Arc 1 Final: Crack (2/3)

  The clash of our blades rang out like a bell toll from another world—deep, resonant, ancient. The sound pierced everything: the walls of the dome, the last stable floor beneath our feet, the air itself, and finally, us.

  We pushed against each other. My cursed sword trembled in my hands like a starving beast that had finally tasted blood. It craved conclusion, craved death, craved Simon’s ruin. His weapon, by contrast, crackled incessantly—a sound like shattering thunder, as if a lightning bolt had been trapped in an endless loop, charged but never fully released. It wasn’t a weapon in the traditional sense, but a condensed manifestation of pure, untamed mana, held by a man who was slowly, irreversibly descending into madness.

  My blade pressed against his. Inch by inch, I gained ground, shoving it toward his neck. And all the while, the room shook. Not from our movements. Not from magic. But from deprivation. From lack. The air itself began to shimmer like dying light, colors smearing as if someone were erasing the world with wet fingers. Reality bent, became porous, unstable. Simon was drawing so much mana from the space around us that the structure of the room itself began to unravel.

  “You have to stop this!” My voice tore through my throat—it wasn’t just me shouting anymore. It was me and Gravor. Two voices in one. Deeper, rougher, with an aftertone that burned into the ears. “Dispel something! The shield, the barrier, anything, damn it!”

  For a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of understanding in Simon’s eyes. Maybe regret. Maybe clarity. But then… his gaze changed.

  He smiled. Wide. Poisonous. And it wasn’t the grin of defiance. It was the grin of a man who had lost everything—and decided others should lose too. He moved closer, so close he nearly touched my helmet—and spat straight into my visor.

  “Not before I destroy you,” he whispered, full of venom, full of rage—and full of certainty.

  Something inside me broke. Maybe the last bit of hope. Or friendship. I knew what I had to do now. I didn’t want to—but the part of me that still hesitated had long since grown too weak to win against the instinct to survive.

  “Gravor,” I said silently, calm as a sentence passed at the scaffold, “take control.”

  For a heartbeat, there was only silence in my mind. Then a wet, slithering sound. As if something dark was stirring.

  “Oh? Are you certain?” the demon asked—not mocking, not gloating, but… genuinely surprised. And ominously delighted. He hadn’t expected me to go through with it. Not now.

  “Certain,” I replied. Monotone. Without anger. Without fear. It wasn’t rage. It was clarity.

  And then—SNAP!

  No light. No smoke. No blinding spell. Just a jolt—a deep, soul-rending jolt, like someone was peeling off my skin, twisting my bones, and forcing me through a space far too narrow. My vision exploded in darkness that glowed from within, and then everything turned cold, everything alien, everything Gravor.

  I was gone.

  Not from the room—from myself.

  Gravor was at the surface now. And he had an opponent he was finally allowed to tear apart with his own claws.

  -

  Then everything happened at once, in the way it only does when Heaven and Hell collide—or more precisely: when both are bound within a single body. With Luken’s silent nod, Gravor had been given full control. For a moment, the transition had been almost gentle, like slipping into a fever dream. But the moment after was anything but.

  Luken found himself a silent spectator, weightless, floating near the dome’s ceiling like a thought without voice, locked within his own mind. He saw everything. Felt everything. And could do nothing. His fear of being trapped up there forever, erased by the demon’s presence, was born instantly—and mocked just as quickly by Gravor. For demons like this, beings from the edge-realms beyond known reality, could never remain on the surface for long. The world itself rejected them. Their presence was like a splinter in reality that had to be purged. Luken’s return was certain—only the “when” remained unknown.

  But what Gravor accomplished in that short time… was obscene.

  The body that once belonged to a Paladin began to shift—grotesque and magnificent all at once. From the sides of his helmet sprouted two curved, pitch-black horns, glossy like obsidian and etched with faint, glowing runes. They grew in a blink into massive, demonic antlers. The pauldrons trembled, tore apart as the back arched and erupted with long, barbed spikes—gleaming like metal thorns, pulsing with doom.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The chestplate finally burst open as if it were linen, not steel, shredded by the sheer force of the awakening energy beneath. What emerged was no man. No Paladin. No Luken.

  It was Gravor.

  A black colossus, over three meters tall, with a body shaped like hardened lava. His skin was covered in smooth, scaly plates, glowing cracks flickering between them—like molten magma churned below. His eyes were golden spheres, without pupils, without humanity—flickering with raw power. From his wide maw, lined with jagged, needle-like teeth, lava hissed and steamed. His hands ended in claws, each as long as a shortsword, throbbing with power, ready to rip, to tear, to crush.

  With a voice like a war horn from Hell itself, he bellowed:

  “I. AM. BACK!”

  Without hesitation, Gravor launched himself at Simon—like a beast unchained. A black flash, a storm of magma and madness set into motion to annihilate the sorcerer.

  -

  Outside the barrier.

  I—Maira—stood as if electrified. The ground vibrated beneath my feet. The air was thick as syrup, charged with raw magic, with pain, with consequence. Beside me, Vin knelt, trembling, her lips moving silently, summoning vines again and again, each weaker than the last.

  We no longer knew whose side we were on. Luken had… become something else. And Simon had revealed himself to be a traitor, a madman of cold calculation. But between them burned a fire that pulled us ever closer to the edge of decision.

  But we had to go in.

  We had to break the barrier—not to kill, but to end what was happening inside. Every blow within the dome was like a hammerstrike against reality itself. Too much mana was being consumed. Cracks formed in the walls. The ground quaked. Magic waves pulsed like earthquakes through the stone.

  I raised my hands, and for the tenth, twentieth time, hurled curses at the dome. Strong, furious, desperate spells. Words I had never dared to speak. I felt them tear blood from my veins, shred my voice. I called on gods I didn’t even know existed… because Erebos no longer answered me.

  I spoke prayers soaked in hexes. I believed. I believed, despite everything, that something would hear me.

  And then—a tremor. The barrier flickered.

  A faint fracture flashed across the surface like lightning through glass. Then, a crack.

  A hum so deep it robbed the breath.

  I gasped, my knees gave out. But I saw it. Finally. The barrier was weakening. A sign. An answer.

  Whether divine, demonic, or just luck—I didn’t care. I looked at Vin, and we nodded silently.

  We were going in.

  And if Hell awaited us in there—then we would burn with it.

  -

  For the miracle—for the fine fracture in the otherwise perfect barrier of pure mana—no one else was responsible but Erebos, the Father of Rot, the Decaying God, the Keeper of the Final Breaths. Once called a god, though he had long since ceased to hear the title. In his realm, far removed from all mortal comprehension, he sat upon his throne—or rather: upon a pulsating mass of rotting flesh that continuously formed and decayed anew. A place where the ground groaned like lung tissue beneath one’s feet, where every breath carried diseases for which no names had ever existed. His hall was made of misery. Of slime, of boils, of souls that were not allowed to die. It was not a place of punishment—but of truth, as Erebos called it.

  And there he sat. Colossal. Motionless.

  His body was composed of layers of disease—not metaphorically, but literally: every part of his form was a host for a new kind of suffering. His voice was the death rattle of entire peoples. His fingers were the needles that plunged lives into darkness.

  He stared through a vision wrought from putrid substance into a small chamber in the mortal world. A room of mana, somewhere in the north of Tirros—a fabricated arena full of rage, fire, and decisions.

  To Erebos, it was… entertaining.

  Not thrilling. Not compelling.

  But amusing.

  Like watching a poisoned animal twitch.

  But what truly held his attention was not the raging demon, nor the wrathful sorcerer. It was her.

  Maira.

  His cleric.

  One of his last.

  And she was wavering.

  Erebos’ eyes—two crater-like, festering pits—twitched for the briefest instant. The blackness within them rippled, stirred by something ancient and divine: loss.

  “She is a torch in my name…” he murmured, his voice like shattering glass, “…and she begins to flicker.”

  That, he could not allow.

  His right arm, more skeletal scaffold than flesh, lifted effortlessly. No dramatic surge of power, no thunderclap, no rain of flame. Just a single word—an ancient word, unspoken for eons. It tainted the air around him. The walls of his throne room screamed. Souls wailed.

  And somewhere, in the heart of the mana dome, a rift appeared—narrow, unstable, but real.

  For Maira. For her faith. For her choice.

  Shortly after, a servant arrived—or what counted as one in the realm of Erebos: an amorphous, slime-drenched mass of flesh with an oversized belly, skin so venomously green it would burn even demons, and a serpent tongue constantly slithering from a lopsided mouth.

  “Mylord…” hissed the creature reverently, “the gods, the others—even the dark pantheon… they disapprove of your interference. You’ve revealed yourself.”

  Erebos did not move. No muscle twitched. Only his gaze—that rotting, all-seeing gaze—remained fixed on the raging form of Gravor. A moment of silence. Heavy. Lethal.

  Then the god inhaled. Or perhaps he sighed. It sounded like an entire continent collapsing under plague.

  “Deliver them,” Erebos said with a voice that could melt walls, “the message…”

  He slowly raised his arm and pointed with a clawed finger through the vision—directly at Gravor, who was about to cut Simon apart.

  “…that if no one acts… something is coming.”

  His finger trembled slightly. Not from fear—but because even he knew what he meant.

  “Something that not even we can stop.”