The healers held the back band of sky like pegs driven into the wind. Hands up. Palms bright. Voices steady. Light braided out of their throats and into the lines in front, stitching meat and bone faster than he could tear it.
Noctis bled from the chest where sanctity had split him, wing-joints smoking, feathers ragged. His halo still burned; arcs cut pale scars through the air behind his horns. He fixed on the column of chanters and leveled the Reaver.
"Enough," he said. "You die first."
He went in hard.
The front wedge tried to catch him—shields raised, spears braced, blades flashing in rhythm with the hymn. He refused their rhythm. He dropped a fraction too early, took the first shield on his shoulder, and rode the impact down. Steel screamed. His scythes spun low and cut ankles until the wedge folded. Blood sprayed in ropes. Wings buckled. He stepped through marrow and shadow—Dominion Step IX—and the place he'd been was already full of spears.
He appeared inside the space he wanted: the clear, bright lane between two healer columns where the hymn ran cleanest.
He opened the Grid.
Sovereign's Crucible IX.
The air around him went hot and red. His veins flared like molten wire. For a breath there was only pressure, then the Crucible detonated outward—an eruption of bloodlight that slammed the sky. Hymn-threads snapped like overstretched cords. Angels jerked as marrow seized. Every wound in reach tore wider. Ribs that had knitted moments before split again with wet cracks; a dozen shields fell from numb hands.
Noctis bared his teeth. "Good."
He poured the next strike into the gap while the host reeled.
Crimson Tempest Dominion IX.
His wings beat once. The sky answered with a storm. Bloodfire burst out in a spiraling wall around him, a hurricane of red heat laced with black edges that ate sanctity as it touched it. Feathers ignited midair and drifted away as embers. The front line curled under the pressure; voices choked; the healers' song rasped under the wind like rope dragged over stone.
He dove inside his own storm, eyes locked on the chanters. "Keep singing," he said, breath sharp. "It won't save you."
Light flared against his torn chest and leg. He needed the edge sharpened. He pulled faith down his throat like air.
Eucharist Chalice IX.
Pale fire sank into his wounds and set there. Searing, steady, clean. The edges of torn flesh bound; the worst of the wing-root burn cooled to a livable heat. Power ran through his arms and into his blade; the next beat of his wings hit harder. The halo behind his head brightened until its arcs left thin white lines in the sky.
He tightened the trap.
Sovereign Chains IX.
Blood-iron links erupted from the air with a clatter, whipping toward the back band. They struck wrists and throats and wings and seized hard. The two nearest healers had just drawn breath for the next chord when the Chains locked them in an X and yanked them wide. Their hymn snapped into a broken gasp. Their eyes flared with light and then with fear.
"Two of you," Noctis said, voice low. "Now."
He hit the first one with the Reaver like a falling door. The blade crushed through collarbone and spine, cleaving the body in half. Blood burst in a fan across the sky, pattering warm across his face and arm. The Chains held the halves apart while the scythes spun past and trimmed the last of the voice from the throat.
The second tried to force a chord through a strangled windpipe. It came out as a bright cough. Noctis hammered him with a clawed fist, broke the jaw, drove his hand into the mouth, and tore the bottom of the face away. Sound died. He rammed the Reaver up under the breastbone and cut to the heart. Light went out behind the eyes. The body sagged on the Chains and then fell.
Hymn tore open in the back band. The whole host buckled a fraction of a beat later, like a bridge losing two main cables. Spears dipped. Shields shook. Wings splayed wrong before snapping back. It wasn't collapse. It was a crack.
He grinned and pushed into it.
The formation tried to close around him. The wedge to his left folded in, blades low, spears high, wings breaking his line of sight. He let them press, then split the closest shield with a short, hateful cut. His scythes scythed—one at knee height, one under the elbow of a spear arm—tendon and bone going soft under steel. He stepped again through the Dominion Step IX tether he'd anchored at the start of his dive and reappeared a body's length closer to the next column of healers.
Sanctity slammed him from the right. A Tier IX chord punched through his ribs and lit the nerves along his spine. He hissed. "That hurts. You'll pay for it."
He ripped the spearhead out sideways and hurled it into the chanter who'd cast, burying the jagged triangle in the throat. Light gushed; song stopped; the body flailed once and fell backward into the arms of the next line.
"Three," he said, counting without looking.
The host shoved harder. Shields hammered his forearms. A blade grated along his jaw and laid open his cheek to the teeth. Blood drooled down his chin. He spat red and laughed, breath harsh. "Push. Go on."
They pushed. He didn't give ground. He ate it with his body.
The Crimson Tempest was still working, a wall of red wind that punished any line that overreached. Every time a spear slid too far forward, the storm chewed the hand behind it raw, peeled layers off the wrist, dragged blood out like thread. The hymn couldn't cover everything at once. That was the whole point. He pressed where the cover thinned, and when the host tried to patch that, he bared a new wound a heartbeat later.
The healers realized the pattern; the columns began to stagger breaths, alternating so that when one silenced under pressure, another could catch the song. Good discipline. It bought them seconds.
He took the seconds away.
He threw his Chains again, not wide this time but tight and mean: a loop around a singing throat, a cinch across a wrist mid-gesture, a snare that caught two wings together and jerked them shut. Every chain that landed broke a note. Every broken note loosened a brace. Every loosened brace let his blade talk.
He talked with it.
The Reaver took a chanter at the hip and kept going until the head left the shoulders. The scythe on his left snagged a prayer-halo and tore it off like a crown, taking hair and scalp with it. The right scythe skimmed low and opened a femoral artery; blood jetted high and hot, pattering his face and chest, slicking his fingers on the next grip.
The hymn dipped hard, then climbed in a rough, desperate scramble. Front ranks shouted without words, a raw sound rising under the song. Their faces didn't show fear. Their hands did—knuckles white, grips too tight, a fraction of tremble at the end of each thrust.
"Better," Noctis said, rolling his shoulders to keep his ruined wing working. "Now try not to die."
Healers to his far right tried to peel away, two columns sliding laterally to get out of the storm's worst reach. He cut across to meet them. Three shields slammed into him at once; he took them with his chest and let the Sanctis burn into the wound Eucharist had just closed. The heat ripped the breath from his throat. He punched straight through the middle shield, fingers crunching breastbone, and used the body as a ram to throw the other two aside.
A spear came down on the wrist of his blood-slick hand. Bones in the forearm shifted with a crack. He swore. "Fine." He broke the spear with his elbow, grabbed the angel by the throat with his left hand, and ripped the larynx out again. He could do this all night.
He didn't, because the opening was there.
Four healers in a line, hands up, eyes on him. Their breath drew together for a single restored chord.
He put his halo through them.
Halo Severance II cut clean, arcs of pale fire sliding through necks and wrists like ice through water. Heads tipped forward. Hands fell away. Light guttered in four throats at once and the song took a step into silence.
The host jolted. It wasn't panic. It was shock traveling through muscle and bone. In that shock, the front rank's spears missed their rhythm by half a breath. He bathed them in Oblivion Flame, the black heat eating sanctity out of their armor, leaving smoking bodies that dropped out of the sky in silence.
He was inside the healers again. They knew it because hands shook, the first tremors of physical reality breaking into training. One dropped his gaze to his own blood on his wrist and flinched as if surprised to find himself mortal. The Reaver kissed him under the chin and took his head away.
"Four," Noctis counted, not loud, not soft—just done.
He knew he could get greedy and be punished. The last Tier IX had bitten deep. His chest felt like a furnace door left open. Wing-root throbbed in hard pulses that threatened to steal motion. He needed to complete the pass, not die proving a point.
So he finished like a butcher, not a duelist.
He let the Crimson Tempest spool tighter, drawing the wind in close so the storm's teeth gnawed the next column as he rotated. He hooked a Chain across a heel and jerked a healer out of position. The chanter beside him reached to catch his comrade; Noctis cut his forearm off at the elbow, then curved the Reaver and buried it to the hilt in the third's chest.
Hymn ripped again, thin and high now, more scream than song.
The host crashed in from both sides, bodies closing like a wound. He went through his tether into open air and the bite of sanctity fell away a fraction as he cleared the thickest weave of voices. Breath came easier. The sky moved under him the way it should—with nothing in it but cold and wind.
He looked back.
The lane he had cut still bled. Three columns stuttered. Two were broken. In the middle of that ruin, two bodies tumbled—healers he had specifically opened in halves. Their blood unspooled in long red banners that fluttered as they fell. The back band was thinner now. It would get thinner still.
He rolled a shoulder and pain clawed the wing-root again. He set his jaw and talked to it like a stubborn animal. "You'll hold."
The front ranks rallied, wings beating hard, blades steady again, shields lifted like a wall. They were coming for him with everything. He saw the next Tier IX chord forming: seven casters in a V, two anchors singing low, a shield-ring to carry the edge.
He grinned. "Come on."
They brought the sky down.
Light slammed him so hard his teeth clacked. The Bastion burned white-blue and still the heat got in. He felt the cut open under his sternum, a clean, hot line across the bone. His vision blurred for a heartbeat. He exhaled through pain and drove straight through it anyway.
Into the anchors.
Noctis dropped inside the ring before the second pulse landed and hacked the closest anchor's head off at the mouth. The second tried to finish the chord alone—voice cracking under the load. The Reapers crossed through ribs and stopped the note cold.
He felt the pressure drop like a rope gone slack. "There you are."
He could hear the back band trying to reset. The pattern of breaths had changed; staggered now, but shallow, too quick. Good. Fear was getting in under the discipline. Not terror—he respected them too much to wish for that—but the kind that made hands clench and timing slip.
He cut at timing.
Every time a spear should have landed, he was somewhere else by a finger's width. Every time a shield should have interposed, he had already bent its carrier with a heel to the knee. When a blade finally caught his flank and tore a long strip free, he didn't curse; he drove his forehead into the attacker's nose and finished the sentence with a cut under the ribs. "Worth it."
He let the Eucharist Chalice pulse once more—brief, controlled—enough to close the worst leaks, to quiet the tremor in the right hand where the earlier impact had rattled bone. He refused to flood himself with light. Too much sanctity numbed the edges he needed.
He kept moving angry and clear.
Two new healers stepped into a gap with clean faces and steady hands. Replacements. He didn't give them the comfort of a first full note. The Chain snapped around their necks and yanked them together hard enough to make their foreheads crack. His scythes went through the backs of both skulls in one motion. He let the bodies fall and stepped away before the blood finished spraying.
The host finally tried to retreat the rear arc a little, to get those who remained out of reach of his storm. He didn't let them. He ricocheted off a shield with his shoulder, felt something grind in the joint, ignored it, and dropped into the pocket they'd left by moving. The Reaver carved a chevron through three more singers. One lived for a breath with half a face, hands still raised out of habit, mouth opening and closing around the hymn that wasn't there. Noctis opened the rest of him so he could stop trying.
"Two down," he told the wind, remembering his promise from the moment he'd thrown the first Chains. "And more to go."
The sky stank of iron and hot feathers. His forearms were slick to the elbow. Each beat of his wings left a wobble he could feel in the bones. The halo still carved bright arcs behind his skull. He tasted ash and salt and the sweet metallic after of angelic marrow.
He looked over the field once—fast, practiced. The back band: broken places, staggered places, a few clean columns still holding. Front lines: rallied, but moving around holes. The storm: still grinding. The Chains: ready to bite again. His body: hurt, workable.
He set himself for another run and spoke without looking at anyone, just into the same air he was using to live.
"Keep healing," he said. "I'll keep killing."
He leveled the Reaver and went back in.
The sky was a furnace of wings and hymn. Voices locked together, shields layered into walls, spears thrusting in rhythm. Even with columns broken and bodies falling, the choir still sang. The host refused silence.
Noctis's breath came rough through blood. His jaw dripped red, his shoulder dragged fire where bone had cracked, and one wing stuttered on every beat. His halo still burned, arcs leaving scars in the clouds, and his eyes stayed locked on the back band. The healers.
They had staggered their columns now, learned from the ruin he'd cut. Breaths alternated, hands shifted, so when one voice broke another caught the hymn. Good discipline. He respected it. He would still end it.
He angled his wings and dropped. The front wedge lifted shields and spears in perfect timing. He hit them full, let the impact split blood across his chest, and forced his way through. His Reaver split a shield rim to spine, claws tore another throat, scythes carved knees out from under two more. He forced a path the way a boulder forces a stream to move around it.
The healers braced. Palms lifted. Light gathered.
Noctis smiled through blood. "Now you break."
He pulled everything at once.
Sovereign's Crucible IX ignited around him, veins burning hot as forges. Light cracked as marrow seized in fifty bodies at once. Angels froze mid-flight, jaws locked, wings stuttering. Shields sagged. Spears tipped.
Crimson Tempest Dominion IX roared in, a hurricane of red-black wind that burned sanctity out of the air. Feathers ignited, wings tore, armor cracked. The storm bit deeper the longer they stayed inside it. Screams rose, sharp and human under the hymn.
He held nothing back.
Eucharist Chalice IX pulsed through his chest. His broken wing knit enough to drive again, sternum holding where sanctity had split it. Pain dulled just enough to keep breath steady. The glow seared into him, part healing, part fire.
Then the trap. Sovereign Chains IX lashed the air, a web of blood-iron links snapping shut across the back band. Chains coiled throats, wrists, wings, holding them in crosses and knots. The healers jerked, voices strangled in their own throats. Light faltered in their palms.
"No song," Noctis snarled. "No light."
He dove.
The first healer gagged against a chain, eyes wide as Noctis's blade found him. The Reaver cut clean through collarbone and chest, marrow spilling into the storm. The body twitched once before falling.
The second tried to force a hymn through a crushed throat. Noctis ripped the jaw off with one hand and split the chest with the scythes. The body sagged, blood spraying in ribbons that painted his armor.
"Two," Noctis muttered, counting, then pushed on.
Chains yanked three more healers into a knot. Their hands still glowed faint, trying to hold a chord together. Noctis drove his halo through them. Halo Severance II cut necks and wrists alike, arcs slicing clean through. Heads fell in slow arcs, wings folding as bodies tumbled into the sea below.
The hymn cracked. The host buckled. Shields dipped, spears slipped, lines shuddered.
"Fall!" Noctis roared. His voice carried over the hymn, blunt and brutal. "Fall with them!"
He smashed through the front line. His claws ripped through armor, tore ribs open, crushed spines in fists. The Reapers spun wider, cutting wings in half, leaving bodies tumbling blind. Blood sprayed in sheets, feathers drifted like black snow.
The healers tried to catch rhythm again. Noctis saw the desperation in their hands, the tremor under their arms. He laughed through blood. "Still trying? Pointless."
He snapped another chain, dragged a healer down by the neck, and impaled him on a scythe. The body twitched, hymn sputtered, blood poured. The next healer screamed voicelessly, light faltering, and Noctis tore him open with claws.
One by one, the back band died.
By the end of the pass, five healers hung in chains, bodies slashed, blood dripping steady trails. The hymn was thinner now, jagged and desperate, no longer smooth and perfect. The host flinched each time he turned toward them.
Noctis hovered, breath rough, chest smoking, wings trembling under blood and fire. He lifted the Reaver, its blade dripping red.
"You healers are finished," he said flat. "The rest of you are next."
He dove again, halo blazing, storm raging. The sky filled with feathers, blood, and broken hymn.