The Basalt Behemoth did not roar. Its fury was a silent, tectonic pressure that preceded the storm. It took another earth-shaking step forward, its obsidian gaze burning into Doom. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone, crushed stone, and the Behemoth's incandescent hatred. 'My son, focus!' Ainar's voice was a razor's edge, cutting through the ambient rage. 'This is not a foe to be met in your current state. You are stronger, yes, but not whole. The Light-Bearer's poison still lingers, your essence reserves are critically low. One solid blow from that thing could shatter your sigil's tenuous stability.' Doom's eyes narrowed, tracking the Behemoth's movements. It was slow, ponderous, but each step was deliberate, its connection to the ground absolute. It raised its hammer-fist, not in a swift strike, but with the inevitable, grinding rise of a mountain peak. The earth around its feet rippled.
'He will try to pin you again. Or shatter the ground beneath you. Do not let him. Your speed is your advantage, but you lack the energy to sustain it. You need fuel. Pure, potent fuel to purge the last of the contamination and replenish your void.' Her spectral gaze turned, a cold pressure in his mind directing his attention away from the immediate threat, towards the wagon. 'There. The other light-bearer. The male. He is weak, distracted, pouring the last dregs of his power into guiding the girl. His essence, while not as battle-potent as the others, is refined. Holy. It will burn away the lingering Light contamination far more efficiently than the warlord's crude life-force. It is the key to a full recovery.' Doom's gaze flicked to Finn. The Solar Warden was on his knees, one hand pressed to his own injured side, the other guiding Faith's glowing hands over Lyra's shattered mark. His face was ashen, sweat beading on his brow, his breathing shallow. He was utterly vulnerable, his light guttering like a candle in the wind. 'Wait for the moment,' Ainar purred, a hunter's patience in her tone. 'The earth-shaker's attack will be your curtain. Let his rage provide the distraction. Then move. Swift and silent. Do not give the new light-bearer time to react. A single, clean harvest. It is all you need.'
The Basalt Behemoth's hammer-fist reached its apex, a mountain peak poised to fall. The air itself seemed to solidify around it, crackling with pent-up earthly energy. Then, it fell. Not with speed, but with the inevitable, grinding force of a continental plate shifting. It aimed not for Doom, but for the earth before him. Doom didn't retreat. He met it. He braced, the Ossuary Blade held in a two-handed grip, and intercepted the descending fist.
BOOM-CRACK!
The impact was not a clang of metal, but a detonation of pure force. A shockwave of concussive energy and shattered stone exploded outwards. Doom's bare feet skidded backwards, tearing twin furrows through the churned earth. The vibrations jarred up his arms, a painful reminder of the Behemoth's monstrous strength, but the Ossuary Blade held, unyielding. The crimson veins within it flared, drinking the violent energy of the impact. Before the shockwave had even dissipated, the Behemoth's other arm, the shield-gauntlet, came around in a brutal, horizontal sweep. It wasn't a finessed strike, it was a cliff-face breaking off and sliding into the sea, meant to crush him against the lead wagon. Doom dropped low, the massive gauntlet whistling over his head. He retaliated with a savage upward sweep of his own blade, aiming for the joint where the shield-gauntlet met the Behemoth's arm. The obsidian edge screeched against the magically reinforced stone, shearing off a chunk of rock and sending sparks of void energy and earthen power flying.
The Behemoth recoiled slightly, more from surprise than injury. It stomped its granite foot. "[TREMOR STOMP]!" The ground beneath Doom bucked violently, not to throw him, but to break his balance for the next blow. Doom rode the wave, his void-enhanced agility keeping him upright, but it cost him a crucial half-second of focus. The Behemoth pressed its advantage, its hammer-fist rising again for another devastating slam. The air grew thick, heavy with the promise of another shattering impact. 'Enough of this brutish exchange!' Ainar's voice cut through the din, sharp and analytical. 'His strength is endless, yours is not. Your energy is still too low for a prolonged melee. The cooldown has passed. Use the Dash. Now. Use his own power as your veil.'
The Behemoth's fist began its descent, a second earthquake in the making. This time, Doom didn't brace to meet it. As the fist began its downward arc, he moved. He triggered [VOID DASH], not away from the explosion, but at a sharp, calculated angle. His form became a violet-tinged blur, a streak of impossible motion that carried him behind the wide cone of the impending devastation, using the visual and auditory chaos of the colossal attack as his perfect cover. [VOID ENERGY: -48% -> -63%]. The strain was immense, the Sigil flaring in protest, but Ainar's timing was perfect. He reappeared not in front of Finn, but behind him. The Solar Warden's senses, already stretched thin by pain and concentration, were completely overwhelmed by the cataclysmic impact of the Behemoth's second attack. The world was reduced to thunder and shaking ground. Finn didn't even sense the void-smoke and blood-scent that announced Doom's arrival.
Doom's left hand, talons extended, shot out. It didn't strike to kill. It clamped over Finn's mouth and nose, stifling any cry. Simultaneously, the Ossuary Blade, held in his right, plunged forward. Not a savage thrust, but a precise, clinical stab aimed below the ribcage, seeking the core of the Solar Warden's essence.
SHLIK
The blade slid in with a soft, wet sound. Finn's eyes snapped wide, a silent scream of shock and betrayal trapped behind Doom's grip. His body stiffened, his guiding hand falling away from Faith's. The golden light emanating from him didn't flare in defiance, it was instantly siphoned, drawn into the hungry obsidian metal. His skin desiccated rapidly, his form withering as his pure, holy energy was violently extracted and fed into the Void Herald's starving system.
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HARVEST: [FINN - TIER 3 SOLAR WARDEN]
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BIO-TITHERIUM EXTRACTION: [PURE SOLAR ESSENCE / LIGHT-BLESSED VISCERA]
YIELD: VERY HIGH (40% - EXCEPTIONALLY EFFICIENT FOR PURGING LIGHT CONTAMINATION)
CONTAMINATION PURGE RATE: ACCELERATED 500%
HP: 75% -> 85% (RISING RAPIDLY)
VOID ENERGY: -63% -> -40% (SIGIL STABILIZING - REGENERATION RATE INCREASING)
PURIFYING LIGHT CONTAMINATION: 5% -> 0.1% (NEARLY PURGED)
✦━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✦
```
The influx was transformative. It was not a surge of raw power like Bron's, but a purifying flood of concentrated light. It scoured the last vestiges of Lyra's crystallized contamination from his wounds, the sizzling golden residue evaporating into nothingness with a final, spiteful hiss. The deep gash across his ribs and the myriad smaller wounds knit together with visible speed, weaving new flesh under a lattice of faint scars. The Void Sigil's erratic flickering ceased, its violet glow becoming a steady, hungry burn. The profound emptiness within him receded, but it was still empty nonetheless. The exhaustion that had been gnawing at the edges of his consciousness begin to vanish. He withdrew the Ossuary Blade from Finn's back. For a heartbeat, the Solar Warden's body remained kneeling, a macabre statue frozen in its final moment of guidance. Then, with a dry, crumbling sound, it imploded. Not into a husk, but into a fine, grey ash that lost all cohesion and poured into a forlorn pile on the churned earth. The faint, golden light that had clung to him winked out. All that remained was the faint, acrid smell of ozone and spent holiness, quickly overwhelmed by the scent of blood and void. The empty robes settled atop the ash, a pathetic shroud for a man utterly unmade.
Faith, so deep in her trance, shuddered as the guiding presence she leaned on vanished completely, but her own fragile light, born of desperate empathy, continued its work on Lyra, unaware that its source had been annihilated inches away. Doom took a deep, clean breath. The air no longer burned his lungs. He flexed the fingers of his free hand, feeling the strength coursing through him, untainted and cold. 'Better,' Ainar murmured. 'Much better. But not optimal. Your Void Energy remains in the negative. The Sigil is stable, but it is a bank with no reserves. To face the earth-shaker in his new form, to use your abilities without fear of backlash... you need more. Every drop counts.' The Behemoth, having delivered its shattering blow, turned its obsidian gaze. It expected to see a staggered, wounded foe. It saw Doom standing tall, renewed, the pile of ash that was the light-bearer at his feet. The twin pools of molten hatred in its skull-face blazed with a new intensity. It recognized the theft. It felt the profound insult. A fresh spike of obsidian began to grow from its shoulder in furious, jerky increments.
It slammed its hammer-fist into its shield in a challenge that cracked the air. But before it could charge, a new sound cut through the tension, the panicked screams of the civilians. The merchants and their families, who had been huddled in silent, petrified horror, had finally reached their breaking point. The sight of Finn's rapid, horrifying dissolution into ash, the looming presence of the rock-monster that was once their protector, and the naked, bloody demon who was the source of it all, it was too much. "Run! For the love of the gods, RUN!" a man shrieked, grabbing his wife and child and bolting from behind a wagon, not towards the road, but blindly into the dark, whispering embrace of the Whisper Wood. It was a choice of certain, unknown terror over immediate, certain death. It sparked a stampede. A dozen people, their fear overriding all reason, scrambled from their hiding places, abandoning their wagons, their goods, everything.
They ran in every direction, a scattered flock with no shepherd, their cries of pure terror a sharp counterpoint to the silent fury of the Behemoth. 'Look at them scatter,' Ainar's voice was dripping with contempt. 'Like roaches from a lifted stone. Pathetic. But do not be wasteful, my blade. Even a single drop fills the cup. They are weak, their essence thin, but it is still fuel. Fuel you need. Do not let a single one escape. Harvest them. It will only take a moment.' The Behemoth took a thundering step towards Doom, its granite foot crushing the earth flat. But Doom's attention was split. Ainar's logic was cold and impeccable. His Void Energy was still critically low. The Behemoth was a patient, slow-moving threat. The civilians were fleeting, escaping assets.
With a final, dismissive glance at the advancing Behemoth, Doom turned his back on the titan. The greater threat was the escaping fuel. 'Forget finesse, my blade,' Ainar's voice slithered into his mind, cold and eager. 'Make it brutal. Make it a spectacle. I want to see how much pressure the earth-shaker can take before his new form cracks or evolves. Does his rage have a limit? Let us find out. Break them where he can see. Make their end... memorable.' Doom didn't use Void Dash. He wanted Garret to see this. He broke into a run, a predator's lope that ate up the ground between him and the fleeing civilians. His bare feet were silent on the blood-soaked earth.
The first targets were a family of three, a merchant, his wife, and their young son, fleeing hand-in-hand towards the dubious safety of the tree line. The father, looking back, met the hollow gaze of Death closing the distance, and his face crumpled into a mask of pure, animal terror. 'Now,' Ainar hissed, a serpent's pleasure in her voice. 'A statement. Make it messy. Let them feel it.' Doom didn't sprint, he was simply upon them, a vortex of silent, predatory motion. The Ossuary Blade screamed a silent, psychic scream of anticipation. He took the father first. Not with a clean thrust, but with a downward, hacking blow that severed the man's arm at the shoulder. As the merchant fell, shrieking, clutching at the geyser of his own blood, the mother's scream was not one of fear, but of raw, shattered denial. "NO!" She wrenched her son behind her, a futile human shield against the inevitable. She didn't run. She begged, her voice cracking, tears carving clean lines through the grime on her cheeks. "Please! My son, take me, not my son, please—" Doom's response was to reverse his grip and drive the Ossuary Blade up and under the father's ribcage, lifting the impaled, still-twitching man off the ground with a wet, tearing crunch of cartilage.
The mother's begging dissolved into a wordless wail. Doom used the father's corpse as a grisly battering ram. He didn't withdraw the blade, he charged forward, using the weight and momentum of the skewered body to smash into the screaming woman. The obsidian point, slick with her husband's life, punched through her abdomen with a sound like a butcher cleaving meat. The force drove her back, and she fell, pulling her shrieking son down with her. The boy was trapped beneath her, his small hands pushing against her back, slick with her blood. Doom leaned his full, immense weight into the hilt. The blade ground through the mother's spine, through the cavity of her body, and into the softness of the boy beneath her. There was a sickening, wet pop, and then his screams were silenced, replaced by a choked, gurgling gasp. They were pinned together, a squirming, dying, unholy shish kebab of a family. The father's corpse slumped atop the pile, the blade transfixing all three in a single, grotesque column of final agony. They shuddered as one, a last shared convulsion.
Then, the harvest began. The Ossuary Blade ignited, its crimson veins pulsing like a diseased heart. It didn't just drink, it feasted. The three figures shuddered as their vitality was violently siphoned away, their skin tightening and cracking over rapidly desiccating flesh. They withered into hollow, papery husks, their forms collapsing in on themselves before a final, silent tremor reduced them to a fine, gray ash, leaving behind only three empty, interconnected sets of clothing on the ground.
```
HARVEST: [CIVILIANS x3]
YIELD: NEGLIGIBLE (3.1% TOTAL BIO-TITHERIUM | 1.3% VOID ENERGY)
```
The entire brutal sequence had taken less than four seconds. Doom turned, scanning for the next source of fuel. My blade, the ground! Ainar's voice was a sharp, protective lash in his mind. A fraction of a second later, the ground before him erupted not with a single pillar, but with a jagged crown of basalt spikes, sharp and thick as ancient spears. They tore upward with a sound of grinding stone, the enraged Behemoth's attempt to end the slaughter. Naked and unarmored, Doom did not retreat. He moved with the instinctive trust of a child following his mother's cry. As the first spikes lanced toward his flesh, he leapt straight up, a controlled explosion of muscle. In mid-air, he twisted, slamming the flat of the Ossuary Blade horizontally beneath his bare feet. The first spear of basalt met the dark metal with a shriek of protesting stone, stopping dead. For a single, impossible moment, Doom stood balanced on his blade, perched atop the spike as it finished its violent ascent.
'Now! Use his own anger as your stepping stone! Away, my blade'.