Part 5: Ash Crowned
The shaking grew louder.
Not the trembling of collapse.
The stride of something walking.
Deliberate. Slow. Confident.
Yuji stood at the threshold of the hall, blade drawn—not glowing, but warm in his hand. The girl lay wrapped in Siora's cloak, tucked safely behind a rune shield. Sylvia stood beside her. Sacha at Yuji's right. Amelia behind them all, eyes narrowed.
Then it stepped into view.
It had once been a man.
Tall. Muscled. Regal.
Now, it was a corpse that had forgotten to rot.
Its skin was stretched tight over an obsidian frame, glowing faintly with decay glyphs that pulsed at the edges. Bones jutted from its arms—not armor. Grown. A crown made of fused rib fragments encircled its head like a twisted halo.
Its chest bore a sigil in silver:
The Church's seal.
Below it: one word, burned into the skin.
"Ashborne."
Yuji's voice was low. "It's branded."
Amelia's tone shifted. Serious. "That's not a cult-born. That's Church-forged. They made this."
The Ashborne Warden raised one hand.
A bloom of black rot burst from its palm—spiraling toward them like a reversed flame.
Yuji leapt forward, Fertility aura bursting from his core in golden shockwaves.
The two forces met in mid-air.
They did not cancel out.
They clashed—and screamed.
Where Yuji's aura surged, life bloomed uncontrollably—moss, boneflowers, cursed roots tearing through the floor. Where the Warden's decay spread, everything withered instantly. The two forces warred across the stone, creating zones of unstable magical flux.
Sacha broke left, smashing into the Warden's side. Her blade hit—but it didn't pierce.
Sylvia flashed forward, blades finding flesh—but the Warden regenerated mid-slash, the bone crown pulsing harder with every cut.
Yuji charged head-on.
His Fertility magic wrapped around his blade—not for growth. For rupture. He turned creation into chaos—his aura spiraling into the Warden's core like a bloom of sunlight forced through concrete.
The creature screamed.
Amelia whispered a word, and the shadows in the hall swallowed its limbs just long enough for Yuji to strike again.
The crown cracked.
Once.
Twice.
Then shattered.
The Warden collapsed, ash pouring from its mouth like dust from a broken urn.
The hall trembled again—but not from attack.
From release.
Whatever was binding Ash Spire's decay… was now unbound.
They didn't wait.
They fled through collapsing stone, through rot-choked tunnels, through bone-grown arches that snapped and bled as they passed.
Above, the Bonewood burned slowly—roots curling in.
And behind them, Ash Spire caved inward, swallowed by the very magic it tried to contain.
Yuji didn't speak until they were miles out.
Then he looked at the girl, resting in Siora's arms.
"She's not the only one."
Amelia nodded. "They'll come for her."
"And us," Sylvia added.
Sacha cracked her neck. "Then we hit first."
Yuji looked to the horizon.
The world wasn't waiting.
It was dying.