Two Kaels stared at each other. One stood in shining golden armor at the top of the barracks steps. The other froze in the body of a dark-haired noblewoman right in the middle of the training ground.
The High Commander regarded the uninvited guest with a heavy, penetrating gaze. In his gray eyes, there was neither recognition nor admiration for the woman's striking beauty. The Order of the Vanguard answered only to the crown and military discipline; to the Commander, the person standing before him was an unidentified intruder who had breached a restricted area.
And yet, his gaze lingered—not on her face, but on her stance. She stood with her feet spread at a precise tactical forty-five-degree angle, shoulders squared, her left hand resting at her waist exactly where a soldier typically kept a spare dagger. It was the stance of a seasoned warrior.
"I asked a question, civilian," the Commander's voice rang out like a blade drawn from its sheath as he slowly descended the steps. "The Northern Campaign is a classified operation. Only a narrow circle of high-ranking officers is aware of the purge. Answer immediately: who is your handler, and how did you breach military intelligence defenses?"
Kael opened his mouth but couldn't utter a sound. His mind frantically sifted through every plausible military explanation he had ever known. A skillfully created state-sponsored double? A deep-cover spy, altered by foreign healers to copy his face and voice? Or had Royal Intelligence secretly cultivated a duplicate without his knowledge?
Before Kael could formulate a safe lie, the Commander raised his left hand toward the assembled knights.
"Gareth. Secure the perimeter," the scarred man commanded coldly, his gray eyes fixed on Kael's face. "No one is to interfere. Keep the yard locked down."
"Yes, sir!" Gareth barked, drawing his broadsword and gesturing for the surrounding knights to form a tight cordon. None of them stepped forward; the Vanguard's code was absolute: when the Commander engaged an intruder, interference was punishable by court-martial.
"You have five seconds to drop your weapon and surrender for interrogation," the Commander said dryly, drawing his heavy two-handed sword. "Otherwise, I will disarm you myself."
Kael tightened his grip on the hilt of the borrowed bastard sword. Without his golden aura, his life depended entirely on pure swordsmanship.
Zero seconds, Kael thought.
The air around the Commander suddenly compressed. His figure blurred into a golden streak—a blur of speed so dazzling that an ordinary human eye wouldn't even register the start of the movement.
"Displacement!" Kael's heart hammered against his ribs in utter disbelief. This is impossible! I spent three cursed years in the Blood Swamps developing that move! No one on this continent knows the initial attack angle!
Instincts, ingrained from decades of combat, bypassed Kael's conscious thought. He couldn't match the aura-fueled Commander's speed, but he didn't need to—he knew the blind spot of his own signature move down to the last detail.
Adjust for the body! he mentally screamed, moving out of the line of attack. This body's arm length is six inches shorter, and its center of gravity is higher! Shift the hips!
Instead of retreating, Kael lunged forward, into the dead zone of the Commander's strike, placing the flat of his blade directly beneath the crossguard of his opponent's sword before it gained full momentum.
CLANG!
The shockwave of clashing steel kicked up a ring of dust across the yard. Kael's wrists screamed in pain, but the blade held. By some stroke of luck, the ornament he had snatched from the manor wall was not a hollow prop, but an ancient ceremonial sword with a core of mithril and steel alloy—heavy and strong enough to withstand an army-grade blow without shattering.
However, it wasn't the blade holding firm that caused a wave of shock on the parade ground.
The Commander's attack had been completely parried—knocked straight into the ground by a woman who didn't emit a single spark of aura. Worse, she had done so by adopting the Seventh Stance of the Vanguard—a defensive counter-position that the Commander had developed personally.
"By the Light, what is that...?" Gareth gasped from the cordon, eyes wide with astonishment. "Commander! She just disrupted 'Displacement' using your own counter-stance!"
The scarred man froze, his sword locked with Kael's. His gray eyes widened in undisguised shock as he scrutinized the woman's grip, her weight distribution, and her rhythmic, measured breathing. Every micro-movement was a precise, flawless mirror image of himself.
"Who taught you that stance?" the Commander snarled, genuine fury cutting through his impassive voice for the first time. "These movements exist nowhere outside my personal instruction. Answer!"
Kael sneered. In his chest, despite the madness of the situation, a fierce, proud anger flared.
"Let me think, impostor," Kael grated through clenched teeth, dislodging his opponent's heavy blade with a sharp twist of his body. "I taught myself!"
He adjusted his grip and lunged forward to disarm his opponent, expecting a standard parry.
Instead, the Commander took a step back, his expression shifting from shock to icy, tactical calculation. He didn't raise his sword. Instead, he twisted a ring on his left gauntlet and barked a sharp command in an ancient language.
The stone slabs beneath Kael's feet flared with dazzling blue runes.
Before Kael could react, spectral, glowing chains of dense, frosty light erupted from the stone, wrapping around his ankles, wrists, and waist with terrifying speed. The fierce cold of the shackles instantly paralyzed his muscles, pinning him in place like a cornered beast.
Kael's breath hitched, his pupils dilating with wild, paralyzing terror.
What... what the hell is this?! His mind desperately rejected what he saw. Light turning into solid steel?! Runes carved into stone moving on their own?! No clockwork mechanism, no alchemy in the world could achieve this! This isn't science... is this sorcery?!
In Kael's world, priests spoke of miracles and scholars debated alchemy, but magic—true, physical, reality-altering magic—was a child's fairy tale. The sight of an army commander conjuring chains of pure light shattered his understanding of the world.
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"Your swordsmanship and knowledge of my stances defy all logic," the Commander said coldly, sheathing his sword. He did not rely on ordinary steel to subdue an incomprehensible anomaly; the Vanguard's runic suppression seals were designed precisely for threats that could not be classified by steel. "You are too valuable a prize to execute on the spot. I will extract the truth from you in the dungeons."
He stepped forward and pressed his heavy gauntlet against Kael's shoulder, activating a secondary rune carved into its palm.
The world collapsed.
For Kael—a warrior whose entire life was governed by the laws of physics, gravity, and steel—what happened next was a true nightmare. Space didn't just blur—it folded. His stomach lurched into his throat as his body was hurled through space without moving an inch across the ground. A wild wave of nausea and dizziness nearly rendered him unconscious.
Teleportation. They literally tore space apart... What insane, god-forsaken world have I been dragged into?!
When reality regained clarity, the sun-drenched yard was gone.
Kael found himself kneeling on the cold, damp stone of an underground casemate, lit only by the flickering glow of two torches in iron cages. The air was thick with the smell of mold, saltpeter, and the unmistakable coppery tang of old blood. The glowing chains forcibly held him on his knees before a heavy, iron-bound interrogation chair.
Heavy footsteps echoed from the stone stairs behind him.
The Commander entered the chamber with a slow, methodical gait. He removed his golden gauntlets and tossed them onto a wooden table laden with terrifying torture instruments. In full accordance with his rank, he had no intention of killing an enemy possessing impossible information—he intended to dissect it piece by piece until the truth bled out.
"We are in the lowest casemates of the Order of the Vanguard," the scarred man stated evenly, looking at the captive with eyes the color of a winter sea. "Sound does not leave these walls. No handler will save you from here. Let's start with the basics: who taught you to perfectly copy my stances, and what is your name?"
Kael, trapped in a woman's body, bound by impossible sorcery, and forced to look up at the man who had stolen his face, his scar, and all his military glory, felt something finally break inside him.
Tactics, disguise, and caution burned to ashes in the flames of wounded soldier's pride.
"My name is Kael, you bastard," he spat, his crimson eyes flaring with a rage that matched the Commander's own. "And that was MY swordsmanship I just showed you!"
The words hung heavy in the stale dungeon air.
The Commander froze. For a fraction of a second, confusion flickered in his cold gray eyes, but it was immediately replaced by a dry, mocking sneer.
"Kael?" he repeated with icy contempt. "Did your parents give a noblewoman the name of the High Commander of the Vanguard? Or did you take it yourself to complete this delusional act of espionage?"
Kael, in the woman's body, jerked violently, but the spectral blue chains only bit deeper into his wrists, burning his skin with an unbearable, unnatural cold.
"That is MY name!" Kael roared, glaring fiercely at the man in golden armor. "And who the hell gave you the right to wear MY face?! What kind of alchemical monstrosity is this? You bound me with these icy ropes, stole my fighting style! If I had my golden aura, I wouldn't have lost to a freak like you!"
The Commander narrowed his eyes, and the sneer was replaced by a perceptive, calculating gaze.
"Golden aura?" he articulated slowly, enunciating each word. "You speak as if aura is a natural phenomenon. It is an artificial concept. A high-precision method of mana control that I developed for seven years. The swordsmanship style you so flawlessly copied in the yard was created exclusively for that golden flow of mana. So answer, who taught you this?"
Mana? Kael gritted his teeth. His mind, hardened by pure physical discipline, utterly refused to accept this concept.
"What, in the Abyss's name, is 'mana'?!" Kael spat in utter bewilderment. "Is that what you call your glowing ropes and teleportation tricks? I don't know what enchantments you use, but true aura comes from pure life force! Everyone has it from birth! It's just that few live long enough to ignite it into a golden glow!"
The Commander stared at the captive as if she were utterly insane. She had flawlessly executed a technique countering a teleportation lunge, and yet she didn't even know what mana was?
"You are a disgusting liar," the Commander stated coldly. He turned to the table with the torture instruments. "I have no time for a madwoman's riddles. There is a war on, and you pose a security threat."
He picked up an incredibly sharp silver knife and turned. Without hesitation, he slashed the blade across Kael's forearm.
Kael didn't even flinch. Thanks to decades of military conditioning and an inhuman pain threshold, this shallow cut felt like a mere scratch. He simply continued to burn his tormentor with the fiery gaze of his crimson eyes.
"An enviable composure," the Commander noted, discarding the bloody knife. "But physical pain has its limits. A hardened fanatic will parrot rehearsed nonsense even if skinned alive. Therefore, we will bypass the flesh. I will tear the truth directly from your soul."
He walked to the table, pulled back a piece of thick velvet, and retrieved a perfectly spherical orb of pristine white crystal on a silver stand.
"What is that now?" Kael growled, frantically straining against the magical shackles in a futile attempt to break them by force. "Are you going to tell my fortune?"
"'The Eye of the First King'," the Commander stated dryly, with deep reverence for the artifact. "A legendary relic that projects the primal, undistorted truth of the soul. No illusion, no mind magic, no shapeshifter can deceive it. It bypasses memory and reads the very essence of your being. Whoever you truly are, it will show."
He pressed the cold, smooth orb against the dark-haired woman's forehead.
In the next moment, the orb flared with dazzling white light.
Kael expected pain but felt only a slight dizziness. The space before them shimmered, and a three-dimensional, flickering projection, woven from light and shadows, materialized in the air.
It wasn't just a picture. It was a first-person memory, drawn directly from Kael's soul.
The memory showed a pair of heavy, calloused hands gripping the hilt of a broad Vanguard sword. The perspective shifted, the gaze falling upon a bloody shield lying on the ground. Reflected in the polished steel was the face of a tall man with short dark hair and a jagged scar above his left eyebrow. The Commander's face.
The viewpoint rose. The Siege of the Dark Citadel. A ruined, burning city. Mountains of northern corpses. Around them, dozens of knights surged into battle, their weapons blazing with natural, wild life force—gray and blue auras illuminating the smoke-stained sky. No spells. Only pure, brutal steel.
The orb in the Commander's hand trembled betrayingly.
The scarred man stared at the hovering image, his legendary composure cracking. He saw the world through the eyes of this... woman. But the hands gripping the sword were his own. The reflection in the shield also belonged to him.
"Impossible," the Commander whispered, his rational mind desperately trying to construct a defense. "Top-tier memory falsification? A grand illusion?"
But he looked at "The Eye of the First King." It vibrated with pure, undistorted white light. The artifact was flawless. It could not lie.
The hovering memory shifted. A dusty training ground. A view of a line of unpolished, terrified recruits. A voice—Kael's voice, rough and commanding—emerged from the memory, urging them to draw life force from within, not from the mind, because aura flowed in every person from birth.
The Commander took a step back, nearly dropping the artifact.
The Dark Citadel? In his world, the Dark Citadel was a peaceful, prosperous trade hub in the far south, completely untouched by war. And these knights... ordinary soldiers wielding Aura? In his Vanguard, only five of his most trusted lieutenants were trained in this technique, and their powers were fueled by mana reserves.
This paradox shattered his reality. As the Commander's absolute certainty wavered, the mana sustaining the magical chains weakened.
The piercing cold of the glowing ropes faded for a fraction of a second.
Now! Kael's hardened instincts didn't hesitate for a moment. Feeling the pressure release, he braced his feet against the stone floor and made a powerful upward surge, pouring all his inhuman physical strength into it.
With a crack like breaking glass, the weakened magical chains shattered into blue sparks. Kael lunged forward, ready to attack his tormentor, but stopped abruptly. He was unarmed, barefoot, and deep in enemy territory. He adopted a flawless defensive stance, breathing heavily and waiting for the Commander to draw his sword.
But the Commander did not attack. He didn't even raise his hands to cast another spell.
He looked at the fading projection, then at the artifact, and finally—at the dark-haired woman before him.
"Who are you?" the Commander whispered. For the first time in his life, absolute, undisguised confusion was reflected in his gray eyes. "The Dark Citadel was never besieged. Mana is the very foundation of this world. But this artifact cannot be deceived... How can I look into your soul with my own eyes? Why is your life... different?"