Garret's charge was not a tactical manoeuvre, it was a landslide of grief and rage. The ground itself trembled with his passing, chunks of rock tearing free to orbit his stone-encased form. His amber eyes, once beacons of stoic resolve, now blazed with the incandescent fury of a dying star. The loss of Bron, harvested before his eyes, had shattered the last vestige of the Iron Sentinel's captain, leaving only a raw, elemental need for vengeance.
He didn't swing his Warhammer. He unleashed the earth with his shield. "[TREMOR GUARD]!" He slammed his tower shield into the ground. The shockwave didn't radiate out; it focused, a localized earthquake that rippled directly beneath Doom's feet. The earth bucked violently, not to throw him, but to break his stance, to send him stumbling into the path of the inevitable follow-up.
Doom rode the tremor, his void-enhanced balance a stark contrast to his bloody, battered form. He shifted his weight, bare feet gripping the fracturing ground, the Ossuary Blade held low and ready. The earth beneath him suddenly turned to slurry, a pit of grasping mud. "[QUICKSAND GRASP]!" Garret bellowed, his voice grinding like millstones. Doom's ankles sank instantly, the hungry earth pulling him down.
Before he could extract himself, Garret was upon him. The Warhammer came down in a devastating overhead arc, wreathed in crushing gravity. "[MOUNTAIN'S FALL]!" The air pressure alone was immense, pressing down on Doom, seeking to drive him to his knees in the mire.
Doom didn't try to block it head-on. He twisted, bringing the Ossuary Blade up at an angle, aiming to deflect the hammer's head. The impact was titanic.
CLANG-SHRIEEK!
Sparks of void energy and shattered stone exploded outwards. The force drove Doom deeper into the mud, the slurry now up to his mid-calves. Agony flared in his wrists and shoulders, but the blade held, its dark hunger drinking the vibrations. Garret, overextended from the colossal blow, was left exposed for a fraction of a second.
'Now! Low left! His stabilizer leg! The stone is thinner there, strained from the transformation!' Ainar's voice was a cold scalpel, dissecting the fight. 'A full chop. Sever it completely!'
Doom obeyed with the instinct of a predator. As Garret recovered his balance, Doom ignored the sucking mud and his own screaming muscles. He put his entire weight, every ounce of void-forged strength and stolen power, into a brutal, downward diagonal chop aimed not at a tendon, but at the thickest part of Garret's left calf.
The Ossuary Blade met the straining amalgamation of stone, adamantite, and petrified flesh.
CHUNK-SHRIEK!
The sound was not clean. It was a wet, percussive crack of shattering bone and stone, followed by the metallic shriek of parting armour and the gruesome tear of muscle and sinew. The blade didn't just cut; it pulverized, shearing through the limb with devastating, unholy force.
Garret's roar of fury became a choked, airless gasp of utter shock. His left leg, from mid-calf down, was instantly separated from his body. It was a grotesque sight: a stump of boot, shattered greave, and mangled flesh, now just dead weight. It cartwheeled through the air in a spray of thick, gritty, amber-tinged blood and landed in the mud with a sickening, heavy thud, looking less like a limb and more like a piece of bloody battlefield debris.
For a heart-stopping moment, Garret stood balanced impossibly on one leg, his face a mask of blank, uncomprehending shock. The reality of the loss hadn't yet been processed by his mind, only by his failing body. Then, with the dreadful, slow-motion inevitability of a monument collapsing, he toppled sideways. His massive, stone-laden form crashed to the earth with an impact that shook the ground and sent a plume of mud and his own lifeblood spraying into the air. A torrent of the thick, gritty sludge that was his blood now poured from the horrific stump, his essence flooding back into the earth he had tried to master.
A collective, strangled cry ripped from the throats of the onlookers. A merchant's wife screamed, the sound high and piercing before she clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. The young apprentice who had fainted earlier woke to this nightmare and immediately vomited onto his own shoes, sobbing uncontrollably. Thorn, still trying to aid Finn, roared "CAPTAIN!" in a voice raw with anguish and fury, his own pain forgotten. Elara flinched back from Lyra as if struck, her face ashen. Marik stared, his lightning gloves sputtering out, his mouth agape in pure, unadulterated horror. Even Faith, deep in her healing trance, whimpered as if feeling the echo of Garret's catastrophic loss.
Silk didn't make a sound. She simply stood frozen, her hand pressed against her mouth, her knuckles white. She watched the dark, gritty pool expanding around the fallen mountain of a man, and the last flicker of hope in her chest guttered and died, extinguished by the brutal, final reality of the amputation.
```
HARVEST: [GARRET - LIMB AMPUTATION]
✦━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✦
BIO-TITHERIUM EXTRACTION: [PARTIAL - EARTHEN BLESSED ESSENCE / STONEBONE MATRIX]
YIELD: MODERATE (20%)
HP: 42% -> 47%
VOID ENERGY: -70% -> -65% (SIGIL STABILIZING)
```
Doom stood over him, the mud releasing its grip on his calves with a wet suck. He raised the Ossuary Blade high, point aimed at Garret's neck. The killing strike. The final harvest. The air itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the final, terrible crunch.
'Wait!' Ainar's command was sharp, not with mercy, but with intense, analytical curiosity. 'Hold, my blade. Do not sever the thread yet. Look at him. See how the stone reacts without the heart's flow to temper it?'
Doom paused, the blade held poised. Garret writhed, clutching his stump, his breaths ragged, wet things. But Ainar was right. The petrification wasn't stopping; it was accelerating. The stump wasn't bleeding normally, it was sealing itself over with a rough, jagged crust of rapidly forming granite. The grey mottling on his neck and face spread faster, his skin cracking like dry soil. His amber eyes, fixed on Doom with pure hate, were becoming dull, lustreless stones in his skull. He was turning into a statue from the inside out, even as he died.
'Observe,' Ainar murmured, her voice that of a fascinated scientist dissecting a rare specimen. 'The Bond is a crude, parasitic symbiosis. It seeks to preserve the host, but its method is assimilation. Without the living blood to feed it, it consumes what's left in a frantic attempt to complete the process. Will it stabilize him as a living monolith? Or will the paradox of a dying host shatter the transformation from within? I want to see how this particular experiment concludes.'
Her tone shifted, becoming speculative, almost hungry for data. 'And watch his essence. When his comrade died, his rage triggered a partial manifestation, a forced evolution. Pushed to the absolute brink of oblivion, drowning in grief and fury... what might that catalyse? A final, glorious eruption of power? A more complete, terrible transformation? Or simply a pathetic, silent crumbling? The data is invaluable. This "Blessing" is a fascinating, reckless form of power. Understanding its failures and its breaking points is knowledge we can use against every other Essence-Bearer who dares stand in our path.'
She let the cold logic hang in the air. It wasn't about mercy. It was about study. It was about weaponizing the understanding of an enemy's weakness. 'Let the earth consume its champion. It is a far more instructive end than a simple severance. Now, the others. The lightning-weaver, the stone-guardian. They are weakened, distracted. Harvest them. Now. Let their captain watch that, too. Perhaps it will provide the final stressor for my hypothesis.'
The Ossuary Blade hovered for a heartbeat, a promise of final severance above Garret's stone-encrusted throat. Then, driven by Ainar's cold curiosity, Doom shifted its aim. Not to kill. To punctuate.
The massive blade descended in a short, brutal arc, its flat side smashing into the side of Garret's helmet.
CLANG!
The sound was a dull, sickening gong. Garret's head snapped to the side, his stony helmet cracking under the impact. Stars exploded in his vision, his ears ringing. He didn't lose consciousness, but the world swam, a nauseating blur of pain and mud and the looming, bloody form of his tormentor. He was pinned, not just by his missing leg and petrifying body, but by the deliberate, degrading act. He was being kept conscious. Forced to watch.
'Now,' Ainar purred, her voice dripping with dark delight. 'The stone-guardian first. Make it slow. Let the earth-shaker see his shield break piece by piece.'
Doom's obsidian gaze slid from Garret's dazed form to Thorn. The Stone Guardian, his face a mask of pain and fury, was trying to drag himself towards his captain, his shattered leg leaving a bloody trail in the mud.
Doom took a single, deliberate step towards him. Thorn looked up, meeting that empty gaze, and saw his death approaching not with speed, but with terrifying leisure. He raised his maul in a shaking, two-handed grip. "[GRANITE WALL]!" he grunted, a weak, earthen barrier sprouting from the ground between them.
Doom didn't break stride. He swung the Ossuary Blade in a contemptuous, backhand swipe. The dark metal sheared through the magical stone like it was stale bread. The barrier dissolved into dust. Thorn's eyes widened. Doom was on him.
The first strike was a flick of the wrist. The blade's tip licked out, not to maim, but to cut. It sliced through the leather straps holding Thorn's left vambrace in place. The piece of Living Stone armour clattered to the ground. Thorn flinched, trying to bring his maul around. Doom's foot, swift and brutal, stamped down on the haft, pinning it to the mud.
The second strike severed the straps at his shoulder. His pauldron fell away. Then the other. Methodical. Dismantling. Each strike was precise, unhurried. Thorn was being stripped of his defences, his identity, right before his captain's eyes. He roared in frustration, throwing a punch with his stone-knuckled fist. Doom caught the fist in his free hand, his talons piercing the stone-reinforced skin with a sound like cracking slate. He squeezed. Thorn screamed as the bones in his hand compacted. "Get away from him!" Garret bellowed from the mud, his voice a raw, grinding thing. He tried to push himself up, to crawl, but his petrifying body was an anchor. He slammed a fist into the earth. "[EARTHSPIKE]!" A single, pathetic spike of rock, weak and misshapen, jutted from the ground a foot from Doom. It was a pitiful effort, a ghost of his former power.
Doom didn't even acknowledge it. He released Thorn's crushed hand and, with a brutal shove of his foot, sent the maul skittering away. Thorn was now disarmed, half-dismantled, on his back in the mud. Doom placed a bare, blood-caked foot on his chest, pinning him. He looked down at the helpless guardian, then slowly, deliberately, turned his head to look at Garret. Making sure he was watching.
Then he drove the Ossuary Blade down through Thorn's right thigh, pinning him to the earth like a specimen.
Thorn's scream was cut short as the harvest began. His body arched, not just in pain, but as his essence was violently siphoned. His skin greyed, pulling tight over his screaming face. His muscles withered. Garret could only watch, his own screams of denial silent curses in his throat, as his steadfast guardian was reduced to a desiccated husk in a matter of seconds. The blade came free with a wet shuck, Thorn's body collapsing into ash and empty armour.
```
HARVEST: [THORN - TIER 3 STONE GUARDIAN]
✦━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✦
BIO-TITHERIUM EXTRACTION: [EARTH-AFFINITY ESSENCE / GRANITE-DENSIFIED BONE]
YIELD: HIGH (30%)
HP: 47% -> 62%
VOID ENERGY: -65% -> -55%
PURIFYING LIGHT CONTAMINATION: REDUCED BY 10% (NOW -20% SUPPRESSION)
```
Doom turned, his body humming with stolen power, the wound in his side knitting further. His gaze, cold and assessing, found Marik next. The Storm Lord was backing away, his lightning gloves sparking erratically. "Stay back! Stay away!" he shrieked, firing a wild [Lightning Lance] that went wide, scorching the air. Doom began to walk towards him. Not a dash. A slow, relentless stalk. Marik turned and ran, a terrified flight towards the relative cover of the wagons. 'Let him run,' Ainar whispered, a cruel smile in her voice. 'Let the earth-shaker see his storm-chaser's hope die.'