Chapter 126 – Hunting Old Gods (5)
(Erynd)
Collapsing the building was a no-go.
If I took the whole chamber down, it wouldn't just be Nazyen that got pulped. The shockwave would travel up the flesh-tunnel, hit the foundations, and the entire block above us would become a mass grave with "old brothel" stamped on the report and "unexplained sinkhole" whispered afterward.
I needed her divinity at or near zero.
Then—and only then—could I kill her without the whole district coming with.
Simple plan.
In theory.
***
I stopped trying to hurt her and started thinking in numbers.
Every spike she grew out of the wall cost her.
Every meat-golem she birthed and threw at me cost her more.
Every illusion, every mental shove, every "let me love you until you disappear" trick ate into that heavy, slow reservoir.
I just had to live long enough for that reservoir to drain.
So I made it expensive.
Any time she grew a new limb, I mangled it.
Any time she stretched herself too thin into the walls, I cut the tendril at the base, forced her to waste divinity knitting it back together or accept structural failure.
Gungnir and Melody together made a good account of themselves.
Spear for anchors.
Sword for nerves.
Spatial Awareness mapped the whole mess for me—lines and weights and tension points—and I moved inside that map like I'd been born to it.
[ Derivation progress: Spatial Awareness ]
[ 18% ]
[ 22% ]
Each percent cost.
Every time I leaned into it, something in my head screamed.
Blood ran down my temples in slow, hot tracks that had nothing to do with physical wounds.
Nazyen noticed.
"Look at you," she crooned, voices cracking. "Little thief, little rat, little godling. Your head aches, doesn't it? Your thoughts stretch and tear. You weren't meant for this. You weren't meant to see like us."
"I wasn't meant for a lot of things," I said, stepping just out of reach of an arm swipe that would have taken my head off. "I'm adaptable."
I drove Gungnir into another anchor.
The spear bit deep.
Divinity bled.
Her scream rattled my teeth.
She was smaller now.
Not physically—if anything, she'd spread more, smeared through the chamber like someone had diluted her in meat—but in presence.
The weight of her pushed less against the edges of reality.
Palatable blasphemy instead of suffocating.
"Child," she hissed. "I am love. I am every hand that ever reached for warmth. When your mother held you, that was me. When your lovers gasped your name, that was me. When your little soldiers kneel and call you 'master' with tears in their eyes, that's my gift."
"Don't drag my sex life into this," I said. "It's already complicated."
She laughed.
It came out broken and wet.
Bone spurs shrank.
The floor stopped trying to eat me every other heartbeat.
Spatial Awareness didn't give me numbers for divinity, but I didn't need them.
I could feel it.
She was running out.
I was, too.
My lungs burned.
My legs shook.
Every cut and puncture screamed for attention my qi barely managed to deny them.
Melody's voice had gone tight in my mind, thin with worry.
"Master," she said. "This is past 'reckless.' You're going to lose pieces you can't grow back."
"Then we make this the last round," I muttered.
The map in my head showed one last load-bearing point.
The place where too many of her tendrils converged, where she'd sunk herself deepest into the chamber to stay anchored in this world.
I drew a breath that tasted like old blood and rot.
"You wanted a lover," I said to her. "Here's a breakup."
I thrust.
Everything I had left went into that vector.
All the careful restraint, all the micro-adjustments, all the "don't overdo it or you'll pass out" warnings—I ignored them.
Gungnir tore through meat, threaded past a handful of still-pulsing organs, and hit the spine of the room.
The crack this time wasn't shy.
It roared.
Reality buckled.
The wall behind her split like bone under a hammer.
Lines of fracture shot outward, ripping through her tendrils, severing attachments.
Divinity poured out.
Not as light.
Not as impressive fireworks.
As absence.
As a sudden, jarring nothing in a space that had been overfull.
Her upper torso peeled away from the wall.
She hung there for a heartbeat, obscene and sagging, unsupported.
Her remaining arm scrabbled for purchase.
Her mouths howled.
"NO—"
Then the whole mass collapsed.
Not outward.
Inward.
The piles of meat that made up the chamber's extra decorations sloughed toward her like someone had opened a drain at her core.
She imploded, swallowed by her own failing divinity, dragged back under whatever rules she'd been cheating.
The walls shuddered.
I yanked Gungnir free and stumbled.
"Master," Melody snapped in my mind. "Out. Now."
She wasn't wrong.
The chamber wasn't stable anymore.
Chunks of flesh hit the floor in wet slaps.
Bone spurs sagged, then toppled.
I turned and ran, Spatial Awareness helping me pick the path where the least amount of ceiling was about to become floor.
Behind me, something big gave way.
The sound was like a stadium collapsing in slow motion.
I didn't look back.
I didn't have anything left to look back with.
By the time I hit the entry tunnel, the roar had settled into a distant, ugly grinding.
The choke-point walls pulsed once, weakly, then went slack.
The fleshy texture under my boots loosened, lost cohesion, and sloughed off in sticky sheets to reveal raw dirt and stone beneath.
Nazyen was gone.
I couldn't feel her anymore.
Whatever was left of her divinity had sunk below the threshold my senses could touch.
Murdered, finally.
And I was still breathing.
Barely.
"Melody," I managed.
Her presence slid back against my spine, warm and solid, sword-form dissolving into its usual weight.
"Yes, Master?"
"Tell me when we're clear," I said. "If the tunnel starts looking at me, I'm not equipped to handle that conversation right now."
She hesitated.
"Master," she said quietly, not answering my joke. "There's something wrong."
"I just killed an Old God while bleeding out and semi-conscious," I said. "Everything is wrong."
"Not down here," she said. "Up there."
That got my attention.
I pushed on.
Every step up the tunnel cost me more than it should have.
My muscles felt hollow, like someone had scraped them out and filled them with sand. My head throbbed in time with my pulse: each beat a hammer on an anvil made of bone.
Spatial Awareness flickered at the edges of my vision, trying to map everything, then shrinking back like a burned animal when I told it no.
Mental cost.
You don't get to cheat perception without paying something.
By the time I saw daylight ahead, my legs were shaking.
I could hear… nothing.
No shouting.
No orders.
No Yara swearing about paperwork.
No Lyra pacing grooves into the ground.
No Zoe's chains ringing.
Just wind.
Cold.
Empty.
My stomach tried to climb into my throat.
"Melody," I said.
"I know," she whispered.
***
The cult house was quiet.
Not the good kind of quiet, where a job's done and everyone's too tired to talk.
The bad kind.
The kind where sound is afraid to be there.
The floor near the tunnel entrance was slick.
Red.
I stepped onto it and my boot slid half a finger-width before I caught myself.
The smell hit a second later.
Blood, old and new.
Guts.
Burnt hair.
The half-sweet, half-sour stink of people who'd died recently and badly.
I forced my eyes up.
The first body was Edward.
He was propped against the wall like he'd just sat down too hard.
If you didn't look below the ribs, he almost looked peaceful. Mouth slightly open, eyes closed.
From the sternum down, he was just… gone.
Melted.
Like someone had poured his lower half through a grate and then changed their mind halfway.
Yara sat beside him, or what was left of her; from the waist up she was fused to him, flesh sagged together like wax that had been pressed before it cooled.
Two people, one obscene sculpture.
Hands interlocked.
Of all the things to hold onto.
My vision tunneled.
The next shape on the floor was Lyra.
I knew it was her because of the weapon.
The weapon I'd made for her was still in her hand, half-melted metal fused into her fingers, handle scorched black.
The rest—
Her body had taken the brunt of something that didn't believe in half-measures. There were pieces. Not enough. Skin bubbled and burst open, bones fragmented, organs cooked where they'd been caught.
Someone had tried to cover part of her with a cloak.
It hadn't helped.
Tamara lay a little further away, face down, arms outstretched toward nothing. Her back was open from neck to hip. Not a clean cut. Something had ripped its way out or in, vertebrae showing white in the ruin.
Noelle was near the doorway.
On her knees.
Head bowed.
For a heartbeat, I thought she was praying.
Then I saw the hole in her chest.
You don't pray with that little heart left.
Julia—
I didn't see Julia's body.
Just her head.
It lay near the broken table, hair spread around it, eyes still open, expression frozen on something halfway between fury and surprise.
As I stepped out of the tunnel, my boot bumped it.
The gentle nudge made it roll a fraction, exposing the back where something had taken it off in one stroke.
"Careful, Master," Melody murmured reflexively.
As if not kicking the severed head of my Jarl of Logistics was the thing that needed focus right now.
My chest felt… empty.
No panic.
No screaming.
Just a cold, hollow space where something important had been.
My legs gave up.
I dropped to my knees in the doorway, hands hanging uselessly by my sides, spear still in one, knuckles split and slick.
I wanted to cry.
Nothing came.
The fight had wrung everything out of me.
Tears would've required a body that still believed in being alive.
"Master," Melody said, voice very, very small. "Erynd, I—"
A shadow moved.
Not a cultist.
Not a soldier.
Not a priest.
She stood near the center of the ruined room, exactly where the table would've been before everything went to hell.
Dark veil. Simple clothes. Bare feet.
A vial at her belt.
A grease-stained paper bundle on the half-collapsed table beside her like she'd walked in carrying groceries and found a massacre squatting in the middle of a house she'd been planning to use because it was supposed to be forgotten.
For half a heartbeat, she just… looked at me.
And something in her posture loosened.
Not much.
A fraction.
Like she'd been bracing for a different sight.
Her shoulders dropped. A quiet breath left her. Relief, so quick it was almost shameful.
Then she caught herself.
The veil settled back over her face like a curtain.
Mild annoyance returned like armor.
"My, my, my," she said, tilting her head slightly, voice dry. "What do we have here? An Authority user?"
Her gaze ran over me.
Not leering.
Weighing.
Measuring.
She didn't look at the bodies first. She looked at the space around them.
The corners.
The ward lines.
The gaps between shadows.
Like she expected something else to be watching.
Melody stiffened against my spine.
"Master," she whispered, and the word sounded wrong in her mouth. "She's not… she's not hunting you."
My throat didn't work. My mind didn't want to accept what my eyes were showing.
The woman's eyes narrowed slightly under the veil.
"What do you possess?" she mused aloud. "Strength? Intelligence?" Her head tilted again. "Or perhaps what they like to call the Demon King?"
A tiny smile tugged under the veil.
Sharp.
Practiced.
But it didn't reach the rest of her.
It was the kind of smile someone used when they were trying not to cry.
I tried to speak.
What came out was a wet, rattling exhale and maybe half a syllable.
She took one step closer.
Unhurried.
Then another.
She stopped an arm's length away and looked down at me like I was an insect she hadn't decided to pin or set free.
Up close, I could feel it.
Not mana.
Not divinity.
Something older.
Roots, not branches.
Her voice softened, almost… genuinely curious.
"You're in worse shape than I expected," she said. "Though you did kill the Old God."
Her gaze flicked over the ruin again, and for one heartbeat her tone dropped into something else.
Something real.
"…You're late," she added quietly.
Late.
Not "weak."
Not "pathetic."
Late, like I'd missed an appointment.
Like this had been preventable.
My chest felt hollower.
My fingers twitched uselessly around Gungnir's shaft.
She crouched.
Her hand came up.
I wanted to flinch.
I didn't have the strength.
Cool fingers pressed against my chest, right over my heart.
Not gentle.
Not cruel.
Clinical.
But there was a tremor in her hand that didn't match the rest of her.
The contact burned.
Not heat.
Not cold.
A scrape, like something sharp and invisible was peeling layers off me, looking for the core signature underneath blood and shock and grief.
For a second—
one shuddering, endless second—
it felt like she reached through skin and bone and qi and touched the organ itself.
My body spasmed.
I couldn't pass out.
The pain pinned me awake, nailed my consciousness to every screaming nerve.
She inhaled.
A small sound.
Almost a relieved laugh, strangled before it could become one.
"There you are," she whispered.
Not triumphant.
Found.
Her fingers dug in a fraction, and the veil tilted as if she was looking closer.
"My little Demon King," she murmured, and then, softer still, like the words were meant for her alone: "My father."
My skull rang.
Father.
My tongue didn't cooperate. My mind didn't either.
She stared down at me and for a heartbeat the sharpness in her expression cracked. Under the veil, her mouth curved again.
This time the smile was unmistakably sad.
A smile you give at funerals when you're trying to be brave for someone who isn't coming back.
"I'm sorry," she said.
The apology landed wrong. It didn't match the scene. It didn't match the corpses. It didn't match the fact that she was a stranger with a predator's aura and a casual cadence.
It matched… grief.
Melody's voice trembled in my mind.
"Master," she whispered. "She's… she's apologizing."
The woman's gaze flicked to the ward lines again. To the shadows. To the places where the air felt wrong.
"He's not here," she muttered.
My voice scraped out, barely audible. "Who."
She hesitated.
Just a beat.
Then she looked back at me, and her annoyance returned, because emotions were a liability and she was used to surviving by refusing to have them.
"The one who thinks I'm his," she said quietly. "The one who would use you… and put me back on the leash."
Her fingers pressed harder to my chest.
Not threatening.
Anchoring.
Like she needed to be sure.
"Don't die here," she said, voice flat, and it sounded like an order until the last two words softened. "Not yet."
Not yet.
Like there was a "later" that mattered.
Like there was a plan.
My vision tunneled, grief crushing down so hard it felt physical.
Lyra, melted around her own weapon.
Tamara facedown, back open like a lesson written in bone.
Noelle on her knees like prayer had failed.
Julia's head rolling a fraction when my boot bumped it, eyes still open, still furious.
Everything I'd built, dead in one room because I'd gone underground and believed time would wait.
The woman watched my face, and something in her expression tightened.
Pity.
Or recognition.
Like she'd seen this exact look before.
"Listen to me," she said, and for the first time her voice wasn't amused. It was urgent, low, controlled. "You can't stay in this state. Not in this branch. If you live through tonight like this, you won't just break."
Her thumb brushed once, almost gentle, over the spot above my heart.
"You'll become something that makes this look merciful."
My throat closed.
I wanted to ask what she meant. I wanted to demand answers. I wanted to grab her wrist and drag meaning out of her.
My body didn't move.
My body was done.
The woman's lips pressed together.
Then that sad little smile returned again, brief and bright like a match in the dark.
"Next time," she whispered, so softly it almost got eaten by the silence, "get to me first."
My breath hitched.
Her fingers tightened.
And then she did it.
Not with theatrics.
Not with cruelty.
One precise motion, like an executioner who hated her own job.
A thin spike of shadow slid out between her fingers and into the center of my chest.
I didn't feel it pierce.
I felt the absence after.
My heart stuttered once.
Twice.
Then the world tilted, not into vertigo but into quiet.
I stared at her as the room began to dim.
She held my gaze the whole time.
And for the first time, her mask fully broke.
Under the veil, her eyes shone wet.
Her voice came out almost soundless.
"Please," she whispered. "Save me."
Then the dark took the rest.
[ System ]
[ You died by the Heroine. ]