The battle had already begun.
The Ebon Shade towered before them — a hulking silhouette of writhing shadow, brine, and souls, each movement dragging the world down with it. Its presence warped light, devouring sound until every breath felt stolen.
The air stank of salt and rot.
Kaelith was the first to meet it head-on. His radiance flared, gold and silver fire spilling from the cracks along his blade as he struck, every blow a burst of searing light that hissed against the Shade's liquid darkness.
The creature recoiled, shrieking, but its wounds refused to stay. The shadows rippled and sealed, brine and soulstuff congealing like blood.
Beside him, Seris darted in and out, her sabre tracing arcs of red-gold flame through the air. The heat from her Blazing Arc burned the brine to vapor, her strikes carving glowing fissures through its hide. She moved fast, yet even so, her flame sputtered, her footing trembling.
Riel stayed low, his chain alive in his hand. He swung it wide, the steel links glinting with light. Each time the Shade's massive limbs came down, he lashed the chain around them, halting its momentum just long enough for Seris and Kaelith to strike. Every impact rattled his arms to the bone. Every second felt borrowed.
Varen stood at the rear, hands ablaze with runes. His voice was a low chant, each word pulling light from the air itself. Spells burst from his fingertips — arcs of starlit energy slamming into the Shade's body, explosions lighting the obsidian walls. Between each attack, he wove barriers of shimmering blue, intercepting the shockwaves that rolled from the creature's blows.
Still, it wasn't enough.
The Shade screamed — a deep, resonant vibration that bypassed sound and struck directly into their minds. The walls shuddered, the ground cracked, and the runes in Varen's barrier fractured under the strain.
Kaelith drove his palm forward, his light erupting in a blinding flash. "Hold it back!" he yelled, his voice breaking against the chaos.
For a heartbeat, they did. The Shade staggered, its shape rippling apart under the radiance. But then, with a motion that defied sense, it reached toward the heart — the pulsating black core behind it — and tore it free.
"Kaelith!" Seris shouted, but the warning came too late.
The Shade shoved the heart into its chest.
The impact sent out a shockwave that split the world. A scream followed — not of air or flesh, but of souls. The sound made the stone bleed light. Kaelith and Seris were hurled back like ragdolls, their bodies slamming into the shattered ground. Varen's barrier imploded, and his form vanished behind a veil of dust and shards of light.
Only Riel remained standing.
The air was gone. His ears rang. The whispers in his mind rose into a deafening chorus, a thousand dissonant voices shrieking in perfect unison. He could taste metal in his mouth, feel the pulse of the Shade's new heart syncing with his own.
He stepped forward anyway.
"Come on…" His voice trembled, the dagger in his grip shaking. "Come on, then."
The Shade turned its gaze toward him — or something like a gaze. Its form bent inward, hollow eyes burning with faint starlight, its chest pulsing with stolen life.
Riel charged.
He swung the chain, embedding the dagger deep into the creature's chest. The metal hissed against the brine, light flaring from the rune etched into its hilt. The Shade convulsed, its body rippling like disturbed water. Riel yanked the chain, drawing the dagger free, and struck again, and again — every attack carving through fragments of its body that immediately began to reform.
It retaliated with a sweep of its arm. The force was immense, a collapsing tide of shadow and despair. Riel ducked, rolled, and barely avoided being crushed. The ground erupted beside him, spraying black liquid that hissed where it touched.
He moved by instinct — chain looping, dagger flashing — trying to keep it at bay. The whispers screamed in his head: run, hide, kneel, submit. He bit his tongue until blood filled his mouth, grounding himself in the pain.
He'd faced horrors before. The beasts from his nightmares, the monsters that haunted his every waking moment — but this was something else his body was screaming, begging him to run away as the shadow of death loomed over of him.
A swipe caught him across the chest. The world blurred. The air left his lungs. He hit the ground hard, vision swimming.
He thought of everything that had brought him here — the nights clawing through his own mind, the monsters he'd killed, the friends he'd made. He remembered how powerless he once was — and how, somehow, he wasn't anymore.
When he forced himself to stand, blood running down his arm, the Shade loomed above him, its new heart beating faster, brighter.
But before it could strike again, light returned to the cavern.
Kaelith rose from the rubble, his breathing ragged, his body trembling. His Eclipse flared above, the circle spinning faster. The light it emitted wasn't warmth — it was annihilation. Even half-descended, it burned like a dying sun, bending the world around its edge. The ground disintegrated beneath his boots. His own body shook beneath the pressure, the veins in his arms glowing gold as divine light poured through him.
The effort drained him instantly; his knees almost buckled.
He stepped forward, powering through one swing after another. Each strike left trails of molten gold that cut through the Shade's body, searing the faces screaming across its surface. The being howled, recoiling.
"Seris," he rasped, "now!"
Her sabre flared alive once more. The heat rolling off her body made the air quiver.
Together, they struck.
Kaelith's light carved the Shade's right arm at the shoulder, while Seris' flaming arc severed the left in one sweeping motion. The limbs dissolved into waves of brine and trapped souls, collapsing to the floor in torrents of black sludge.
The Shade screamed again, the sound so deep it shook the marrow in their bones. The heart within its chest pulsed violently, spewing molten crimson into the open wounds. The liquid crawled and pulsed like veins, knitting the arms back together, reforming what had been lost.
The four stared in silence, breathing ragged.
The creature stood whole again, its heart glowing through the translucent skin of its chest — a throbbing ember in a sea of darkness.
And for the first time, Riel saw it clearly: not a monster, but a reflection — all the pain, death, and despair of Ashvale made flesh.
A god of ruin, birthed from humanity's own grave.