The wyvern fell out of the clouds like a bad memory, all broken sail and black flame. Its cry bit through the ridge; slate trembled, lungs forgot their work, and even the wind seemed to duck. Andy stepped into the sound and the ground steadied, as if the hill had been waiting for someone to decide how firm it ought to be. The Oathblade throbbed against his palm—ember, tide and gale twining along its edge until the steel looked like a thought made visible.
A cool hand brushed the back of his mind.
[Constellation Sync — Orion Active]
Nia ⭐ 78% | Aurelia ⭐ 71%
Tier II Combined: 36%
Buffs: Corrupter's Bane I | Shared Inventory Sync (Ready)
Status: Stable
He breathed once, deep and even, and let the second tier rise. It wasn't a roar. It was a quiet ladder inside his bones. Aura scaled over his forearms in a shimmer that never became scale; heat curled at his left shoulder, cool at his right, wind braided his stance and tucked itself under his heels like invisible wings. Dragon Warrior Form—Tier II—settled like a coat that had been cut for him and no one else.
"Shiny," Aurelia said, already smiling like a secret. Her dagger turned once between fingers, a pale crescent of moonlight. "I might need to borrow that aura later."
"Return it in the same condition," Nia replied, soft and possessive. The Staff of Lumina lifted; sigils the color of frost spun from its head and took their places over the villagers like patient stars.
The wyvern's shadow dropped on them and then the beast itself, all cracked ribs and stitched sinew. Black fire opened like a curtain.
"Left," Andy said, and moved.
He met the breath with a low cut; heat bloomed around the blade and climbed the torrent as if it had found a stair in a waterfall. "Ember Edge—Flame Spiral." Red wrapped black and the hiss of their argument salted the air. He rolled his shoulder, sank his weight and turned the line he'd drawn into an angle. "Tide-Singer—Aqua Fang." Water-teeth erupted along the Oathblade's path, lancing the wyvern's breast; the scream it gave back sounded like rust pulled through a harp. Wind took the third line: "Stormbreaker—Gale Rift." Pressure gathered at the edge, invisible until the world remembered to split; the good wing's primaries shredded and fell like strips of burned prayer.
Aurelia slipped past him with a laugh that didn't ask permission. She blurred down the slope, boots kissing grit, and her brooch ticked—a tiny, satisfied clock. A twin to Moonfang winked into her left hand with a neat chime only the system would count.
[Shared Inventory: Quickdraw]
Moonfang Dagger (2) → Aurelia
Latency: 0.11s
"Eyes," she sang, and the first silver bolt tore the nearest corrupted knight off his feet before the sound had finished being a word.
Nia stepped forward into her own light, drew a circle and a line and then nested them and flicked them open. "Glyphstorm." Runes fell like a narrow rain and pinned three more knights to the earth by elbows and knees as gently as a mother pinning a sleeve for mending. The ward behind her did not flicker. She didn't either.
Andy took two long steps through heat and ash. The Oathblade hummed in approval, every element bright and brief at the edge. The wyvern tried for his head with a chop of bone; he let it have the shadow of his cheek and paid it back with a straight cut that shaved black spines into glass.
The Corrupter watched from his stone, then stepped down. The blade he carried had not been forged; someone had merely argued with metal until it agreed to look like a sword. He smiled, small and pleased, as a priest might when a child has finally learned its letters.
"Dragon-blooded," he called. The voice came across ruined ground unharmed. "Show me who taught you to breathe."
Aurelia cut a knight in half with something like apology and said without looking, "He's flirting with you."
Nia didn't laugh, but the corner of her mouth made a confession. "Let him. It'll make the lesson easier to remember."
Another pulse rolled through Andy's chest. It felt like a heartbeat that belonged to three people at once.
[Bond Pulse ↑]
Nia ⭐ 80% | Aurelia ⭐ 72%
Tier II Combined: 40%
Resonance: +12% (Move +10% | Resist +8%)
The wyvern came again, angrier for understanding too late. Andy stepped into the shade of its reach and wrote a crescent in the air, then closed it. Fire made the first stroke, water fixed it, wind carried it; the beast met a geometry it could not keep. Breath broke against Nia's lattice. Aurelia's arrow took the right eye and turned it into a very clean absence.
For a heartbeat the creature tried to be alive out of habit. Habit failed. It collapsed, the impact throwing a halo of ash and a gust that smelled like quenching and last night's rain. Villagers remembered that they had throats and used them; the cheer that rose wore threadbare fear over new hope like an old coat over a bright shirt.
The Corrupter did not clap. He knelt by the wyvern as a man might check a horse's hoof, and then sank his arm into its chest up to the elbow. Black veins leapt under his skin. The beast convulsed. When he stood, something had followed him out. Spines budded along his back and set, two short, wrong wings unfurled like mistakes deciding to be permanent. His mouth found a smile that didn't belong to any face that remembered kindness.
"Better," he said, and the word was a caress that made the ridge want to shiver.
Villagers shrank back. One old woman crossed herself with the wrong hand. Another whispered, "Maker keep us," and nobody told her the Maker hadn't been listening for a long time.
"Steady," Nia murmured, not to him—he needed nothing—but to the world. Her free palm brushed his shoulder. Aurelia's boot planted half a pace behind his heel like a flag staking claim.
He lifted the Oathblade a finger's width and watched the Corrupter's eyes. The system touched him again, almost amused.
[Threat Assessment: Corruption Aura ↑↑]
Form Recommendation: Maintain Tier II
Note: Dominance displayed without escalation
The Corrupter moved. It wasn't fast. It was exact. His first cut came low and without warning, the wrong blade whining the way a green branch cries when you bend it past what it can forget. Andy turned his wrist and laid the Oathblade along it; the edges kissed and the air between them tried to hide.
They traded three lines in the time it takes a kettle to decide if it will sing. The fourth line belonged to wind; the fifth to tide. On the sixth, the Corrupter smiled properly, and Andy learned what it meant when three inches of wrong steel try to turn your bones into suggestions. He let the force pass through his hips into the earth and paid the smile back with a cut that opened a seam along the Corrupter's ribs. Black steam curled out and tried to be birds.
A knight lunged for Nia's ward and shattered his sword on it as if on a childhood promise. She answered with a short, merciful staff-thrust that put him down without letting him break anything else. Aurelia vaulted a fallen cart, shot two bolts through the same hole in a helm and landed with a laugh she did not apologize for.
"Eyes on me," Andy said, and didn't need to raise his voice.
The Corrupter obliged with another wrong line. Andy's answer wasn't harder. It was closer to true. The Oathblade bit, ember flaring, tide cooling, gale carrying. He felt the resistance give the way a lie does when it meets a simpler sentence.
"Jealous," Aurelia said to Nia, not quite panting, hair stuck to her cheek. "He's dancing with someone else."
"He'll come home," Nia said, and the certainty in her tone made even the wind consider obedience. She shifted her grip. "Glyphstorm—narrow band." Sigils fell like a seamstress's pins, stitching shadow to earth along the Corrupter's ankles. It didn't hold him. It made him choose where to step. Choice costs.
The fused wings snapped and loosed another breath that took the color out of everything it loved. Andy cut it three times, each cut a word that didn't need a friend. The breath frayed and blew away like smoke that had learned manners.
He closed, because there are distances that belong to cowards and he had never rented one. The Corrupter raised his blade horizontal, a farmer's measure; Andy slid under it and let the Oathblade talk to the seam he had opened. The talk wasn't long. Black light hissed, and the wrong wings faltered.
Another pulse—warmer now, as if the constellation above them had leaned down to listen.
[Constellation Sync — Orion]
Nia ⭐ 81% | Aurelia ⭐ 73%
Tier II Combined: 42%
Shared Inventory: Auto-Summon (Ready)
"Breathe," Nia said, and he did, and the breath went where she wanted. Aurelia's next volley threaded the falling glyphs; two bolts drove into the joint where wing met back and blossomed into clean silver. The Corrupter hissed like he had bitten his own tongue.
He answered by calling the shadows up in a ring. Knights rose halfway, like men who had decided waking wasn't worth it and were trying it anyway. Aurelia stepped through them as if crossing a stream on flat stones. Nia's ward flexed and made room for fear to stand without shaking.
The Corrupter's blade came again, low to high, left to right, then feinted at a lie meant for a boy. Andy had stopped being a boy two wars ago. He met the feint with nothing and answered the truth with a cut that turned set ribs into poor counsel. The Corrupter staggered once, anger finally blooming on his tongue.
"You carry two cores," he said, almost curious. "How many more will you borrow?"
"Enough," Andy said, and made it a promise instead of a number.
The wyvern's remaining wing tried to remember how sky works and failed. It folded in on itself like a tent a tired man didn't want to fight anymore. The fused body lurched. The Corrupter snarled and dragged strength through it by hand.
"Do not—" he began.
"Do," Aurelia advised, not to be helpful.
Nia's hand slid to the small of Andy's back and pressed, a priestess's benediction disguised as a reminder. He stepped in on the push and wrote another clean line. Fire—water—wind. The Oathblade said enough in three languages.
For a moment longer than sense permits, everything held. The ridge, the breath, the wing, the wrong blade—caught in a stillness that felt like the world had set down its cup to listen.
The moment broke. The Corrupter reeled back two paces and caught himself on hatred. He lifted his sword in both hands and let the fused wings spread. Shadow crawled out of the cuts Andy had given him and made him bigger than his own skin.
The system did not tell Andy to escalate. It only put its hand on his shoulder again and waited to see who he was.
[Status Check]
Form: Dragon Warrior Tier II (Maintained)
Stability: High
Next Recommendation: Hold
He held. The villagers' cheer faltered into a hush with weight to it. Somewhere a child hiccupped a sob and swallowed it because her mother squeezed her hand.
"Stay with me," Andy said, and Nia's ward leaned into his words and Aurelia's arrow point lowered then rose again, steadier.
They stood three across the ridge—one calm blade, one steadfast light, one laughing moon—while the Corrupter's silhouette thickened into a promise it didn't deserve to keep.
The corrupted sky cracked once more under those wrong wings, and ash came down like snow that had forgotten what winter was for. The ridge drew in a breath it hadn't earned.
The night hadn't even ended.