The Fell sorcerer’s chant fractured as Kaela’s spear punched through the air.

  It didn’t strike flesh.

  A warped sigil snapped into existence just in time, green energy flaring as the spear deflected off at a brutal angle. Kaela swore, twisting mid-step as corrupted lightning scorched past where her head had been a heartbeat earlier.

  Bront barreled past her, leading with his shield, soaking a volley of stone projectiles as he pushed for the advantage.

  Barton’s chanting came unintelligibly, but when gold radiance bloomed around Bront’s massive form, the spell’s effect was made known. The massive half-orc could feel his strength swelling, giving him the energy he desperately needed to keep up with the barrage.

  Kaela and Bront pushed the sorcerer from every angle, deflecting, blocking, and tearing through its defences one by one. Supported by Barton’s revitalizing magic, it was as if they could not tire. Kaela’s golden eyes gleamed as her spear twirled, her body moving in a serpentine pattern opposite to Bront’s charge.

  She swiftly stepped out from behind his shield wall, leveling her weapon.

  The sorcerer hissed something in its Fell tongue and raised both hands—

  —but Kaela’s spear came faster.

  It pierced clean through his shoulder, pinning him to a half-shattered pillar. Fell energy warbled, unraveling violently as the sigils collapsed in on themselves.

  Bront didn’t give him time to scream.

  His axe came down.

  The sorcerer went still.

  Celeste nearly lost Jango to the second sorcerer’s opening volley.

  A ribbon of distorted gravity tore through the air, folding stone inward as it passed. Jango barely got his guard up—his sword flexing under the pressure as he was flung aside like debris.

  “Jango!” she shouted, waving her staff frantically.

  Gold and teal mana twisted together to create another of her spectral constructs. This time, a giant crab of translucent light. It slammed into the ground between Jango and the sorcerer, occupying all the space of a wagon. It charged on Celeste’s command, gravity magic deflecting off its tough carapace.

  Running to his side and extending her hand, Celeste funneled as much mana as she could spare into healing Jango. Her vision flickered once, maintaining the construct and channeling the minor healing spell were quickly draining what little mana she had left.

  “Thanks…” he muttered, expression hard as he pulled himself up.

  In their brief distraction, the Fell sorcerer managed to send a volley of stone missiles past the crab, hurtling toward the pair.

  A flash of blue, like lightning, came in like a blur, cutting each projectile out of the air before it could land.

  Selene came to a stop, panting and clutching her side.

  With a nod to Celeste and Jango, she disappeared once more.

  The duo pressed on behind the spectral crab.

  But both were drained.

  Jango’s physical stamina was nearing its limit, and Celeste’s mana was running on fumes.

  And yet—neither could slow for even a moment.

  Lyria’s hands were shaking.

  She hated that.

  The third sorcerer was different.

  Smarter.

  He stayed mobile, warping space in short, erratic bursts—never lingering long enough for a clean strike. Every spell he cast was layered, overlapping corruption and misdirection, probing for weakness.

  Haizen took the brunt of it.

  A blade of compressed darkness tore across his side, ripping through plate and skin alike. He grunted, staggering—but stayed upright, teeth bared as he forced himself forward, twinblade whirring.

  “Don’t stop!” Lyria shouted.

  She scanned desperately for an opening.

  Selene blinked into being at her side.

  “Lyria—!” she called over the din of battle. “The warp points aren’t random—anticipate it!”

  A sudden blast in Celeste and Jango’s direction pulled Selene’s attention back. With an apologetic nod, she ran back in their direction while energy from the shard pooled toward the second sorcerer.

  Lyria nodded and drew deeper.

  Past fear.

  Past exhaustion.

  She let the mana burn.

  A lattice of frost snapped into being around the sorcerer’s next three potential warp points—anticipation, not reaction. It paid off. Space buckled as he emerged directly into one of the spells, ice crawling up his legs with a scream of tortured air.

  Momentarily frozen in place, Coles took the opportunity, charging in and slamming his blade forward into a hastily conjured arcane shield—shattering it.

  Haizen was there before the sorcerer could recover. Despite his injuries, he only moved faster. His twinblade screamed through the air as he found the creature's flank, splitting it in two with a decisive slash.

  Celeste and Jango were forced back, eyes widening, limbs trembling.

  The second sorcerer would not go down easily.

  With a hum of superheated and distorted air, it shattered Celeste’s spectral crab in a single, overwhelming blast—translucent light collapsing into shards that evaporated before they hit the ground.

  Before either of them could counterattack, the Fell being extended its long, crimson hand toward the shard suspended amidst the ruins behind it.

  And much like the demon—

  It began to pull.

  The shard answered.

  Red light surged along the sorcerer’s arm in violent pulses, crawling beneath its skin like molten veins. The warped sigils around its body screamed as they were forcibly rewritten, the air itself bending under the sudden spike of pressure.

  Its magic amplified instantly.

  The sickly green glow in its eyes was snuffed out, replaced by a deep, burning red.

  Bone cracked.

  Muscle swelled.

  Its frame twisted and grew, robes tearing as its body expanded—corrupted flesh bulging, posture straightening as something far more physical asserted itself. The thing that rose from the stone no longer resembled a frail spellcaster.

  It exhaled once.

  The ground shuddered.

  Celeste felt it then—cold certainty settling in her gut.

  This wasn’t a simple power-up.

  This was ascension.

  The dust thinned.

  Slowly.

  A massive horned figure stepped out of the ruin—still standing.

  The demon straightened, rolling one shoulder with a crunch as fragments of shattered armor slid free. Cracks spidered across its blackened pauldron, sickly light bleeding through. One horn was chipped near the tip.

  It grinned anyway.

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  “Devastating power…” it rumbled, glancing at the smoking trench gouged through the stone.

  It didn’t give me time to answer.

  The demon lunged.

  I barely brought the blade up in time—bident and sword colliding with a clang that rattled my teeth. The impact hurled me backward, boots scraping through broken stone until Grahamut raised a massive trunk up behind me, arresting my slide.

  Roots exploded from the earth, snapping toward the demon’s legs.

  It twisted mid-stride, severing them with a contemptuous sweep, but the distraction was enough. Grahamut charged, shoulder-first, like a living avalanche. The collision thundered across the ruins as god and demon slammed together, earth folding beneath their weight.

  The demon skidded back a step.

  Only one.

  Its red eyes flicked to me—bright, intent.

  “You wield stolen fire,” it said, parrying Grahamut’s follow-up blow and driving a clawed foot into the forest god’s knee. “Borrowed divinity stitched into mortal flesh. Sloppy.”

  I came in from the side, blade humming, Lun and Ten’s power screaming as I carved for its ribs.

  The demon caught the strike on the haft of its bident, sparks detonating between us.

  “But effective.”

  It shoved me away with a burst of invisible force. I rolled, came up hard on one knee—

  And felt it.

  That pressure—the same as when the demon had siphoned energy from the shard.

  My head snapped up.

  The shard now pulsed brighter than before, no longer steady but hungry. Red light lashed outward in jagged veins, reaching—feeding.

  My breath caught.

  Beyond the demon, at the edge of my awareness, I saw it clearly now.

  One of the sorcerers.

  Still alive.

  Still fighting.

  And no longer just a thrall—but an enhanced avatar of the shards power.

  The demon laughed as Grahamut slammed both fists into the ground, stone walls surging up around it once more.

  “Oh?” it said pleasantly, bursting through them in a storm of debris. “Are you remembering?”

  I met it head-on again, fury cutting through the burn in my limbs. “What is that thing?” I snarled, blade leveled at its chest.

  Steel rang as we traded blows—three strikes, fast and brutal. The demon gave ground this time, boots grinding as it blocked, redirected, countered.

  Then it tilted its head.

  “A fragment,” it said, almost fondly.

  Grahamut roared and swung, forcing the demon to sidestep, stone shattering where its body had been a heartbeat earlier.

  “A splinter of something…” the demon continued, spinning its bident and slashing low. I jumped, felt the wind shear under my boots. “Something ancient. Twisted. Too stubborn to die properly.”

  It drove its weapon into the ground and unleashed a shockwave that hurled both Grahamut and me apart.

  Lun and Ten’s energy swirled faster in response to the demon’s words.

  I caught myself, nails scraping across fractured stone, then stilled—eyes narrowing.

  “Did you bring it here…?”

  The demon smiled, black fangs baring in amusement.

  “We did not,” he cackled. “It brought us.”

  My mind reeled.

  I could not know then what he meant, nor understand the shard’s true significance. Neither time nor wisdom would allow it.

  Beside me, Grahamut buckled.

  The forest deity was nearing its natural limit.

  “Yukon…” Grahamut said slowly, forcing himself upright. “The gods within you… They are far more ancient than I.”

  My eyes widened, my heartbeat spiking.

  “Long ago, they maintained the balance in all things… Life and death. Push and pull. Question and answer.”

  The demon bristled, irritation flashing across its twisted features, as if wanting to silence whatever revelation Grahamut was building toward.

  Its head snapped sharply to the side.

  Toward the others.

  I noticed.

  “No—!” I shouted, drawing deeper on Lun and Ten, convinced he meant to obliterate them before either of us could react.

  But in that same instant—

  Grahamut’s energy surged.

  Suddenly amplified far beyond comprehension.

  Roots outlined in a yellow-green glow erupted from the ground instantaneously. Not like the trees and vines summoned before. It was as though the roots themselves were a divinity. Grahamut’s emerald eyes burned like prismatic stars, and the god of the wandering woods finally showed his true power.

  Thicker than castle towers, the roots tore through the sundered earth, splintering stone and snapping through the remnants of the remaining ruins like dried twigs. They did not simply wrap around the demon—they claimed him.

  Divine script, faint and moss-veined, pulsed along their length. The ground itself answered Grahamut’s call.

  The demon shrieked as the roots pierced through armor and flesh alike, pinning his limbs wide, forcing the bident from his grasp. Fell energy detonated outward in violent bursts, shearing away coiling vines in droves—but more roots replaced what was lost, growing faster than destruction could consume them.

  Grahamut rose to his full height.

  No longer merely a towering construct of vine and stone—but something older. The ivy along his body blazed gold-green, each leaf etched with luminous veins. The forest bent toward him in reverence. Even the air thickened, heavy with pollen and ancient breath.

  And yet—

  I felt it.

  The strain.

  Cracks spiderwebbed along his stone limbs. The emerald glow in his eyes flickered at the edges.

  “Yukon…” Grahamut’s voice was no longer carried on air. It vibrated through root and marrow. Through soil and bone.

  “The power I wield now… is not mine to spend twice.”

  The demon roared again, thrashing. The shard floating beyond him burned like a hateful star, pulsing in time with the corrupted energy coursing through his veins. The roots blackened where they touched him. Smoke rose. Bark withered.

  He was trying to tear free.

  “Hear me,” Grahamut commanded.

  The words struck like a falling tree.

  “The deities within you…” His emerald gaze fixed on me—no, through me. “They are not merely spirits. Not merely gods.”

  The energies behind my eyes flared in answer. Ice and flame spun faster.

  “They were once one,” Grahamut continued. “A primordial being of Balance. Before division. Before fracture.”

  The demon snarled, eyes wild. “Silence!”

  He forced one arm loose. The roots cracked. The ground split.

  Grahamut tightened his hold. Every remaining tree in the grove bent inward. Every surviving root answered. The forest screamed as it gave more of itself.

  “They do not remember,” Grahamut said, softer now. “Not fully. The sundering cost them memory… and form—this much you know.”

  A tremor ran through him. A fissure split down his shoulder, glowing sap spilling like molten amber.

  “But they are still two halves of the same scale. Drawn together for one purpose—to stop a darkness that wishes to shatter balance entirely.”

  Grahamut’s frame groaned as he faced me, resolution shimmering within his emerald eyes.

  “...The world cannot afford for them to fail here.”

  Understanding dawned in cold horror.

  “You can’t mean—” I started.

  The demon tore another limb free.

  “You are not whole, a yet incomplete vessel,” Grahamut pressed. “And the shard he draws from—” His gaze shifted to the pulsing red anomaly, still floating where the pyramid split. “—is a fragment of imbalance. A weight tipped too far. A piece of that encroaching darkness.”

  The roots were burning now. Whole sections turning to ash.

  “To defeat him,” Grahamut said, “the scale must be tipped.”

  My stomach dropped.

  “No.”

  The word left me before thought could form.

  Grahamut’s emerald eyes softened.

  “I am but a minor deity, Yukon. Bound to these wandering woods. I have already spent what limited power I command. This”—the blazing roots, the trembling earth, the radiant script—“is the last of my divinity.”

  The demon howled and unleashed a surge of Fell power so immense the sky itself dimmed. The roots constricted, but they were thinning. Fading.

  He was going to break free.

  “You saved me once,” Grahamut said.

  Memory flashed—his grove restored, corruption driven back. When Lun and Ten finally answered my call back in Night’s Reach.

  “Your tale does not end here,” he continued, voice cracking like splitting timber, “So now, I shall repay my debt.”

  My chest tightened.

  “No!” I stepped forward, blade raised. “There has to be another way. I’ll finish it—just hold him!”

  “I am holding him,” Grahamut replied gently.

  And he was.

  Every remaining ounce of his being strained toward that singular purpose. The forest deity’s body began to unravel—stone turning to loam, vines shedding leaves that disintegrated before touching ground.

  The demon’s movements slowed—not because he was weakening—

  —but because the forest itself was sacrificing its life to anchor him.

  “Offer me,” Grahamut said.

  The words hit harder than any blow.

  “Tip the scale.”

  Ice and crimson flared violently within me, reacting—not in refusal, not in acceptance—

  —but in recognition.

  “If I give myself,” Grahamut continued, “balance will answer. For a moment… Lunae and Tenebrae will align.”

  The demon’s head snapped toward me, eyes wide.

  “No—!” he roared.

  “You will have one strike,” Grahamut said. “One true strike. Not as two divided wills—but as the echo of what they once were.”

  Cracks raced across his torso now. Whole sections of his arm collapsing into glowing dust even as the roots held firm.

  I clenched my sword until my knuckles split.

  “You’re asking me to sacrifice you.”

  “I am asking you,” Grahamut corrected, “to let me preserve my grove.”

  The demon screamed as another wave of roots speared through him, pinning him fully once more. The shard pulsed frantically, trying to compensate.

  Grahamut’s voice lowered, ancient and steady.

  “Tip the scale, Yukon.”

  The forest dimmed.

  The roots began to crumble.

  And the demon’s power surged one final time as the bindings started to give way.