They were severely outnumbered.
A battalion member fell before her, his head turned a sickening direction. His eyes were wholly black, drained of life.
Steel clashed. Magic screamed as the air thickened with ash and war cries.
Maris raised her hands, her power sang to her. Too loud. Too wild. She fought to shape it like scholars had taught her, like she had practiced. But this was raw. Unfiltered. Like trying to tame a star mid-collapse.
“Focus,” Alarik shouted, eyes flashing to her between his own blows with the nightmares before them. “Let it through you, not out of you!”
Another creature lunged for her, Serenya caught it mid-air, dragging it down with a battle cry. It shrieked, dissolving into the ground, only to reform as a fog made of screams.
Maris broke.
She couldn’t hold it.
The magic tore through her like a wildfire through dry grass. Her vision blurred, her breaths shallowed. Somewhere, she heard her name — Alarik’s voice, but it was distant. Like he was on the far side of a field.
Her knees buckled.
The tree flared ahead. Her sigil —once faint —now blazed with molten silver, the green of her irises bleed over until they were nothing but white fire, her veins lit from within, now visible rivers of starlight beneath her skin.
The pain vanished, and a presence older than stars whispered into her ear.
“Glory is not given, it is claimed.”
Maris in that moment resembled a god incarnate.
She rose not by footfall, but with the air itself. Suspended between the heavens and the hell being unleashed below her. Her hair whipped behind her in a silken stream, starlight dancing across her skin. Magic wrapped her like armor, entwining with her black leathers, unfurling in waves that cracked the very sky. And gods— it felt good. She uncoiled more of her power, releasing it from its shackles.
The terrors halted.
Frozen in place writhing —confused.
She smiled —a slow, devastating smirk curling her lips.
She raised one glowing hand.
“You meant to end me. Instead, you’ve awakened a new nightmare. Tell the gods they’ve miscalculated,” she seethed in a divine terrifying voice.
And with a snap of her fingers the world obeyed.
One by one, as if struck by the wrath of divinity the attack was over. Veilspawn bodies didn’t just fall, no, they faded, unraveling like threads yanked back to the Veil itself. Screams were silenced and smoke scattered.
The Veil, ragged above, sealed.
A sound like a thunderclap echoed through the temple as the last of the rips vanished into nothing.
Silence fell.
Serenya, dropped to her knees beside her blade before Maris. Then the two magic-wielders, their eyes wide with reverence fell before her. The battalion, then with heads bowed. And finally Alarik.
He dropped to one knee, sword lowered, breathing hard.
But his eyes never left her.
Maris lowered slowly, down from the heavens— her boots whispered against the stone. The light in her eyes still glowed but the harsh fire was replaced with a hue of starlit steel. Her power lingered in the air like smoke, the glow of her veins began to fade.
She walked forward, slow and commanding. Straight to Alarik.
