My body is simply gone.
I don't feel the weight of my limbs or the ache in my muscles. My breath is an alien concept; my lungs don't draw in air. My voice, too, has been stripped away, reduced to a desperate, soundless echo.
Only thought remains—fragmented, dissolving like a puff of black smoke released on a winter night. I am consciousness suspended in a vacuum of despair.
Then, with a shudder that vibrates through non-existence, the world reforms around me.
It is a plain. Not of earth or stone, but of glass and shadow that stretches into a terrible, unreachable infinity.
This ground is not opaque; it is transparent, a fragile sheath over a well of suffering. Beneath this glass, I see the endless, horrific reflections: my memories—not flowing chronologically, but fractured, cycling, and looping endlessly like a broken, cruel reel.
I watch Liana's smile, vibrant and tragically brief, immediately juxtaposed against my father's disgust, a sneer that defined my life.
I see the fortress burning—not a single event, but the consuming fire of failure, an image that repeats until it is seared onto my soul.
And worst of all, I see my own eyes staring back from the transparent abyss… hollow, dead, utterly defeated.
Every reflection is a blade twisting in a wound that never heals.
And from between those hairline cracks in the glass of my mind—from the sliver of space where regret festers—it crawls.
It is a shape made of pure, animated ink and churning veins, a mockery of life. It does not walk; it seeps, sliding out of the psychic wounds.
It has no mouth, yet it is whispering in hundreds of voices at once, a chorus of doubt and temptation, all aimed directly at the dissolving edges of my sanity.
"So fragile… so open… a perfect void ready to be filled…"
The whispers do not arrive through my ears; they slide into my head like white-hot needles. They pierce the membrane of my consciousness.
My vision splits, bleeding static and crimson light.
The creature's face is not defined—it is literally nothing, a dreadful absence wearing a temporary, fluid form.
Every subtle movement it makes drags streaks of broken thought through the stagnant air, subtly bending reality around its horrifying presence.
This is not a battle of flesh, but of existence itself.
My knees buckle beneath a pressure that isn't physical.
I claw at my chest, unable to find the rhythm of breathing I no longer have.
The absence of air is a cruel reminder of my vulnerability.
A wave of profound, suffocating terror washes over me. I am dissolving.
This is the end.
"You'll make a fine vessel, little one," it hisses, its form elongating as it reaches with a claw made of jagged shadow.
The shadow connects, and the cold intensifies, threatening to shatter me completely.
I can't fight this. I am nothing here.
Then, just as the tendril pierces my last shield of resistance, the entire world shakes.
The glass plain vibrates violently, the soundless void suddenly thrumming with raw, impossible energy.
A roar echoes through the emptiness—a sound that is deeper than thunder, impossibly, older than mountains.
It is the sound of primal, unyielding fury, and it immediately starts to tear the fabric of the corruption apart.
Flames burst from the very zenith of the sky, not the orange of mere fire, but black and gold—an arcane fusion that embodies both destruction and creation.
This inferno descends, searing away the corruption's whispers as if they were nothing more than thin smoke.
The piercing needles in my skull retract instantly, leaving behind a jarring, ringing silence.
"Enough," booms Noctharion.
The single word is a decree, a law of physics. It strikes the entity like a physical, tangible shockwave.
The dragon descends—an impossible, breathtaking spectacle of scale and power.
He is vast; his wings, which spread like torn night, eclipse the endless gloom.
His presence is the antidote to the cold.
It ignites the glass beneath my feet, and for a glorious, painful heartbeat, I can feel heat again—the divine warmth of life and power flooding back into my non-existent limbs.
The cold retreats instantly, leaving a trail of hissing frost.
The ink-shape shrieks, a high-pitched, desperate sound that is immediately swallowed by the dragon's presence.
Its coherent form unravels into dozens of writhing, desperate shadows, trying to escape the encroaching black-and-gold fire.
"Do not fight it, Kael," Noctharion's voice rumbles inside my skull, not a whisper, but a bedrock certainty. "Hold your mind steady. Anchor your consciousness. I will end this."
I obey, gripping the edges of my dissolving head, staggering as the visions twist and writhe around me, amplified by the corruption's final, desperate attack.
The monster retaliates by weaponizing my most protected memories.
My mother's face melts into putrid ash before my eyes.
Elira's innocent, ringing laughter turns to razor-sharp screams that echo across the glass plain.
Every single image cuts deep. Every distorted sound is a blade sinking into my soul.
The mental assault is paralyzing, meant to force me to surrender and dissolve.
> "You failed everyone," the corruption sings, its voice now a hypnotic, poisonous lullaby. "The pain is yours. You are worthless."
"No…" I manage to whisper, the sound utterly weak and hollow, shaking with a grief that threatens to consume my existence.
"No, I—"
I tried. I ran. I wasn't strong enough.
The thoughts spiral.
Noctharion's flame surges again, a controlled, focused torrent of black-gold that tears the illusions apart like paper.
The shrieking laughter of Elira is silenced; the image of my melting mother is consumed by the purifying heat.
"Do not listen to the lie," he growls, his focus absolute, his attention never wavering from the enemy. "It feeds on your regret. Regret is its lifeblood. Cling to the truth of your intent, Kael! Not the result!"
The glass ground cracks under the immense, conflicting pressures.
The air, or what passes for it, instantly turns crimson—a color of pure, volatile energy.
A thin, glistening tendril of black light pulses ahead of the main mass of the corruption—stretching outward, impossibly long, piercing through the void like a crucial, taut tether.
That's it.
My fragmented thought finds the key. The connection. The invisible, psychic thread of control.
It is the link that binds the commander in the physical world… and the monstrous entity inside the Lava Giant.
If the corruption is a puppet master, that thread is the string to its most powerful marionette.
Noctharion sees it too.
His vast, serpentine head whips toward the tether.
His eyes narrow—they are burning orbs of molten fury and decisive intent.
> "That thread links their minds," he states, his voice now lower, an analytical vibration of power. "It is the beast's anchor. It keeps a physical footing in reality. Sever it, and the corruption is trapped here to be devoured."
The dragon spreads his wings—an action that feels less like a movement and more like a cosmic rearrangement.
He begins gathering the storm—not a physical one, but the raw, elemental energy of his being—within his colossal chest.
The air bends and warps around him. The void screams in protest against the influx of true power.
I instinctively stumble back a few paces. The heat is unbearable, purifying.
His body becomes light itself, a searing, focused star of black and gold.
This is not an attack; it is an execution.
> "Hold still, Kael," Noctharion commands, his voice fading slightly as he commits his entire being to the strike.
And then, with the focused momentum of a meteor, he dives.
Outside, in the smoke-choked, real world, Kael's body convulses violently on the shattered stone.
It is a terrifying, desperate sight.
His eyes roll white, showing only the milky sclera, and the veins across his temples and neck are blackening with an unnatural, sickly hue—a map of the psychic poison flowing through him.
The very ground trembles and groans beneath him, reacting to the war being fought within his soul.
A few meters away, the commander's body jerks in sync, mirroring Kael's spasm.
He is a marionette, caught and manipulated by invisible, agonizing hands.
The psychic struggle is bleeding into the physical realm.
Across the field, the monstrous Lava Giant roars soundlessly—a vast, terrible tremor of pure frustration.
Molten cracks spread rapidly across its titanic chest, fissures caused by the strain of the anchor point being violently attacked.
Then—
A catastrophic surge of energy erupts from Kael's convulsing body.
It is a blinding flash, a release of the immense power of the mindscape conflict.
Aura and raw mana spiral upward with devastating force, instantly forming a vortex—a glowing, terrifying chimney of power linking all three entities: Kael, the commander, and the parasitic beast trapped inside the giant.
The surrounding air instantly distorts, vibrating until it is a visible shimmer.
Crimson lightning cuts through the oppressive smoke and ash—not from the sky, but generated by the sheer, violent exchange of spiritual force.
The climax is happening now.