The battlefield bent around him.
Soldiers stumbled.
Veilspawn fled.
Because Kael wasn’t running anymore.
He was descending.
He crossed the bloodied stretch of field toward her, toward them, like death itself made flesh. His shadows spread wide behind him, cutting trenches into the soil, splitting open scorched craters with each step.
And when he reached the edge of that fight, just as Maris’s blade deflected a strike meant for her throat,
He intervened.
The shadows struck first, knocking Astrielle back in a violent wave of black. She crashed to the ground, rolled once, and hissed as she staggered to her feet.
Maris didn’t look surprised.
She had known he would come.
The shadows flared around him like wings.
“I will end you once more.” he said, voice like frost.
Astrielle screamed, lunging and Kael moved.
“Go.” He called to Maris.
She looked at him with longing. But with the dip of her head and hand to her heart she was gone. Running straight for Eiren.
-Maris-
They moved like a flood.
Maris at the center, gods flanking her, every step forward a cleansing. Veilspawn fell like wheat under a scythe scorched, drowned, dissolved, crushed. Their screams were nothing compared to the silence that followed in her wake.
She was no longer just human.
She was the fury of four gods wrapped in mortal form.
To her left, Yseron tore through a line of armored beasts, his molten blade swinging wide and leaving only cinders.
To her right, Vaerith laughed as he spun in a cyclone of flame, his fire catching the sky itself.
Behind her, Thaleia sent rivers of poison flooding into the enemy’s flanks, her voice a hiss of incantation.
And Syrathe, drifted forward without touching the ground, and wherever her shadow fell, the Veilspawn simply… unraveled.
Maris didn’t stop.
Didn’t look back.
Her sword was weightless in her hands now. Every strike split the air with light. Every heartbeat drove her closer to Eiren, the monster that had ruined this world, had turned hope into a weapon and mercy into mockery.
The twisted goddess stood ahead, perched high on her ridge of black stone, untouched and grinning.
But not for long.
