The first rays of sunlight broke over the horizon, chasing away the night.
But the chaos left behind by the cults remained.
Once Viktor had slain the servant of the god, the shadow monsters dissolved into nothing, leaving only the five cultists who had summoned them. Furious and shocked that their ritual had failed, they tried to flee, but the students and teachers, burning with grief and rage, cut them down before they could escape.
Viktor hovered above the wreckage for a moment, staring down at the ruins of Nevermore, the shattered forest, and the surviving Outcasts who were crying, laughing, and clinging to one another in celebration.
His flames flickered.
He looked skyward one last time before the fire around him went out, and he fell.
The ground shook when he hit. His skeletal form began to change, flesh slowly knitting back together until his body was whole again, but there was no light in his eyes.
He was dying.
He knew it. This was the cost of using too much power.
Through his blurring vision, he saw the Outcasts gather around him. Agnes knelt at his side, sobbing, her words a muffled echo he could barely hear. Jass knelt nearby, smiling faintly, though tears streaked his face. One by one, every Outcast who could still stand came to him. They wept, not only for the battle they'd survived, but for the one who had saved them.
Viktor weakly tried to raise a hand, but it fell limply to the ground. Darkness closed in.
'I haven't even said goodbye yet…'
---
Jericho River
Something fell from the sky, a fragment of pure darkness, etched with patterns no mortal eye could decipher. It splashed into the river, sinking briefly before floating back to the surface.
A figure in a black robe appeared on the bank, silently retrieving the fragment.
They turned their hooded gaze toward the sky for a long moment… before vanishing back into the forest.
///
Author's Notes:
Finally, Arc 1 — Cult of Shadows — is complete.
Honestly, I wasn't sure if I could make it this far. If you look at my older novels, most of them didn't even last ten chapters before I dropped them. But I'm proud that I kept writing and brought this one all the way to the end of its first arc.
Arc 1 turned out to be quite short. At first, I planned to stretch this arc to 50+ chapters, but I realized I was making a lot of mistakes, especially with Viktor's power. His "cheat" wasn't something I even planned from the start; it just came to me while I was writing, and it ended up making him way too overpowered. That made things harder to balance, and I had to limit it by confining most of its effects to his inner world.
There were many mistakes like this, and that's why I decided to end Arc 1 here, so I can take what I've learned and do better in the next arc. I want to use all the lessons from this first arc to write a stronger, more consistent story moving forward.
Thank you all so much for your support.