The cathedral bells were still SCREEEEAMING—!! when they hit the streets.
Shade moved like a phantom through the smoke-choked city, coat snapping behind him as shadows bled from his footsteps. Each overturned lantern guttered out the moment he passed. Every corpse they stepped over twitched—fingers curling, jaws opening in silent, gurgled pleas—as if the darkness wanted to lift them back up and puppeteer their bodies.
Veyra kept pace beside him, chains clattering like WAR DRUMS in a storm. Half the iron links that had once bound her to the execution cross now dragged behind like predatory tails; the other half fused into her armor, thorned coils burrowing deeper into her flesh with every breath. Blood traced molten-red lines down her pale arms, but her grin stretched wider than the Rift that had tried to swallow the world.
"Left!" she barked, voice bright with feral joy. "Templars incoming—smells like incense and cowardice!"
Shade didn't ask how. He just turned.
Twenty Holy Templars stormed around the corner, shields locked, white plate gleaming through the haze. Blessed halberds glowed gold in the rain. Their captain—a stern woman with a surgical scar across her lips—leveled a crystalline spear at him.
"Shade Voss! By order of the Eternal Light, surrender the Calamity Witch and—"
Veyra was already airborne.
Her laugh rang out—KSHAAAA!!—sharp as shattering glass. Chains detonated from her back, and Wrathbinder materialized in her grip: six feet of jagged obsidian wrapped in pulsing pink runes. Heat haze rippled off the blade, carrying the scent of scorched roses.
"Wrong day to pray, bitch."
She swung.
FWOOOOOOOM—!!!
The street lit up crimson.
A single arc of Sinfire tore through stone, shields, armor, and bone. Twelve templars became drifting red mist before sound could reach their throats. The survivors stumbled back, gold barriers flickering like dying fireflies.
Shade watched her, shadows curling tighter around his arms.
Too fast.
Too strong.
And the thorns on her neck were blooming.
"You're bleeding on my boots," he said flatly.
Veyra glanced down—blood dripped freely from her collarbone onto his shadow-drenched feet. She shrugged.
"Adds character. Keep up, pretty boy, or I'll princess-carry you."
A shadow tendril snapped from Shade's sleeve, coiling around her ankle with CRACKLING force.
"Touch me and lose the leg."
She stared down at the tendril, then back up at him, crimson eyes glittering.
"Promise?"
Before he could decide whether to throttle her or himself, the air changed.
Cold.
Unnaturally cold.
Every flame in a hundred meters extinguished at once—FWUP—FWUP—FWUP—as though the night had inhaled them.
A figure stepped from the alley ahead.
Barefoot in the rain. White dress unstained. Long silver hair drifting as if underwater. Violet eyes reflecting lightning in fractured shards.
Seraphine Nocturne tilted her head, observing them with the detached curiosity of a deity studying insects.
"You freed me," she said, her voice soft—multilayered, like a thousand whispers braided into one. "That was… unintended."
Veyra's grin finally wavered.
Shade felt the shadows within him recoil, hissing like cornered beasts.
This woman wasn't human.
Not Abyss-touched.
Not corrupted.
She was the Abyss made flesh.
Seraphine stepped forward. Rain around her froze mid-air, droplets suspended like crystal beads—then winked out of existence, erased.
"I should kill you both," she murmured, almost gently. "The chains you broke were meant to bind me until the stars died. Now the world will burn again, and it will be your fault."
Veyra lifted Wrathbinder, thorns crawling across her cheeks like eager vines.
"Lady, I just met you and I already want to see what color your insides are."
Seraphine smiled—beautiful, serene, catastrophic.
"Pink, I imagine. Like everything else that screams."
Black-white fire—flame that cast no light—spiraled around her fingers.
Shade stepped between them. Shadows rose into a barrier of clawing hands.
"Enough."
Both women paused.
He met Seraphine's gaze without flinching, even as the Hunger gnawed at his ribs, begging him to let it consume her.
"You want to kill us?" he said quietly. "Fine. But not here. Not while the Church is calling every paladin in Elyndor to burn us alive. You want the world to fall? It's already falling. Help us survive the night, witch—and you can end us tomorrow."
Silence.
The kind that feels like the world holding its breath.
The rain resumed, droplets shattering on stone.
Seraphine lowered her hand. The suspended rain dissolved into nothing.
"Tomorrow," she agreed. "I will walk with you until dawn. After that… we will see whose story ends."
Veyra snorted. "Great. Always wanted a suicidal ghost girlfriend."
Seraphine ignored her, drifting past, bare feet leaving no prints.
"Your Hunger is loud," she said to Shade, barely above a whisper. "It sings to mine. Be careful, shadow boy. Some songs only end when the singers are dead."
She vanished deeper into the burning city.
Veyra watched her go, then glanced at Shade.
"You sure about this?"
"No," he admitted, already moving. "But dying alone sounds boring."
Behind them, the cathedral's great bell finally tore free and plunged from the tower, crashing through stone in a rain of fire and rubble.
Ahead, the war horns of the Church HOWLED across Elyndor—every hunter converging on the capital.
And in the forgotten tunnels beneath the city, something ancient stirred, following the scent of three broken souls.
The night was young.
And the Abyss was starving.