The hymn was no longer whole. It rasped and cracked, stretched thin across broken columns. Where once the song had pressed like a wall of light, now it stuttered, voices missing, chords bleeding.
Noctis's chest was a map of cuts. His wing roots burned with every beat. His arms dripped steady red down to his gauntlets. His halo still burned behind nine horns, arcs searing faint scars in the clouds. His breath steamed blood into the cold air. He was tired—but not finished.
The healers still sang. Not many, not whole, but enough to stitch flesh and keep wings aloft. Enough to make the battle drag on.
Noctis spat blood from his mouth, grinned through crimson teeth, and pointed the Reaver toward them. "I told you. You're first."
He dove.
The front line tried to harden, shields locked, spears braced, wings beating in rhythm. They had already lost too much. The storm chewed their timing, the Crucible boiled their marrow, the Chains dragged wrists and throats into binds. Noctis went through like a blade through wet wood.
The Reaver split a shield and the man behind it. His claws ripped another's face into blood and bone. His scythes cut wide, taking ankles, spraying feathers and screams into the air.
He was inside the healers again.
One raised both hands, light flooding. Noctis snarled, snapped a Chain around the wrist, and yanked. The elbow bent backward with a loud pop. He tore the head off with claws before the hymn could rebuild.
"Another."
Two more stood shoulder to shoulder, voices braided. He let the Reapers spin past them—scythes carving both at waist height. Their halves tumbled apart, blood misting in a red sheet. Their voices ended mid-note.
The hymn buckled again, stuttered thin.
They tried to spread out, each healer drifting to sing alone so he couldn't kill them in clumps. He laughed through his breath. "Spread wide. Makes it easier."
He dropped on the farthest, dove straight through three interceptors, and tore the chanter in half before the shield wall could close. His scythes tore wings from the escorts, bodies spiraling down like burning ash.
"Four."
He dragged himself higher, panting. The hymn was barely a song now, thin threads pulled taut. He heard the cracks, the desperate rhythm, the way voices shook when they should have been steady. He dove again.
The healers raised hands, too slow. The Reaver slashed, scythes swept, claws raked. Three more fell, blood raining down into the sea. The rest broke formation, voices faltering. He chased them one by one.
Chains lashed, dragging one into his grip. He cut him open from spine to throat and hurled the corpse at the next. The second stumbled, hymn caught in his throat. Noctis slammed him with a claw, shattering ribs, then finished with the Reaver.
Bodies fell like torn banners.
The last column tried to flee higher. Their voices wavered as they rose. Noctis beat ruined wings harder, ignoring pain, driving after them. His halo flared, arcs slashing the sky.
"Run," he growled. "It won't save you."
He caught them before they could climb free. His storm roared up, the wind chewing feathers and blood out of the air. His scythes cut their wings, his claws tore their throats, the Reaver split their bodies. Their hymn ended in screams and silence.
When it was over, the back band was gone. The healers were broken bodies falling into the sea. Blood trailed behind them like banners. Feathers drifted down in black snow.
The sky was quieter. Not silent—never silent, not with a hundred warriors still alive—but thinner, weaker. The pressure of the hymn had collapsed into something jagged and desperate.
Noctis hovered in the middle of the wreckage, body dripping, armor scorched, halo blazing. His breath came ragged. He grinned anyway.
"No more healing," he said, voice flat, carrying across the sky. "Now you bleed."
The remaining angels surged, lines closing tight. They came with blades bright and faces hard. No voices in the back to carry them now. Only steel and wings and the hymn of the fighters.
Noctis leveled the Reaver, blood running off the blade in steady drops.
"Good," he said. "Now it's just us."
And he drove forward into their waiting swords.
The sky was empty. No feathers drifted. No hymn pressed. The silence was heavier than the chant had ever been.
One day had passed since the host first descended. One day of blades and wings and fire, of marrow burning under hymn, of attrition that wore even him down.
The sea below was slick with corpses. Angels drifted like shattered banners, wings broken, bodies bobbing red in the waves. Stone from the temples had fallen into the water and burned white under sanctity before going dark. The air stank of blood, smoke, and iron.
On the broken ground of one floating isle, Noctis stood.
Not whole.
Three wings were gone—nothing left but torn roots and seared stumps that smoked faintly in the cold wind. His right arm had been ripped away at the elbow. In its place, a length of blood had been hardened into shape, a crimson arm that dripped steadily but moved like steel. His chest was a map of cuts, his halo faint, arcs guttering weakly. His breath came ragged.
But his eyes still burned.
Around him, the corpses of one hundred and forty-six angels lay scattered. Their armor was split. Their wings were torn. Their blood had painted the stone in slick rivers.
Only four still stood.
They circled him, wings beating ragged, armor scorched, blades bright. Their hymn was faint now, four voices holding together a threadbare chord. Thin. Shaking. But still enough to bite.
Noctis tightened his grip on the Reaver with his blood arm. The weapon hummed faint, aura running through it. His scythes spun slower now, orbit dragged by exhaustion. He still smiled, teeth red with his own blood.
"Four left," he said, voice low, almost casual. "Come finish it."
They came.
One dove straight, blade aimed for his chest. Another circled wide left, spear angled low. The third rose high, sword poised to cut from above. The fourth hung back, wings spread, light pooling in hands for a desperate sanctity strike.
Noctis snarled and moved.
He caught the first strike on his shoulder, steel grinding into bone. Pain flared white. He let it in, then shoved the Reaver upward, splitting the angel's face open from chin to scalp. Blood sprayed hot. The body sagged, wings folding, and fell.
"Three."
The spear jabbed for his thigh. He snapped the shaft with his blood arm, claws lashing forward to tear the wielder's throat. The angel gasped, blood fountaining. Noctis shoved him back with a boot, watched him stumble before collapsing.
"Two."
The sword came from above. His halo flickered weak, arcs not strong enough to sever. He ducked instead, rolling with one good wing, and slammed his scythes upward. They carved through belly and ribs. The angel screamed soundless, wings spasming, before falling in halves to the ground.
"One."
The last hung back, hands glowing, light swelling to a burning chord. The hymn trembled. The angel forced the last of his marrow into it, a Tier IX strike poured from dying lungs.
Noctis stood in its path.
The light burned across his chest, splitting flesh, tearing open ribs. His halo cracked. His blood arm sputtered, dripping into mist. He staggered, one knee slamming stone. His breath came in a ragged cough, blood splattering the ground.
The angel landed, sword raised, ready to finish.
Noctis grinned through blood. "Good. Hurt me. I'll remember you."
He surged up, drove the Reaver through the angel's chest, and split him open until the hymn shattered. Blood poured over his hands. The last voice cut out mid-note.
Silence fell.
Noctis stood swaying, one arm gone, three wings torn, body torn apart. His breath rattled in his chest, shallow and sharp. His blood arm dripped to nothing, fading back into mist. He clenched his teeth, forced his legs to stay locked.
All around him, the battlefield was bodies. One hundred and fifty angels reduced to corpses and ash. Their feathers drifted in clumps across the ruined stone. Their blood soaked into the cracks.
Noctis threw his head back and laughed, raw and broken, voice echoing across the dead sky.
"Finished."
He dropped to one knee, chest heaving, blood running steady from his mouth. He was still alive, still sovereign, but even his body had limits.
The ground beneath him was soaked in red. His claws dug into it, and he leaned forward, eyes still burning, smile carved into his face.
"One day," he muttered. "One day, and all of you gone."
And then he let his body sag, breath coming shallow, still grinning through blood.
The battle did not end when the healers fell.
Their hymn broke, but the warriors kept their blades raised. Ninety angels, wings bloodied, armor split, voices hoarse from singing alone, still came on. The air was thick with iron and ash, and the silence between hymns was filled only by the beating of wings and the crack of steel.
Noctis floated above the wreckage, blood soaking his chest, smoke rising from his ribs where sanctity still burned. His right arm was gone from the elbow down, replaced by a construct of blood essence, pulsing and dripping but strong enough to hold the Twilight Reaver. His wings were shredded; two feathers fell each time he moved. His halo flickered, arcs sputtering like an ember in the wind.
Still he bared his fangs in a grin.
"You'll bleed slower without your choir," he said, voice raw, "but you'll bleed all the same."
They answered with silence, blades raised. The hymn resumed in a broken thread.
They charged.
The first wedge hit with spears low. Noctis stepped through marrow and shadow—Dominion Step IX—and reappeared above them. His phantom double slashed once before fading, a clean cut across three throats. The Reaver came down into the wedge, splitting a shield and the body behind it. His scythes cut low, trimming ankles, spraying blood in wide arcs.
Eight angels fell in the first clash. Their wings folded as they tumbled down, blood streaking behind them.
The rest closed in, blades shining. Noctis hissed as one struck his shoulder, sanctity slicing through muscle. He twisted, claws catching the angel's helm and crushing the skull in his hand.
"That hurt," he spat, blood dripping from his teeth. "You'll pay for it."
He fought them for hours.
Every exchange left him bleeding. A spear tore his thigh open to the bone; he answered by driving the Reaver through its wielder's chest. A sword cut one of his wings clean away; he roared and bit into the angel's throat, tearing it out with his fangs. His blood arm cracked under strain, dripping faster, but he reforged it mid-swing with marrow essence, then cleaved a helm in half.
By midday, thirty more angels had fallen. Their bodies burned as they hit the sea below, leaving floating corpses like shattered banners. Noctis landed on a crumbling platform of temple stone, chest heaving. His halo flickered, arcs sputtering weak.
Wings beat overhead. Fifty remained, circling like hawks.
He grinned through blood and raised the Reaver. "Come down, then."
They did.
A spear came low, another high. He twisted, taking both into his body, then dragged them deeper and closer. He ripped the spear shafts in opposite directions, tearing the angels together into his claws. He crushed one skull, split the other open at the ribs. Blood soaked him from chest to knees.
They screamed without words, a sound between hymn and rage.
By dusk, only twenty were left.
Noctis stood in the wreckage, barely upright. His chest was a ruin, ribs showing through burned flesh. His halo sputtered, arcs barely visible. He had only three wings left; the others had been ripped or burned away. One beat sent pain screaming through his back. His blood arm dripped constantly, weaker now, but still clutching the Reaver.
The bodies of seventy more angels lay around him. Broken armor, severed wings, blood pooled across the stone. Feathers floated like snow in the air, catching the dimming light.
The survivors circled, their discipline unbroken, but their faces showed strain. Blood dripped down their chins. Their armor was scorched. Their eyes flickered with exhaustion. Still they came.
They dived in trios, trying to keep him boxed. Noctis fought them one by one, his strikes slower but heavier. He caught a sword on his claw and snapped it, then rammed the broken blade into its owner's chest. He spun the Reaver and cleaved another in two, blood spraying across the stone. His scythes caught a wing and tore it off; the angel screamed as it fell.
By nightfall, only ten remained.
Noctis staggered, knees weak. His chest rattled with each breath. Blood ran down his legs, each step leaving a dark print on the stone. His grin was still there, jagged and cruel.
The last ten circled him, hymn thin and desperate.
He dragged the Reaver up, blood dripping from its edge. "Come," he rasped.
They obeyed.
They hit him all at once. Blades tore into his chest, sanctity burning deep. He howled, fangs bared, and let his Frenzy edge show. He tore with claws, ripping one's ribs apart. His scythes spun wide, cutting three throats. The Reaver came down and split a helm. He crushed another's skull with his blood arm, marrow spraying across his face.
Six fell in that clash.
The last four pulled back, wings beating steady, forming a circle above him.
Noctis staggered, body dripping blood, his halo faint, arcs barely glowing. Three wings gone, one arm replaced by blood, chest split wide, ribs burned through. He stood among the corpses of one hundred and forty-six angels. Their blood soaked the stone. Their feathers lay in drifts around him.
The last four hovered, blades raised, wings spread. Light began to gather in their hands, bright and steady, braiding into one.
Noctis lifted his head, blood running from his mouth, and bared his teeth.
"Come," he rasped.
The final four prepared to strike.
The last four did not descend. They rose.
Wings beat in perfect tempo. Their blades lifted until the edges met. Light threaded between them like wire pulled hot from a forge. The broken hymn steadied — not words, only pressure, the sound of a chapel inhaling before a bell hits.
Noctis stood ankle-deep in blood and feathers. Wind tore at the shreds of his cloak. His blood arm trembled and recomposed in a stuttering pulse, marrow shivering against sanctity still embedded in his ribs.
He drew breath through scorched lungs and set his feet.
"Come on," he rasped.
The light braided tighter.
He felt it before it struck — sanctity drawn past the limits of tier and rite, braided and interlocked until the sky itself seemed to harden. The air went thin. Stone under his feet crisped, hairline fractures racing out from his heels.
He lifted both hands, fingers crooked like talons, and tore open his lattice.
Sovereign Bulwark IX.
The ward slammed into existence with the weight of a dropped gate. Crimson plates locked; a false radiance bled through them, catching the angelic charge and bending it inside the shell. Threads from Benediction and Shroud snapped into the frame. His Grid hissed as it drank against the stream, turning prayer into feed, eating what it could and spitting fire from the rest.
The first touch of their light hit like a hammer into the barrel of a cannon.
The ward held for half a breath.
Then the blast arrived.
It wasn't a beam. It was pressure that took the shape of light — a cathedral's tower swung like a cudgel. It struck the Bulwark and blew the first plate backward into his chest. Ribs cracked. His halo spat sparks and went dull. The shell buckled, screaming, folding around him as sanctity poured through seams and split every stitch of shadow he'd laced there.
Noctis layered again, teeth bared — Command Nexus threads yanked in, Radiant Barrier inverted and added as a second skin. He forced the crack shut with will and iron.
The light didn't stop.
It drove down through him, through stone, punching a shaft into the ruin. Feathers seared to ash midair. Blood on the floor turned white and lifted like smoke. The blast bored him into the slab until the slab failed, and he fell with it — three layers of temple, each shattering under his back, each one slowing the strike by an inch and that inch costing him more of himself.
Sovereign Bulwark fractured.
It went all at once. Plates burst into shards, crimson and pale, and the sanctity behind them slammed into his body naked. His chest opened again, not a cut but an absence where the light passed and refused to remember him. One wing unraveled from shoulder to tip, vanishing into drifting motes. The blood arm detonated at the elbow, splashing the chamber with a sheet of red that boiled as soon as it landed.
He struck the next floor and kept going. Stone columns broke like teeth. He tumbled, hit, slid, and finally stopped with his back wedged into a corner of blackened steps, rubble buried up to his waist.
Silence returned in pieces — dust pattering, burned feathers falling, the dry crackle of hot stone cooling.
He tried to stand. His legs answered, but the answer came from a distance, like he had shouted down a well and the reply had to climb back. He pushed with what remained of his arm and got his shoulders off the floor. That was enough. He sat in wreckage with light-burns crawling down his chest like frost, breath sawing in and out, eyes steady.
Above, the four angels hovered in the vertical shaft the blast had cored. They were white with ash and blood, faces blank with discipline. One had lost most of a wing and hung crooked; another's helm was split. Their hands still glowed dull, the after-image of the strike simmering in their bones.
Noctis rolled his jaw, tasted iron and sanctity both, and forced his lattice to open a finger's width.
Sanctity Inversion: a trickle only. Chalice bled where it could, dragging the residual glow off his wounds and folding it into dark. It gave him a second of breath and a cut's worth of pain withdrawn. Not enough.
He pulled for more and felt the answer: slow. The Tier X braid had scoured his pathways. Everything in him moved like a man running in water.
He laughed once, a short broken sound.
"Good," he muttered. "Make it fair."
They answered with what they had — no speech, only the set of their shoulders and the steady beat of wings.
They dove.
He moved to meet them and learned his speed by the distance he failed to cover. Dominion Step caught, flickered, and dragged him a body-length sideways instead of across the shaft. His phantom burned out in a single slash and left a smear of shadow on the air.
The first blade found his shoulder socket and bit deep. The second drove at his stomach. He turned into it and took the point under the ribs instead of through the spine. The third spear hit the rock beside his head and cracked it. The fourth slid along his jaw and stripped flesh to bone from ear to lip.
He snarled and answered by habit and precision. Claw into the joint at the elbow: snap. Twist and pull the helmed head down into his knee: crunch. Reaver up from the floor in a tight arc that started at hip and ended cutting a gorget apart: spray.
Sanctity burned everything it touched. Each kill gave him blood and each drop of blood fought him, hissing as it crossed his teeth. He drank anyway. His Grid took what it could and rejected the rest as steam curling from his tongue.
They broke off and rose, wings beating dust into spirals. He pushed to his feet. Stone slipped under him and he planted the Reaver to stay upright. The blade's weight grounded him. The chamber stank of cooked iron and marrow.
The four separated. They didn't try another braid. They split him.
One came low, spear yawing for his thigh again. He stepped, slow but exact, and let it graze and stick in the rubbled steps. He stamped, pinned it, and dragged the angel down the shaft's edge. The Reaver fell like an axe. Two pieces.
The second hit from behind. He didn't have the speed to turn. He drove his shoulder back instead, caught armor to armor, and let bones in both bodies crack. Pain went white; his vision narrowed; he bit drawing breath and tasted his own blood cooked raw. He hooked his free arm around a neck and closed his hand. Vertabrae popped under his fingers. He tore the head off and threw it into the shaft.
The third and fourth struck together, blades crossing. He raised what remained of his halo and it flashed once, a ring of dead gold that shrugged one cut to the side and failed to stop the other. The sword went in under his left clavicle and out his back. He screamed and didn't hear it. His Reaver bit the attacker in half out of reflex. The blade stuck in bone on the far side. He wrenched and tore it free, leaving a rib behind.
He went to one knee.
The last angel saw it and did not hurry. It straightened, feathers lifting in the warm air. Its blade pointed down. The hymn in its chest was a thread pulled smooth and unbroken. It stepped forward along the broken steps, each foot placed with the deliberation of a rite.
Noctis tasted dust. He could not feel three fingers on his remaining hand. His vision crawled with black at the edges. Everything inside him that moved without asking — the small repairs, the quiet drains, the nightly reserves — were wrecked and slow. Pain had weight.
He set the Reaver across his knee and looked up into a face that would not speak to him.
"Again," he whispered.
The angel obliged.
It dropped like judgment. Blade forward, wing-beat hard enough to shove rubble across the floor, sanctity riding the edge like heat off a kiln. Noctis lifted the Reaver to parry and felt his arm fail at the elbow. The sword came down and would have split his skull.
He stepped — not far, not fast, a broken sideways slide that bought him the width of a hand. The blade took his ear instead of his head. He drove his own up from below, catching the angel in the soft under-guard just above the hip. The edge rang on spine. He pushed until it bit. The angel screamed — not words, only metal and choir — and hammered down with its cross-guard into his face.
Something broke in him again. He didn't check what.
They separated a body's length. Both staggered. Both bled.
The angel came once more, steady as a bell swing. He met it with nothing ornate — a short cut, a twist, the ugly answer of a fighter trying to stay upright. Their blades kissed and scraped. The sanctity on its edge walked across his knuckles and laid them open to bone. He let go of the Reaver with that hand and let the pain turn him rude. He bit the angel's exposed wrist. Teeth met through glove and skin and tendon. He tore. Blood hit his tongue like hot coin.
It ripped back. He spat a mouthful onto the floor. It flamed.
They stared at each other over a sliding carpet of feathers.
Above, the sky showed through the shaft, a slit of late light. The city beyond burned quietly where stray bolts had fallen. The sea was black with ash and oil where bodies had landed and fire had followed.
Noctis set his feet again and opened his hand.
The angel understood: one more pass.
It rose. He rolled his shoulders and felt the empty place in his chest where light had gone through him like a memory returns. His Grid climbed as far as it could with the damage he had given it and lit three small lamps:
— Inversion, minimum.
— Bulwark, fractured plate.
— Chain, one throw.
He took the last.
The angel dropped. He let it. At the last wing-beat he threw the remnants of Sovereign Chains and they answered like a half-remembered command — not a net, not a web, only three links that landed exactly where he needed them: wrist, ankle, throat.
It hesitated for the first time.
He didn't. He pulled and stepped in through pain and ash and heat, and the Reaver's edge took the angel under the jaw and out through the scalp.
The body folded like a tent collapsing. He kicked it away and it rolled off the broken steps into darkness.
He stood hunched in the wreckage, breath tearing at his chest, the Reaver's tip scraping stone because his hand could not quite lift it clear.
Above him, light moved.
He turned — slow, late — and saw that there were still two.
The one he had split at the waist did not know it had been cut yet. It tried to rise and folded. He watched it with dull attention, making sure it would not stand.
The fourth hovered in the shaft, bright as the first hour of a feast day. Its wing-feathers were blackened and curled. Its helm was gone. Its eyes were the color of a cold bell. Its blade lifted.
Noctis tried to lift his.
His arm did not answer.
The angel fell like a dropped star.
The point of the spear entered above his heart and kept going until it hit stone. The sound it made was small, like a nail driven into old wood.
Noctis's body jerked on instinct. His hands rose and closed around the haft. The sanctity pouring through the shaft pinned him to himself. He opened his mouth and blood fell out. His halo lit once — the weakest arc, a last reflex — and died.
The angel planted both feet on the ruined steps, braced the haft, and pushed forward until they were close enough that he could see his face reflected in the polished metal of its breastplate. He bared his teeth without meaning to. The angel did not blink.
The spear withdrew half a hand's length and drove again, deeper. The floor under his boots cracked. His heart tore.
Everything went quiet.
The angel let go of the haft and stepped back. Wings beat twice. It and the other survivor lifted together, white silhouettes in the shaft, their bodies shaking with exhaustion but holding position.
They watched him sag. They watched his head fall forward. They watched his hands slip from the wood and his fingers drag along it, leaving four black streaks like old handwriting.
They reached down, as though to lift a corpse.
They dragged him off the spear and threw him aside into the debris.
He slid until a broken pillar stopped him. Blood spread under his cheek in a dark fan and kept spreading. His chest moved once, twice, and then struggled to remember how.
The angels hovered, blades low, waiting for the body to stop.
The chamber filled with quiet. Only the crackle of hot stone moved the air.
Noctis lay still. His eyes were open but did not fix on anything. His aura drew in on itself, thin as the filament in a dying lamp.
Above him, the last two circled the shaft once more to be certain.
When they were, they rose.
The sea hissed far below. The sky dimmed to iron.
Noctis did not move.