Gaël drew a deep breath, trying to steady the chaos in his lungs as the acrid stench of blood and ash saturated the air around him. The battlefield was a symphony of violence, a brutal dance where every movement spelled survival or death.
All around him, darkness was torn apart by flashes of steel and wisps of Umbra, a nightmarish painting splattered with guttural cries and fleeting sparks of light. Brann was cutting through reality itself, his absolute strikes carving the void into pure destruction. Maera twirled and darted like a crimson shadow, leaping from one target to the next, each one falling before even realizing they were already dead.
Kaien wasn't a static fighter. He was a storm. His saber swept in elegant arcs, targeting weaknesses, upsetting balance, never allowing his foes to gain ground. Every strike was a calculation, a display of surgical precision that belied the carefree aura he wore like a second skin.
And Rai, always at the heart of the storm, moved with perfect economy of motion. He didn't strike often, but when he did, it was with the force of a collapsing mountain. A single palm crushed a monster into stone; a heavier blow unleashed shockwaves that tore the very air apart.
Gaël knew he had to become part of that dance. He didn't have the luxury of standing still.
Then a shadow lunged at him, and instinct screamed before thought could catch up. There was no time to think.
His body moved before his mind.
A swift step to the side, a roll of the shoulder to narrowly dodge a twisted claw, and then a pure, clean strike, delivered with the clarity of instinct.
The steel bit into the Infested's vaporous flesh, slicing through its very structure, severing the shard that kept it tethered to existence.
There was no scream. Only a breath of void. A silent implosion.
The monster's remains dispersed into thin motes, swallowed by the cloying air of the rift.
And Gaël… felt something stir inside him.
A shiver.
Not of fear.
A shiver of raw exhilaration.
His blade vibrated. Subtly, but with intimate intensity, like it was answering an ancient song he had never known he could hear, until now.
There was a call in it. A faint whisper, echoing from another plane.
The call of the Severance.
A connection formed, somehow, unbidden. A silent agreement between his being and the blade, between his instinct to survive and a deeper, vaster will.
It was no longer just his body striking. It wasn't a technique honed through discipline, still too rigid, too blunt.
It was his will, laid bare, yearning to become the edge.
And so...
He struck again.
A second Infested, caught mid-leap, was cleaved clean through, frozen for a heartbeat in a grotesque posture before scattering into dark ash.
Then a third, who charged with a snarl, only to be split from shoulder to hip, dissolved before it even realized it was already dead.
And a fourth, its twisted form collapsing beneath a cut so precise it seemed to erase a mistake from the world.
Then another.
The movements flowed now, effortless.
Each gesture more fluid, more instinctive. His blade met no resistance, only clean arcs, lethal cuts that followed the wake of his will.
Gaël was no longer fighting.
He was cutting.
But the wave didn't stop.
Every fallen creature gave way to three more, spewed from the rift like an endless torrent, a flood of shadows and fangs, claws and gaping maws. The horde fed on itself, pressing against the limits of endurance and courage.
And just as the tension threatened to snap, Brann, still at the eye of the storm, glanced toward the depths of the cavern. A sharp look, lucid and without illusion.
His voice rose, rough and cold, sharper than his blade. It cracked through the air like an irrevocable verdict.
"We can't kill them all. We move."
No rage. No heroics. Just the raw truth.
Rai gave a simple nod, his expression unchanged, already adapting. Kaien and Maera exchanged a glance, then a thin, razor-edged smile. There was no fear in their eyes, only a wild, almost primal thrill. The kind that came to those who danced at the edge of the abyss and breathed in the void. Gaël tightened his grip around the piece of steel he still dared to call a sword.
Then the air changed.
Suddenly, the atmosphere grew denser, heavier, as if the world was holding its breath. The darkness began to tremble, pulsing like a living membrane around them, thick with an invisible shiver. Cold crept in, not the chill of winter, but something else.
An absence.
A denial of warmth, a fracture in reality.
Something was coming, and Gaël felt it before he saw it. An invisible pressure, a wave of raw intent. A hunger with no bottom.
Brann stopped dead.
Kaien's ever-present smirk faded into a tight shadow.
Maera, feline to the bone, twirled her weapon in one hand, her golden eyes gleaming with pure adrenaline.
Only Rai remained motionless. Shoulders loose, stance relaxed, but ready to strike.
And then it came. A silhouette stepped out of the void.
Massive.
Wrong.
An Hollowborn, the alpha of the horde.
It wasn't just tall. It loomed. A monstrosity built from devoured flesh and shattered bone, gleaming chitin plates, digested scraps of armor, and veins swollen with Umbra, pulsing with every beat like a second heart.
Its body devoured the light around it, as though it carried a shard of void within.
And still, it advanced.
Slowly.
Inexorably.
But its size wasn't the worst part, nor its form, nor the stench of ruin trailing in its wake.
The worst… were its eyes.
Or rather, their absence.
Two gaping hollows, churning with nameless hunger. And then… a whisper. A low, grating vibration. A mental wave, an invitation that didn't travel through sound, but thought.
A voice with no words, from a creature with no gaze.
Kaien exhaled slowly, like savoring a rare wine. His smile returned, tauter, sharper.
"You feel that? That exquisitely crushing aura?"
Then, with almost casual ease, he raised his saber and let it rest lazily on his shoulder.
"Brann, he's all yours."