A thick silence, laden with dust and agony, filled the hall. Uriel observed his companions. Gaellum was trying to stand, leaning on his sword buried in the floor. Gretel gasped, trying to gather a thread of magic. Lycor rubbed his side, assessing the damage with a strategist's eyes. Seres, finally conscious, looked at the Fragment lying nearby and then at Uriel, with a painful understanding in her gaze.
They had given everything. Despite the monstrous scale of the fight, despite being mere insects before titans and transcendents, they had risen, planned, fought. Their courage resonated in Uriel's stone heart more powerfully than any battle cry.
He took a combat stance. His form, a silhouette of stone and shadow, anchored itself on the cracked floor. The flames of his eyes, which had been melancholic, determined, or even childish, now burned with a funereal calm and absolute resolution.
This would be his last cycle. He decided everything would end now. It was time to end his nightmare. Not for revenge, not out of duty, but for a debt of friendship millennia overdue.
'Sorry for taking so long, Isis,' he thought, and his dark essence stirred.
His stone body began to dissolve, not into loose shadows, but into a compact, powerful darkness that maintained his humanoid form. He transformed into a living statue of pure night, a dark specter with the appearance of the stone saint but made of the very essence of the abyss he had inhabited for so long. It was the incarnation of his millennia of guilt, pain, and now, his final will.
Across the crater, the wounded Great Beast, Isis, the empty form, shuddered. The black blood stopped dripping. A tremor ran through her androgynous body.
And then, a primal fury—the last vestige of the trapped soul and desperate corruption—erupted. Not with a roar, but with an electrifying silence that preceded the cataclysm.
She lunged. Not with the supernatural grace of before, but with the brute, desperate force of a cornered beast. A punch aimed at reducing the entire universe to dust.
Uriel, the dark specter, did the same. He did not dodge. He charged.
CRACK!
The clash was not a sound; it was the absence of sound, followed by a wave of force that pulverized the remaining ground around them. Then, the battle exploded into a whirlwind of destruction.
They moved through the devastated hall at speeds the eye could barely capture. It was a duel of titanic phantoms. Isis, with the blind fury of that which is dying. Uriel, with the grim determination of one who has already died many times.
They passed through walls, not opening holes, but dissolving the stone in their path. They ascended, breaking through the damaged castle roof, emerging into the light of the immutable sun and moon that reigned over the city. There, above the ruins, under that dual sky, they continued their deadly dance.
Blows that could split mountains were exchanged. Uriel received countless wounds. Claws of corrupt essence tore strips from his dark form, which bled black sparks.
Isis, for her part, saw how Uriel's darkness, cold and absolute, ate away at the edges of her body, disintegrating the corrupt flesh inch by inch. It was not a struggle of power against power, but of final attrition. Of mutual annihilation.
For Uriel, the battle lasted an eternity. He felt every cycle, every failure, every time he had retreated, condense into every blow he now delivered. It also lasted only a minute. The final minute of a five-thousand-year nightmare.
It was in the air, over the castle, that the climax arrived. Isis, in a last and terrible burst of strength, pierced through Uriel's dark defenses. Her arm, now little more than a spear of flesh and black bone, penetrated the chest of the dark specter.
An unfathomable pain—not physical, but of the soul—exploded within Uriel. He felt his essence, his core, trying to split in two. He looked down at the arm piercing him, then at Isis's empty eyes, inches from his own.
In them, for a fragment of a second, he thought he saw a glimmer. Not of the princess. But of the final relief he had never given her.
With the last strength of his being, with the force of millennia of repentance turned into action, Uriel did not try to free himself. Instead, his dark hand closed—not on Isis, but on his own chest, on the point where the abomination's arm emerged.
And he pushed.
He impaled himself further, advancing along Isis's arm like an unstoppable shadow until his dark hand found, not the Sacred Fragment that was no longer there, but the hollow it had left in Isis's chest. The final point of union, the root of the corruption and artificial life.
With an effort that consumed the last remnants of his titanic strength, Uriel seized a nucleus of distorted existence.
And he tore it out.
There was no blood. There was no audible scream.
Isis opened her mouth in a silent scream that resonated only on the plane of essence. Her entire body convulsed. The fury left her eyes, replaced by an even greater emptiness, but this time a peaceful one. A final one.
She lost all her strength. Her arm slid out of Uriel's chest. Her body, now without the darkness that had sustained it, began to disintegrate. Not into golden dust, but into fine gray ash that the wind immediately began to disperse, carrying away the last remains of the rebellious princess, the Great Beast, Uriel's nightmare.
Uriel, his body battered and shattered, the darkness of his form fading and dripping like ink in water, lost all support. He plummeted from the sky, a black star going out.
Before crashing into the castle courtyard ruins, a gust of wind, rough but careful, enveloped him. Lycor, his face strained with effort, had managed to gather enough power to guide his fall. He deposited him gently on the ground, next to the others.
Uriel lay there, his form returning to fractured stone, but the cracks were deep, dark, and final. The flames of his eyes were faint embers.
With a weak gesture, he dismissed his loyal ones. A mental call, a last sigh of will. In the sky, Gunlaug the dragon let out a sad, low roar, a sound of farewell, before dissolving into golden darkness.
In the distance, Soul's titanic tree shuddered, its purple leaves falling in a sudden rain, and then her form faded, leaving only a sigh of relief and pain in everyone's mind.
Then, Uriel looked weakly at the group of four. A rough sound, like stones grating, came from where his mouth should have been. It was something like a weary laugh, a sigh.
"I am... happy," he managed to articulate, each word an effort. "Even... in death. In the end... there were people... by my side."
The group said nothing. There were no words to balance the scale of millennia of solitude.
With a trembling movement, Uriel extended his partially disintegrated hand. In it, he did not hold the Sacred Fragment lying nearby, but he pointed toward it.
"That... is what... you sought. I hope... it will be... of help... on your journey." A long, painful pause. "I would have... liked... to accompany you... But it's too late... for me."
Seres crawled toward him, ignoring her own pain. She took his large, cracked hand.
"It's alright," she said, her voice firm despite the tears welling up. "You were an incredible warrior. I will have stories written. Not about the Ascended Titan, nor about the saint trapped in a cycle... but about the stone saint... with a human heart."
Gaellum, standing with difficulty now, struck his fist against his breastplate in a martial salute. "You were an admirable warrior. I will train harder. I will become stronger... to be a true warrior... worthy of having fought by your side, even if only at the end."
Lycor approached, his usual nonchalant air replaced by solemn respect. "Do not worry. You were a worthy warrior. The God of Shadows... will give you peace. You have earned it."
Gretel fell to her knees at his other side. Her tears flowed freely. "I wanted... to teach you more things," she said between sobs. "You were a good student. So curious... So... human. Thank you... for being my student."
Uriel listened to each word. The flames in his eyes flickered, a last glimmer of warmth. He nodded, a movement almost imperceptible.
"You must... leave... now," he whispered, his voice almost inaudible. "Before... the creatures... invade... the castle."
The four looked at him, reluctant. But they saw the truth in his cracks. His time was ending, and the world outside, without Isis or her influence, would rush toward this power vacuum.
With one last look, Seres took the Sacred Fragment. Its warmth was now gentle, melancholic. Gaellum helped Gretel up. Lycor nodded, preparing the wind for a quick exit.
They passed through the enormous, shattered doors of the throne hall, leaving the dying saint behind.
Uriel, alone in the immense, devastated hall, looked toward the hole in the ceiling. There, the dual sky began to change.
The sun and the moon, the immutably fixed witnesses of his cyclic torture, began to melt. They turned into a blur of light and darkness that mixed, slowly swirling, dissolving into a perpetual twilight that finally, finally, began to move forward.
The cycle was ending. The spell was unraveling. Real time, heavy and majestic, flowed once more over the cursed City.
Uriel closed his eyes.
He did not hear the final collapse of the towers. He did not hear the distant cries of the corrupted creatures, now directionless, beginning to disperse or fight amongst themselves.
The last thing he perceived, clear and undeniable, was the cold, neutral voice of the Spell, the same one that had governed his hell, pronouncing his final sentence:
[You have slain a Great Beast, Isis of Ydrat]
[You have obtained a Memory]
And with that echo in his fading consciousness, Uriel, the stone saint, found his long-yearned-for rest. The nightmare had, at last, ended.
[Awaken, Uriel, your nightmare has ended!]
[End of Volume Two: Fearful Saint]
(Note: Okay, this is the final chapter of the second volume of this story. I was planning to publish it tomorrow, but I decided to release it now.
Well, I don't usually say this, but please comment on how this second nightmare was compared to the first volume. I know there are some things I didn't explain well, but that will be explained later.
I'll just say it has to do with a large river.
Anyway, comment and give me power stones. On Saturday or Sunday, I'll publish three chapters of the third volume in a row. Well, that's all.)