The world had shifted.
Kael felt it in the air before he saw them - an unnatural stillness pressing down on the clearing like a second sky. The familiar buzz of insects had vanished. No birds. No wind. Just silence.
Then the veil shattered.
Figures stepped through, dressed in matte-black garb, their faces obscured, their movements fluid and coordinated. Kael's breath caught as memory surged - he'd seen them once before, in the same clearing, tracking a woman. Their presence had carried the same chilling purpose then as it did now.
Oren chuckled. "Would you look at that. One of them carries a Stigmata."
He raised his staff. "Perfect training partners have presented themselves to you."
Then he brought the staff down.
The ground quaked.
Selene moved first, hurling forward with a burst of speed that blurred her outline. Her twin daggers flashed as she met the first two enemies head-on, metal clashing against Moonsteel. Sparks sprayed. She ducked low, spun, and slashed a heel out from beneath one of them.
Kael surged beside her, sword drawn. The blade felt heavier than usual - not in weight, but in gravity. His feet pounded over cracked stone and torn earth. The first enemy he met moved fast, a short spear darting for his ribs. Kael twisted to the side, caught the shaft on his blade, and drove his elbow into the attacker's throat.
Another came from behind.
Kael dropped low and pivoted, swinging wide. His sword caught the attacker's thigh, slicing through fabric and skin. The man screamed, collapsing to one knee. Kael slammed the hilt into the side of his head, then followed with a thrust to the heart.
The smell of blood filled the clearing - coppery and hot. It clung to Kael's tongue. Bones cracked. Someone gurgled. His shoulders ached. Fatigue clawed at him like heat.
Selene danced between blades. She rolled under a wide swing, leapt off a fallen trunk, and landed in the center of a cluster of enemies. Her daggers whirled in tandem - a blur of silver. Wrists, necks, knees. She moved like a storm, using a tree for cover, bouncing off its bark to impale a man through the spine.
Kael ducked a flurry of strikes, reversed his grip, and buried his sword in an enemy's chest. Another lunged with twin blades - Kael parried left, side-stepped right, then kicked dirt into the man's face and drove his knee into his chin. The man's head snapped back with a wet crunch.
Bodies fell. But they kept coming.
Four more. Six. Ten. A dozen.
They encircled Kael and Selene. Kael stood back-to-back with her, both panting, blades bloodied.
"Little busy here," Selene muttered.
"Try not to die."
"You first."
They moved.
Kael charged a shield-bearer, feinted high, then rolled low and cut the man down at the ankles. Selene vaulted over Kael, landing on a second foe, driving both daggers into his collarbone. Her knee slammed into his face as she withdrew the blades.
Kael turned just in time to block an axe. He grunted, pushed back, then slammed the attacker into a tree. Bark split. Blood followed.
One by one, the enemies faltered. Then fell.
And in the wake of silence - he stepped forward.
The Stigmata-bearer.
No mask now. His face was gaunt, almost skeletal, violet veins pulsing beneath the skin like something wrong had taken root in him. His blade - serrated and cruel - hummed with distortion, warping the air around it.
His eyes, cold and fractured like broken glass, flicked toward Rook.
Rook didn't move. Arms folded, he gave the faintest shrug. "You don't have to worry. I won't interfere."
The man exhaled slowly, then focused entirely on Kael. His voice was low, smooth like oil.
"So. This is the vessel."
Kael stepped forward, sword drawn, blood trickling down his cheek.
"I'm no one's vessel."
The Stigmata-bearer smiled faintly. "We'll see."
He didn't raise his blade.
Kael attacked.
Steel met steel with a shriek. The boss parried lazily, then countered with an open-palm strike that cracked Kael's ribs. Kael gasped, stumbling. Another blow sent him skidding through the dirt.
"This is the Devourer's host?" the man sneered. "I expected… more."
Kael pushed up, teeth gritted. He lunged again. The boss dodged without looking, hands behind his back.
Mocking.
Kael slashed low - missed. Slashed high - parried. Again and again, his attacks were batted aside like twigs.
Finally, Kael feinted a wild overhead, ducked low, and landed a shallow cut across the man's thigh.
The boss's eyes gleamed. "Good. Rage suits you."
Their rhythm shifted. Sparks flew as blades collided again and again. Kael ducked a horizontal slash, twisted under a reverse grip, and retaliated with a tight uppercut that forced the boss back a step. He blocked a thrust, then pivoted and delivered a cut across the boss's side - shallow, but real.
Kael was no longer chasing the fight. He was reading it.
The boss lunged low - Kael anticipated the move, leapt over the sweeping blade, and came down with a savage stomp on the man's wrist, forcing him to drop his weapon. The boss recoiled and summoned it back with aether, but Kael was already moving.
He drove forward with a shoulder check, knocking the man off balance, then spun and struck the boss's temple with the flat of his blade. The blow rang out like a gong.
The boss snarled, slashing wildly - but Kael sidestepped, planted his foot and launched upward.
A beat of silence.
Then Kael's knee smashed into the boss's face.
Cartilage cracked. Blood sprayed. The boss reeled back with a muffled scream, nose shattered, hands clutching his face.
Kael landed hard, sword raised. For the first time, the boss looked stunned.
The man's smile faded. "Fine. Let's see you dance."
The boss's pupils split into fractals. Aether warped the space around him - shadows twisted, light dimmed, as if the world recoiled.
Then the world broke.
Kael's sword dripped like wax. He dropped it instinctively - only to realize too late. The real blade screamed toward his neck. He barely dodged, the edge grazing his throat.
The world flipped.
Gravity inverted. Kael was falling - up. Trees reached for him like spears. He twisted mid-air, gasping, and landed hard on his back. His lungs screamed.
Then the trees screamed.
Branches lashed like whips, thorns sprouting from bark. One slashed his arm - blood welled. He blinked. The forest stood still. The boss's laughter echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
"The mind breaks before the body."
Five doppelgängers lunged from all sides. Kael slashed through three - one caught him in the ribs. Crack.
He blocked a blow - felt nothing. Two seconds later, agony ripped through his side.
The boss vanished mid-swing - then reappeared inside Kael's guard.Steel punched into his thigh. Blood burst in a hot arc.
Kael staggered back...."Kael!" Selene's voice cracked the air.
Then she turned on him.Same face. Same stance.But her eyes were wrong.Cold. Empty.Daggers raised.
Kael froze.
A pommel smashed into his temple.
Darkness pulsed.
The world went mute. The boss's sword sliced for his eye in utter silence.
Kael rolled. The blade scraped his scalp, shearing hair.
He collapsed, heaving. Blood mixed with dirt. Every illusion scraped another layer from his sanity.
Selene stepped forward.
"Kael!"
She started to run - only to be yanked back.
Rook's hand clamped down on her shoulder, iron-tight.
"Wait."
Her eyes blazed. "He's dying!"
"No," Rook said. "He's waking up."
Kael shut his eyes.
He stopped fighting the illusions - and started listening.
Aether aligned with his breath. He felt the tremors of the boss's footsteps in the soil. The pull of air against real steel. The hum of Moonsteel from the left - not the right.
His next parry rang true. The boss staggered.
"How - ?" the man hissed.
Kael rose. His veins blackened like ink spilled under skin. His sword groaned - metal splitting to reveal a jagged maw of violet light.
Kael didn't scream.
He devoured.
The illusions around him warped - and were pulled into the blade like smoke in reverse. The forest bent. Even the light dimmed.
The Devourer had awakened.
Kael flickered.
His silhouette warped mid-step, stretching and snapping back, like shadows trying to outrun him. The boss's counterstrike passed through air - Kael was behind him already. His sword carved a black-veined wound down the man's back.
The boss roared. Created six doppelgängers.
Kael cut through them mid-swing - each one unraveling into wisps of energy and feeding his blade. His eyes burned violet.
"Impossible!" the boss screamed.
Kael spoke only once, voice low and calm:
"You should be proud. You woke it up."
The boss staggered back, blood frothing at his lips - then Kael was on him.
He grabbed the man's face with one hand, lifting him clear off the ground like he weighed nothing. The boss kicked, clawed - but Kael's grip was iron.
From Kael's palm, black tendrils coiled upward, snaking across the man's skull. There was a cracking sound - wet, slow.
Spikes erupted - not from Kael's hand, but from within the man's head. They burst outward like a blooming crown of thorns, jagged and gleaming with violet hunger.
The body spasmed once, then went still.
Kael let go.
The corpse hit the ground like a dropped effigy, eyes wide, mouth frozen mid-scream.
The mark on Kael's arm pulsed - then flared, blistering with heat.
As the boss collapsed, the sigil carved into his forearm - etched in twisted violet lines - seemed to twitch, as if aware of what was coming.
Tattered bands of aether light writhed from the wound, twitching like exposed nerves, searching for an anchor that wasn't there.
Kael stepped forward.
The Devourer's mark shimmered, black and seething, as if responding to prey.
When the two came close, the light from the fallen Stigmata snapped toward Kael - tendrils of it writhing between them like veins ripped from flesh.
For a moment, it resisted.
Then Kael's mark pulsed again.
The tendrils buckled, folding inward as if dragged, sucked toward Kael's arm. His skin rippled as the Stigmata was consumed - not with hunger, but with command.
The boss's forearm blackened. His veins bulged, emptying.
Then silence.
Kael staggered back a step, chest heaving, blood trickling down his jaw. His fingers twitched around the hilt, but the blade no longer mattered.
Something shifted.
The air thickened. The world tilted - a pressure behind his eyes, like claws scraping at the inside of his skull.
He clutched his head -
And the pain bloomed.
A gasp tore from his throat as the Devourer surged - not outward, but inward - dragging him down into memory like a stone dropped into black water.
The world dissolved.
Light flickered. Shapes twisted. Heat shimmered.
Then -
A lavish study. Gold-trimmed curtains swaying. A woman in a silver veil, reaching out.
A memory not his own.
A lavish study, lit by golden sconces. A younger version of the boss knelt before a woman in a silver veil.
Kael's stepmother.
She cupped his face gently, like a mother would a child she was about to discard.
"The reports, They must vanish. No witnesses. No copies."
Her thumb brushed his brow.
"You've seen enough to know the stakes. Can I trust you to make it disappear?"
Then the memory shifted
He watched - not as the flames took the reports, but as she handed them to a second figure hidden in the gloom. A ring glinted - marked with the sigil of one of the noble houses.
His breath caught. She never trusted him.
Kael's heartbeat thundered.
Then the memory vanished.
And Kael stood alone, blade still humming, the clearing strewn with corpses, the Devourer whispering beneath his skin.
Kael blinked, the memory's afterimage still burning behind his eyes. The Devourer's mark pulsed faintly on his arm, feeding on the fading essence of the man he'd just killed.
He turned - Rook stood with arms folded, unreadable. Selene's knives dripped with blood. Oren leaned slightly on his staff, expression calm, too calm.
Kael exhaled, voice low.
"I think the madam they're searching for... is my stepmother."
A beat of silence.
Oren didn't flinch.
"We know."