The battlefield shook as if the very bones of the earth could no longer bear the weight of the struggle.
The once-perfect tide of Crawlers—so coordinated, so relentless—was broken. Their movements faltered, no longer a single mind but a thousand shrieking bodies lashing in confusion. One clawed blindly at another. Another thrashed itself into a trench. The harmony of the hive had fractured, and in that fracture came hesitation, panic, chaos.
The cause stood before them: Sous, crimson and gold gleaming like a flame against the ruin. His sword dripped with acid and ichor, Penelope's frame scarred, smoking, yet unbowed.
The Sire screamed.
It was no sound of command, no disciplined rally. It was a raw, feral shriek—the death cry of a tyrant denied control. Its crystal pulsed in wild bursts, red light spilling erratic rays across the plain. Its colossal form moved without rhythm now, smashing its own brood beneath its bulk, spewing acid in frantic gouts. Defense abandoned. Rage absolute.
Sous lifted his sword high. His surviving knights, scattered and battered, drew breath as though pulled up by invisible cords.
"Brothers! Sisters!" Sous' voice thundered across the din, carried not just by speakers but by conviction. "Do you see it? The beast falters! It bleeds!"
A cheer, ragged but real, answered him. Men in ruined frames, their visors cracked, their runes dim, steadied their lances. Their arms trembled, but they lifted their weapons all the same.
Sous' voice cut through again, sharp as lightning. "We do not kneel to beasts! We do not flee to shadows! Today, we carve our names in fire!"
The words rippled through them, filling lungs with what little strength remained. The Cardinals re-formed what lines they could, battered shields lifted, their lances lowered. The swarm pressed still, but the knights stood firm once more.
And Sous… Sous leapt.
With a burst of thrusters, Penelope surged into motion, a crimson streak across the battlefield. Electricity screamed along his blade, arcs snapping violently into the air. The runes of his harness blazed brighter than ever before, red sigils crawling across its armor like veins of fire.
"Lightning—" he growled, and the battlefield obeyed.
The sword swung in a horizontal slash, and lightning cascaded outward, a storm of blinding arcs. Bolts leapt from his blade into the soil, racing like serpents through the battlefield. Crawlers shrieked as they convulsed under the surge, their carapaces cracking, limbs locking. Even the Sire staggered, its colossal legs twitching under the voltage. Sous became a streak of stormlight, zigzagging across the plain, carving a path of raw speed and brilliance.
The knights saw it and rallied. Where lightning opened gaps, they surged forward. Where Crawlers faltered, they struck. Hope—a word long lost—ignited again in their voices as they fought alongside their lord.
Sous came to a halt directly beneath the Sire's looming bulk. His sword hummed, now rimed with frost. He drew a sharp breath, muscles taut.
"Ice—"
The blade drove into the soil, and from that point, a forest of crystalline frost erupted. Jagged spears of ice shot upward, coiling and curling like chains of glass. They wrapped around the Sire's limbs, encasing its joints in frozen shackles. Its massive legs strained, snapping some, but more spread in their place, growing thicker, higher, until the beast's lower half was locked in glittering prison.
The monster howled, thrashing wildly, acid spilling onto the frost, hissing steam billowing like smoke from a forge. But the ice held long enough.
Sous raised his blade once more. The runes of Penelope burned so hot the frame's armor glowed, crimson edges haloed in white light. Fire gathered at the sword's edge, not as a flame but as an inferno condensed into a single stroke.
"And fire—" Sous roared, "—to end it!"
He launched upward, Penelope's thrusters screaming, hurling the massive frame into the sky. Time seemed to slow. The world below was ruin: knights struggling, Crawlers thrashing, the Sire roaring its hatred to the heavens. The sky above was clouded and gray, yet in that instant, Sous burned brighter than the sun.
He descended like judgment.
The blade fell, a vertical arc of blazing wrath. The fire roared outward as he struck, pouring into the wounded sac beneath the Sire's thorax. It split like glass under a hammer. Ichor gushed forth, igniting instantly under the heat. Fire consumed it, crawling up into the beast's core.
The explosion was cataclysmic.
The Sire shrieked, a sound so piercing it rattled bones and shattered visors. Its crystal pulsed once, twice, then burst in a detonation of crimson shards. Fire and ichor sprayed across the battlefield, raining down like molten rain. The beast's colossal form convulsed, legs snapping as it collapsed forward.
The ground shook as though a mountain had fallen. Dust plumed skyward in a choking storm.
Sous stood, Penelope's sword still embedded in the smoldering wound, flames licking from every crack of the Sire's body. Slowly, with one last roar, the monster's sound turned into a gurgling rasp, then silence.
And then—stillness.
The swarm scattered.
As though a signal had been cut, the Crawlers broke in all directions, no longer united, no longer driven. They hissed and screamed, but they fled, their bodies clambering over one another in chaos to escape the field. Some convulsed, lost without command. Others simply collapsed, lifeless husks.
The knights watched, first in disbelief, then in triumph.
"The Sire is down!" someone cried.
And then, like a dam breaking, voices rose in cheers, in shouts, in sobs. Men pounded their lances on the ground, others knelt in exhausted prayer, some simply dropped to the soil and laughed through tears. The impossible had been done.
Sous withdrew his sword, ichor hissing from its edge, and stood tall atop Penelope's battered frame. His chest heaved with breath, his armor burned, but his voice carried strong.
"Raise your banners," he commanded. "Let the world see it. The Sire is no more."
From the wreckage, knights obeyed, planting cracked standards into the ground. Runes flickered faintly as fabric flapped in the foul wind, yet still they stood.
The Choir of Ashes—the name whispered later by survivors—had been sung on that field. Not in words, but in thunder, in fire, in blood.
And at its heart stood Sous Angelus, the crimson knight, his eyes fixed not on the cheers of his men but on the horizon, where other shadows yet lingered.
For though one monster had fallen, the war was far from over.