The fou Seres, Gretel, Gaellum, and Lycor, observed the fight and decided to help by forming a plan to extract the Fragment, using the fact that Uriel's creature kept the beast occupied.
The plan was risky, but they executed it. Gretel used her most powerful enchantments to restrain the Great Beast, even if only for a half a millisecond.
Lycor summoned fierce gusts of wind. Gaellum used his Aspect to try and cut the Great Beast's body, though his sword was incapable of making even a scratch.
The Great Beast focused on them, beginning to attack, but Fallen stopped her, saving their lives over and over. Every movement of Isis was a deadly whirlwind; her fists cut through the air with a whistle promising instant death.
Gretel shouted ancient words, and chains of spectral light emerged from the ground, entangling themselves around Isis's ankles.
It was only for a blink, but it was enough for Fallen to drive his dark daggers into the beast's shoulders, immobilizing her for a crucial instant.
"Now, Lycor!" shouted Gaellum.
The Noble Devil concentrated all his essence. The winds in the hall, once chaotic, united into a single beam as sharp as a guillotine's blade—a miniature cyclone that crashed against Isis's chest, precisely where the Fragment glowed.
It did not cut the flesh, but the impact forced the beast back a step, her white dress tearing. The crystal in her chest flickered, and for the first time, an expression of pain—or perhaps surprise—crossed her beautiful face.
Seres, seeing the opening, acted on pure instinct. She didn't have a powerful attack, but she had speed. She channeled her essence into her legs and launched herself like lightning, not towards Isis, but towards a tall column near the throne. Her feet struck the stone, propelling her in an impossible leap over the beast's head.
From above, with gravity as her ally, she descended like a meteor, not with a weapon, but with her hands extended towards that glittering crystal.
Isis, still recovering from the wind blow, turned her head upward. Her blue eyes met Seres's. In them, there was no madness, no corruption, only infinite sadness and ancient power. Fallen, seeing the danger, dematerialized and reappeared behind Isis, trying to immobilize her arms.
Seres's fingers brushed the edge of the crystal. A discharge of pure energy, as sacred as it was devastating, coursed through her arm. She felt as if her soul were burning and purifying at the same time. A scream choked in her throat.
Isis, feeling the contact, roared. Not with beastly rage, but with a sound of betrayal and agony that resonated in the castle's foundations.
---
Outside, under the eternally twilight sky, the clash was of titanic proportions.
Gunlaug coiled in the air against the Titan. The latter was a nightmare made flesh: decomposing feathers dripping black ichor, a cracked beak from which emanated the laments of the spirits trapped around its body in a perpetual aura of torment.
Their collisions were not simple blows. They were cataclysms. When the dragon unleashed a breath of golden fire and shadow, the vulture responded with a shriek that tore the air and launched projectiles of tormented souls. The shockwaves from their encounters shook the remains of the surrounding buildings, reducing towers to rubble.
Gunlaug fought with the ferocity of a Transcendent, his claws seeking to tear out the corrupted eyes of the vulture while dodging the thrusts of the beak that could pierce mountains.
The dragon sought not only to defeat; he sought to redeem. In each of Gunlaug's roars, there was an order, an attempt to free the tormented spirits that fueled the vulture's corruption. But the Titan was an opponent of similar power, hardened by centuries of feeding on the despair of the city trapped in the cycle.
---
On the ground, at the foot of the castle, the scene was chaos of pure instinct and death.
The sea of Corrupted creatures—a twisted mass of claws, tentacles, mouths, and forms defying description—clashed against the lines of the Corrupted controlled by Soul.
The latter, though equally monstrous in appearance, moved with eerie synergy, like extensions of a single will.
Soul, in her form as a titanic tree again, did not fight directly. She was the nerve center, the consciousness directing the battle. Her roots sank into the earth, not to absorb nutrients, but to feel every vibration, the flow of the essence of thousands of combatants. Her branches, now stripped of fruit, swayed gently, and with each movement, waves of purple mental energy swept across the battlefield.
This energy did not harm her servants. Instead, it disorganized the already fractured minds of the enemy Corrupted, making them turn on each other, freeze in confusion, or charge in useless directions. Soul watched with her calculating, cold eyes.
Every Corrupted that fell under her will's control was another resource. Every enemy destroyed by her hordes was another step toward the castle.
But the numbers were overwhelming. For every Corrupted that Soul dominated or annihilated, two more seemed to emerge from the ruins, drawn by the clamor of battle and the scent of essence in the air. The battle was a gigantic tug-of-war, a feast of violence under the imperturbable gaze of the Transcendent maiden-tree.
She knew her role was not to win the war on the field. It was to keep the path clear. It was to contain the tide so that, inside the castle, her father and his strange allies would have the chance to do the impossible: tear out the heart of the nightmare that had consumed this city for millennia.
---
Back in the throne room, Seres's fingers, charred and smoking, closed with desperate force around the crystal embedded in Isis's chest.
An indescribable agony, a mixture of sacred fire and corrupt ice, burned her nerves. But she did not let go.
Isis roared, this time with pure, visceral fury. The sound made the remaining stained glass high in the hall tremble. With a superhuman twisting movement, she freed herself from Fallen's partial grip and, shaking her body, threw Seres through the air as if she were a rag doll.
Seres flew backward, but the sensation of that crystal under her fingers, its heat and power, was etched in her mind. Isis, with blue eyes now incandescent with rage, focused on her. In an instant, the distance between them disappeared. Isis was upon the fallen princess, her fist rising to turn her skull to dust.
Seres opened her eyes, seeing death descend. But just before impact, a thick wall of rock, black as night, emerged from the ground between them with a dull roar. Isis's fist crashed against the rock, shattering it into a thousand pieces, but the force was dampened, and the lethal blow was deflected. Fragments of stone flew like shrapnel.
It was Uriel. He had reformed his body from shadow and intervened in the last millisecond, his will shaping the darkness solid as a shield.
The moment of distraction was enough. Fallen arrived like a silent lightning bolt, not with daggers this time, but unsheathing a long two-handed sword of a dark, matte metal that seemed to absorb light. He wielded it with lethal precision, resuming hand-to-hand combat with renewed ferocity.
Fallen's blows were different now. Where before his attacks sought to immobilize or distract, now they sought to dismember. The black sword left deep grooves in Isis's arms, torso, and legs. For the first time, the Great Beast bled: a dark blackish liquid that fell to the stone floor while the light from the Fragment created a macabre contrast. Before their eyes, the deep wounds began to close, the flesh regenerating at a monstrous speed.
The Fragment in her chest pulsed powerfully, feeding her healing. Fallen, however devastating, could not inflict damage at a rate greater than she could repair.
The group quickly gathered, panting, in a corner of the devastated hall. Seres held her right arm, which throbbed with agonizing pain; her hand was blackened and blistered.
"It's useless," panted Gaellum, watching Isis's wounds vanish. "Cutting her does nothing! That thing heals instantly!"
"The Fragment," coughed Seres, pain clouding her voice. "We have to... take it out. I felt it. It's the source. Without it, she's vulnerable."
Lycor observed the fight, his devil eyes analyzing every movement. "Fallen keeps her busy, but he can't do it forever. Her regeneration is an infinite cycle. We need to break that cycle, to extract the source."
Gretel, pale but with determination in her gaze, spoke quickly. "The Fragment is sacred. Its energy is the opposite of the corruption that transformed her, but it's also what keeps her alive. It's a paradox. If we tear it out abruptly, the energy explosion could be catastrophic... for her and for us."
"Then we don't tear it out," said Seres, with a flash of understanding in her eyes. "We isolate it."
"How?" asked Gaellum.
"Uriel," said Seres, looking at the stone saint who remained on the periphery, his dark form fluctuating. "You control darkness. Darkness can smother, can suppress. Can you... envelop the Fragment? Cut its connection to her, even if just for a few seconds?"
Uriel made an affirmative gesture with what seemed to be his head. "It's possible. But it requires extreme precision and for her to be completely immobilized. A second of error, and my darkness could corrupt the Fragment or fuse with its energy... with unpredictable results."
"That gives us a window," said Lycor, his mind working at full speed. "A plan in three parts. One: we immobilize the beast. Two: Uriel suppresses the Fragment. Three: the final blow, while she's vulnerable."
"Fallen is already on part one," said Gaellum, watching how the dark warrior deflected another devastating attack. "But he needs more. Gretel, do you have something stronger? Something that binds her completely, even for a longer instant?"
Gretel nodded, taking from her bag an ancient scroll tied with a ribbon that flashed with runes of suppression. "This... this is a rooting spell. It will bind her body to this place, to the ground itself. But the caster will be exhausted. And it will only work if her guard is lowered by a massive distraction."
"I'll be the distraction," said Lycor, his eyes shining with a tempestuous wind light. "I'll concentrate all my power, all my cores, into a single attack of compressed wind. Not to wound her, but to push her with all the force of the sky against that wall. It should unbalance her, make her focus on not being crushed."
"And I," said Seres, her voice firm despite the pain, "the moment Uriel isolates the Fragment... I'll go for it. My hand already touched it. I feel that... there's a connection. Maybe I can hold it a moment longer this time."
Gaellum placed a hand on Seres's shoulder. "You won't go alone. My Aspect can't cut her, but perhaps I can channel it through my sword at the exact moment, to weaken the point where the Fragment joins her flesh. I'll be a wedge, to help you."
Fallen, as if he had heard the plan through his bond with Uriel or simply by battle instinct, changed his tactic. He stopped seeking deep wounds and began to harass Isis with a series of fast, disconcerting attacks, pushing her, spinning around her, forcing her to move her feet, to occupy her mind with defense, slowly driving her towards the sturdiest wall in the hall, one of solid, unadorned stone.
The group exchanged one last look. There was no time for more discussion. "Now!" shouted Seres.
The Wind Devil rose a few centimeters off the ground. Around him, the air began to whistle, then to roar. It condensed, visible as a violent silver mist, spinning around him before compressing into a single point in front of his extended hands. All sound of the battle seemed to be absorbed by that miniature vortex.
With a scream that tore his throat, Lycor released the attack. A cylinder of pure, destructive wind, so dense it seemed solid, shot across the hall like a cannon blast from a god. It wasn't aimed directly at Isis, but at the space in front of her, to create a wall of unstoppable force.
Instinctively, Isis crossed her arms and braced herself against the wall behind her. The impact was monumental. The stone wall cracked in a giant spiderweb pattern. Isis was embedded in it, her arms pinned to her sides by the inhuman pressure, her feet suspended centimeters off the ground. A grunt of effort escaped her lips.
"Gretel, now!" ordered Seres.
Gretel untied the scroll and began to recite in a forgotten tongue. The runes on the ribbon shone with a blinding white light before disintegrating. From the scroll emerged chains of geometric energy, made of light and rays that shot towards Isis. They didn't entangle her body, but instead anchored themselves in the ground at her feet and the wall at her back, sealing her in a prison of pure enchanted runes. Gretel fell to her knees, her face bathed in sweat, exhausted from using all her essence in that enchantment.
Isis struggled. The wall cracked a bit more. The chains of light flickered dangerously. But for a moment, she was immobilized.
"Uriel!" shouted Seres.
The stone saint merged into a liquid shadow that flowed across the floor, separating from Fallen, at incredible speed. Reaching Isis's feet, the shadow rose like a black wave, but instead of attacking, it thinned, becoming precise. It transformed into the finest filaments of absolute darkness that, like the roots of a voracious plant, inserted themselves with millimeter care around the edge of the crystal in Isis's chest. They did not touch the flesh. They surrounded only the jewel, weaving a black, opaque dome around it.
The effect was instantaneous. The Fragment's light, once constant and pulsating, dimmed until it almost disappeared within its shadow prison. Isis stopped struggling for an instant. A spasm of true panic crossed her face. The regeneration in her wounds stopped dead. The incisions made by Fallen remained open, dripping that blackish liquid.
"Gaellum!" ordered Seres, and both lunged forward.
Gaellum shouted, and his Knight's Aspect shone with a silver light. He channeled all that energy not into his body, but into the tip of his sword, which began to vibrate with a high-pitched hum. With a precise movement, he drove the tip of the blade right into the lower edge of the crystal, at the point where the stone seemed to fuse with Isis's skin. He did not cut, but acted as a lever, a wedge of sacred energy trying to separate the divine from the corrupt.
A sound of shattering crystal, fine and sharp, filled the air.
"Now, Seres!" shouted Gaellum, his arms trembling from the effort of maintaining the pressure.
Seres extended her wounded, blackened hand. The pain was unbearable, but she ignored it. Her mind was focused only on that point of union, on the small space that Gaellum's wedge and Uriel's shadow had created. Her trembling fingers found the edge of the crystal again.
This time, there was no explosion of pain. There was a resistance, a deep and ancient bond refusing to yield. But there was also a crack, a weakness exploited by the combined plan.
With a scream that erupted from the depths of her being, Seres pulled.
The will of a princess who had seen her kingdom threatened, that of an ally who would not abandon her new companions, that of a young woman determined to end this once and for all.
Seres continued pulling on the bright Fragment, trying to separate it from the body of the great creature that struggled to free itself from its bonds.
'Just a little more!' Seres mentally screamed.
The great creature did something strange. It opened its mouth wide, and an inhuman scream emerged from its throat.