The red-masked priest lifted the brown book above his head.
Its cover peeled open on its own.
The pages inside were not paper anymore. They flexed like dried skin, each line of ink crawling into a new shape as the priest spoke a prayer too old for the room to understand.
"Let the nightmares wake."
The ruined recovery wing answered.
Walls burst inward.
One nightmare ravager dragged itself through the breach on too many limbs, its body wrapped in armour-thick shell plates. A second followed, its head split vertically into a tooth-lined seam. Then a third crashed down from the ceiling, showering the lobby in concrete and severed light fixtures.
Their bodies were wrong even by ravager standards—too large, too dense, too deliberate. Human faces pressed and twisted beneath their black shells, mouths silently pleading as the beasts moved.
Arthur's grip tightened around the bent support pole.
He had struggled against one of them.
Now there were more.
A nightmare charged him, its hooked forelimb cutting through the air with enough force to tear a reception desk in half. Arthur dove behind the broken counter as splinters and tile fragments blasted over him. He rolled out, drove the pole into the creature's throat seam, and felt it strike something hard beneath the armour.
The pole snapped.
The nightmare turned its eyeless face toward him.
Arthur's hand darkened.
Absolute Black stirred under his skin.
He could feel Shadow Dance waiting. Painted Black waiting. The Black Star, silent and hungry, waiting behind both.
Then Layla grabbed his wrist.
"Don't," she said.
Arthur looked at her, stunned.
Her white sword was chipped from the shell she had cut, and rainwater from the broken ceiling ran down her face. Still, she stood between him and the nightmare.
"You only reach for it when you think you have to carry everything alone," Layla said. "Don't use it unless this becomes truly hopeless."
Arthur's jaw clenched.
"It already is."
"No," Layla replied, raising her sword. "Not while we are here."
The line begins to break
Across the wing, Alex was being pushed back.
He fought with precise, brutal economy, but he was also shielding Sunny and Lola, both still too drained to survive a direct clash. Every time Alex cut down one corrupted attacker, another crawled through the shattered entrances.
Sunny tried to rise.
"Stay down," Alex ordered.
"I can still—"
"You can recover," Alex cut in. "That is your job."
Lola's fingers sparked weakly with flame. "And mine?"
"Stay alive long enough to use yours when it matters."
Alex did not sound cruel. He sounded like someone who had counted exactly how little room they had left.
Nearby, Alexi fought with both daggers drawn.
Her water ability had thinned to little more than streams pulled from burst pipes and wet tile, but she used it intelligently—slicking the ground beneath nightmare limbs, throwing cutting arcs of water at exposed joints, forcing smaller corrupted attackers away from the injured.
But every movement cost her.
Her breathing was ragged. Her hands were beginning to shake.
Azrion Velcrest, the Heir Without a Throne, fought at her left, keeping nightmare claws from reaching her. Eldric Vaelor stayed close at her right, striking at the beasts whenever their shell plates shifted apart.
Even together, they were losing ground.
Nightmares were not simply stronger ravagers.
They were ravagers elevated into another realm of power—creatures built to endure, hunt, and break anything below them.
One slammed Eldric through a divider wall. Azrion caught the creature's claw before it could follow through, boots skidding over blood-slick tile as the dormant seal beneath his ribs burned black through his shirt.
"Eldric!" Azrion shouted.
"I'm up," Eldric rasped from the debris.
But he was slower when he stood.
Then the recovery doors opened again.
For one heartbeat, Arthur thought another wave of Midnight Church monsters had arrived.
Instead, contestants poured through.
The remaining participants who had crossed the finish line had been brought into the recovery sector—and they did not turn away when they saw the nightmare beasts. Fighters with battered weapons, healers with nearly empty reserves, scouts, shields, and survivors of the first stage rushed into the wrecked wing.
"The first round is complete!" someone shouted. "Hold the line!"
Behind them came the groups that had qualified first and second.
The first group moved like they had trained together for years: one fighter locked a nightmare's legs in place while two others hammered at the gaps in its shell. The second group spread out through the ruined lobby, driving corrupted attackers away from the wounded and forcing the Church's lesser monsters into a narrowing corridor.
The battle did not become easy.
It became possible.
Arthur saw the difference immediately. The nightmares could no longer choose one exhausted target and tear through them. They were being pressed from several sides. Distracted. Forced to expose weak seams in their shells.
Layla stepped beside Arthur, white sword raised.
"Now?" she asked.
Arthur looked at the brown book in the masked priest's hands.
At Alex holding the line for Sunny and Lola.
At Alexi, Azrion, and Eldric refusing to fall back.
At the dozens of contestants choosing to fight rather than wait to be slaughtered.
He tightened his hand around the remaining piece of the metal pole.
"Now," Arthur said. "We take the book"
"Now."
Arthur and Layla broke from the defensive line together.
A nightmare ravager swung across the ruined recovery hall, its shell-rimmed claw scything through the space where Arthur's head had been. Arthur slid beneath the strike, boots skidding across shattered tile, while Layla stepped inside its reach and carved her white sword across the split in its throat.
The blade found the gap.
Light flashed inside the monster's shell. It recoiled with a chorus of warped voices, buying them one breath of open ground.
"Left!" Layla called.
Arthur went left.
They ran through smoke, alarms, and the wreckage of the recovery wing. Around them, the newly arrived groups held the nightmare beasts in place—shields braced against claws, weapons driving into exposed seams, exhausted contestants refusing to let the line collapse again.
Ahead, the red-masked Midnight Church priest stood unmoving amid the devastation.
His black robe stirred in the hot wind pouring through the broken wall. The red symbol across his back seemed darker now, as though it had absorbed the light around it. In his hands, the brown book turned pages by itself.
He watched Arthur approach.
"You think destroying this book ends the hunger?" the priest asked through his devil-horned mask.
Arthur did not slow. "I think it stops you controlling it."
The priest raised one hand.
The nightmare beasts reacted instantly.
One abandoned the fighters restraining it and launched itself toward Arthur and Layla. Its plated body tore through a reception counter, spraying splinters across the hall. Arthur had no weapon strong enough to pierce its shell—only a fractured length of metal in his hand.
Layla planted herself in front of him.
"Keep going," she said.
"Layla—"
"Go."
Her white sword met the nightmare's claws.
The impact drove her backward, but the blade held. White light crawled through the cracks in the beast's armour, freezing it for a heartbeat.
That heartbeat was enough.
Arthur sprinted past.
The priest's brown book snapped open to its final visible page. Ink poured from it, twisting into black-red threads that raced across the floor toward Arthur's legs.
Arthur jumped them.
The threads rose like grasping hands. He struck them aside with the broken metal pole and crashed into the priest before the man could finish the command.
They hit the floor hard.
The book flew free.
For one instant, the priest's red mask turned toward it—not toward Arthur.
That was the mistake.
Arthur drove his shoulder into the priest's chest, pinning him against the cracked tiles. The priest fought with surprising strength, one gloved hand clawing toward the book as it skidded through dust and broken glass.
"Arthur!" Alex shouted from across the wing. "Don't let him touch it!"
The priest's fingers stretched toward the cover.
Arthur grabbed the nearest fallen blade from the floor and threw it.
It struck the brown book dead centre.
The book opened.
Every nightmare beast in the recovery wing stopped.
Not defeated.
Not dead.
Just still.
Then all of them turned their eyeless faces toward Arthur.
The red-masked priest began to laugh beneath Arthur's grip.
"You broke the command," he whispered. "Now they are free."
Behind Arthur, Layla's voice cut through the sudden silence.
"Arthur…"
The largest nightmare ravager lowered itself onto all fours.
And started crawling toward him.
Three Hours of War
When the damaged brown book fell silent, the recovery district did not become quiet.
It became worse.
The doors, windows, ceiling breaches, and fractured walls began vomiting nightmare ravagers into the building. They crawled over each other in a tide of black shell, hooked limbs, and eyeless skulls. Some wore remnants of human faces beneath their plates; others had too many mouths opening along their torsos, repeating fragments of prayers in broken voices.
There were not dozens.
There were thousands.
Nearly two thousand nightmares packed the recovery sector and spilled through its surrounding streets, drawn to one target.
Arthur.
"Hold them!" Alex shouted.
Everyone moved.
The first and second qualifying groups threw themselves into the swarm. Vaelis cut openings through lesser beasts. Lucas's shadows pinned whole clusters of ravagers to walls and floors. Azrion and Eldric fought beside Alexi, protecting exhausted healers and contestants who could barely stand. Sunny and Lola, battered and low on aether, forced out only the smallest creations and flames—enough to keep people alive for another second.
But the battle had already lasted three hours.
They had fought through the first round. They had crossed the finish line. They had been given recovery rooms—but not recovery. Their personal aether had not returned. Their arms shook. Their abilities sputtered. Every spell cost more than it should.
And the nightmare horde kept coming.
Arthur fought at the center of it.
He struck until his hands slipped on blood and sweat. He kicked one nightmare away, drove a jagged piece of metal into the throat-gap of another, and ducked beneath claws that tore chunks from the walls behind him.
He could not use Absolute Black.
Not yet.
Layla had told him not to reach for it just because he was afraid.
Then a nightmare slipped behind him.
Arthur did not see it.
A black, jointed claw punched through his back.
For an instant, everything stopped.
The claw burst through Arthur's chest in a spray of blood and torn cloth, leaving a terrible open wound through his body. Arthur's breath caught in a soundless gasp. His eyes widened, then turned red at the edges as blood filled his mouth.
"ARTHUR!"
Layla's scream cut through the war.
Alexi reached him first.
Her water was nearly gone, but she used what remained to force the nightmare's arm aside. With both daggers in hand, she hacked down with everything she had left. The shell cracked. The limb came free at the joint.
The monster staggered back.
Alex appeared beside it a heartbeat later.
One clean strike.
The nightmare's head fell from its body.
But the severed claw remained lodged through Arthur's chest.
Arthur collapsed onto the broken tile. Blood spread beneath him in a widening pool. He tried to inhale, but each breath came wet and thin; red spilled from the corner of his mouth as his body shook.
Layla dropped beside him.
"No—no, stay awake," she said, hands hovering over him, terrified to touch the claw and make it worse. "Arthur, look at me. Please."
He tried.
His eyes found hers for only a second.
Then another nightmare roared over the noise.
The others had no choice but to keep fighting.
They had minutes now.
Not to win.
To keep Arthur alive long enough for someone to save him.
Layla — Reaper
Layla rose slowly.
Her white sword trembled in her hand.
Then she stopped holding back.
"Get away from him," she said.
The nightmare nearest Arthur lowered its head.
Layla's aura changed.
White light poured from beneath her feet, then darkened at the edges into the pale, deathly glow of moonlit bone. Her sword lengthened. The blade dissolved into a curved black-and-white scythe, its edge thin enough to seem unreal.
Her attribute had awakened.
Reaper
For ten minutes, Reaper granted Layla a flood of personal aether that did not diminish, along with overwhelming increases to her strength, speed, endurance, and perception. Other powers slept inside the attribute—but she had not unlocked them.
The cost was merciless.
When the ten minutes ended, Layla would be unable to move.
She looked at Arthur bleeding on the floor.
Then she lifted the scythe.
"Ten minutes is enough."
Layla vanished.
The first nightmare split apart before it understood she had moved.
Then the second.
Then a row of them.
Her scythe swept through the horde in crescent arcs of white-black light, slipping through shell plates that had resisted Arthur's weapons, contestants' spells, and Alexi's blades. Every strike opened a path. Every movement bought the wounded another breath.
For ten brutal minutes, Layla became the line the nightmares could not cross.
She cut through them without pause while the others fought behind her—Alex guarding Sunny and Lola, Lucas holding back a collapsing flank, Vaelis and the qualified groups dragging wounded survivors toward cover, Azrion and Eldric keeping Alexi on her feet.
But two thousand nightmares were not defeated by courage alone.
When the tenth minute ended, Layla's scythe shattered back into her white sword.
Her legs gave out.
She fell beside Arthur, unable to lift herself again.
The remaining nightmares closed in.
Plenty still stood.
A Demon Answers
From beneath the rubble, the red-masked Midnight Church priest rose.
Arthur had knocked away his brown control-book—but the priest had hidden another book beneath his robe.
This one was black.
Its cover looked scorched rather than bound. Its pages turned without wind, and the words written there seemed to stain the air around them.
The priest opened it with shaking hands.
"Three hours," he rasped beneath the devil-horned mask. "And you still believe you can save him."
He read a verse.
"The oozing Crest of corruption , The arrogant vessel of madness , Grant this lonely soul a soldier to fight and fight until it goes back to you primordial demon , take this lost soul and guide it to a world of chaos ... I SUMMON THIS DEMON OF HELL HERE ON EARTH !"
The floor split open.
Heat rolled out of the crack, carrying the smell of ash, iron, and something old burning beneath the world. A clawed hand reached upward.
Then another.
A low-ranked demon crawled from the breach—small by Hell's standards, but terrible in the ruined recovery room. Its skin was charcoal-black, pulled tight over thin limbs; its horns curled backward like burned roots; and its mouth stretched from ear to ear, crowded with needle teeth.
It lifted its head.
Its empty eye sockets fixed on Arthur's bleeding body.
The priest pointed toward him.
"Take the dying one."
The demon smiled.
And began to crawl toward Arthur.