Aiden charged toward Corvus with all the energy he had left, but the moment he lunged to grab the mask, a realization hit him like a slap: I'm completely insane.
Corvus was taller than him, stronger, and above all infinitely more experienced in the art of killing. Aiden was nothing but a former sick man who had spent his life in books. His new physical abilities would never be enough to bridge such a gap.
But he was already airborne, his fingers stretched toward the raven mask. No choice now.
Corvus dodged with fluid grace, pivoting like a dancer. His hand closed around Aiden's wrist with the force of a vise.
- "Pathetic," he spat, hurling the young man against the stone wall.
Aiden struck the wall with a dull thud, his ribs protesting violently. He slid down the wall, his vision blurring momentarily. Shit, shit, shit... His Vital Flame was exhausted, drained by his attempts to free the survivors. He could no longer feel that reassuring warmth in his chest just a cold emptiness that reminded him of his fragility.
Corvus approached slowly, savoring his regained superiority.
- "Did you really think you could challenge me? A sixteen-year-old kid against someone who's been collecting souls for decades?"
Aiden struggled to his feet, his legs shaky. His mind worked frantically, desperately searching for a solution. He couldn't flee Thomas and the others needed him. He couldn't fight head-on Corvus was too strong. So what?
Think, he told himself. In all the books you've read, how does the hero beat a more powerful enemy? Through cunning. Through intelligence. By using the environment.
He looked quickly around him. The chapel was littered with debris pieces of broken puppets, torture tools, stone fragments fallen from the ceiling during their fight. And there, near the altar...
The emotion vials from the forge. Corvus had brought several here, neatly aligned on a table. Each contained fragments of Vital Flames, pieces of souls suspended in glass.
If those vials break, Aiden thought, what happens? Do the emotions get released? Does it disrupt Corvus's powers?
It was just a hypothesis, but it was all he had.
Corvus was now just a few steps away, his hands extended like talons.
- "Come, little lamb. Give me that beautiful Vital Flame. I promise not to make you suffer too much."
Aiden feigned submission, dropping his shoulders as if giving up. Then, the moment Corvus leaned toward him, he rolled to the side and sprinted toward the table of vials.
- "No!" roared Corvus, immediately understanding the young man's intention.
Aiden dove toward the table, his hands closing around the first vial he could grab. Without hesitating, he hurled it with all his strength against the stone floor.
The object shattered with a crystalline tinkle, releasing a luminous substance that spread like colored smoke. Immediately, a pure emotion struck Aiden full force joy, simple and innocent, like a child's laughter on Christmas morning.
But the effect on Corvus was far more dramatic. The Scourge staggered, bringing his hands to his head as if he had just received a violent blow.
- "Those memories... they belong to me!" he moaned.
It works! Aiden grabbed a second vial, then a third, breaking them one after another. Each destruction released a new emotion sadness, anger, love, fear creating a psychic maelstrom that visibly disturbed Corvus.
The Scourge was now staggering, his control over his own powers wavering. The released emotions conflicted with those he had absorbed, creating a mental cacophony that disoriented him.
- "Stop that!" he screamed, throwing himself toward Aiden.
But in his haste and confusion, Corvus stumbled over the debris of a puppet. He sprawled full-length, his mask shifting slightly on his face.
Aiden seized his chance. He leaped over the overturned table and threw himself on Corvus, his hands clawing toward the raven mask.
- "Let go of that!" roared Corvus, trying to push Aiden away.
What followed was nothing heroic. They rolled on the ground in a tangle of limbs, fighting like animals. Aiden had no technique he clawed, bit, threw random knee strikes. Corvus was stronger, but destabilized by the emotional chaos reigning around them.
- "You don't understand!" growled Corvus, trying to strangle Aiden. "I'm saving them! I'm freeing them!"
Aiden was suffocating, his fingers desperately slipping on the leather mask. Corvus clearly dominated him every passing second made him lose a bit more oxygen.
But just as his vision began to cloud, his fingers finally found a grip on the mask's straps. In a surge of desperation, he pulled with all his strength.
The straps gave way.
The mask slipped from Aiden's hands and rolled on the flagstones, coming to rest near the foot of the altar. The moment the object left Corvus's face, Aiden felt an immediate change in the Scourge's aura.
Corvus froze, his hands releasing Aiden's throat. His eyes now visible were still mad, still dangerous, but something had changed. His menacing presence had considerably weakened.
- "My mask..." he hissed, crawling toward the fallen object.
Aiden was faster. He lunged toward the mask and seized it just before Corvus could reach it.
[ARTIFACT DISCOVERED: PUPPETMASTER'S MASK]
[CORRUPTED OBJECT DETECTED]
[MANIPULATION FORBIDDEN WITHOUT PROPER TRAINING]
Aiden immediately dropped the mask, but the understanding was already done. Without his power amplifier, Corvus was nothing more than a man certainly dangerous, certainly mad, but considerably weakened.
- "Give it back to me!" roared Corvus, throwing himself again at Aiden.
But this time, his movements were less precise, less superhuman. Aiden managed to dodge and repel the attack. Around them, Thomas and the survivors were beginning to regain their senses, freed from the mental grip that was now considerably weakened.
Corvus was still the same monster, still obsessed with his demented mission. But without his mask, he was vulnerable.
And for the first time since the beginning of this nightmare, Aiden had a chance to win.
Corvus, deprived of his mask, was still standing, but something had fundamentally changed in him. His movements were less fluid, less superhuman. Madness still shone in his eyes, but it was no longer supported by that aura of terrifying power that had made him so formidable.
- "Give it back to me!" he roared, throwing himself toward the mask lying on the flagstones.
But Thomas was already in motion.
The old man was painfully getting up, his broken ribs wringing grimaces of pain from him with each breath. Blood still flowed from his mouth, his eyes were swollen, but he stood. And above all, his right hand closed around the handle of his club.
- "Thomas, no!" cried Aiden, suddenly understanding what the old man was about to do.
But Thomas was no longer listening. His eyes were fixed on the raven mask, and in that gaze, Aiden read fierce determination mixed with something that looked like pure hatred.
Thomas raised his club above his head and brought it down on the mask with all the strength he had left.
CRACK.
The first blow cracked the dark leather. Sparks of black energy escaped from it, crackling in the air like static electricity.
- "NO!" screamed Corvus, trying to throw himself at Thomas.
But Harold and the two other survivors, still weak but free, interposed themselves. They weren't trying to fight Corvus they had neither the strength nor the skills—but they formed a human barrier, using their bodies to slow down the desperate Scourge.
Thomas struck again.
CRACK.
This time, deep cracks appeared across the entire surface of the mask. An unhealthy light began to seep from the fractures, and the chapel's air became charged with a palpable energy that made the hair on Aiden's neck stand up.
- "You don't understand!" now sobbed Corvus, struggling to free himself from the survivors holding him back. "Without the mask, I can no longer control them! I can no longer save them! My wife... yours... they'll remain prisoners for eternity!"
Thomas stopped for a fraction of a second, the club suspended in the air. On his ravaged face, Aiden could read a terrible conflict. He was thinking of his own wife, transformed into a puppet somewhere in this cursed village. He was thinking of all those people they might never be able to save.
But he was also thinking of Martha. Of all those who had died. Of the suffering this man had inflicted in the name of his twisted vision of "compassion."
- "My wife would never have wanted to exist like that," he said in a broken voice. "Prisoner in a body that isn't hers, controlled by a monster... No. She would have preferred to die free."
He brought his club down a third time.
The mask exploded.
It wasn't an ordinary destruction. The artifact disintegrated in an explosion of blinding light and deafening noise. Volutes of black smoke burst from the fragments, but it wasn't normal smoke. They were souls. Fragments of imprisoned spirits, pieces of consciousness that had been trapped in the cursed object.
And all these liberated souls converged toward Corvus.
The Scourge didn't even have time to scream. The volutes of black smoke enveloped him like a swarm of vengeful insects, infiltrating through his mouth, his nostrils, his pores. His body convulsed violently, his limbs twisting at impossible angles.
- "AAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
His scream of pain resonated throughout the chapel, a sound so inhuman, so charged with agony, that Aiden felt his entrails freeze. Corvus was now writhing as if burning from within, his rolled-back eyes showing only white.
And then he exploded.
It wasn't an explosion of fire or energy. It was an explosion of flesh and blood. Corvus's body literally disintegrated, spattering the walls, ceiling, and everyone in the chapel.
Aiden received a spray of warm blood right in the face. The metallic and nauseating smell filled his nostrils, the taste of iron flooded his mouth. His stomach heaved violently, and he bent double to vomit on the ancient flagstones.
Fuck, fuck, fuck... He couldn't stop. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that explosion of flesh again, that body decomposing in real time. He had read thousands of violent scenes in his books, but seeing someone die this way, really seeing it...
Thomas stared at the spot where Corvus had stood a few seconds earlier. Nothing remained but a dark stain on the flagstones and a few scattered bone fragments. His hands trembled around his club's handle.
- "NOOOOOOOON!"
The cry that escaped from Thomas's throat was charged with such pure, such absolute pain, that it seemed to make the chapel walls tremble. He fell to his knees, his weapon slipping from his bloodied hands.
- "I needed him!" he sobbed. "I needed him alive! How am I going to do it now? How am I going to get my wife back? How am I going to save all these people?"
Aiden struggled to his feet, wiping his mouth with a trembling hand. He now understood the magnitude of what they had just done. By killing Corvus, they might have condemned all the puppets to remain prisoners for eternity.
Harold approached Thomas and placed a hesitant hand on his friend's shoulder.
- "Thomas... we couldn't let him continue. You saw what he made us do. What he forced us to do."
- "But my wife..." moaned Thomas. "She's still out there, somewhere. She's waiting for us to save her, and now..."
- "She's free," said Aiden softly.
All eyes turned to him. He was still pale, still shaken by what he had just seen, but something in his voice carried quiet conviction.
"When the mask broke, I felt something. With my... with my new abilities. All the connections Corvus maintained with his puppets broke. They're no longer controlled."
Thomas looked at him with desperate hope.
- "You mean they've become human again?"
Aiden shook his head, and he saw hope die in the old man's eyes.
- "No. They're... free. Their souls are no longer prisoners. They can finally rest."
A heavy silence settled in the chapel. Thomas wept silently, his tears tracing clear paths in the blood that stained his face. Harold and the other survivors drew closer to each other, seeking comfort in human proximity.
- "At least," Harold finally murmured, "at least it's over. No one else will suffer because of him."
The minutes that followed passed in a strange blur. The survivors embraced, wept together, comforted each other. They were alive, they were free, but the price of this freedom was so heavy that none of them knew how to celebrate it.
Aiden stayed somewhat apart, observing these people who had gone through hell and emerged transformed. He thought of Martha, dead because of him. He thought of all the puppets who would never become human again. He thought of Corvus, a monster certainly, but also a father broken by pain.
Is this what it means to be a hero? he wondered. This feeling of emptiness, this guilt that gnaws at you even when you've done what needed to be done?
Harold approached him and hugged him.
- "Thank you," he whispered. "Without you, we'd all be dead. Or worse."
The other survivors did the same, each expressing their gratitude with simple but sincere words. Aiden accepted their thanks, but he didn't feel like a hero. He felt... tired. Drained. As if he had given something of himself that he would never recover.
Thomas was the last to approach. The old man had regained some of his bearing, but his eyes now carried a sadness that would probably never leave him.
- "You did what had to be done," he said simply, extending his hand toward Aiden. "My wife... at least she's not suffering anymore."
Aiden shook the extended hand.
The moment their palms touched, the world exploded in white light.
It wasn't gradual this time. No transition, no preparation. One moment, Aiden was in the desecrated chapel with the survivors of Greyhollow. The next moment, he was floating in a blinding void where only he and a system voice resonating directly in his mind existed.