Raten's rage was not just a tool—it was a weapon with no safety lock, no failsafe. And once it was unleashed, it would never be stopped or contained, not until it was all over with somebody dead.
Vorden didn't think—he acted.
He saw Raten's muscles tense in real-time. The oxygen flooding his bloodstream, the subtle bend in his knees, the way his fingers curled—not in logical thought, but in instinct. Already ignited, poised to explode.
Vorden's mind split like a branching tree—each possibility unfurled in rapid succession. Attack paths. Enemy positions. Structural integrity. Visibility. Escape routes. He made his choice in the time it took for Raten's heel to begin to shift.
His arm shot out with the speed of a bullet.
His hand clamped down on Raten's shoulder with the authority of a general and the precision of a surgeon. Raten's eyes flared wide as he opened his mouth, whether to argue or unleash fury Vorden never got the chance to find out. It didn't matter anyway.
With a whisper of displaced air, and a pulse of stillness—
They vanished.