The gorge had long since ceased to be a gorge.
Where once a narrow throat of stone had forced armies into single-file slaughter, there now stretched a broken valley of torn ridges and jagged escarpments. Whole faces of mountain had sheared away beneath titan blows. Trenches carved by blade and dominion scored the earth in violent lines that cut across one another without pattern. Dust drifted in choking veils. Ash fell in slow, steady curtains from shattered heights. Beneath it all, the Sovereign's Crucible pulsed, its red-black veins threading through fallen rock and fractured ground alike, adapting to ruin rather than surrendering to it.
The valley roared.
Titans advanced in staggered formation through the debris, their chains dragging in metallic arcs across broken stone. Abyssal brands burned along their chests and limbs, reinforcing joints that had already been split and reknit more than once. Around their legs surged the demon host, pouring through newly opened breaches where collapsed ridges had widened what had once been a contained pass.
At the center of that upheaval, Noctis moved with deliberate economy.
Twilight Reaver rose to meet the descending arc of Maltherion's abyssal blade. Steel and void collided in violent flare that illuminated the dust-choked air in white and crimson streaks. The impact drove force through both combatants and into the fractured earth beneath them, widening an already unstable crack that ran like a scar between two fallen titans.
Maltherion pressed through the recoil, voidlight flaring along the jagged edge of his greatsword as he sought to break Noctis's guard through sheer repetition. The strikes came heavy and direct, intended to crush bone and sunder stance rather than finesse through openings.
Noctis did not attempt to overpower him.
He shifted, angled, redirected. Each blow he met at a slant that carried its force into the ground or into already weakened sections of cliff. Stone exploded outward where redirected arcs landed. Demons caught in the wake were flung into the Crucible's active field and dissolved before their bodies struck earth.
The tremor that followed was deeper than blade impact.
Five titans forced themselves into the basin at once, their massive frames shouldering aside fallen debris as if it were no more than gravel. One raised its arm and brought its fist down in direct vertical smash toward Noctis's position.
He stepped out of its shadow in the space between heartbeats.
The fist struck the valley floor with catastrophic force. Rock ruptured outward in a trench that ran the length of the impact. The shockwave scattered demons in violent arcs. Ash lifted in a storm that briefly obscured sight.
Through that obscurity, a Bloodfang Reaper detached from its orbit and lengthened as it spun, reshaping into a scythe of crimson steel broad enough to match the titan's scale. Noctis guided it through a single sweeping cut across the giant's midsection. The blade passed through flesh and marrow as though through cloth, dividing the titan cleanly from shoulder to hip.
The halves remained upright for a suspended instant before gravity claimed them. They crashed to either side, crushing ranks beneath their weight. Even before they settled, the Crucible's threads seized the torrents of released essence and drew them upward in spiraling streams.
Bloodlight poured toward the nexus.
Noctis felt the influx settle into him in controlled succession, thickening his aura without disrupting its balance.
Another titan lunged through the ash cloud, claws raking for him. Two Reapers adjusted simultaneously, one retaining sword form, the other bending into a second scythe. Their arcs crossed in perfect timing. The sword carved down along the titan's spine. The scythe followed horizontally, tearing through connective marrow-channels and ripping vertebrae free in grisly sequence.
The titan's roar fractured into a choked scream as its upper body collapsed away from its lower half. Essence erupted from the wound in brilliant surge, only to bend and stream into the Crucible's burning veins.
A third titan attempted to close from behind while Maltherion pressed in front. The abyssal inheritor drove his blade in thrust aimed directly at Noctis's sternum, forcing him to divide attention.
Noctis allowed the point to graze shoulder rather than chest, angling Twilight Reaver to deflect the worst of the force. Voidlight bit into flesh and was met immediately by crimson flare. The wound sealed even as he pivoted and reshaped another Reaper into guan dao form.
He drove the weapon upward through the charging titan's chest at the exact seam revealed through his sight. The blade pierced heart and erupted from the creature's back in a geyser of gore. The titan froze, eyes wide, before collapsing into ash under intensified extraction.
Maltherion's laughter rolled across the valley, but it carried strain beneath its volume.
"You turn them into fuel," he said, voice threading through blood and void alike.
"They are already spent," Noctis answered calmly.
Around them, the valley continued to unravel.
Titans swung with less coordination as confined terrain forced their blows into one another. A misplaced strike tore through the shoulder of a neighboring giant, destabilizing both. Another punch collapsed a weakened ridge entirely, sending a cascade of stone into the basin. Demons beneath the avalanche were crushed and immediately harvested by the Crucible's extending threads.
The once narrow passage widened with every impact. New pathways opened through the broken range, and through them the demon host poured southward in renewed surge.
Beyond the basin, Twilight and Ashara forces adjusted in disciplined response. Saints moved first, stepping laterally to anchor fresh lines along exposed flanks. One saint brought his marrow-forged axe down in a sweeping arc that split three demons at once, the cut destabilizing their veins so thoroughly that they collapsed before their halves struck ground. Another raised a shield to intercept a lunging beast, pivoted, and drove a bone-forged blade into its throat with clinical precision.
Knights closed ranks behind them. Spears thrust in overlapping rhythm. Priests chanted low invocations that reinforced breath and stance rather than seeking spectacle. The widened front did not break them; it demanded more ground, and they gave it without surrendering cohesion.
The battle was no longer contained, but neither was it uncontrolled.
At the valley's heart, Maltherion drove forward again, void blade descending in heavy diagonal arc intended to cleave through both guard and ground. Twilight Reaver rose to meet it. The collision sent sparks cascading across fractured stone. Force traveled down both blades and into the earth, carving fresh gouges and exposing deeper veins of Crucible geometry that glowed brighter as they were laid bare.
Noctis stepped into that brightness rather than away from it.
He allowed the lattice beneath his feet to absorb and redistribute pressure. A Bloodfang Reaper detached and struck toward Maltherion's flank. The abyssal inheritor twisted aside, but the blade carved a deep line across his side before abyssal regeneration surged to seal it.
Maltherion answered with a flurry of strikes intended to overwhelm through proximity. Noctis did not retreat in wide arcs. He moved in tight patterns, each step measured, each deflection angled to carry excess force into the nearest titan or weakened ridge.
One redirected sweep from Maltherion's blade sliced through the midsection of a titan attempting to flank Noctis. The giant staggered, then collapsed as its own commander's strike and the Crucible's inversion combined to unravel it.
Another titan descended from behind with crushing blow. Noctis invoked Sovereign Chains from beneath fractured ground. Blood-iron shackles wrapped around the titan's wrist mid-swing and wrenched the limb sideways. The redirected fist smashed into a neighboring giant's ribs, splintering bone and destabilizing both.
The Crucible roared louder.
Rivers of bloodlight spiraled upward from multiple collapse points, converging through dust and ash before folding into Noctis's core.
Maltherion's laughter sharpened into something closer to fury.
"You kill and kill," he said, driving his blade forward once more. "But you cannot end me. This abyss does not exhaust."
Noctis met the thrust at crossed angles.
For a heartbeat, void and blood locked together in grinding tension. Ash swirled around them in tightening spirals. Behind Maltherion, demons continued to fall by the hundreds as they entered the active field. Beyond Noctis, allied lines held firm despite widening ground.
"I do not need to exhaust the abyss," Noctis replied quietly. "Only to outlast your certainty."
He shifted weight and cut downward with Oblivion Rend, not toward flesh but toward the seam where Maltherion's blade connected to reinforcing aura. The fissure destabilized that connection for an instant. A Reaper struck in that instant, carving deeper into Maltherion's side before regeneration could fully compensate.
The valley trembled again as another ridge collapsed.
What had once been gorge was now an open basin of ruin, its original contours lost beneath violence.
Yet through dust, ash, titan collapse, and the relentless churn of the demon host, one constant remained.
The Crucible burned.
And Noctis stood within its heart, blades steady, aura dense and controlled, allowing the battlefield itself to feed him while Maltherion pressed harder into a war he no longer fully understood.
The battlefield had been reduced to a geography of consequence.
Where once a gorge had narrowed armies into disciplined lines, there now stretched a valley of torn earth and broken escarpments. Trenches ran in jagged lines where titan fists had struck and rending waves had carved their passage. Ridges that had stood for centuries lay collapsed in angular heaps. Ash lay thick across everything, fine and gray where demons had dissolved, darker where titan marrow had burned hotter before yielding to light.
Through it all, the Sovereign's Crucible endured.
Its geometry, once confined to carved stone, had spread through ruin. Red-black veins pulsed beneath fractured rock and fallen slabs, weaving through the debris as though the land itself had grown arteries. Rivers of bloodlight streamed from every point where bodies fell, converging toward the valley's center with steady inevitability. The pulse of it had become a second heartbeat beneath the clash of steel, louder than thunder when enough essence fed it at once.
Noctis stood within that convergence.
His wings were extended but not rigid, adjusting subtly with each shift in pressure across the field. The orbiting blades of his Arsenal circled him in disciplined paths, altering angle and spacing as threats approached and receded. Blood streaked across his chest and arms, some his own, most not. Where flesh had been torn open moments before, crimson radiance sealed the wound without flourish, knitting muscle and skin with quiet efficiency.
Across from him, Maltherion advanced without restraint.
The abyss inheritor's laughter rolled low and harsh across the valley, threading through marrow-lines rather than air. He did not attempt to mask his contempt.
"You falter," he said as he closed distance, voidlight gathering along the jagged length of his blade. "You bleed without end. You gain nothing."
He swung in broad, punishing arc.
Twilight Reaver met the strike at an angle that prevented full force from driving through Noctis's stance. The collision threw sparks across the dust-choked air. Shockwaves radiated outward, flattening ash in concentric ripples and shattering weakened stone where redirected force struck. Demons caught too near were crushed between converging pressure fronts and then torn apart as the Crucible seized their destabilized marrow.
The recoil forced both combatants half a step apart.
Noctis did not waste that space.
He folded his wings tight against his back and drove forward through the gap, a Bloodfang blade lengthening into guan dao form as it rotated into his grasp. He thrust upward into the chest of an advancing titan that had sought to capitalize on the clash. The blade pierced reinforced bone and tore through the creature's core. When he withdrew, blood erupted in heavy sheets before dissolving into light and bending toward the Crucible.
The titan staggered and collapsed into ash.
Two more stepped into its place immediately.
Their fists descended in overlapping arcs meant to crush the ground and whatever stood upon it. Noctis slipped left, but the impact struck close enough that fractured earth erupted beneath him. The shockwave caught his side and hurled him across broken terrain into the base of a shattered cliff.
Stone gave way under the force of impact.
Debris cascaded down, burying him beneath a mass of fractured rock and ash.
Maltherion's laughter rose sharper.
"Break," he said, advancing through settling dust. "You never deserved to stand above us."
For a heartbeat, the rubble held.
Then it shifted.
Stone split outward in violent spray as wings drove against its weight. Noctis rose from the debris without visible impairment, ash cascading from his shoulders. A thin line of blood traced from the corner of his mouth, but even as it fell, crimson light sealed the damage beneath.
He did not answer Maltherion's accusation.
He stepped forward again.
Titans closed around him in narrowing ring. Maltherion's chains tightened across their limbs, guiding their movements with renewed precision. A fist descended from his right. A second from his left. A third attempted to cut off retreat by collapsing a remaining section of ridge behind him.
Noctis did not attempt to meet them all at once.
He wove between them.
One wing snapped outward to redirect balance as he pivoted beneath the first descending blow. Twilight Reaver angled upward and severed the tendon of a wrist mid-swing, altering its trajectory so that the fist smashed into the flank of a neighboring titan. Bone splintered. Abyssal brands flared and flickered.
He stepped through the space created by their collision and allowed a Bloodfang blade to detach and strike at the knee seam of another giant. The cut destabilized its stance just as Maltherion pressed forward again.
Voidlight carved a path through air and ash toward Noctis's throat.
He raised Twilight Reaver in time, steel and abyss grinding together in flare of red and blue-white. The force of it drove his boots half an inch into fractured ground. Behind him, a cliff face split further and collapsed in avalanche that buried a fresh wave of demons. The Crucible's threads surged through the fallen stone, harvesting essence from those crushed beneath.
Maltherion pressed closer, blade grinding against guard.
"You cannot hold forever," he said, voice low and venomous. "The abyss does not tire."
Noctis's expression did not change.
He allowed the blade to push against his own for a measured second longer than necessary, as if conceding strain. Another titan's fist descended toward his exposed flank.
At the last possible instant, he invoked Dominion Step and shifted inside the arc rather than away from it. The titan's blow struck the ground where he had stood and drove its knuckles into fractured bedrock. The recoil cracked its own forearm.
Noctis turned that fracture into execution.
He brought Twilight Reaver down along the exposed seam, severing structural marrow-thread in single, precise cut. A Reaper followed and plunged into the joint from behind. The titan's arm collapsed uselessly as its body began to unravel under intensified inversion.
Maltherion withdrew his blade and struck again, this time lower, aiming to split Noctis from hip to shoulder.
The cut landed.
Voidlight tore through cloth and flesh. Blood spilled hot across ash-darkened ground.
Crimson radiance answered instantly, burning away the taint before it could anchor. The wound sealed as Noctis stepped backward, not in retreat but to reset angle.
Maltherion's laughter sharpened.
"You see?" he said. "You bleed. You are finite."
The valley pulsed beneath them.
Bloodlight streamed from every dissolving demon and fallen titan, feeding the Crucible in steady torrents. Noctis felt the accumulation, not as wild surge but as pressure building beneath surface of controlled form.
He did not unleash it.
Instead, he continued to weave between titan blows, allowing their missed strikes to collapse more of the valley into itself. Each crater widened the basin. Each avalanche fed the field. Maltherion's chains coordinated their rhythm, pressing him toward walls of broken stone and closing angles of escape.
He let the pressure mount.
Another fist grazed his shoulder and sent him skidding across ash. He rose immediately. A blade of void carved across his ribs; crimson sealed it. Shockwaves tore through terrain until the valley floor was almost unrecognizable.
Maltherion advanced again, voidflame burning brighter along his sword.
"This is despair," he said. "You are alone."
Noctis met his gaze.
"Despair?" he repeated, voice steady and almost curious.
He lifted one hand slightly.
The Crucible answered.
The pulse that followed was not merely louder; it was deeper. Veins across the valley ignited in sudden, unified flare. Bloodlight that had been streaming steadily now surged in violent acceleration, rising from every corpse and fracture in roaring columns. The ground vibrated under synchronized resonance as the lattice intensified its pull.
Titans faltered mid-stride as inversion seized them more aggressively than before. Demons shrieked as their veins split open in cascading sequence. Even Maltherion's blade wavered for a fraction of a breath as the marrow-lines beneath the battlefield screamed under amplified pressure.
Noctis's wings extended to full span.
The halo above him brightened until its light burned through dust and ash alike. Bloodlight flowed into him in controlled torrents, thickening his aura without distortion. The air around him grew dense, heavy with accumulated force.
Maltherion's expression shifted for the first time since the battle had begun.
"What have you done?" he asked, not loudly, but with edge of genuine recognition.
Noctis lowered his hand.
The Crucible continued to thunder beneath them.
"You mistake patience for weakness," he said quietly.
The valley trembled as another titan collapsed under intensified drain. Maltherion stepped back half a pace without meaning to, adjusting grip on his blade.
Noctis did not rush him.
He allowed the surge to settle into structure rather than chaos, every strand of gathered essence aligning within him like a drawn bowstring.
"You speak of despair," he continued, eyes steady. "You have not yet understood what that word means."
The valley burned brighter.
And for the first time since their blades had first crossed, the weight of the battlefield no longer felt evenly distributed between them.