Chapter 110. Feel That Pain, That’s Reality Breaking Through
The morning light was deceptively gentle as it spilled across the breakfast table, but the atmosphere in the room was poisoned. The report had arrived with a quiet, methodical delivery that felt far more ominous than the panicked messengers of days prior.
When William read the contents, the air seemed to leave his lungs.
It wasn’t just another disturbance. It wasn’t another random magical anomaly or a territorial skirmish.
It was a declaration.
A patrol near the academy’s eastern gate had been ambushed in the pre-dawn darkness. The skirmish had been brief but vicious, with the screams of wounded guards still echoing in the survivors’ reports, but the attackers hadn’t stayed to finish the slaughter.
Instead, they had left behind something far more permanent than bloodstains.
Carved into the ancient stone of the eastern gate, the gouges were deep enough to suggest a weapon wielded with supernatural strength or malice. The stone had been torn as if by claws.
BLACKWOOD.
Catherine read the report twice, her fingers gripping the parchment so tightly that it began to crumple. Her jaw was set in a hard, jagged line, and as she looked up at William, the softness of their shared night had been completely incinerated.
In its place was something tempered, something forged in the fire of the previous evening’s breakthroughs.
"They’re not testing the academy’s defenses anymore," she said, her voice low and dangerous. "This isn’t about territory or politics..."
"They’re targeting me directly."
"Then we handle it together," William interrupted, his voice fierce with protective instinct. "Whatever he wants... or whatever he thinks he can take from you, he’ll have to go through me first."
"No."
The single word stopped him cold. Catherine’s voice lacked anger; instead, it was more unsettling because it conveyed certainty.
"No, William." She stood up, the chair scraping against the floor like a blade on stone. "I need to face this myself."
"Catherine, listen to yourself," William said, rising to meet her, his own desperation mounting. "This isn’t a training exercise."
"This isn’t some ghost from your past that you can exorcise with a sword and a prayer!"
"Whoever is behind this knows exactly how to hurt you...! They know your trauma like the back of their hand!"
"I know that!" she snapped, her eyes flashing with a brief, controlled fury. "I’ve spent every waking second since sunrise dissecting that possibility."
"I know it’s a trap... and I know it’s designed to drag me back into that corridor, to make me feel that same paralyzing helplessness."
She stepped closer to him, forcing him to meet her gaze. "But if I let that possibility keep me from ever standing on my own again, then he’s already won."
"He’ll have taken something far more permanent than my life..."
"He’ll have taken my agency... My will."
"That’s exactly what he wants!" William’s voice rose, raw with emotion. "This isn’t a fair fight, Catherine...! It’s a psychological execution."
"You’re walking straight into a minefield laid out specifically around your worst moment."
"If they’re targeting you directly, they won’t fight you with steel; they’ll fight you with your own shattered pieces."
"Then I will learn to put them back together in real time," she countered, her voice gaining strength. "I need to know, William, for my own damn sake, that I can stand against whatever’s coming without needing you to be my shield every single time."
"If I can’t face this threat on my own terms, then everything we worked through last night... everything we promised each other... it means nothing!"
"It would just be another layer of armor I’m wearing because I’m too afraid to be vulnerable against the world."
William stared at her, the silence stretching between them like a taut wire ready to snap. Every instinct he possessed and every memory of past lives where he had watched precious people die because they were too proud or too broken to accept help screamed at him to restrain her.
His protective fury wanted to cage her in safety, to bind her to him where no harm could reach her.
But he looked into her eyes, really looked at them, and saw that the girl who had collapsed in the armory was gone. The woman standing before him was someone who had claimed her sword, and she would not let anyone, not even him, take it back.
"I’m not going to stop you," William said finally, the words feeling like ash in his mouth.
Catherine’s shoulders dropped fractionally, the tension breaking just enough to show the exhaustion underneath.
"But I’m not staying away either," he continued, stepping forward to close the distance.
He reached out, taking her face in his hands, his thumbs brushing over her cheekbones. "I won’t be your crutch, but I will be your shadow."
"I’ll keep my distance; I’ll stay out of your sightline unless you’re in genuine, life-threatening danger."
"But the moment I see blood... and the moment I see you breaking..." William frowned, his eyebrows. "I am coming in."
"Do you understand?"
Catherine considered the terms, the weight of the unspoken promise hanging between them. The tension that had coiled around her shoulders since sunrise began to unravel slightly, not because the danger had passed, but because she no longer felt she was fighting it alone.
"That... that is acceptable," she finally said, her voice steady despite the storm brewing behind her eyes. "I accept those terms."
"Then it’s settled," William replied, his voice dropping to a tone of absolute sincerity. "But remember, Catherine, there is no shame in calling for me..."
"Pride is a luxury we can’t afford when lives are on the line."
"I know," she whispered. "I promise."
...
The afternoon sun hung low and blood orange over the eastern wall when they arrived. The air itself felt wrong—thick and stagnant, as if the world were holding its breath before a scream.
The academy’s increased patrols had cleared the area, leaving an eerie, hollow silence that pressed against William’s eardrums.
Catherine moved with a new kind of purpose. The tentative hesitation that had defined her weeks ago was gone, replaced by the fluid economy of motion that came from weeks of relentless training.
She adopted the wind stance, her body coiling like a spring, her breathing shallow and controlled. Every muscle was tuned to the environment.
Then, the air curdled.
The stillness shattered when a figure materialized from the gathering shadows near the gatehouse. There was no warning, no taunt, no prelude.
Just the sudden, violent crack of shadow turning to steel.
William pressed himself against the stone wall of the walkway, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He kept his distance, as promised, but his knuckles were white where he gripped the ledge.
He watched and he waited. He also prepared to intervene.
The masked man moved with a predatory grace that made Catherine’s trained movements seem almost human by comparison. A blade of solid darkness bled from the assassin’s sleeve, materializing into a curved dagger that seemed to swallow the light around it.
Clang!
The sound of steel meeting steel rang out like a death knell. Catherine had met the attack head-on, her blade whistling through the air in a perfect arc.
The force of the impact sent a shockwave through the ground beneath them.
"You’ve improved," the masked man observed. His voice was muffled behind the porcelain white mask, distorted and unnaturally calm.
Catherine didn’t answer with words. She answered with a lunge, a vicious, sweeping strike aimed at his midsection.
The assassin spun away, his movement liquid, the blade of shadow leaving a trail of darkness in its wake.
"I expected the reincarnator’s coaching to produce something considerably more mediocre," the assassin continued, his tone almost conversational, which only made the violence of his movements more unsettling.
"Save your commentary," Catherine spat, her breath coming in controlled bursts.
She stepped forward, her blade flickering like lightning. "And save your breath for the fight."
"Oh, but why would I waste breath when I can use it to praise you?" The assassin laughed a dry, rasping sound that sent chills down William’s spine. "I respect competence, White Sword... Truly."
He launched into a flurry of strikes. Each one was a blur of obsidian light. Catherine danced backward, her wind stance allowing her to slip through the gaps in his assault.
She was fast, but he was inevitable. Every time she thought she had found an opening, he was already there, parrying her with an ease that was infuriating.
Crack.
A near miss. The assassin’s blade grazed Catherine’s shoulder armor, sending sparks flying and leaving a deep gouge in the metal.
She didn’t flinch, but William saw the way her jaw tightened.
’Don’t let him bait you,’ William thought desperately, his muscles aching with the urge to rush forward. ’Don’t let him control the rhythm.’
"I respect competence, even in an enemy," the assassin continued, his voice dripping with condescension.
He deflected a powerful downward slash from Catherine with shocking ease, the force of the blow sending a vibration through the ground that William could feel even from twenty paces away. "But competence alone has never been enough to change the outcome of anything that truly matters."
The assassin’s eyes were visible only as slits of cold light behind the mask locked onto hers. "Tell me, White Sword... when the blood starts flowing and your lungs burn with the effort of staying alive, will your ’training’ save you?"
"Or will you realize that you’re just playing at being a warrior?"
He lunged again, not with a slash, but with a brutal thrust aimed directly at her throat. Catherine twisted away at the last possible microsecond, the wind of the blade ruffling her hair, but the assassin’s follow-up was a vicious elbow strike that caught her in the ribs.
The sound of the impact was sickening; a wet, thudding noise followed by the audible snap of something small but important breaking inside her chest.
Catherine gasped, the air driven from her lungs. She stumbled back, one hand instinctively flying to her side, her face contorting in pain.
"That’s it," the assassin whispered, stepping forward like a wolf closing in on wounded prey. "Feel that pain..."
"That’s reality breaking through your illusions."
William’s hand flew to his own weapon, his blood boiling. "Tch..."
’Not yet, not yet,’ he told himself through gritted teeth. ’Wait for the opening...’
’Wait until she can actually fight back...’