Ludwig rushed forward, again, for the umpteenth time.

He knew he wouldn’t win.

His boots struck the marble with a hard rhythm that echoed through the golden hall, every step carrying him toward the same impossible opponent, the same polished face, the same suffocating authority that had killed him in more ways than he cared to count.

He knows he can’t beat him, but he has to try something, anything, to break not the body, but the façade that is Pride.

The body was a wall. The power was a mountain. The authority was a law that had decided Ludwig was an error to be corrected. But the façade, that perfect, golden, untouchable image Pride carried around himself, that was something different. A façade only needed one crack before it stopped being perfect.

The world began pressing against him like always.

This used to kill him unless he entered Undeath or became one with Noctivex, but he did neither. The pressure descended silently, wrapping around his body and sinking into muscle, bone, even thought. It was not simply weight.

Weight could be resisted. Pride’s authority pressed from everywhere at once, telling his body that moving was improper, telling his spine to lock and wait for the inevitable hand that would snap his neck.

"Futile, perish," Pride raised his hand, and the pressure that always stopped Ludwig in place froze him, and never allowed him to dodge the snapping of his neck.

Pride’s palm rose with that same insulting calm, as though Ludwig’s charge was not an attack but a minor disturbance in the room.

The next part should have been simple. Ludwig would freeze, Pride would make some small dismissive motion, and his neck would break before he could curse properly.

"I REJECT IT!" Ludwig howled as he threw Durandal forward.

The words tore out of his chest raw and ugly, full of pain and refusal rather than anything noble. His arm forced itself through the authority crushing around him, veins standing out beneath his skin as he snapped the lighter weapon ahead of him.

Durandal left his hand in a sharp flash, cutting through the compressed air with a cleaner, faster path than Nightbreaker could ever manage.

"You cannot reject eventuality." Pride pressured his authority against Ludwig.

His voice did not rise. It did not need to. The words came down smooth and absolute, as if he was correcting a child who thought shouting at the tide would hold back the sea.

The pressure deepened, tightening around Ludwig’s limbs. His next step dragged across the marble, the sole of his boot scraping a jagged line through the floor.

But for the first time, something happened.

Ludwig kept moving.

It was not graceful, and it sure as hell was not easy.

His shoulders shook under the invisible force. His jaw clenched until his face burned. His vision pulsed at the edges as the authority tried to convince his body that stillness was natural and motion was rebellion.

Yet his foot came down again. Then another. He was slower, strained, half-crushed by the command pressing against him, but he was still coming forward.

And Ludwig laughed as he saw Durandal skid right across Pride’s face.

Sparks flew as the weapon felt like it hit steel instead of a cheek. The blade did not cut flesh, not truly, and the sound of contact was wrong, too sharp, too metallic.

But it touched him. That mattered more than damage.

Sparks scattered across Pride’s golden features, bright and brief, and for the first time, this attempt had produced something different from the usual humiliating execution.

Durandal flew all the way to the back of the hall and fell clattering to the ground. It bounced once across the restored marble, then slid until it struck the far edge of the chamber.

In any normal fight, losing a weapon like that would have been idiotic. Against Pride, being idiotic was becoming less of a flaw and more of a tactic.

Pride, who should be surprised, expressed no emotion.

His face remained smooth, cold, and perfect. No widened eyes, no flinch, no hand checking the place Durandal had struck.

But Ludwig no longer needed obvious reactions. Pride’s lack of reaction was itself a reaction, or maybe a refusal to allow one.

And once Ludwig arrived, weaponless in front of Pride, he struck. He closed the last steps with his body still shaking under pressure, his empty hand rising not as a refined strike but as a blunt insult. No weapon. No armor. No clever enchantment. Just Ludwig’s hand traveling toward Pride’s perfect face. He was not trying to break Pride’s skull. He was trying to touch the symbol.

With a fist to the face.

The blow shattered Ludwig’s fist, but he never groaned or grunted; he merely stepped back. Pain flashed up his arm white-hot as bones cracked against Pride’s face like he had punched a wall forged by arrogance itself.

His knuckles split, his fingers bent wrong, and blood burst across his skin, smearing against golden perfection before he pulled back. His body wanted to react. His throat wanted to release sound. Ludwig gave Pride neither. He held the ruined hand low, letting the blood drip freely onto the marble.

And said, "That’s much more like it," Ludwig said.

His voice came out strained, but there was satisfaction buried under the pain. Not because the blow had hurt Pride.

It clearly had not. Ludwig’s hand was the only thing that had suffered anything resembling damage.

But the red smear on Pride’s face was there, vivid against gold, a disgusting little mark that did not belong in his perfect image.

"Are you losing your sanity? I was never harmed in this futile exchange." Pride’s voice remained composed, but the words were too direct, too focused on denial.

He did not ask what Ludwig intended. He corrected the premise, as if the distinction mattered to him.

Ludwig watched him carefully, his broken hand throbbing in time with his pulse. Pride was not harmed.

True. But harm was not the only way to make something react.

"Nah, but that, on your face, dripping red..." Ludwig said. He lifted his chin toward Pride’s cheek, where a thin line of Ludwig’s blood had begun to slide downward.

The hall’s light caught it, making the red look almost obscene on that flawless golden surface. The mirrors around them caught the image from every angle, reflecting Pride with blood on his face like the room itself had turned witness.

Pride wiped his face and saw it, crimson, red, alive. His fingers brushed the smear from his cheek before holding the blood in front of his eyes.

That tiny motion was worth another death all on its own.

He had acknowledged it. He had touched it. He had looked at it.

"It is your blood. Not mine. I don’t bleed red."

Pride’s correction came sharply, almost too quickly. The statement was factual, and Ludwig believed it. Pride probably did not bleed red. He might not bleed at all in any way that made sense. But facts were not the battlefield anymore. Appearance was. Meaning was. Pride holding red blood on his golden fingers looked like a wound whether or not it technically was one.

"Nah, I know you don’t, but that makes you less you, makes you more... human." Ludwig’s lips curled despite the pain in his hand.

The word human was not praise in this hall. Not to Pride. It was mud thrown upward at a throne. A reminder of limitation, breath, blood, weakness, and all the ugly little things Pride had placed beneath himself.

"Do not squander words you know not the value of. I am above humanity." Pride’s tone hardened, and the authority around him thickened in response.

His posture straightened, superiority settling around him again like a robe. Yet the red still marked his hand, and some of it remained on his cheek, enough for the mirrors to keep repeating the image back at him.

"That’s not what that blood says." Ludwig answered without hesitation, keeping his eyes fixed on the smear. His broken fingers twitched once and sent a fresh stab of pain through his arm. Pride wanted the blood defined correctly.

Ludwig wanted it defined visually. And visually, Pride looked stained.

"I have told you, it is your blood, not mine, your own fist shattered against my face." Pride’s voice carried the weight of repeated correction, and that repetition made Ludwig’s grin sharpen.

There it was again. The need to clarify. The need to restore order.

Pride could have ignored it. He could have killed Ludwig immediately. Instead, he was explaining why the blood did not count.

"You can say whatever you want, but all I see is that if it bleeds, it dies. And you just bled." Ludwig let the words come out slowly enough to be insulting. He knew the logic was crude.

He knew Pride could dismantle it without even trying. That made it better. A polished argument could be countered by a polished mind.

A crude insult stained everything it touched.

"Futile," Pride snorted and raised his arm up, "Golden Vault."