Chapter 196
The two hundred Holy Knights of the Seraphic Order thundered across the scorched plains, their warhorses armored in radiant silver, banners of the High Throne snapping in the wind. The earth trembled beneath the synchronized rhythm of hooves , an army of divine purpose, closing in on Karion's burning skyline.
But then , the world itself convulsed.
A deafening roar rolled from the city's heart, followed by a blinding flash that turned the horizon into living fire. Daniel's Seal of Ten Dimensions met Melgil's Gluttonous Flame, and the collision birthed a wave of pure, uncontrolled power that tore through the air like a divine shockwave.
In an instant, the entire cavalry faltered.
The ground split open, soil liquefying into molten glass beneath their hooves. The pressure was unbearable , like standing in the breath of a god. One by one, the holy steeds stumbled and screamed, their divine armor crackling with distorted runes. Knights were thrown from their saddles, their halberds and lances tearing trenches into the earth.
A few knights tried to rise, their shields glowing faintly as protective charms activated , but even holy magic shattered like fragile glass against the storm of cosmic energy.
"Hold formation!" bellowed Commander Eldric Marrow, voice straining against the roaring wind. But his command was swallowed by the sound , a low, pulsing hum that seemed to come from every direction at once, resonating in the bones.
The sky twisted, bleeding red and violet, as if creation itself recoiled from what was unfolding.
Ahead, the silhouette of Karion was gone , replaced by an impossible sight: A colossal spider-shaped demon, wings of black crystal unfurled across the heavens, clashing against a figure wreathed in void light. Each strike between them released rings of pressure so immense that mountains in the far distance buckled.
The knights stared in awe and terror. Their training, their faith , all of it felt small beneath that battle.
"Saints preserve us…" one whispered, clutching his holy insignia as tears streamed down his face.
Even the most steadfast warriors of the Seraphic Order felt their resolve fracture. What they witnessed was no battle of mortals , it was the language of gods, written in fire and void.
And as the force from the last spell washed over them , a wave that flattened the grass and silenced all sound , the two hundred Holy Knights and their warhorses fell to their knees, trembling, their banners torn apart by the storm.
The light that followed could be seen as far as the eastern coast, where even the sea itself rippled beneath its radiance.
Daniel's Netherborn form pulsed like a living shadow, his body surrounded by concentric rings of black-and-silver sigils. His eyes, twin abysses of shifting void energy, focused on the collapsing formation of the Holy Knights below.
Without hesitation, he lifted his hand , the remaining Harmonic Resonance Orb spinning rapidly in his palm. The air cracked with distortion as he whispered a command
" reveal your true form"
The orb ignited, splitting into a dozen fragments of white-violet light before reforming into a single, glowing sphere. With a flick of his wrist, Daniel hurled it toward the fallen knights. The orb screamed through the air , a streak of harmonic energy that burst into radiant waves upon impact.
At first, there was silence. Then came the screams.
Commander Eldric Marrow, still reeling from the earlier shockwave, felt something pierce through his armor and exit through his back. He turned sharply, startled — but there was no pain, only a strange vibration crawling through his spine.
He gasped.The knight beside him wasn't so fortunate.
That knight convulsed violently, armor rattling, body twisting unnaturally. Eldric dropped to his knees beside him, gripping his shoulder. "Brother! Speak!"
But the knight's body seized again, a thick black miasma seeping from the cracks of his armor. Eldric ripped the helmet off , and froze.
The knight's eyes were gone.A moment later, he vomited a torrent of shadow, thick and oily, that hissed as it touched the ground.
From his mouth emerged something that should not exist , a larval creature, pale gray with a dozen eyes and needle-like legs, writhing and screeching as it fell to the earth. It landed, twitched, then burrowed beneath the soil.
And the ground answered.
A low tremor rippled outward.Then , an explosion of dirt and bones.
From the soil rose a 10-foot monstrosity, its form sculpted from dirt, blood-soaked roots, shattered armor, and the stench of decay. Black smoke poured from the cracks in its body as if its core was a furnace of pure malice.
Eldric stumbled backward, drawing his sword , but the horror was far from over.
Across the field, dozens of other knights began convulsing in unison.Black miasma burst from their bodies like steam under pressure. One by one, the same demonic larvae slithered out, each finding soil to nest in.
Within minutes, seventy corrupted knights had fallen , and from their remains, seventy miasmic golems rose, wreathed in flame-like smoke.
Their movements were jagged, mindless, but fast , feral and hungry, bound to nothing but the will of the Rift.
Eldric shouted orders, his voice hoarse. "Form ranks! Protect the untainted!"
But the creatures were already upon them. One golem tore through a warhorse, another smashed a knight's helm with its claws of bone, while others crawled across the ground like beasts, screeching in distorted echoes of the knights they once were.
From above, Daniel's expression darkened.His plan had worked , the Harmonic Resonance had revealed the possessed.
But now, the battlefield itself had turned into a nightmare.
The sky cracked open with a shriek of steel and wings.Fifty Wyvern Riders of the Holy Order descended from the storm clouds, lances gleaming with sanctified light. Their formation was perfect, a spiral of silver death , but Daniel saw it differently.
It was a net tightening around him.
The first volley came instantly.Spears of radiant energy fell from the heavens, ripping through the air like falling comets. The explosions tore through the old military district, flinging dust and broken stone into the sky. Daniel raised his hand, and the Void rippled. The attacks curved away, bending in impossible arcs as if reality itself rejected them.
But there were too many, fifty wyverns screamed as one, their wings trailing burning sigils of faith. Melgil was still recovering, her form flickering between her colossal spider body and her smaller humanoid shape , her strength ebbing, her hunger burning. Daniel couldn't risk her intervening.
And below , The Holy Knights were being overrun. The seventy miasmic golems rampaged through their ranks, tearing through armor and horse alike. Eldric fought valiantly, his sword glowing with divine flame, but the corruption spread faster than faith could burn it.
Daniel clenched his fist. "If I act alone, they'll die… all of them."
His eyes dimmed , and the Void beneath his feet stirred.
"Then I call upon the shadows that swore to my soul," he said, his voice deep, resonant, carrying across the chaos."Vaelith. Nyxiel. Kitsune… heed your master."
The ground fractured, black veins spreading outward. From those cracks the darkness bled, not as smoke, but as living silk , the memory of creation before light existed.
From the shadows slithered Vaelith, the Black Serpent.His enormous body glimmered with scales of obsidian glass, each reflecting distant galaxies. When he moved, he made no sound , only the soft hum of a predator restraining itself. His molten-gold eyes locked onto Daniel, filled with reverence.
He coiled once, then melted into a column of smoke, reforming as a man — tall, broad-shouldered, and unnervingly calm. His hair shimmered black-blue like an oil slick, and a golden circlet rested on his brow. His eyes, still slatted like a serpent's, gleamed with lethal focus.
"You summon me at last, my king," he said, bowing low. "Shall I devour the filth?"
Nyxiel, the Horned Owl, descended next , silent, perfect.She swept down through the flames, wings cutting through the smoke like silver blades. Her landing stirred not dust but calm , the wind bent around her, whispering reverence. Her eyes were twin moons, ancient and knowing.
As she touched the ground, her feathers dissolved into ribbons of silver light that wrapped her form. A woman of haunting grace emerged, draped in a cloak of woven starlight. Two small horns curved elegantly from her temples, glowing faintly with ethereal energy.
"Your shadows tremble, my lord," she said softly. "Shall I silence their cries?"
And finally , from the mist and flame , came Kitsune, the Nine-Tailed Fox.She emerged with a sound like laughter and thunder mixed together, her nine tails fanning outward, each tipped in burning gold. Her crimson eyes sparkled with playful cruelty.
As she walked forward, her fur burst into fire, revealing a woman whose beauty was almost weaponized , her gaze cunning, her smile knowing. She tilted her head at Daniel, her voice honeyed but edged with danger.
"You've been busy, beloved master," she purred. "Do I get to play too?"
Daniel didn't hesitate.
"Vaelith , crush the golems. Nyxiel , cloak the untainted knights. Kitsune , burn the corrupted miasma. Do not kill the hosts."
The three bowed in unison.
"As you command, my lord."
The battlefield erupted in three simultaneous phenomena.
Vaelith leapt forward, his body expanding in a blink , a colossal serpent of black flame and gold scales, sweeping through the corrupted ranks. Every golem he struck imploded into dust, their miasmic cores devoured by his energy.
Nyxiel spread her wings , reality dimmed. A dome of silver feathers expanded, covering the untainted knights. Inside it, the noise of battle faded; arrows bent, miasma burned away, and time itself seemed to hesitate. The Holy Knights gasped, feeling divine warmth through the shroud of shadow.
And Kitsune She danced through the smoke, her nine tails igniting into burning sigils. Wherever she spun, corruption turned to embers, her laughter echoing as she sliced through demons with blades of living flame.
Above them all, Daniel raised his hand, and the world itself seemed to hold its breath. The storm clouds parted in a violent spiral as a black glyph , vast and intricate , spread across the heavens like a celestial brand. It pulsed once, then cracked open reality itself. The Seal of Ten Dimensions unfolded, a wheel of impossible geometry turning above the wyvern riders.
"You aim at the wrong enemy," Daniel's voice boomed , deep, harmonic, and commanding, echoing through both air and mind.
The riders barely had time to brace. Their holy lances, blessed with divine sigils, froze midair — their magic snuffed out as if swallowed by a deeper law. Then gravity rebelled. The wyverns screamed as their wings locked in place, bodies wrenching violently upward. The formation shattered, riders spinning into the storm above like leaves caught in a cyclone of reversed physics.
air fractured. Daniel vanished , only to reappear among them, his Netherborn form a silhouette of living shadow wrapped in violet halos of Void energy. His eyes glowed like two eclipsed stars.
He extended both hands, palms open. A ripple spread outward , silent, colorless, absolute.The wyverns' eyes turned jet black, one after another, until the sky looked filled with a constellation of sleeping beasts.
"Sleep."
His command was not shouted , it resonated, vibrating through their souls. The wyverns' muscles went slack, their wings unfurling as they drifted weightlessly. Daniel swept his hand once more, and space itself obeyed.
A Transfer Gate bloomed in the sky , a massive ring of pale silver light, inscribed with runes of Void and Aether entwined. Beyond it shimmered the distant spire of the Crescent Magus Tower, home of the Left Archmage Sylveth Melriel. She had been forewarned through Daniel's earlier letters — her role, to identify and contain any knight tainted by demonic parasites.
The Gate pulsed. The sleeping wyverns and their riders were drawn into it, vanishing gently one by one, leaving behind trails of violet mist. On the other side, far above the Crescent Tower's moonlit terraces, Sylveth would soon look up from her arcane table to see dozens of holy knights suspended midair in stasis , silent, cursed, and awaiting her care.
When the last ripple closed, the sky fell silent again.The once-roaring battlefield was now a graveyard of shattered armor and scorched earth.
Daniel descended slowly, the Void dissolving around him like dying embers.Below, his three vassals , Vaelith, Nyxiel, and Kitsune , knelt as one, their heads bowed, the battlefield behind them reduced to smoldering ash and molten soil.
Further back, Commander Eldric Marrow and the surviving Holy Knights regrouped, their armor cracked, their faith shaken. They watched in silence , the man they were told to destroy had saved them instead. None spoke. None dared.
Daniel's boots touched the ground softly, his aura dimming to a faint pulse of violet light.He looked at them , not as enemies, but as victims of something far older and crueler.
"Your war isn't with me," Daniel said, his voice calm yet heavy with cosmic finality."But the real enemy is already watching… through the rift."
The words hung in the air like prophecy.
And then .Above them, the crimson tear in the sky flared. It pulsed once, twice, then shivered like a living wound. From within, whispers spilled forth , countless, layered, and ancient. The rift widened slightly, bleeding scarlet light that painted the ruins of Karion in shades of dread.
Something beyond was stirring. Something that had been listening all along.
Lightning flickered across the storm-wrapped spires of the Crescent Magus Tower, a cathedral of glass and obsidian rising above the northern wastes. Within its highest chamber, a circular sanctum filled with suspended glyphs, glowing conduits, and rune-powered mirrors, Sylveth Melriel, the Left Archmage of the Realm, lifted her head as reality itself bent.
A circle of dark runes ignited across the walled but open marble floor courtyard of the tower . The air rippled like water under pressure, and then fifty unconscious Holy Knights and their fallen wyverns , fell from a transfer gate that materialized, scattered across the chamber floor. Their armor smoked with residual energy from Daniel's Gate, their faces pale and twisted in half-suppressed agony.
Sylveth's robes fluttered as she approached, her staff glimmering like a crescent moon forged from liquid silver. The crescent at its tip spun slowly, aligning with the runes underfoot. Her voice was calm, measured,but heavy with apprehension.
"So… he was right."
She waved her staff once, and streams of blue energy flowed from her fingertips, weaving a hexagram containment field around the knights. Each one froze, suspended a few inches above the ground as spectral bindings wrapped around their limbs and throats.
Their bodies trembled. Beneath their armor, veins of black flame crawled beneath their skin, tiny, pulsing sigils that moved like living things. One knight's eyes snapped open pure red, no pupils, before Sylveth's staff struck the ground, freezing him in stasis.
"A demonic larva," she murmured, eyes narrowing. "But… not one of the Lower Realm's breeds. This is older. Structured."
A dozen enchanted mirrors rotated toward her voice, reflecting magnified images of the knights' corrupted auras. What should have been holy light had turned spiral-black, their divine essence slowly being rewritten from the inside out.
Sylveth's expression darkened. She extended her hand toward one of the hovering knights, and a rune-slicer beam sliced through the air, peeling open a thin layer of magic around his chest plate. Inside, a cluster of black webbing pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat a nest of demonic filaments clinging to the knight's soul.
It was alive.
The web twitched. The runes flickered. For a heartbeat, the whole tower dimmed.
"It's feeding on sanctified mana," she whispered. "Every prayer, every blessing they recited, it made the parasite stronger. This… is a seed from the Abyssal Line itself."
She turned toward one of her crystal sentinels. a levitating orb wrapped in runic chains.
"Send word to Daniel. The parasite isn't merely possessing them, it's replicating their divine resonance. If we purge it by force, their souls will unravel with it."
The orb hummed, recording her message.
As she worked, the shadows in the tower began to stir. A faint whisper slithered through the air, not from the knights, but from inside the black veins that threaded through their bodies.
A voice, not human, mocked her from within the silence.
"You can't separate us, Archmage. We've already become one."
The temperature plummeted. Every mirror in the sanctum cracked at once. The knights' bodies began to twitch in unison, their mouths moving without sound.
Sylveth's grip tightened around her staff. The crescent flared, and an aurora of lunar fire erupted around her, pushing back the growing darkness.
"Then I'll dissect your unity," she said coldly. "Piece by piece."
The runes blazed white. The parasites screamed.
And many miles away, standing on the cliff of the battlefield, Daniel felt the echo of her spell surge through the leyline, the first clash of intellect and corruption, and the confirmation that the demon parasite was far more dangerous than either of them had expected.
The wyverns roared, but the moment Sylveth whispered "Vareth Nul, stasis," their wings froze mid-beat, their veins glowing pale blue as paralysis took hold.
"Do not harm them," she commanded, her voice cold and resonant through the magical intercoms of the tower. "They are victims, not monsters. Chain them, secure their eyes, and place them under the Third Seal. No fire, no light."
Her soldiers obeyed instantly, the Silver Guard of Solnara Cererindur, their armor inscribed with celestial runes, moving like a wall of light through the mist. Heavy runic shackles clanged as the wyverns were bound in circles of moonlight and iron.
The storm above the Crescent Magus Tower had not yet faded when Sylveth Melriel and a two persons wearing hooded robs to hide their appearance walked along side Sylveth herslf toward the underground chambers, with six fully armored knight followed silently behind them .
the 50 infected but bound knights were already transported toward the vast underground chamber , it was a simple feat especially when Sylveth Melriel is near her tower , as it amplify her power, like what Daniel void space does, as the tower core is the one supplying the Crescent Magus mana of with 30 thousand mana , and has a recovery rate of 100 mana points per one hour until it reach it limit capacity.
Through a support pillars of shimmering space sigils, she watched the chaos below,
rushing across the obsidian bridges, those who were wearing hooded robs chanting purification hymns, and wyverns thrashing against their restraints above the tower , as the demonic influence within them writhed like fire under their scales.
With a flick of her wrist, silver chains of lunar energy burst from the air and coiled around each beast's limbs.
the one person wearing the hooded rob revealed to be Queen Nimriel Cererindur herself, tall, serene, her gold hair cascading beneath a circlet of astral glass. Her eyes, however, were troubled.
"So Daniel's warnings were not mere prophecy," she said, stepping beside Sylveth. "The demon are using parasites, to breed, "
"And they are growing," Sylveth replied grimly. "His foresight may have saved our realm from sleeping in ignorance."
Queen Nimriel's gaze hardened.
"Then we will not sleep."
She raised her gauntleted hand, and her royal guard, the Ecliptic Knights, Solnara's most elite, knelt as one.
"By royal decree," Queen Nimriel said, her voice echoing through the tower halls, "every gate, every watchtower, and every mage ward of Solnara will remain on crimson alert. No soul leaves the borders without my seal. The demons shall not claim what we built."
The command rippled through the kingdom. Bells tolled across the valley as magical sigils flared red along the walls, the Crimson Warning, a call not heard in centuries.
Below, within the crimson-lit underchambers of the Magus Tower, Sylveth and her chosen circle of mages began their grim task.The fifty knights from Álfheim lay in suspended stasis upon glowing runic slabs. Their breathing was shallow. Dark webbing pulsed from their chests to their temples, the parasites moving like liquid shadow beneath their flesh.
Sylveth's staff hummed.
"Begin the extraction protocol."
The chamber filled with radiant glyphs as each mage positioned themselves at the cardinal points. They began chanting the Aether Split, an ancient rite meant to separate soul and corruption without breaking the vessel.
At first, it worked. The dark tendrils began to recede, curling like smoke drawn into the runes. One by one, the knights' pulses steadied
Then, without warning, the entire room convulsed.
The crimson runes flared black. The knights' bodies arched upward as the parasites screamed through them, a sound like claws raking the soul. The spell matrix shattered. Mages were thrown backward into the walls as the torches dimmed into shadow fire.
Sylveth raised her crescent staff, shielding herself and the queen as a storm of black filaments erupted from the knights' bodies.The webs struck the ceiling, spreading like veins across the chamber, fusing to the walls, and pulsing with life.
"It's resisting separation!" Sylveth shouted over the roar of mana. "It's aware of us!"
The Queen's hand glowed with holy sigils as she drew her Sunblade of Cererindur, the sword's edge blazing with divine light.
"Then we cut it from their hearts!"
But Sylveth caught her arm.
"No, if we strike now, they'll die! It's bound to their sanctified essence!"
A single knight's voice broke the chaos, his tone layered with two voices—one human, one not.
"We… are already… one…"
His body erupted into black cocoon-like armor, veins of light and shadow interwoven, his face twisted in agony. The others began to follow. The parasite was merging, using the extraction ritual as a catalyst.
Sylveth slammed her staff to the floor.A lunar sigil exploded outward, freezing half the corruption mid-spread.
"Seal the chamber!" she ordered. "Now!"
The great iron doors closed with a thunderous echo, isolating the experiment from the world above.
Queen Nimriel's eyes glimmered, reflecting the chaos before her.
"Then this is not just corruption," she whispered."It's evolution."
Sylveth's jaw tightened.
"And if we fail to contain it…""It won't stop with knights."
The ground shuddered like a living beast.The crimson sigils beneath the knights flickered violently once bright with holy light, now blighted by streaks of shadow pulsing outward in veins. The air thickened with the stench of burning ether and corrupted incense.
Sylveth felt it first.A surge of energy not her own ancient, hungry, and aware crawled along the edge of her consciousness.
The ritual had been perfect, her calculations flawless, yet the power… it wasn't enough. What Daniel had wielded on the battlefield, the resonance of the Netherborn Core, had the might of an entire plane behind it. Hers relied on mortal conduits and lunar alignment. It was like holding a dam with trembling hands.
Then came the scream.
Grandmaster Eledran, High Commander of the Royal Guild, who had volunteered to bless the extraction ritual, he was the second person who was wearing a hooded cloak fell suddenly to his knees. His silver armor cracked along its seams, glowing runes splintering like glass. The insignia of his rank, once radiant with divine grace, crumbled to ash upon his chest.
His voice broke in two: one human, trembling with agony; the other hollow, carrying a thousand whispering echoes.
"No, NO! It's inside!"
A fountain of black ichor erupted from his mouth, spiraling upward into a twisting vortex of miasma. Within that darkness, shapes began to form—hands, faces, and shifting eyes pressed against the inside of the cloud, each whispering in a language older than angels or demons.
Sylveth raised her staff high, voice cutting through the thunder of collapsing magic.
"Contain him! Reinforce the outer circle!"
But it was already too late.
The ground beneath Eledran split apart as black tendrils erupted from the floor, coiling around his limbs like serpents. The ritual runes flared, trying to burn them away,but the parasite drank the light, consuming holiness and turning it into nourishment.
Queen Nimriel Cererindur ignited her blade, the Sunblade of Cererindur, and the hall was momentarily bathed in golden dawnlight.Her voice rang with command and disbelief.
"By the Throne Eternal, what is happening to him?!"
Sylveth's silver eyes widened in horror as realization struck.
"He's the conduit. The parasite has found its perfect host—it's building a mind!"
A sound tore through the air, like the ripping of fabric, like a scream that didn't belong in this world.Every infected knight convulsed in unison, their bodies twitching violently. From their mouths and eyes poured shadows, bleeding toward Eledran like rivers seeking their master.
Within seconds, the Grandmaster's form was lifted into the air. His eyes turned pure white, veins pulsing black and silver. The swirling miasma condensed into a crown of bone upon his head, and from his back unfurled translucent wings of living flesh, inscribed with runes that crawled like insects beneath the skin.
When he spoke again, it was no longer Eledran's voice.
"We… are the Breath Beneath Flesh."
"You drew us from our sleep… and now, we remember hunger."
A wave of psychic energy exploded outward. Mages screamed and fell where they stood. Some bled from their eyes and ears as visions flooded their minds, visions of a world without sky, of roots devouring suns, of oceans made of whispering memories.
Sylveth bit down on her tongue until she tasted blood, grounding herself against the mental onslaught. With one hand she drove her staff into the floor, silver fire bursting outward in a protective ring.
"Queen Nimriel, fall back! The hive-mind is using him as a beacon!"
But the Queen did not retreat. Her eyes blazed with sovereign fury as she took a step forward, her sword humming with divine resonance.
"Then we sever the beacon!"
She brought her Sun blade down in a burning arc, but the strike froze midair, caught by a web of black filaments materializing from nothing. The filaments pulsed like veins, humming with alien consciousness.
The Hive-Voice laughed, speaking through Eledran's possessed body with serene malice.
"Strike… and you cut yourself."
"You pray to the Light… but we were the first light."
The parasite's tendrils spread wider, devouring the runes on the floor, feeding on the chamber's magic until the very air bent around it.
Sylveth's breath caught in her throat as she realized what was happening, the ritual was collapsing, the reality of the hall itself beginning to bend.
She knew what Daniel would have done. He would have erased the vessel entirely, cleansed the corruption with void fire.
But she wasn't Daniel. she might be powerful, but she knows her limit, she lack maturity and true experience as she was still physically young hiding her real form in a a matured false body.
Her duty was not destruction, it was preservation and defense.
Her silver eyes glowed with lunar brilliance as she lifted her staff, whispering words forbidden even among the Lunar Order.
"By the Pale Moon's Wrath, Soul Severance."
A pulse of blinding light surged from her palm, striking Eledran square in the chest. His body convulsed, torn between holy and demonic forces. light and hunger, devotion and despair.
The Hive-Voice screamed, not in victory, but in pain.
For a brief heartbeat, the black tendrils recoiled, and the possessed knights stopped writhing.
Then the crown of bone cracked open, revealing something still forming inside. A shape. A consciousness. A glowing core.
Sylveth's voice trembled with dawning horror.
"This isn't the parasite's full form…""It's birthing through him!"
Her shout echoed through the collapsing chamber:
"Quickly! Duchess Rothchester! We need your divine power, now!"
soon with a sound like a cathedral collapsing. th third person that was wearing a hooded clock step forward and remove the cloak, and stood a few steps away from the shattered ritual circle, her mana was pure, radiant, and absolute. her armor woven from golden hymn steel, her cloak burning with sigils of dawn light. The ground itself sang as her boots touched the marble, runes flaring back to life in her presence.
"By the Seven Thrones…" Sylveth gasped, her silver eyes reflecting the brilliance. "You answered the summons."
Duches Rothchester burst mana swept the chamber, landing on Grandmaster Eledran, who now floated at the center of the vortex, his flesh splitting and knitting back together as the Hive's sigils crawled beneath his skin. The crown of bone above him pulsed like a heart.
"Too close," the Duchess muttered, her voice both furious and calm, the way sunlight can burn while healing. "The infection has reached his soul lattice."
Queen Nimriel steadied herself, her Sun blade trembling under the Hive's psychic pressure. "Then sever it! Before it finishes the birth!"
But Duches Elleena shook her head. "No. Severance would shatter his essence entirely. We must drown it in sanctity, force it out."
Sylveth immediately began tracing symbols in the air, weaving threads of silver flame into Althea's expanding circle. "If we combine moonlight with your dawn light… we might force the parasite to manifest prematurely. It'll weaken it, just enough."
Eledran's body spasmed violently. His voice came in two tones again, one his own, one ancient and voidlike.
"You think yourselves saviors… but we are what your gods abandoned."
The black tendrils from his back lashed out toward them, slicing through the air with sonic force. Althea raised her gauntlet, intercepting the blow; her palm erupted with radiant sigils that turned the tendrils to ash. The backlash knocked her a step back, but she held firm.
"Hold him!" Duches Elleena commanded. "I need his true name!"
Sylveth's voice cracked with strain. "His true name is bound to its oath toward its master, it's buried in the sacred archive!"
"Then call it!" Duches Elleena thundered, spreading her wings of light. "Before the Hive calls it for us!"
The parasite shrieked through Eledran's mouth, a sound that bent space itself. The knights nearby fell screaming as their helmets burst open, eyes glowing white. The Hive was linking them—forming a network of souls around its chosen core.
Queen Nimriel stepped forward, light burning in her eyes. as she cast a spell to blind it "Then let it face the wrath of Solnara's throne!"
She drove the Sun blade into the floor. A column of solar light erupted upward, meeting Duches Elleena divine aura and Sylveth's lunar flame in a trinity of brilliance.
The Demon parasite that was link to its main Hive screamed again, its formless essence caught between the three powers. The armor Eledran was wearing cracked further, as miasma was spilling and hissed like boiling stars.
Duches Elleena chanted, her voice layered with the choir of saints.
"By dawn unending, by mercy unbroken, return, Eledran of the Oath!"
Sylveth added her own invocation, her silver staff trembling.
"By moon's final light, I draw your soul from the dark!"
And Queen Nimriel roared,
"By the Throne Eternal, I command you to live!"
The chamber detonated with divine resonance.
For a moment, Eledran's eyes cleared. He looked at them, tears of blood running down his cheeks.
"Nimriel… Sylveth… Duchess… it's… still inside"
Then the Hive screamed one final time, and the light shattered.
When the glare faded, the Grandmaster was on his knees, his body steaming with holy burns, but alive.
Yet behind him, rising from the cracks in the floor, a figure began to form a mass of bone and shadow, humanoid but unfinished. Its voice echoed like a choir drowned in tar:
"You saved the shell… but we were never one."
Sylveth's blood ran cold.
"It split. The Hive's consciousness separated from him…"
then suddenly space rips open with blinding light as a massive Transfer Gate forms inside chamber From within, a thunderous hammer crashes down, shaking the ground and splitting stone. A figure steps out of the glowing gate , short, broad, and radiating divine heat.
Siglorr Bouldergrove: grunting as he lands, dust swirling around him "Bah! Been many momths, and still , i cant get used to this transfer gate, " , a massive forge-engraved weapon glowing with runes and golden flame was seen pulverizing the floor
Siglorr: "Behold! The work of a Bouldergrove , AYE! a Master Forger of the Old Heavens, Breaker of Steel, and I , the only dwarf forger stubborn enough to hammer light itself!"
The weapon hums, emitting a soft, holy resonance. The runes flicker, and divine energy ripples outward.
"By the gods… what is that thing?"
Siglorr stepped from the Transfer Gate, the air around him crackling with a faint golden glow. He smirked, brushing soot from his thick, unkempt beard.
Siglorr lifted the massive hammer, letting its weight settle comfortably in his hands."This…" he said, pride curling through his voice, "is Auralmir, the Holy Armament of Purity. Took me a month and a half of endless tempering to forge. Dragon core for the heart… cooled in my benefactor's own blood. Swings like thunder, smites like judgment!"
Before the echoes of his words faded, a calm, unimpressed voice replied from the side.
Sylveth Melriel: "No, I mean, who are you?"
Siglorr blinked, lowering the hammer slightly. "Girl, can you not see? I'm a forge dwarf! Or do your eyes not work as well as your tongue?"
Sylveth tilted her head, expression unreadable.
Siglorr squinted at her, rubbing his soot-blackened chin. "Wait a minute…" He leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "Why are you hidin' your true form, huh?"
Sylveth froze for a fraction of a second.
"Aye," Siglorr grunted, pointing at her with a thick, calloused finger. "I know that aura. You're no simple magic caster. You're Sylveth Melriel, the Left Arch-Mage of the King and Queen. You don't need to prance around wearing' that fake skin."
The air between them thickened, magic humming faintly, meeting the forge-born fire in Siglorr's eyes.