The husks surged.
Not with shouts, not with rage—just the dull determination of a tide that didn't care if it drowned itself. Steel scraped against stone, boots slapped in rhythms too neat for men without souls. The smell was rot and wet coin, the taste of ash ground into teeth.
Andy stepped into them, the Oathblade humming. Ember pulsed up the spine, tide weighed the fuller, gale braided the edge. His body remembered geometry; his will reminded the world to agree.
"Stormbreaker—Gale Rift."
Air split like parchment torn across the grain. Husks staggered, torsos half-separated from legs, shadows snapping off their shoulders like burnt banners.
"Tide-Singer—Aqua Fang."
The second cut came low, teeth of water lancing through three ranks, bursting shadow-veins that ran into the Corrupter's feet. The ichor hissed as if embarrassed.
"Ember Edge—Flame Spiral."
Heat rose around him, a coil of red light spinning higher until it looked like the Oathblade had written a staircase of fire. Husks that stepped inside came apart into drifting black grass. The smell was rain on rusted iron, heavy enough to bite the tongue.
The villagers saw a boy's body standing where a wall should be. The ridge steadied itself around his stance.
Nia anchored the inner ring. Her staff tapped the ground once, twice. Light webbed outward, thin and precise, every thread stitched like a seam you only noticed because it had refused to tear again.
"Lumina Ward—Third Band."
The new ring pulsed outward in a ripple of frost-silver. Husks smashed into it and slowed as if memory had struck them—faces pulling for an instant into what they'd once been. Then the lattice unmade the memory, gently, cruelly, inevitably.
She whispered, "Whisper Cast." Runes too faint to see with eyes alone slid along the ward, reinforcing thin places, breathing fresh air into fading sigils. Inside the dome of silence, she worked without a voice, without gestures—only with trust and bond.
The villagers saw her as calm as stone. They did not see the blood staining her glove from the staff's grip.
Aurelia blurred along the edges of the lattice. Each glyph became a foothold; each husk a rung to spring from. She laughed as she moved, bright and sharp.
"Moonpiercer Arts—Ribbon Guillotine!"
Twin daggers scythed across three helms, the sound clean, metallic, surgical.
"Crescent Dash."
She vanished in a blur of silver, reappeared behind the flank, daggers low. Husks collapsed before they knew their spines had been unfastened.
The system chimed at her wrist:
[Shared Inventory: Auto-Supply]
Quiver Refilled | Latency 0.07s
She grinned like the world had remembered she was its favorite.
The Corrupter did not move at first. He fed. Each husk's fall poured dark strength back into him, the veins crawling up his ribs like vines around a dead tree. His wrong blade thickened, edges shivering like they were trying to decide what shape they wanted.
Andy saw it again—the stutter. The moment of drinking. The half-breath where the wrong blade became honest, unwillingly, before lies patched it back together.
He marked it. Waited.
The Corrupter came forward, dragging the ground into a scream. He swung, wide and cruel. Andy stepped in. The blades kissed, sparks black and red.
The stutter arrived. Andy's wrists rolled, hips sinking, weight carried through his heel into the ridge. The Oathblade's edge whispered three truths in three languages.
"Draconic Oathblade—Triune Severance."
Fire wrote the first mark. Water locked it in. Wind carried it through.
The cut opened across the Corrupter's chest. Black ichor sprayed upward, hissed against the prism's channels, tried to be birds and failed. The fused wings folded, one snapping like dry parchment.
The Corrupter snarled, a sound too wide for his throat. "You carry too many cores!"
Andy's eyes did not waver. "Enough."
He pressed forward. The Oathblade flared ember, tide, gale—braided into a line that was not just cut but conclusion. He drove the blade straight through the Corrupter's chest.
Light burst outward—black shards, shadow unravelling, ash turning to mist before it touched the ground. The wrong blade shattered, whining like a lie that had run out of sentences. The wings crumpled inward and dissolved.
The Corrupter staggered once, then fell apart into air that did not want him.
Silence landed heavier than the cheer that followed.
The system spoke into Andy's chest, warm, calm, approving.
[Corrupter Tier II Defeated]
Reward: Core Fragment ×2
New Passive: Dragon Resonance — Tier II (Aura control improved)
Shared Inventory Updated
Aura settled in his bones, quieter, steadier—less flame, more furnace. He exhaled, and the ridge exhaled with him.
Nia lowered the Staff of Lumina. Blood smeared the haft, but her hands were steady. Aurelia flicked ichor from her dagger and winked like she had just stolen the kill count from a friend.
The villagers finally found their throats. The cheer rose raw, ragged, unbelieving, but it did not break. Some knelt. Some wept. One child clapped twice, then hid her face in her grandmother's skirt.
Andy did not smile. He let the Oathblade rest at his side and spoke quietly, as if reminding himself as much as them.
"It's done."