Chapter 128. The Blade That Cuts Through Everything Without Feeling
The crimson haze in Catherine’s vision didn’t dissipate; it crystallized. William’s words acted like a whetstone against her fractured psyche, sharpening her rage from a wild, consuming fire into something cold, focused, and terrifyingly precise.
She stopped fighting the pain; she began to ride it. The agony in her ribs became a compass, and the throbbing in her skull became a metronome.
She wasn’t drowning in the storm anymore; she was becoming the eye of it.
Fwooosh CLANG!
Corwin lunged forward, attempting to exploit her obvious blood loss with a vicious thrust aimed directly at her throat. But Catherine didn’t flinch.
She didn’t retreat. She pivoted on her wounded heel, the movement sending a fresh spike of agony through her thigh, but she ignored it.
She spun inside his reach, her body moving with the eerie, frictionless grace of a gust of wind.
Screeeeee SHINK!
Aetherion flashed upward, not in a wild swing, but in a controlled, surgical slice that caught Corwin across the cheek, opening a wet, red grin from ear to ear. Before he could react to the sting, her second blade darted down like a striking viper, catching the underside of his elbow.
Rrrrrip.
Corwin’s armored vambrace shrieked as the steel bit through the leather straps, sending a spray of arterial blood spattering across Catherine’s pale face. He grunted, a sound of genuine surprise breaking through his aristocratic mask.
"You used me," Catherine hissed, her voice dropping to a deadly, quiet register that was more terrifying than her earlier screams.
She pressed forward, each step measured, each blade weaving a web of death around him. "You spent years pretending to care about a child’s potential, watching me struggle, watching me bleed, all while you were just calibrating a weapon!"
Corwin stumbled backward, his boots skidding through a puddle of his own blood. He raised his blade to parry a relentless assault. Clang! Clang! Slash! The sounds echoed across the clearing like funeral bells.
"I built a survivor, Catherine!" he roared back, his breathing now coming in ragged, desperate heaves. "The world would have broken you anyway!"
"I gave you the means to break it back!"
"I don’t want to break the world," she countered, her movements becoming impossibly fluid as she tapped into the Wind Stance, using the momentum of his own desperate parries to propel her next attack. "I want to break you."
Corwin’s eyes flashed with something dangerously close to admiration.
"Then show me!" he challenged, throwing himself into a suicidal offensive. "Show me the monster you’ve become!"
He unleashed a devastating series of overhead strikes, each one designed to shatter her guard through sheer force.
BOOM. BOOM. CRACK.
The ground beneath them cracked under the pressure of their clashing steel. Catherine met him blow for blow, not by meeting his strength head-on, but by redirecting it.
She flowed around his blades like water around stone, each deflection sending Corwin off-balance, each counterstroke leaving a new crimson trail across his torso.
Thwip Splat.
Her white blade grazed his ribs, parting flesh and muscle. Corwin’s breathing became a wet gurgle as blood began to fill his lungs.
He tried to feint a deceptive shift of his hips that suggested a low sweep to her left before reversing into a killing thrust, but Catherine was already there. Her instincts, honed by weeks of brutal drilling and now supercharged by her newfound clarity, read the twitch in his tendons before his muscles even contracted.
"Don’t call me that," she spat, her blade catching his sword mid-arc with a bone-jarring CLANG that sent vibrations through both their frames.
"It’s the only name that’s ever truly suited you," Corwin wheezed, blood frothing between his teeth. "White Sword... the blade that cuts through everything without feeling."
"Then prepare to feel this," Catherine whispered.
She abandoned the defensive posture entirely. Dropping into a low crouch, she drove Aetherion forward in a thrust so fast it seemed to teleport through the air.
Corwin twisted, but not fast enough. The blade punched through his shoulder armor with a sickening crunch of metal and bone.
Blood erupted in a hot spray, painting Catherine’s arms crimson.
Corwin screamed a raw, guttural sound of agony, but even as he recoiled, he swung his sword in a desperate, dying arc. Catherine didn’t dodge this time; she stepped into the strike, taking a shallow cut across her shoulder to close the distance, her eyes locked onto his with murderous intent.
She grabbed his sword arm with one hand, the grip crushing the leather, while her other blade hummed toward his throat.
The air between them crackled with the sheer intensity of their hatred and their history. The fight had ceased to be about technique; it was a collision of two broken souls, each trying to shatter the other before they shattered themselves.
The clearing became a vortex of violence as Catherine unleashed everything she had left. She no longer moved like a person; she moved like a hurricane made of steel and spite.
The Wind Stance wasn’t just a technique anymore; it was a language of destruction.
Whirr SHINK! Whirr SHINK!
Her dual blades became a continuous cycle of motion. She spun, her body rotating on its axis to deliver a horizontal slash that Corwin barely deflected, only to immediately follow it with two rapid stabs aimed at his solar plexus.
Thwip thwip!
Corwin twisted his torso back, the tips of her blades scraping across his ribs with a screeching sound that set teeth on edge. But Catherine didn’t pause.
She used the momentum of the miss to drop into a spinning low sweep, then vaulted off the ground, bringing both blades down in a crushing X-shaped overhead strike.
CLANG KRAK!
Corwin didn’t flinch.
"Enough of this dancing, White Sword!" His voice dropped an octave as his entire aura shifted.
The fluid, predatory grace he had shown earlier evaporated, replaced by something terrifyingly immobile.
His breathing slowed. His stance widened.
His center of gravity dropped until he seemed rooted into the very foundation of the earth.
FROOOM!
A low hum of energy emanated from him as he activated the Stone Stance.
Catherine launched into a desperate, high-speed combination: a feint to his left, a slash to his throat, and a spinning kick to his groin, followed by a devastating lunge aimed at his sternum.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Each strike landed, but not with the satisfying bite of flesh; instead, they met an immovable wall. Corwin’s blade moved with minimal effort, each parry precise and economical.
He wasn’t chasing her movements; he was simply existing where her attacks needed to land. His sword moved in short, brutal arcs, meeting her blades with the sound of iron striking granite.
Chak! Chak! Chak!
"You’re fighting against the mountain, Catherine," Corwin said, his voice unnaturally calm despite the blood streaming down his face. "And mountains do not break for the wind."
Catherine’s heart hammered against her ribs, each beat a painful reminder of her wounds.
’He’s doing it again,’ she thought, her mind racing through years of suppressed memories. ’That stance... that impossible stillness.’
A flashback tore through her mind: six years old, kneeling in the dirt, watching Corwin stand motionless while arrows rained down upon him. He hadn’t moved an inch.
He hadn’t even blinked. He had simply stood there, a monument of absolute defense, letting the world break against him.
’That’s the pattern,’ she realized, sweat stinging her eyes. ’He’s not reacting to me...’
’He’s anticipating the exact point of contact.’
’He’s waiting for me to exhaust my momentum so he can shatter my bones with a single counter.’
"You taught me this too, didn’t you?" Catherine gasped, her lungs burning as she circled him, her blades lowered but her muscles coiled. "You taught me that the Stone Stance is the ultimate answer to any offense!"
"You taught me how to read it."
Corwin’s eyes narrowed. "Then you should know how this ends."
Catherine didn’t respond with words. She knew that continuing a direct assault would be suicide.
Against the Stone Stance, every direct hit was a gift to Corwin, giving him a chance to use her own force to break her wrists. She needed to change the frequency of her attack.
She needed to make the wind not just blow but swirl.
Sssssss!
She began to circle him faster, her boots scuffing the blood-soaked earth. She deliberately slowed her breathing, trying to mimic the calm William had commanded.
She wasn’t going to hit the mountain. She was going to erode it.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
She began to deliver light, stinging taps against his blade, not attempts to cut, but attempts to test the tension of his guard. Each tap was a probe, feeling for the minute vibrations in his muscles, searching for the crack in the granite.
"Come on," she whispered to herself, her inner voice a desperate prayer amidst the chaos. "Show me where you’re weak!"
"Show me where the stone cracks."