The gorge no longer resembled a mountain pass.
Three days of sustained annihilation had stripped it of natural character. The canyon walls were scored with fractures from titanic impacts and blade clashes. The floor was layered in thick ash that shifted underfoot like dark snow, glowing faintly where the Sovereign's Crucible burned beneath it. Red-black veins pulsed through the stone in steady cadence, as if the mountains themselves had developed a heartbeat.
Within that confined corridor, order had dissolved into controlled violence.
Titans staggered along both flanks of the pass, their immense frames scraping against jagged walls that left deep gouges in stone. Chains dragged behind them in broken arcs, some links snapped by earlier clashes, others still intact and pulsing with abyssal reinforcement. Their movements were constrained by the narrow terrain, forcing them into awkward angles as they attempted to bring full mass to bear.
Between their legs and beneath their shadows surged the demon host.
Wave after wave poured forward from the northern plain, driven by abyssal compulsion that permitted no pause. They advanced through smoke and ash, stepping over dissolving remains of those who had preceded them, only to collapse mid-stride as the Crucible flared brighter in response to increased density. Marrow split open under imposed inversion. Black ichor burst and evaporated before it could stain stone, its essence drawn into the lattice etched throughout the gorge.
The pass had become both battlefield and mechanism.
At its center, where the geometry converged most densely, two inheritors faced one another.
Maltherion's blade descended in a heavy arc, voidlight trailing from its jagged edge like liquid shadow. Twilight Reaver rose to meet it. Steel met distortion with a violent shriek that cut through the roar of the field. Sparks of abyss and bloodlight scattered outward in sharp trajectories, striking canyon walls and igniting brief flares where they struck exposed veins of Crucible geometry.
The collision sent a shockwave down the length of the gorge.
Demons nearest the impact were lifted from their feet and thrown into the active field's brightest arcs. They dissolved in mid-air, their forms unraveling before striking ground.
Maltherion pressed forward through the recoil.
His fangs bared in a grin that bordered on feral delight, blue hair streaming behind him as though caught in internal flame. The abyssal aura around him thickened, bending air and distorting light.
"You cannot win," he said, voice carried through marrow rather than air. "You were unworthy before. You remain so now. In the heart of my abyss, you will be broken."
Noctis did not answer with immediate retort.
His expression shifted only slightly, a faint curvature at the edge of his mouth that did not reach his eyes.
A titan, seizing upon what it perceived as distraction, brought its massive arm down toward Noctis's exposed flank. The impact would have crushed stone and flesh alike.
Before the blow landed, one of the orbiting Bloodfang Reapers altered form mid-rotation.
Its curvature elongated. The blade thickened and extended along a central shaft, reshaping into a guan dao of condensed crimson steel. Noctis pivoted under the descending limb and drove the lengthened weapon upward through the titan's lower jaw.
The blade pierced through bone reinforced by abyssal brand and did not slow. It traveled through cranial cavity, splitting marrow channels and destabilizing core structure before bursting from the back of the skull in a geyser of bloodlight.
The titan's scream lasted only a heartbeat.
As its body collapsed, the Crucible seized the released flood of essence and dragged it inward. The massive form disintegrated in controlled collapse, dissolving into ash that joined the already thickening layer underfoot.
Noctis withdrew the guan dao in smooth motion. The weapon retracted into standard Reaper form and resumed its disciplined orbit.
"One fewer," he said evenly.
Maltherion answered with renewed aggression.
He advanced in a straight line, abandoning lateral feints in favor of overwhelming force. Voidlight flared along his blade as he brought it down in successive vertical strikes designed to break through Twilight Reaver's guard by sheer repetition.
Noctis adjusted his stance within the Crucible's densest lattice.
The geometry beneath his feet absorbed part of the transmitted force with each collision, redirecting it outward along etched channels. Where redirected shockwaves met the canyon walls, they split weakened stone and sent fragments raining downward onto advancing demons, who were then caught in the field's inversion and dissolved.
The duel settled into rhythm.
Maltherion's swings came heavy and direct, designed to crush guard and fracture bone. Noctis's responses were economical, measured, each counter placed at an angle that reduced force rather than absorbing it fully. Tempo Ledger governed his motion, aligning each step and pivot with the cadence of the battlefield.
Strike.
Deflection.
Countercut.
Reposition.
A third titan attempted to close distance from the opposite side. Its massive shadow loomed over both combatants as it raised both arms to bring them down in crushing convergence.
Noctis shifted his weight fractionally and extended his wings.
The Crucible answered the gesture.
A concentrated pulse of bloodlight erupted outward in radial expansion from the nexus beneath him. The wave struck the approaching titan before its fists could descend. Its arms were thrown wide, balance shattered, and its body hurled backward into the canyon wall with a force that cracked the stone behind it.
The titan slid downward, already unraveling under intensified extraction.
Maltherion used the distraction to lunge.
His blade drove forward in thrust rather than arc, aimed directly at Noctis's sternum. Twilight Reaver twisted to intercept, but the point grazed shoulder before sliding off angled steel. Voidlight bit into flesh.
For a moment, blood flowed.
Crimson light flared across Noctis's skin, sealing the wound as quickly as it had opened. The void taint was burned away before it could anchor. The injury left no lasting impairment.
Maltherion withdrew his blade and smiled sharply.
"You bleed."
"And you heal," Noctis replied calmly.
He stepped inside the next swing.
Twilight Reaver cut across Maltherion's chest in a clean diagonal. The edge intersected the seam between rib and shoulder, slicing through flesh that warped green-black under abyssal reinforcement. For an instant, the cut remained open, and dark blood spilled across armor.
Then the wound sealed.
Abyssal energy surged inward, boiling blood back into place and knitting flesh closed with unnatural speed.
The battlefield offered no pause for contemplation.
Demons attempted to swarm inward around the duel, perhaps hoping to overwhelm through numbers or distract one inheritor long enough for the other to capitalize. They entered the periphery of the Crucible's active zone and collapsed in scores. Marrow tore free in luminous arcs, rising like inverted rain toward the etched channels in the air.
Noctis extended Crimson Tempest Dominion in a controlled sweep across the densest cluster.
Blood-forged blades descended in disciplined pattern, cutting down hundreds before they could approach within striking range. Radiant fragments from inverted sanctity laced through the storm, destabilizing abyssal reinforcement threads among mid-tier officers.
Maltherion responded by widening his aura.
The void presence around him thickened, pushing outward against the Crucible's influence. For a brief span, the red-black glow dimmed at the edges where abyssal pressure pressed hardest.
He swung again, blade trailing distortion that carved a deep groove along the canyon wall. The displaced arc struck two titans still staggering within range, slicing through their midsections and accelerating their collapse under extraction.
Noctis recognized the tactic and mirrored it in principle.
He angled Twilight Reaver not toward Maltherion's blade, but toward the ground beneath his feet. Oblivion Rend activated along the edge, carving a fissure through ash and stone that intersected several of the abyssal chains reinforcing the surrounding ranks. The threads snapped in sequence, weakening cohesion and reducing the pressure Maltherion could project outward.
The duel tightened.
Blades collided at close range.
Shoulder met shoulder as each attempted to force advantage through proximity. Blood and void mingled in brief sprays before being consumed by either regeneration or field inversion.
Maltherion's strikes grew heavier, less measured, as frustration edged into his movements. He drove forward with repeated overhead blows intended to crush rather than cut. Noctis absorbed one along Twilight Reaver's spine and allowed the impact to slide, redirecting force into a lateral sweep that carried Maltherion's blade into a cluster of demons advancing from behind.
The unfortunate ranks were split apart by their own commander's arc.
Ash rose in a dense cloud as bodies dissolved.
Both inheritors bore visible damage now.
A rent appeared along Noctis's flank where a glancing strike had connected. It sealed almost instantly, bloodlight knitting torn tissue with controlled precision. A jagged tear opened across Maltherion's forearm under successive Reaper strikes. Abyssal energy flooded the wound, sealing it with warped flesh that carried faint green-black sheen.
Neither slowed.
A titan, perhaps the last of those remaining within the gorge's reach, charged in desperate attempt to break the stalemate. Its chains dragged uselessly behind it, brands flickering under sustained drain.
Noctis extended Sovereign Chains in response.
Blood-iron shackles erupted from beneath the ash and wrapped around the titan's ankles. The creature stumbled mid-stride. Maltherion attempted to use the distraction to land a decisive blow.
Noctis met him in direct collision.
Twilight Reaver and the void blade locked at crossed angles. For a heartbeat, neither advanced.
Around them, the Crucible roared louder than at any previous moment.
The fallen titan was dragged sideways into the brightest arc of the field and dissolved in rapid succession. Its essence surged into the lattice, reinforcing Noctis at the precise moment of strain.
He shifted weight and pushed.
Maltherion was forced half a step backward.
It was slight, but measurable.
The demon host at the periphery thinned rapidly now. Without titans to anchor them and with officers falling under precise strikes, their cohesion fractured beyond immediate recovery. Still they advanced under compulsion, and still they fell.
The gorge had become furnace and arena simultaneously.
Blood fought blood at its heart, each inheritor sustained by different law. One drew strength from ordered extraction and disciplined integration. The other fed upon abyssal reinforcement and raw assertion of will.
Strike followed counterstrike without pause.
A deep cut opened across Maltherion's side; it sealed in seconds.
Voidlight pierced through Noctis's thigh; crimson radiance burned the taint and closed the wound before it could compromise stance.
The duel did not resemble wild chaos to those capable of perceiving its structure. It was exchange of layered dominions, each probing for structural weakness in the other's equilibrium.
Ash rose and settled in constant motion.
Bloodlight streamed upward in continuous rivers.
Void flared and recoiled.
And at the center of the gorge, beneath a sky darkened by smoke and residual energy, two progenitor inheritors continued their clash without yielding, the battlefield itself paying the price for their refusal to fall.
The gorge had ceased to be a passage and had become an engine of violence. Sound rolled through it without pause, a continuous roar born of steel, collapsing stone, titan cries, and the low, relentless thrum of the Sovereign's Crucible. The canyon walls, already fractured by earlier clashes, shuddered under repeated impact. Ash lifted in dense sheets whenever shockwaves rippled outward, only to settle again in thick drifts that glowed faintly from the lattice burning beneath.
At the center of that ruin, Noctis and Maltherion fought at close range.
Their blades met in heavy collision, Twilight Reaver absorbing and redirecting the descending arc of the abyssal greatsword. Voidlight crawled along blood-forged steel in a flare of dark radiance before being cut away by crimson glow. Each impact transmitted force into the stone beneath them, cracking already weakened sections of floor and sending vibrations racing along the canyon's length. Neither gave ground for more than a step before reengaging. Their movements were not wild but calculated, each angle chosen to reduce exposure to the other's strength while preserving striking line.
The tremor that followed did not originate from their exchange.
It traveled up through fractured rock in deeper cadence, heavy enough to displace ash from ledges high above. Noctis felt the altered rhythm through the Crucible's lattice a heartbeat before the new mass entered sight.
Five additional titans forced their way into the narrowed approach from the north.
Their chains rattled violently against canyon walls that could no longer contain their full breadth. Abyssal brands across their chests burned brighter in answer to Maltherion's will, reinforcing joints and marrow against the draining pressure of the field. Each step they took fractured stone underfoot, widening cracks and sending debris cascading into the basin that the gorge had become.
Maltherion's expression sharpened as he sensed their arrival. A harsh smile curved his mouth as he pressed forward against Noctis's guard.
"Let them fight beside me," he said, voice carried through marrow rather than air. "Let their weight finish what you began."
The first titan did not wait for command nuance. It raised its arm high and brought its fist down in direct vertical strike toward Noctis's position. The blow would have pulverized bedrock had it landed cleanly.
Noctis moved an instant before contact.
His wings drove downward in controlled burst, lifting him above the descending mass as the fist smashed into the gorge floor. Stone ruptured outward in violent fissure, carving a trench through fractured ground and throwing a plume of debris skyward. The shockwave rippled through ash and scattered demons in all directions. Those lifted by the blast dissolved mid-flight as the Crucible seized their destabilized marrow.
Suspended briefly above the impact zone, Noctis redirected one of the orbiting Bloodfang Reapers.
The blade elongated as it rotated, reshaping into a vast scythe whose arc exceeded the titan's own reach. He guided the weapon through a single sweeping cut that intersected the titan at mid-torso. The edge did not falter against reinforced bone. It passed through flesh, marrow, and spine in continuous motion, bisecting the giant cleanly from shoulder to hip.
For a moment the titan remained upright, divided but not yet fallen.
Then the two halves parted.
Blood surged outward in heavy sheets before evaporating into streams of light that bent sharply toward the Crucible's core. Both sections toppled, crushing scores of demons beneath their mass. As they struck ground, the lattice intensified extraction. The colossal remains unraveled rapidly, collapsing into ash that joined the thickening layer across the basin.
The Crucible's pulse deepened.
Essence streamed upward in visible rivers, converging along red-black channels before folding inward toward Noctis's body. The influx did not destabilize him. It reinforced structure, amplifying density of aura and sharpening precision of movement.
A second titan lunged while the first dissolved.
Its clawed hand cut through the air in wide sweep intended to enclose Noctis mid-flight. Two orbiting Reapers adjusted simultaneously. One retained its sword-like edge. The other reshaped into scythe once more. They crossed paths in intersecting arcs, striking the titan's back in perfect sequence. The sword carved down along the spinal seam, splitting armor and flesh. The scythe followed horizontally, severing connective marrow-channels and dragging vertebrae free in a grisly chain.
The titan's roar broke into a single ragged scream as structural integrity failed. Its upper body collapsed backward while lower limbs buckled forward, creating violent torsion that snapped what remained of its spine. Essence poured from the rupture in luminous torrents and fed the Crucible's geometry without pause.
A third titan advanced through ash and falling debris.
It did not attempt finesse. Both fists rose and descended in overlapping arcs meant to crush rather than capture. Noctis descended from above into narrow gap between those descending limbs, folding one wing to reduce profile and extending the other for balance. As the fists struck and fractured ground on either side of him, he shifted a Bloodfang Reaper into guan dao form.
The thrust was direct and efficient.
He drove the blade upward through the titan's sternum at a point revealed by Omen Sight as central marrow-knot. The weapon pierced heart and continued through reinforced bone until its tip erupted from the giant's back in violent spray. The titan froze in half-motion, eyes widening in sudden comprehension before its entire frame convulsed under inversion. Blood cascaded downward, but before it touched ash it converted to light and bent inward along the lattice.
Noctis withdrew the guan dao in smooth motion.
The titan collapsed forward, its weight shaking the basin. Extraction consumed it almost as soon as it struck.
With each kill, the Sovereign's Crucible intensified. Veins embedded in the stone glowed brighter, their red-black illumination reflecting off fractured walls and shattered rubble. Streams of bloodlight converged from every direction, spiraling upward before bending sharply into Noctis's core. The accumulation manifested not as wild flare but as concentrated density. His aura expanded and compressed in measured rhythm, every breath drawing in regulated influx of power.
Maltherion's gaze narrowed as he registered the pattern.
"You convert them into fuel," he observed, voice sharpened.
Noctis adjusted his grip on Twilight Reaver, the guan dao retracting into orbiting blade once more.
"It is efficient," he replied evenly.
Around them, the battlefield devolved further into controlled ruin.
Remaining titans swung with increasing aggression, their strikes often colliding with canyon walls rather than intended target. Each missed blow tore away more stone, collapsing entire sections of cliff into the basin below. Avalanches cascaded down, burying demons in tons of rock. The Crucible's geometry extended through newly fallen stone, harvesting essence from crushed ranks as readily as from blade-cut flesh.
The original bottleneck of the gorge widened with every collapse.
What had once been confined corridor had become irregular amphitheater of broken rock and ash. Yet the widening did not weaken the slaughter. It accelerated it. The more mass that entered the field, the more efficiently the lattice consumed.
Maltherion pressed in close once more, void blade sweeping in heavy diagonal arc. Twilight Reaver rose to meet it, steel and distortion colliding in flare that illuminated the entire basin. Sparks cascaded across fractured ground, igniting brief flares where they struck exposed sigils.
He followed with rapid sequence of strikes designed to overwhelm through repetition. Noctis answered each with measured deflection, stepping through narrow gaps and redirecting force into weakened stone rather than absorbing it fully. Where redirected arcs traveled, they intersected advancing demons and destabilized titans alike.
The gorge no longer roared with single dominant sound.
It resonated with layered rhythms: titan impacts, blade collisions, collapsing cliffs, and the constant undertone of the Crucible's pulse.
Maltherion's laughter continued, but it carried strain beneath its surface. He drove forward with renewed force, attempting to press Noctis into unstable ground where footing faltered.
Noctis did not concede balance.
He stepped backward only to reposition into brighter segment of the lattice, where extraction ran strongest. A titan lunged from his flank. Without breaking eye contact with Maltherion, he extended Sovereign Chains from beneath the rubble. Blood-iron shackles wrapped around the titan's ankle and wrenched it sideways. Its own momentum carried it into the path of Maltherion's next sweeping arc. Voidlight cleaved through titan flesh, accelerating its collapse into ash.
Bloodlight surged again.
Rivers of crimson streamed inward.
The basin that had once been a gorge lay shattered under combined violence, but the predator remained centered within its burning geometry. Stone fell, ash rose, titans collapsed, and demons dissolved in continuous cycle.
Maltherion pressed his blade against Twilight Reaver once more, void and blood locked at crossed angles.
Even as the terrain fractured around them, even as the bottleneck widened into open ruin, the Crucible held.
And in the midst of widening chaos, Noctis stood unmoved, bloodlight flowing steadily into his core while the battlefield fed him without end.