The shriek of metal on bone was a discordant hymn to violence. Lyra's perfected Dawnblade, a lance of solidified sunlight, met the devouring obsidian of the Ossuary Blade. Where before their clashes had been storms of force and fury, this was a duel of precision. Lyra's movements were a masterwork of zealot's geometry, every parry, every thrust, was efficient, devoid of wasted motion. Her renewed power was a stable, humming reactor, but it lacked the desperate, explosive potential of her near-apotheosis. She was a scalpel, and she aimed to dissect the abomination before her. Doom met her with the brutal economy Kael had hammered into him. But his focus was split. The true variable, the irritating new sun, was Faith. A flicker of prescient light from the amber mark on Faith's forehead was the only warning before a [SOLAR LANCE] sharper and more focused than anything Lyra had ever conjured, speared towards his side. He phased, a micro-[VOID DASH] that cost a mere flicker of energy [VOID ENERGY: 76% -> 75%], but the lance's edge grazed him. The pain was a clean, searing brand that sought to unmake his void-tempered flesh. [HP: 98%].
'She predicts you! The amber eye sees intent!' Ainar's voice was a frantic buzz. 'The Judicator is a known equation. The healer is the variable. Remove her!'
Doom's obsidian gaze narrowed. A direct assault on the prescient, slippery healer was inefficient. The cold calculus shifted. Wound the scalpel, and the variable would be forced to react. He changed his stance. The formal, powerful sweeps of the Ossuary Blade gave way to something lower, uglier. He fought like a back-alley thug, using the environment. He kicked a chunk of Thorn's shattered maul towards Lyra's shins. As she sidestepped with refined grace, he was already upon her, not with the blade, but with his talons, raking towards her eyes. It was a dirty, unexpected move. Lyra recoiled, her Dawnblade parrying the void tinted talons with a shower of golden sparks.
"Your heresy has no finesse, monster!" she spat, but a flicker of uncertainty crossed her face. This was not the straightforward power she had prepared for.
"[DAWN'S EDGE]!" she cried, her blade becoming a whirlwind of precise, cutting light. Doom didn't try to match it blow for blow. He triggered [VOID DASH] and [VOID SHROUD] in a single, seamless, brutal sequence.
[VOID DASH: -8% VOID ENERGYVOID SHROUD: -12% VOID ENERGYVOID ENERGY: 63%]
He vanished from her front and reappeared at her blind spot, wreathed in a tempest of devouring violet mist. The [VOID SHROUD] lashed out. Where the dark tendrils touched Lyra's polished sun-plates, they didn't just sear, they siphoned. The brilliant light of her armor dimmed at the points of contact, the energy violently drained, leaving patches of dull, pitted metal. A cold, numbing chill, the [VOID CHILL] debuff seeped into her joints, slowing her reactions by a precious fraction. "Lyra!" Faith's voice was a panicked chime. Her hands moved, the silver mark on her left flaring. A beam of surgical light lanced towards the Shroud, not to heal, but to excise it. The Shroud recoiled, the sterile light carving a temporary hole in its fabric. But Doom was already moving. Using the Shroud as a visual screen and the Dash for repositioning, he became a phantom. He'd phase behind Lyra, strike with the blade, and before her perfected counter could land, he'd Dash through her, the Shroud's tendrils lashing her back, and appear on her other side with a talon strike.
It was a dizzying, disorienting assault. He was no longer fighting a warrior, he was dismantling a machine. Lyra's refined style was built for honorable, direct combat. This was a street brawl amplified by the void. A talon scraped across her vambrace, the Shroud's touch leaching the light from it. The Ossuary Blade scored a deep groove across her thigh plate. She was being worn down, her stability a liability against his chaotic, dirty efficiency. The moment of truth came when he feinted a massive overhead chop with the blade. Lyra, her movements slightly sluggish from the Void Chill, committed to a solid, perfect block. But the chop was a lie. He abandoned it mid-swing, triggering [VOID DASH][-8% VOID ENERGY | VOID ENERGY: 55%] to drop low and slide behind her legs. As she stumbled forward, overbalanced, he reversed his grip on the Ossuary Blade and drove it upwards, under the back of her knee, where the polished sun-plate met the flexible joint.
SHINK-CRUNCH!
The sound was sickeningly wet. The devouring obsidian sheared through armor, tendon, and bone. Lyra screamed, a sound of pure, shocked agony, her leg buckling instantly. The harvest began instantly. The blade's crimson veins blazed, and Lyra's pristine, solar-infused life force was violently siphoned, the light in her eyes dimming as she felt her very essence being consumed.
```
HARVEST: [LYRA - CRITICAL WOUND]
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BIO-TITHERIUMEXTRACTION: [PURIFIED SOLAR ESSENCE / DAWN-FORGED FLESH]
YIELD: SIGNIFICANT (30%)
BIO-TITHERIUM RESERVES: 30%
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"NO!" Faith's scream was not a word, but a wave of force. The grief, the horror, the sight of Lyra being harvested, shattered her tenuous control. The dispassionate gold in her eyes vanished, replaced by a maelstrom of raw, unfiltered power. The four sun marks on her body blazed in chaotic unison. "[SUN'S WRATH]!" she shrieked, not aiming, simply unleashing. A sphere of incandescent white-gold energy erupted from her, expanding outwards. It wasn't a targeted attack, it was a tantrum of divine power. The ground itself was scoured clean in a twenty-foot radius, ash and soil vaporized. The blast caught Doom full-on, throwing him back like a leaf in a hurricane. His [VOIDSHROUD] was ripped to shreds, the purifying light searing his flesh. [HP: 98% -> 65%]. He landed hard, skidding through ash and vaporized earth, the Ossuary Blade shrieking in protest as it scraped against stone. But the blast was indiscriminate. It caught the kneeling, crippled Lyra, who was sent tumbling like a broken doll, her own divine power turned against her. The perfect, polished plates of her armor were scorched black, the brilliant light within them guttering. The horrific wound on the back of her knee, already weeping stolen essence, was cauterized and cracked by the friendly fire. A choked, airless gasp was all she could manage, the world swimming in a nauseating whirl of pain and blinding light.
Through the ringing in her ears and the searing agony, a single, brutal point of clarity pierced the zealous fog in her mind. 'Doctrine is a shield. It will not stop the blade. He adapts. He turns our strengths against us. And she… she will burn us all to ash in her grief.' Survival was not in righteous victory. It was in escape. In living to fight with knowledge, not just fury. Her head swam, her vision blurring. With a monumental effort that tore a ragged scream from her throat, she twisted her head, her eyes, dimmed but desperate, finding Faith amidst the blazing chaos.
"FAITH!" The name was a raw, bloody scrape, barely audible over the roaring energies. "My leg! Heal it! NOW!". It was not a request. It was the command of a captain, a Judicator, cutting through the hysterical maelstrom. "Your emotions are a weapon he can use! Control it! That power… it must be a scalpel, not a bludgeon! You must be the dawn, not the wildfire! For both our sakes, FOCUS!"
The words were a lifeline thrown into the storm of Faith's psyche. The sight of Lyra. Proud, perfect Lyra, brought low and bleeding, was a colder, more effective douse of reality than any reprimand.
The amber mark on her forehead flared, not with prescience, but with frantic analysis. She saw the intricate damage, the severed tendons, the splintered bone, the lingering ravenous void-energy of the Ossuary Blade actively resisting being pushed out Lyra's light. With a sob that was both anguish and effort, she focused. Her hands moved, the silver mark on her left flaring with a more controlled, focused light. "[SOLAR SUTURE]!" she cried, her voice trembling but purposeful. A beam of intricate, silver energy lanced out, not at Doom, but at Lyra's ruined knee. It wasn't the gentle flow of [GentleDawn], it was a violent, efficient knitting. Tendons snapped back into place with audible pops, bone fragments were fused together under the intense light, muscle tissue wove itself back into a solid whole and the lingering void-energy removed with little resistance. It was a brutal, painful process, far from gentle, but it was fast. Incredibly fast.
Lyra, scorched, bruised, but mobile again, rolled to her feet. The healing had been savage, but it had worked. Her leg held. Her gaze met Faith's. The molten gold was still there, but a sliver of the terrified, determined girl was visible within it. Nodding once, a sharp, grateful gesture, Lyra snatched up her Dawnblade. The light within it was dimmer, the plates of her armor dulled where the Void Shroud had touched them. She was back in the fight. And the fight was coming. Doom was already rising from the scorched earth, his obsidian eyes burning with cold fury at the interruption of his harvest.
---
As Doom pushed himself up from the smoldering crater, his silver-traced skin smoking from the backlash of Faith's uncontrolled blast, Lyra did not hesitate. The zealous fury was gone, burned away in the crucible of pain and near-harvest. In its place was a cold, tactical clarity. The Void Herald was a predator that fed on direct confrontation. To survive, they must become phantoms. "Faith! The light! Not a storm, a shroud!" Lyra barked, her voice raw but commanding. "Blind him!".
Faith, her hands still trembling from the catastrophic release of the [SUN'SWRATH], flinched at the order. But the amber mark on her forehead flared, understanding the intent. She wasn't being told to destroy, but to disrupt. With a choked sob of effort, she focused. The chaotic, blazing corona around her condensed, sharpened. She raised a hand, not towards Doom, but towards the air directly above him.
"[DAZZLINGORB]!"
A sphere of pure, silent, blinding intensity bloomed into existence a dozen feet above Doom's head. It was a miniature sun, but its purpose was not heat, it was overwhelming, disorienting radiance. It flooded the immediate area with a light so absolute it bleached all color, casting stark, shifting shadows that danced with afterimages. For Doom, with his void-attuned senses and enhanced eyes, it was agony. The pinpricks of violet light in his obsidian eyes contracted to nothingness, seared by the purity of the glare. His vision became a field of blazing white and confusing, overlapping shadows. The world was reduced to a disorienting, painful blur. It was the opening Lyra needed.
She lunged, not at Doom, but towards Silk, who was still cowering nearby. She grabbed the stunned rogue with one arm. Then, with a prayer to a god she hoped was still listening, she channeled her mobility into a single, focused ability. "[SOLARASCENSION]!" A wave of golden light propelled her forward in a blazing streak, snatching up the dazed, weeping Faith with her other arm as she passed. She became a comet of desperate light, shooting not towards the open road, but into the dark, whispering embrace of the Whisper Wood, in the general direction of Arden's Reach.
---
The world dissolved into a silent, searing white. Faith's [DAZZLING ORB] bloomed above him, a miniature star whose only purpose was annihilation of the senses. For a being whose perception was so deeply attuned to the subtle currents of void and shadow, this was not merely an inconvenience, it was a violent assault. The absolute, purifying radiance seared his void-attuned eyes, burning away all detail, leaving only a painful, blinding whiteness and the ghostly, overlapping afterimages of everything it touched. His enhanced senses, usually an asset, turned against him, amplifying the disorientation into a nauseating crescendo. He was trapped in a cage of pure, agonizing light. The golden streak of Lyra's [SOLAR ASCENSION] shot past his blurred periphery, heading for the treeline. The sight of his assets fleeing, the healer who had dared to interrupt him, the Judicator who had been his rightful harvest, the dancer who was his to claim, ignited the icy fury in his chest into an inferno.
He would not be caged. He would not be blinded.
A raw, guttural snarl ripped from his throat. Instead of stumbling blindly or wasting energy on another Dash, he planted his feet digging into the earth. He raised the Ossuary Blade high with both hands, not in a technique, but in a gesture of pure, brute-force negation. The dark bone of the blade seemed to shudder, not with its usual hungry hum, but with a resonant, angry thrum, as if offended by the very existence of such pure, sterile light. He didn't swing at Lyra. He swung at the light itself. With a roar that was part defiance, part raw will, he brought the massive sword down in a devastating arc, not through the air, but through the very center of the [DAZZLING ORB]. There was no metallic clang. Instead, a sound like the universe tearing its stitches, a horrific, vacuumous SCHLORP-RIP echoed across the field. The Ossuary Blade's devouring nature didn't just block the light, it attacked it. The blinding orb didn't shatter or explode. It was violently unmade. The concentrated radiance flowed into the matte black blade like water down a drain, the white light stretching and distorting before being violently sucked into the hungry obsidian. For a moment, the blade's crimson veins blazed a sickly, furious white, overwhelmed by the purity of the energy, before they pulsed violently and returned to their deep, devouring crimson. The orb was gone, erased from existence, leaving behind a sudden, shocking twilight and the ghost of its glare burned into everyone's vision.
The sudden return of shadow was as disorienting as the light had been. But for Doom, it was a clarity born of vengeance. His obsidian eyes, the stellar voids within them burning with cold fire, instantly locked onto the fading golden streak of Lyra as she vanished into the dark maw of the Whisper Wood, her two burdens in tow. They would not escape. 'My son, your energy!' Ainar's voice was a desperate, warning shriek in his mind. 'You are at the precipice!' He ignored her. The Ossuary Blade was a satisfied, heavy weight in his hands. He triggered [VOID DASH] and layered it with [VOID SHROUD], pushing his refined control to its absolute limit in his fury.
[VOID DASH: -8% VOID ENERGY VOID SHROUD: -12% VOID ENERGY VOID ENERGY: 35%]
He became a projectile of vengeful darkness, a scarred comet wreathed in lashing violet tendrils, streaking across the blasted field and into the edge of the Whisper Wood. The ancient trees, their bark black and peeling, seemed to recoil from the violent intrusion of void energy. He saw the golden trail ahead, Lyra struggling with her two burdens. He was gaining. He raised the Ossuary Blade, dark energy coalescing at its tip. He would not let them get deeper.
[VOID REND: -8% | BIO-TITHERIUM RESERVES: 22%]