Lyra's transformation reached its zenith... She saw an opening... Her crystalline mind calculated the perfect strike. She didn't just thrust, she committed. Her entire being focused into one, blindingly fast, impossibly precise lunge with her Dawnblade, aiming for the fractured Void Sigil pulsing on his chest...
'NOW!The overcommit! Void Dash inside her guard! Override! Talons to the light-source, her Blessing mark! All remaining energy!' Ainar's voice was a shriek of desperate opportunity.
Doom saw it. The suicidal commitment. The crystalline perfection offered no yield. He didn't try to parry the unstoppable thrust. Instead, he triggered [VOID DASH] overriding cooldown, pouring the dregs of his will and the last vestiges of accessible power into it. [VOID DASH OVERRIDE: COST 30%VOID ENERGY | VOID ENERGY: -95% - SIGIL RUPTURE RISK] Agony ripped through his legs and core as he phased not away, but towards her, aiming to appear chest-to-chest.
But Lyra, operating with the terrifying, crystalline efficiency of her near-complete transformation, perceived the ripple of void energy signalling his intent a microsecond before he vanished. Her optimization wasn't just physical, it was predictive. Even fully committed to the lunge, her body, moving with the flawless precision of light refracted through a perfect prism, made a minuscule, instinctive adjustment. Her thrust angled fractionally downward, its trajectory shifting from centre-mass to a point just below the ribs, anticipating not where Doom was, but where his momentum and the Void Dash's inherent directional tendency suggested he would be upon reappearing again.
Doom phased through the space where her original strike aimed for his sigil. He reappeared inside her guard, chest-to-chest, just as her devastatingly adjusted thrust arrived.
SHINK!
The solidified sunlight blade, driven by immense momentum and her supreme focus, plunged deep into Doom's right side, just below the ribs, angled upwards. It wasn't the heart strike she originally intended, but it was devastating. Light and void energies met in a catastrophic collision within his flesh. [HP: 18% - CRITICAL WOUND - PURIFYING LIGHT CONTAMINATION - HEALING HALTED]. Simultaneously, his left hand struck upwards. Obsidian talons, fuelled by desperate, overridden void energy and Kael-forged instinct, punched through the hardened crystalline lattice guarding her mark in between her eyebrows.
SHINK!
The obsidian talons punched through the crystalline lattice surrounding her mark and sank deep into the radiant sigil itself. There was a sound like shattering glass mingled with a dying star's scream. Golden light, not pure radiance but thick, almost liquid power, erupted from the wound. Lyra's near perfect form shuddered violently...
SHINK-CRACK-BOOM!
A miniature explosion of conflicting energies blew Doom backwards, tearing his talons free and partially dislodging the crystallized blade still embedded in his side. He hit the mud-churned earth with bone-jarring force, skidding through the earth throwing soil up.
[HP: 18% - CRITICAL - VOID SIGIL FLICKERING ERRATICALLY].
The Void Sigil flickered wildly, like a guttering candle in a hurricane, its light dim and unstable. Waves of icy fire, the backlash of catastrophic energy depletion and direct Light contamination, seared through his nervous system. Dark violet void-smoke mixed with steaming crimson blood and sizzling golden residue poured from the horrific wound around the embedded blade. His Void Energy reserve was a gaping void of negative numbers, the Sigil itself seemed on the brink of unravel from the strain. The Ossuary Blade lay several feet away, its hum silenced.
Lyra stumbled back, a marionette with cut strings. clutching her shattered sigil in between her eyebrows. The golden light bled from the deep puncture, thick and luminous like liquid gold. The crystalline facets across her body dulled, cracked, and began to flake away like dried paint, revealing pale, shocked human skin beneath. Her eyes were wide, human, filled with unimaginable pain and the dawning horror of what she had become, and what had been done to her. She collapsed to her knees, gasping, the radiant power within her guttering like a dying flame, the backlash of her aborted transformation and the wound to her Blessing mark beginning to take its terrible toll. The cost of her near-victory was written in spilled light, broken crystal, and the broken, bleeding form of the Void Herald lying disarmed and critically wounded nearby.
Silence crashed down, thicker than the Whisper Wood's gloom. Only Doom's wet, ragged gasps, the sizzle of Light-contaminated void-blood, Lyra's pained whimpers. Garret stood like a cracked monument, stone-armoured but wavering, his amber eyes fixed on Lyra with dawning terror that transcended his own petrification. Thorn and Bron stared, frozen, their faces masks of horror at the broken Judicator and the mortally wounded, yet terrifyingly animate, abomination. Civilians huddled, silent and wide-eyed. The road to Arden's Reach was paved with shattered light, spilled essence, and the broken form of the Void Herald, teetering on the razor's edge of annihilation fuelled by his own desperate overuse of his on power.
Silk's breath caught in her throat. 'He's down. He's finally down.' The surge of hope was blinding, almost painful. Ember's death, Brick's horrific end, the collapsed dimension… it could all be avenged. Right here. Right now. Garret could end it. One blow from his stone-wreathed hammer would cave in that skull, crush bone into splintered fragments and pulp the flesh beneath. Silk wouldn't have to… wouldn't have to endure that. The thought brought relief, a physical warmth washing over the numbness, a sickening counterpoint to the wet, final crunch she was hoping for. 'Maybe… just maybe…it would finally end'
Before anyone could make a move, the impossible happened.
The silence shattered with a wet, loud bubbling rasp. Silk's surge of hope froze mid-breath, crystallizing into icy dread. He moved. Not a death rattle. Not a final spasm. A deliberate, agonizing push onto his elbows. Steam and violet-black smoke coiled from the ruin of his side where Lyra's crystallized blade had sunk deep. The Void Sigil pulsed erratically above the wound, its light sickly and weak, casting jagged, dying shadows. Blood, thick and dark like clotting oil, mixed with searing golden residue that sizzled and popped where it touched his raw flesh, pouring onto the churned earth.
'Get up, my blade!' Ainar's voice was a razor slash in his mind, sharp with urgency, cutting through the haze of agony. 'Kael's lesson! Pain is the whetstone, not the breaker! Show these gnats the steel they cannot shatter! Never let them see you bleed weakness!'
Doom obeyed the ghost of his father's training, ingrained deeper than bone. A low, guttural growl vibrated in his chest, the only outward sign of the white-hot inferno consuming his right side. He locked his jaw, teeth grinding audibly. Every muscle in his neck stood out like cables, veins bulging under the scarred skin slick with blood and sweat. He pushed, tendons straining against the horrific damage. His left arm trembled violently, but he levered himself up, inch by torturous inch, onto his knees. The movement dislodged the partially embedded crystallized blade slightly, eliciting a fresh gout of blood and golden light that hissed like acid. Civilians retched, a young apprentice fainted dead away.
'They see the wound, my son,' Ainar hissed, her voice a frantic calculation amidst the psychic roar of his pain. 'They think you broken. Use it. But you need essence. Now. That Light contamination burns like the Void's inverse, it devours your reserves from within. You must Harvest. Immediately.'
Doom's glacial eyes, bloodshot and burning with suppressed agony, scanned the battlefield through a haze of pain. Civilians huddled behind wagons, their terror palpable but their Bio-Titherium weak, insignificant. Wasteful. Lyra knelt nearby, clutching her shattered Blessing mark, golden light weeping from between her fingers, her crystalline transformation flaking away to reveal ravaged human skin beneath. Garret stood protectively over her, a mountain of cracked stone, his amber gaze fixed on Doom with renewed, horrified vigilance. Thorn and Bron were close, guarding their fallen Captain and Judicator. Too close. Too defended. Too risky in this state.
'The others,' Ainar commanded, her spectral voice laced with cold fury. 'The spark-thrower, the lightning-weaver. They intervened. They tipped the scales. They owe you this life. Take it from them. Quickly! Before the Light-Bearer rallies her pet healer!'
Doom's gaze snapped towards Elara and Marik. The Elementalist and the Storm Lord stood frozen near Finn's injured form, their faces pale masks of shock at Lyra's condition and Doom's impossible rise. Fear radiated from them, potent, fresh, usable fear. They were isolated, away from Garret's immediate protection.
He took a shuddering, wet breath that scraped like gravel in his lungs. Using his left arm for leverage, ignoring the screaming protest from his ruined side, he began the agonizing process of rising fully. His right leg buckled once, threatening to spill him back into the mud, but he locked his knee, swaying like a storm-blasted tree. He stood. Naked, scarred, drenched in blood and void-smoke, the crystallized shard of Lyra's power still protruding obscenely from below his ribs, the Void Sigil flickering like a dying star above it. The sheer, horrific willpower it took to remain upright, to not scream, to not collapse, sent fresh waves of terror through the onlookers. Silk felt bile rise in her throat, her fleeting hope replaced by a soul-deep chill. 'He shouldn't be standing. He shouldn't be alive.'
His obsidian eyes, burning with pain and cold fury, fixed on the embedded blade. His left hand, talons retracted but fingers trembling minutely, reached towards the crystalline hilt. He grasped it. Not gently. A brutal, possessive grip.
And pulled.
It didn't slide free. It scraped. The sound was horrific, a wet, grating screech of crystallized light dragging against shattered bone and seared muscle deep within the wound. Flesh tore further. Ribs, visible through the gore, scraped against the hard light blade as it moved. Golden residue sizzled violently against the raw edges of the wound, sending fresh plumes of acrid steam and violet smoke coiling into the air. Blood, thick and dark, pulsed out in a rhythmic cascade with each agonizing inch the blade was withdrawn.
Doom's face remained a mask of stone, but his entire body vibrated with the strain, sweat mixing with blood running in rivulets down his heaving chest and arms. His knuckles were white on the hilt. Only the faintest, almost imperceptible tightening around his eyes betrayed the unspeakable agony.
A merchant's wife screamed and vomited. Thorn turned his head away, retching. Bron stared, wide-eyed, muttering, "By the Stones… how? How does he do that?"
```
VOID HERALD STATUS UPDATE
✦━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✦
HP: 18% -> 16% (SEVERE TRAUMATIC DAMAGE - FOREIGN OBJECT REMOVAL)
WARNING: MAJOR ARTERIAL BLEEDING DETECTED (SUB-COSTAL REGION)
HP DRAIN: -0.5% PER SECOND (UNTIL CLOTTING/HEALING INITIATED)
PURIFYING LIGHT CONTAMINATION: ACTIVE (HEALING SUPPRESSION -95%)
VOID SIGIL: CRITICAL INSTABILITY (FLUCTUATING OUTPUT)
VOIDENERGY: -95% (SIGIL FEEDBACK LOOP - RISK OF CASCADING FAILURE)
✦━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✦
```
With a final, sickening SCHLORP, the crystallized blade came free. Doom held it for a second, dripping his own corrupted blood and sizzling golden residue, then let it clatter to the mud, where it rapidly dulled and cracked, its light extinguished. He swayed, the blood loss hitting him like a physical blow. He needed his weapon. He stretched his left hand towards where the Ossuary Blade lay half-buried in churned earth, ten paces away. Instinct screamed to call it, to feel its cold, familiar weight instantly back in his grip. He focused, a mental command lancing through the agony
'Return.'
Nothing happened.
Not silence. Not absence. Wrongness.
A searing, jagged wrongness tore through the psychic link to his blade. It wasn't a lack of power, the faint, frayed connection was there, pulsing weakly like a dying nerve. Instead, it felt like... static. Dimensional Static. Corrupted. The intense collision of Lyra's crystallized light energy and his own void essence within his wound wasn't just physically devastating, it had created a localized, chaotic distortion field around him. The lingering Purifying Light contamination sizzling in his flesh acted like a scrambler, warping the subtle dimensional folds the Ossuary Blade used to phase into his hand when he summoned it. Trying to force the summon now felt like trying to thread a needle with a hand engulfed in lightning, impossible, agonizing, and potentially catastrophic for the delicate spatial anchor of the blade itself.
'The wound!' Ainar's mental shriek was laced with horrified realization. 'The backlash energies... they're tangling the local skein! You can't phase it through that mess! It's not power you lack, it's stable space! You'll tear the anchor point apart or phase it into the mud!'
Doom's hand clenched into a fist, dropping to his side. A fresh wave of icy fire erupted from the Sigil, a visceral echo of the spatial feedback, making him gasp. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He locked his knees again, fighting the black spots dancing at the edge of his vision. The solution was brutally simple, brutally physical. 'Walk. Get to it.'
He took a step. Then another. Each one was a monumental effort, leaving a trail of dark crimson footprints in the mud. His right arm hung uselessly, the wound in his side gaping, pulsing blood with every heartbeat. His breath came in ragged, wet gasps. But his gaze remained fixed on the skull pommel of his blade. Predatory. Unbroken.
'Garret! Lyra… she's fading!' Finn's voice was a desperate croak. He'd dragged himself closer, his face ashen, staring at the golden light weeping steadily from Lyra's shattered mark. Her skin was grey, her breathing shallow. The crystalline remnants were crumbling faster. 'The backlash… the wound to her Blessing… it's consuming her! Like the stone consumes you!'
Garret tore his gaze from the horrifying spectacle of Doom's advance. He looked down at Lyra, his stony face etched with anguish. "Can you stop it? Like Thorn did for me?"
Finn shook his head weakly. "I… I haven't the strength. Not for a Blessing this potent, this damaged. The Tear's residue is volatile…" His eyes darted past Garret, landing on Faith. She was still huddled near the wagon, her eyes wide with terror, but Finn's desperate gaze held a spark of realization. "Faith! Her Light… it's pure. Untainted by combat blessings. Gentle. If… if I guide her… show her the pattern Thorn used… maybe… maybe we can slow the decay? Stabilize her long enough to reach the city?"
Garret looked from the dying Lyra to the bleeding, relentless Doom slowly closing the distance to his weapon, then to Faith's terrified face. The decision was etched in the cracks of his stone visage. "Do it. Now, Finn. Thorn, cover them! Bron, with me! We hold the line!"
Thorn, grimacing through his own shattered leg, began dragging himself towards Lyra and Finn. Bron hauled himself upright, leaning heavily on his spear, his face pale but determined, placing himself between Finn's desperate efforts and Doom's bloody path. Garret hefted his Warhammer, the stone spurs on his armour grinding as he stepped forward, planting himself firmly in Doom's way, his amber eyes blazing with defiance and a terrible, protective sorrow.
Doom reached the Ossuary Blade. He didn't bend gracefully. He half-collapsed, catching himself with his left hand on the skull pommel, his right side screaming in protest. With a grunt that was more vibration than sound, he wrenched the massive sword free from the earth. The familiar, cold weight settled into his grip. The crimson veins within the matte black blade pulsed faintly, weakly, but they pulsed. Hunger stirred.