Doom launched himself forward. Using the blade as a springboard, he pushed off, sending himself in a blurred, soaring arc, targeting a young woman. The woman ran, her breath sobbing in her throat, her eyes fixed on the dark tree line that promised some semblance of cover. She didn't dare look back. The sounds behind her, the shrieks, the grinding stone, the wet, terrible silences, were enough to fuel her terror. A shadow fell over her. Not from above, but from behind, blotting out the weak light. A primal instinct, colder than fear, screamed at her to turn. She glanced over her shoulder. And her mind broke. Doom was not on the ground. He was a phantom in the air, a scarred, bloody nightmare launched into a soaring, silent arc. He was going to land not where she was, but where she would be. He was a predator calculating the exact intersection of their paths. Her forward momentum was her doom. She took two more stumbling steps, her eyes locked on the impossible horror descending upon her. He landed behind her with the silence of a falling leaf, his bare feet making no sound on the earth. Before she could process his landing, before she could scream, his foot lashed out in a vicious, precise kick. It connected with the side of her right leg.
CRACK
The sound of her leg breaking was a dry, sickening snap. A scream of pure, shocked agony was torn from her lips as her leg buckled instantly, no longer capable of supporting her weight. She crashed face-first into the dirt, her world dissolving into white-hot, nauseating pain. 'He is so beautifully predictable.' Ainar crooned in Doom's mind, a mother admiring her son's work. Doom stood over the writhing woman. He made no move to finish her. Instead, he placed a bare foot on her broken leg, not with crushing weight, but with enough pressure to make her shriek anew, a sound that was pure, undiluted anguish. He held her there, a pinned, suffering thing. 'Careful, my son,' Ainar's voice cut in, sharp with warning. 'The earth itself is his weapon. He does not just strike, he ensnares.' As if on cue, the ground beneath Doom's right foot ceased to be solid. It liquefied instantly into clinging, sucking mud that grasped his ankle with the grip of a drowning man. Before he could pull free, it solidified again, locking his foot in a vice of unforgiving stone.
He was anchored. 'There. His opening move. He believes you are pinned. Now comes the true strike.' As if summoned by her words, the air around Doom hummed. Three spikes of black basalt erupted from the earth simultaneously with the sound of tearing fabric, one from directly behind him, aimed for his spine, one from his right side, streaking toward his ribs, one from his left, targeting his thigh. He was trapped, a fixed target. The Behemoth's attacks were no longer wild, they were coordinated, lethal. Doom didn't try to break his foot free. Instead, he moved with the shocking speed that defied his captivity. In one fluid motion, he bent and grabbed the screaming woman by the arm. He wrenched her from the ground, her broken leg dangling horribly, and used her body as a living shield, swinging her in a brutal, short arc. The spikes arrived.
THUD. SHUNK. CRUNCH.
The spike meant for his spine took her in the lower back, punching through with a wet, hollow sound. The one for his ribs speared into her side, ripping through her abdomen. The third spike, aimed for his thigh, impaled her already shattered leg, splintering the bone further. Her scream was cut off into a gurgle, her body jerking violently as she was skewered in three places, held aloft by the stone spikes that had been meant for him. Doom held her limp weight for a second, the spikes having missed him by inches. He was untouched, standing within a cage of stone and dying flesh. 'Perfect,' Ainar whispered, a sound of dark approval. 'He gave you an anchor, and you used it to moor your shield. His precision is his own undoing. Now, do not let it go to waste.' Still anchored by one foot, Doom yanked the woman's body down, tearing her off the spikes with a horrific, ripping sound.
He let her crumpled form fall against his trapped leg. Her broken body was a ruined thing, barely clinging to life. 'Why use a scalpel when the scythe is already in your hand, my son?,' Ainar's voice was a coaxing whisper. 'Summon it. Let him see the instrument of his failure. Let the blade feast.' In answer, Doom outstretched his free hand, fingers curling as if grasping a hilt that wasn't there. The air beside him shimmered, a localized distortion of space that crackled with violet energy. With a sound like a shard of reality breaking, the Ossuary Blade phased into existence, its matte-black length slamming into his waiting palm. Kael's skull pommel settled against his grip with a familiar, hungry weight. Without a moment's hesitation, he reversed his grip and drove the point of the massive blade down into the woman's chest.
SHUNK.
The impact was brutal and final. The blade punched through bone and buried itself deep in the earth beneath her, pinning her to the ground like a butterfly in a collection. A final, wet gasp escaped her lips. Then, the harvest began in earnest. The Ossuary Blade flared to life, its crimson veins blazing like heated arteries. A visible torrent of life force, a shimmering, pale energy, was ripped from the woman's body and sucked into the hungry obsidian metal. Her form convulsed once, then collapsed in on itself, desiccating at an alarming rate. Within seconds, she was gone, replaced by a fine grey ash that settled around the blade. The only evidence she had ever existed was the empty, blood-soaked dress pinned to the ground by the sword.
```
HARVEST: [CIVILIAN x1]
YIELD: NEGLIGIBLE (1% TOTAL BIO-TITHERIUM | 0.5% VOID ENERGY)
```
The fine grey ash that was once a young woman settled around the Ossuary Blade. Doom wrenched it free from the earth, the motion effortless. The crimson veins within the obsidian metal pulsed with a satisfied glow, the negligible trickle of essence absorbed. It was a meagre sum, but a meagre sum he would not waste. His glacial gaze swept the chaotic field. The remaining civilians were scattering like leaves in a hurricane, their screams a high, panicked counterpoint to the Basalt Behemoth's grinding fury. He targeted an elderly carter next, the man hobbling desperately towards an overturned wagon. Doom moved, not with a dash, but with a predator's ground-eating lope. The man looked back, his eyes wide with the wisdom of age that knew exactly what was coming. He didn't beg. He simply stopped, shoulders slumping in resignation and turned to face Doom. Doom closed the final distance. Instead of a clean cut, his free hand shot out, clamping on the carter's shoulder, talons digging into the old muscle like iron hooks. He yanked the man, off-balance, and drove the Ossuary Blade deep into the carter's gut and out his back. It was not a swift kill. It was an insertion. The man let out a wet, choked gasp. His eyes, wide with a new, more intimate terror, looked down at the great sword buried in his abdomen.
Doom held him there, impaled, watching the understanding dawn, this was not just death, but consumption. The blade began to pulse with a dull light. Thin, tendrils of energy, like roots or veins, spiderwebbed out from the wound, crawling beneath the man's skin. The harvest began. It was not swift. The man shuddered, a dry, rattling whimper escaping his lips as his life was not just taken, but siphoned. His body withered in Doom's grip, his skin desiccating and cracking like old parchment, his frame collapsing in on itself. The weary acceptance on his face twisted into a silent scream as his very essence was drained. Finally, when the last dregs were gone, Doom ripped the blade free. What remained wasn't a body, but a hollow shell. It crumbled, not falling so much as unravelling into a fine, grey ash that settled around the empty, collapsed clothes. The Ossuary Blade gave one last, satisfied gleam before its light faded.
```
HARVEST: [CIVILIAN x1]
YIELD: NEGLIGIBLE (0.8% TOTAL BIO-TITHERIUM | 0.4% VOID ENERGY)
```
The young couple was next, a fleeting portrait of terror intertwined. Doom was upon them in a breath. He did not simply grab the man, he hooked his talons into the man's collarbone, the sickening crunch of bone echoing the woman's shriek. He wrenched him around, not as a shield, but as a canvas for pain. As the woman turned back, her love's name a desperate prayer on her lips, the Behemoth's rage answered. A jagged stone spike, more shard than spear, erupted from the earth.
With a wet, tearing pull, Doom ripped his talons free from the man's shoulder and, in the same motion, slammed the shrieking victim chest-first onto the obsidian point. It did not cleanly pierce, it punched through his sternum with a sound of splintering cartilage, lifting him partially off his feet. He hung there, impaled but agonizingly conscious, his body convulsing, a wet, gurgling rasp escaping his lips as he drowned in his own blood.
Doom stepped around the twitching human pike, his gaze fixed on the woman, frozen in horrific disbelief. There was no clean slash. He sawed his claws through her throat, a brutal, tearing gouge that ripped through muscle and vein. A torrent of hot, arterial crimson erupted, drenching them both. He dragged her collapsing form against him, forcing her dying eyes to watch her lover's final, shuddering breaths. He held her there, a macabre embrace, as her life pumped out over his chest in thick, hot pulses. Only when the light began to fade from her eyes did the Ossuary Blade plunge into her. It violently unravelled her from the inside out, consuming her in a vortex of agony. Her partner, still pinned on the spike, followed an instant later, his own essence ripped from his broken vessel. Two more piles of ash, settling around the grisly, blood-soaked spike.
```
HARVEST: [CIVILIANS x2]
YIELD: NEGLIGIBLE (1.7% TOTAL BIO-TITHERIUM | 0.8% VOID ENERGY)
```
Of the few civilians who had reached the forest, the last was a mother. She had shoved her small son into a empty rain barrel, his whimper the last sound she would ever hear from him. "Not a sound," she breathed, sealing him in darkness before turning to run, a sobbing, desperate decoy. Doom did not chase. He converged. His hand did not strike her, but snared her, clamping over her mouth to silence her prayers. He lifted her, not to snap her neck, but to break it with a slow, deliberate torque. The crack was wet, a sound of gristle and splintering bone. He held her aloft, watching the terror in her eyes solidify into glassy shock, then dropped her broken form to the forest floor. But the Ossuary Blade was not silent. He drove it through her chest, and the forest watched as the body desiccated, skin pulling taut over bone, then flaking to ash.
```
HARVEST: [CIVILIAN x1]
YIELD: NEGLIGIBLE (0.9% TOTAL BIO-TITHERIUM | 0.4% VOID ENERGY)
```
A faint scratching came from the barrel. Doom turned. With a single, casual motion, he backhanded the barrel, splintering the staves. The boy tumbled out into the leaf litter, small and trembling, staring up at the giant whose shadow swallowed him whole.
Silk watched.
She had seen the Ashen Gulf collapse. She had seen Brick harvested. She had seen Ember beheaded. But this… this was different. This wasn't the heat of battle or the cold calculus of harvesting a strong foe. This was systematic, brutal, efficient extermination. These were just people. Merchants, families, children. Their only crime was being on the same road as a monster. Her breath hitched. Her stomach roiled. The numbness that had protected her shattered, and the full, horrific weight of the evening crashed down upon her. The Iron Sentinels, broken and dead. The Dawnseekers, shattered. Garret, transformed into a raging monument of grief. All these people, reduced to dust. And for what? Because Lyra had tried to protect her? Because Garret had stood his ground for her?
'Why?' The thought was a silent scream in her mind. 'Why did it have to be us?,Why did we have to find him in that cursed tomb?,Why couldn't it have been some other team, some faceless adventurers who wouldn't have tried to protect a rogue and a cleric?'.They'd be alive. Garret would be whole. Bron would be complaining about his rations. Thorn would be standing guard. These people… they'd be safe in their beds in Arden's Reach.' The guilt was an acid tide, burning through her. Her fear of Doom was now eclipsed by a profound, soul-crushing despair. She was the catalyst. Her survival had doomed them all. Tears, hot and shameful, streamed down her face. She couldn't watch another second. She couldn't let this continue. A desperate, foolish courage, born of utter hopelessness, seized her. She stumbled forward, out from the relative shelter of the wagon, into the open killing field. "STOP!" Her voice was a raw, torn thing, barely a whisper against the Behemoth's rumbles and the fading echoes of screams. "Please… just STOP!"