The first blade split through flesh before they even screamed.
Steel bit deep into a worshiper's shoulder, carving downward, splitting the ribs with a wet, cracking snap. Blood sprayed across the cold stone, a dark arc of crimson against pale candlelight.
And they still knelt.
Still chanted.
Even as their bodies collapsed, throats gurgling on half-finished prayers.
Rikard moved beside me, silent as a phantom, his greatsword cleaving through the line of kneeling figures. Bone shattered. Heads rolled. The floor darkened with life that no longer had a vessel.
I turned, sword flashing.
One of them moved. A dagger, shaking in his hands, rising toward me.
But I saw it.
One second ahead.
Before the thought had even finished forming in his mind, I knew. I had already stepped aside. Already brought my blade across his stomach—already watched the moment his guts spilled onto the floor, steaming in the cold cathedral air.
He twitched. Once. Twice. Then fell limp.
Weak.
They didn't even fight.
They didn't even resist.
Even as I drove my sword through their backs, through their chests, even as they fell onto the already-growing pile of bodies—they did nothing.
They just knelt.
Knelt in the blood of their own. Knelt in the remains of the ones before them.
Still murmuring. Still praying.
Still feeding a God that wasn't here.
Rikard's form moved through the carnage, unstoppable, relentless. His greatsword fell like a butcher's cleaver, hacking, breaking, crushing.
A woman reached toward him—not to fight, not to run, just to grasp for something—and his blade took her arm at the shoulder. A second strike split her skull in two, the pieces falling apart like overripe fruit.
I felt the heat burning inside me.
Astrid's rage.
The longer I moved, the more I killed, the more I could feel it. My body surged with raw strength, veins thick beneath my skin, muscles bulging, stretching beyond human limits. My breath came out in short, ragged exhales.
This was power.
Another one moved. Another dagger, another desperate attempt.
I had already grabbed his wrist. Already twisted. Already watched the bone snap like brittle wood.
He screamed. I silenced him with a blade through the throat.
Flesh tore. Blood poured. The cathedral drank it all.
The walls, once gray stone, now painted red. Pools of thick crimson gathered along the altar, soaking into the robes of the kneeling bodies that still remained.
But fewer, now.
Much fewer.
The last one turned his head toward me. His lips still moved, whispering his final words to a God that would never answer.
I watched him.
Then I drove my sword through the top of his skull.
His body twitched—once, then nothing.
And just like that—
Silence.
A low hum filled the air.
The ward was breaking.
And I—
I could feel it.
Power, raw and undiluted, flooding into me. Their souls weren't vanishing. They weren't fading. They were becoming mine.
Strength pulsed through my limbs, my vision sharpening, my senses sharper than ever.
I could take two Rhazans now.
Hell, I could take three.
And I wouldn't even break a sweat.
From the side, a shuddering crack split through the air.
I turned.
Orlan stood with both hands raised, arcs of violet lightning coiling around his fingers. The air rippled outward, the unnatural shimmer of the barrier distorting—then shattering.
The weight that had pressed against my skin, that had filled this cathedral with something unseen, vanished.
And the moment it did—
A portal opened.
A tear in reality itself, spiraling outward in unnatural waves, its edges fraying into sheer nothingness.
Naestra came first.
She hit the ground running, her boots skidding across blood-slicked stone as she sprinted toward us, her chest rising and falling with ragged breaths. She was drenched in sweat, her usual grin nowhere to be seen.
"Move!" she snapped, her voice sharp, urgent.
Because right behind her—
Nyxar emerged.
A God. A monster. A presence that should not exist.
He was tall. Too tall. His body stretched beyond normal proportions, a mass of shifting robes that never quite settled, fabric that moved like liquid, changing color with every subtle shift.
And beneath that hood—
A maw.
Not a mouth. Not a face. Just rows and rows of jagged, needle-thin teeth, spiraling into darkness. No lips. No tongue. Just an endless, gaping void, inhaling with a slow, deliberate shhhhhhkkkkkk—
His arms were long. Too long. Six of them, crawling out from the folds of his robes, each one grasping at the air like it was something tangible. Long, skeletal fingers, clawed at the tips, twitching as if sensing us.
And his eyes—
There weren't any.
But I felt them.
Watching. Calculating.
A pulsing energy radiated from him, an overwhelming pressure, like thousands of voices whispering at once, murmuring forgotten languages, lost prayers, secrets of the dead.
I gritted my teeth. My head pounded.
Sieg had already drawn his sabre.
Orlan's hands flickered with magic.
Naestra stood between us and him, wiping the sweat from her brow. "Bad news," she panted. "He was already on his way."
Nyxar inhaled again, that slow, sucking shhhhhhkkkkkk—
Then, he spoke.
"Ahhh..."
His voice wasn't a voice. It was layered, wrong, like a choir of dead tongues speaking in unison.
"You are the ones who seek the death of Gods..."
His six hands unfurled.
And the whispers grew louder.
Orlan moved before any of us could react.
A single, sharp flick of his left hand—
And we were thrown back.
An unseen force crashed into me, slamming me against the cold stone wall. Hard. I gritted my teeth as the impact rattled through my bones. Naestra and Sieg hit beside me, the air forced from our lungs in unison.
Orlan didn't even look at us.
"Step aside," he murmured, his tone final. "I shall handle him."
Sieg pushed off the wall immediately, ready to protest, but before he could, Naestra grabbed his wrist.
"Don't."
Sieg's jaw clenched, his muscles tensed, but he didn't shake her off.
Naestra exhaled, eyes locked onto Nyxar, her voice quick, urgent. "Physical attacks won't work on him. Nothing you do will hurt him. But Orlan—" She turned to Sieg, gaze firm. "Orlan can."
Nyxar loomed, his shifting robes twisting unnaturally, his six clawed hands stretching toward Orlan as if curious.
And Orlan—
Orlan simply raised his own hand.
The cathedral trembled.
The air burned.
The moment Orlan raised his hands, the entire cathedral came alive with magic.
Nyxar moved at the same time.
And then—
Hell broke loose.
The first collision of power shattered the floor beneath us. A torrent of arcane energy exploded outward, a shockwave of sheer force that sent debris flying, twisted pillars into splintered ruin. Candlelight snuffed out instantly, replaced by a searing, white-hot glow of raw destruction.
I shielded my eyes just as Orlan answered.
A storm of violet lightning split from his fingertips, coiling like living serpents, slamming toward Nyxar's twisting form.
But before it could strike—reality bent.
Nyxar didn't dodge. He erased the space between them.
One second the lightning was there—the next, it wasn't. Swallowed into nothingness.
And then Nyxar unleashed.
A chasm of writhing shadows erupted from beneath Orlan's feet, a spiraling void clawing upward, hungry, endless. The air around it bent inward, as if trying to collapse into itself.
Orlan stepped through time.
I didn't know how else to describe it.
One moment, the void was about to consume him whole— the next, he was somewhere else. His body flickered, movements impossible to track, bending through space like he'd rewritten the very concept of distance.
He raised his hand—
A thousand blades of pure force materialized.
They launched forward, each one a precise, death-dealing projectile, slicing through the air, through the broken stone, toward Nyxar's center mass.
And then—
Stillness.
Nyxar raised one of his six hands.
The blades stopped.
Mid-air.
Frozen.
Then, just as quickly—they turned.
They reversed, shooting back toward Orlan twice as fast.
I sucked in a breath, expecting him to be impaled, shredded—
But Orlan didn't move.
Instead, he flicked his fingers.
And the air rippled.
The blades disintegrated before reaching him, dissolving into nothingness like they had never existed at all.
That was the moment the battle changed.
The explosions stopped. The raw displays of destruction faded.
Now—
Now it was something else.
A game of precision.
A battle of who was better.
Every movement, every gesture, flawless. There was no wasted motion, no useless flares of magic. Just perfection.
Nyxar flicked his fingers—Orlan countered before the spell could even form.
Orlan moved his hand—Nyxar unraveled the magic mid-air.
Spells never even had the chance to land. Every attack was answered before it had even finished existing.
They weren't just casting magic.
They were dismantling it.
Nyxar launched another void strike—Orlan erased the very concept of the spell.
Orlan sent a wave of violet fire—Nyxar rewrote physics to make it meaningless.
Their hands barely moved now. Just the slightest shifts of the wrist, the tiniest tilts of the fingers—that was all it took.
I had never seen anything like it.
This was beyond magic.
This was control.
This was mastery.
And then—
Orlan made a mistake.
A flicker—a hesitation.
And Nyxar took it.
In a blink, Orlan wasn't standing anymore. He was in the air, his body flung backward, slammed against the cathedral wall with a force that cracked the stone. He didn't move.
Nyxar loomed, his six hands twisting into new gestures, dark power gathering.
And I knew—this was it.
Orlan couldn't win.
But he wasn't trying to.
His fingers twitched.
A single movement. A single spell.
Nyxar's form wavered.
Not a lot.
Not enough for the average person to notice.
But I noticed.
He was vulnerable now.
And I wasn't the only one who saw it.
A blur of motion—
Sieg.
His sabre was already swinging.
A single, perfect strike.
Straight for Nyxar's heart.