Crimson flames painted apocalyptic shadows across the ruins of Clan Valor's mansion grounds. Debris lay scattered like fallen soldiers – shattered concrete, twisted metal from destroyed PTVs, and fragments of what once stood proud now reduced to battlefield detritus.
Fire dominated everything. It crawled across surfaces with hungry tongues, devouring whatever fuel it found. Yet something was wrong with these flames – they felt hollow, weakened, as if even they were being drained of their essence.
Only the divine fire from the Abyssal Glaive maintained its true fury, its silver flames cutting through the night with righteous purpose.
But even these sacred flames weren't enough. Sunny watched with growing unease as the abominations he struck down burned too slowly, too stubbornly. He'd carved through scores of them, his count supposedly nearing a hundred, yet each victory felt pyrrhic.
His limbs grew heavier, his movements sluggish, his strength seeping away like blood from an unseen wound.
This weakness – it gnawed at him, whispering wrongness into his bones. He wanted to blame his desperate battle with Mordret, or perhaps the strain of shattering that soul sea illusion. But deep down, he knew this was something else. Something worse.
Then his shadow sense screamed.
The darkness around him writhed with impossible life. Where there should have been the still, peaceful shadows of the defeated, instead writhed serpentine shapes of active, malevolent energy. Sunny's heart thundered against his ribs as the truth crystallized: these weren't the shadows of the dead at all.
The crunch of straw and scrape of stone behind him turned his blood to ice. Slowly, dreading what he'd see, Sunny turned.
They rose like nightmares given form. The abominations he'd "killed" stood transformed, their face-cloths now pulled taut across features that seemed sharper, more defined – more hungry.
What had been loose straw was now packed dense as iron, and their stone claws caught the firelight like freshly whetted blades. Each cut, each blow, each "death" had only served to forge them stronger.
The realization struck him like a physical blow: the spell had never announced their deaths. Not once. Not a single kill confirmed. Because they hadn't died – they'd evolved.
Survival instinct screamed at him to retreat, to run back to his cohort. But as he spun toward escape, his heart sank. More transformed abominations blocked his path, moving with a newfound grace that spoke of lethal intelligence.
The scattered debris he'd been fighting around suddenly looked less like chaos and more like the carefully arranged bars of a cage.
Sunny stood trapped in the center of their circle, watching as they closed in with predatory patience. His strength continued to fade, each breath harder than the last.
Around him, the ordinary flames guttered lower, as if they too were being smothered by the growing darkness.
And still, the abominations came, their stone claws clicking against the ground in a rhythm that sounded terribly like anticipation.
Through the eyes of shadows, the battlefield took on a different dimension entirely. Where others saw only chaos and flame, the two Saints perceived layers of darkness like sheets of silk, each rippling with potential power.
They moved in perfect synchronization, their onyx armor catching what little light penetrated the smoke-filled air and transforming it into something darker, more purposeful.
The Saint of the present felt the gift of elemental darkness flowing through her form – a power that should have been impossible, yet here it was, granted by her future self in ways that would have made Sunny question everything he thought he knew.
Together, they danced through the battle, their movements a graceful ballet of shadow and steel. Their elemental darkness flowed like liquid night, cutting through abominations with precision that would have been beautiful if it weren't so lethal.
They had discovered the truth early in the battle. Each severed straw limb, each cleaved torso, told the same story – these weren't creatures meant to die.
The Saints could see it in the way darkness clung to the abominations' forms, how it twisted and reformed rather than dissipated upon what should have been death.
But their inability to speak left them frustrated, reduced to watching as their allies discovered this truth the hard way. All they could do was continue their deadly dance, buying time while searching for a more permanent solution.
Meanwhile, the Nightmares moved like living shadows themselves, their forms blurring between solid and incorporeal. These weren't mere horses – they were manifestations of shadow given form, their adamantite hooves striking sparks against stone as they tore through the battlefield.
Their wolf-like teeth, gleaming with an otherworldly sheen, ripped through the straw bodies of their enemies while their horns gored and impaled with devastating efficiency.
The Nightmare of the present charged through a cluster of abominations, his powerful form shifting between shadows as naturally as breathing. His future counterpart matched his savagery, both of them working in terrible harmony.
Where their hooves struck, abominations shattered. Where their teeth snapped, straw bodies burst apart. Their horns left trails of shadow in their wake as they carved paths through the enemy ranks.
Yet for all their destructive power, both Nightmares remained acutely aware of their master. Despite the ease with which they could have melted into the shadows and escaped, they stood their ground. Even as the abominations reformed stronger after each attack, the Nightmares continued their assault, loyal to Sunny's unspoken command to hold position.
The Saints watched this display of power and loyalty with knowing grace, their own movements never ceasing. They understood better than most the bond between shadow and wielder, having lived it from both sides of time.
Through the chaos, they maintained their vigil, their elemental darkness weaving patterns of protection even as they searched for a way to warn their allies about the true nature of their enemy.
Around them, the battlefield continued to transform. Each destroyed abomination rose again stronger, their straw bodies more densely packed, their stone claws sharper. The Saints and Nightmares fought with increasing intensity, their shadows stretching and twisting across the debris-strewn ground.
Yet even as they tore through their enemies with devastating efficiency, they could sense the growing wrongness in the air – the same weakness that now plagued their master, slowly seeping into the very shadows they commanded.
As Sunny found himself surrounded by the seemingly immortal abominations, a troubling thought pierced through his battle-fogged mind.
The Gate Guardian – he had killed it, hadn't he? And there had been others, definitely others, that had stayed dead. Why were these different? What had he missed?
Making a split-second decision, he called to his future Nightmare, the powerful steed materializing from the shadows at his side.
With practiced efficiency, he directed the present Nightmare to future Saint's position while present Saint melted back into his shadow, becoming one with the darkness once more.
Mounting future Nightmare in one fluid motion, they dove into the nearest shadow, emerging from darkness to darkness as they made their way back to his cohort.
The battlefield blurred past them in strobes of flame and shadow until they found what they sought – Nephis, standing amidst a field of genuinely dead abominations.
"How?" Sunny called out, his voice hoarse from the smoke and fighting. "How did you kill them permanently?"
Nephis turned to him, her eyes reflecting the divine flames she commanded. "The cloth," she explained, gesturing to the burnt remnants around her. "My flames destroyed the cloth covering their faces first – after that, they fell easily enough."
The realization hit Sunny like a thunderbolt. They weren't truly immortal – the cloth was the key. But even as this knowledge crystallized, he understood the cruel irony of their design.
Each time they struck these creatures down, the cloth contracted, grew denser, stronger. They had been going about it exactly wrong – targeting the body first only made their true weakness harder to destroy.
Before he could fully process this revelation, his shadow sense screamed a warning – too late. An abomination struck from behind, its stone claws raking the air where his head had been a moment before.
Sunny spun, Abyssal Glaive materializing in his hands. The weapon gleamed in the chaotic light, its leaf-shaped blade extending a full half-meter from its enigmatic wooden hilt.
As he engaged this new threat, the truth of their predicament became even clearer. The cloth wasn't just their weakness – it was their strongest feature. The less of it there was, the more concentrated its power became, making it increasingly difficult to destroy. Standard attacks barely scratched it now.
But Nephis's flames... Sunny watched as another abomination fell to her divine fire, the cloth disintegrating under the pure solar energy she commanded.
As a follower of the sun god, her flames carried a divine authority that seemed particularly effective against whatever dark power animated these creatures.
"The cloth first!" Sunny shouted to his cohort despite their close proximity, bringing the Abyssal Glaive around in a wide arc.
Even as he called out this warning, he could see more abominations emerging from the shadows, their shortened face-cloths pulling tight across features that seemed to be growing more defined with each resurrection.
This battle was far from over, but at least now they knew how to win it – if they could generate enough power to destroy those increasingly resilient cloths.
Breaking away from the fight, Sunny guided future Nightmare past his cohort until he reached Nephis. He dismounted in one fluid motion and, despite the grime and chaos of battle, despite the height difference between them, he pulled her into a quick kiss.
They made an unusual pair in that moment – both covered in dust, dirt, and spattered with blood, her having to lean down to meet him – but neither seemed to care.
Nephis fell into step beside him as they rejoined the cohort, everyone moving into formation with practiced ease. Yet Sunny felt uncertainty gnawing at him. Even knowing the abominations' weakness, even with Nephis's divine flames, the path to victory seemed increasingly unclear. These creatures grew stronger with each defeat, and their numbers seemed endless.
Then everything changed.
High above them, a gate materialized – stark white and impossibly wide, stretching from sky to ground like a tear in reality. But this was different from any gate they'd encountered before.
There was no violent displacement of nearby objects, no compelling call to enter. It simply... opened, like a door to somewhere else.
The cohort watched, transfixed, as the first sign of what lay beyond came hurtling through – a tsunami of swords, countless blades flying through the air in a deadly wave of steel.
The swords moved with terrifying purpose, cutting down any abomination that dared approach their position, turning the battlefield into a dance of flying steel and falling enemies.
A presence emerged from the gate, so overwhelming it felt like gravity itself had intensified. Through the gate strode a figure clad in fearsome metal armor, radiating an aura of power that made Sunny's previous battles feel like mere practice spars.
Behind this warrior came seven others, each carrying the presence of saints, some transformed, some not, but all bearing the unmistakable mark of experienced warriors ready for battle.
The abominations suddenly seemed less threatening in comparison to these new arrivals.
From a different direction entirely, a woman appeared, running toward the gate as if she had known exactly where it would appear. Her black armor seemed to drink in what little light remained on the battlefield, offset by a cape of such deep crimson it looked like flowing blood.
She moved with purpose toward the armored figure, her breathing heavy but controlled, like someone who had just completed a demanding but necessary task.
Sunny and Nephis exchanged glances, a flash of recognition passing between them. They knew exactly who had just arrived through that white gate in the sky, and what it meant for the battle ahead.
The question wasn't whether these were allies anymore – but rather, what had brought such powerful warriors to their battlefield at this precise moment?