Maera licked her lips, but her eyes had changed. A new flame burned within them, sincere, focused.
"Finally... a worthy opponent."
Brann didn't answer. He didn't even glance at her. His gaze never left the creature. He simply raised his sword, barely. A minimalist gesture, almost lazy, almost unreal. Just a flick of the wrist. It wasn't a flashy stance, nothing about it screamed offense, and yet it held within it the quiet promise of execution.
That was all.
The HollowBorn charged.
Its formless mass surged toward them like a living wave, boiling, seething. Its limbs twisted into impossible tendrils, claws splitting and multiplying into a swarm of writhing blades. A gaping maw, set on its flank like a remnant torn from a nightmare, opened wide and exhaled a breath thick with corruption, black drool and a growl without origin.
Gaël stumbled back, his stomach twisting, knuckles white around his grip. A sudden vertigo slammed into him, not fear, but something deeper. Raw. Instinctual. This thing... was no being. It was Umbra. A monarch in the making.
And then Brann struck.
His blade sliced through the air, not with power, but with certainty. A clean motion. Inevitable. The cut was neither fast nor slow. It simply was.
Space itself seemed to warp around the arc of the blade, and the Hollowborn howled as several of its limbs were severed in one clean sweep.
But it didn't fall. It reacted.
Dozens of black growths erupted from its torso, lashing outward like predatory roots, twisting at impossible angles to ensnare Brann in a web of clawed tendrils.
Kaien moved.
But he didn't block the strike.
He slipped into the gap between movements, light as breath, his saber tracing a graceful arc that skimmed the tendrils without touching them. The attacks landed where he no longer was. He danced at the edge of Brann's cut, like a coordinated echo.
His silhouette blurred in a flurry of elusive steps, and in the same fluid breath, his saber bit into the creature. Not to kill it. To disrupt it.
The HollowBorn lost cohesion for a fleeting instant. Its limbs crumbled slightly, just enough.
Maera seized the moment.
She burst forward into the fray. Her blade swept in a perfect arc, deadly, inescapable. She struck from behind, her weapon plunging deep into what passed for the creature's spine.
It screamed.
Not a cry. A ragged, broken groan, an abomination's death-rattle, a vibration of agony that fractured the rules of life itself. Its body convulsed, but didn't fall. Already, the Umbra surged, pulsing, rebuilding, knitting severed limbs with inhuman haste.
That accelerated regeneration, fueled by the abnormally dense Umbra saturating the rift, was becoming a problem.
Rai understood that instantly.
He launched forward, and it was as if the night itself came crashing down, swift and inexorable.
His palm struck the monster's chest with a single blow, so precise it seemed summoned by the stars. The impact rang out like a death knell, briefly illuminating the darkness, scattering shadow like a divine breath.
The rock trembled, the ground cracked, and the shockwave hurled the creature into a burst of shattered stone, pinning it against the wall with a muffled explosion.
Gaël thought it was over. That hope didn't last.
The abomination rose again. Worse still, the horde surged around it, like a living swarm, encircling their master in a grotesque reflex. A wall of infected flesh and claws formed, an abject instinct of protection.
Brann remained unfazed. His eyes never left the enemy.
That glacial stare cut through the writhing mass of creatures, locked on the alpha as it spewed guttural sounds, vibrations so vile they scraped at the mind and eardrums like a poison made of sound.
Gaël felt his knees buckle under the pressure. His whole body trembled beneath the weight of that unholy cry. But Brann didn't flinch. He moved forward, relentless, as the horde charged.
No words. No shout.
And all it took was a single motion.
An arc.
A simple, circular sweep of the blade.
Precise. Perfect.
The sword sliced the air with supernatural grace, drawing a line of silent death, and the monsters fell. Like ripe wheat under the harvest, they dropped without resistance, without hope.
And he didn't stop.
He kept walking.
Unshaken.
Eyes locked on the nightmare still rising.
The HollowBorn tore itself from the ground in spasms, its warped form struggling to piece together a new shape. Each movement defied anatomy, an affront to coherence.
Then it screamed.
No, it bellowed, a cry beyond sound, more judgment than voice. It didn't pass through air, it vibrated in the bone marrow. A wave of pure shadow, tearing reality like an invisible maw.
Gaël dropped to one knee, reeling from the nauseating vertigo crashing down on him.
Brann stood firm.
He planted his feet into the earth, raising his sword high, very high, above his head. One foot slid half a step back.
A perfect stance. An absolute guard.
Then… he struck.
The ground, the HollowBorn, the horde, the fear, everything, with one cut.
Absolute silence.
An irrevocable judgment.
Time seemed to freeze in that instant, and then the beast slowly split apart, two halves sliding past each other, as if even gravity hesitated to accept the weight of the blow.And this time… it didn't rise again.
The echo of the strike faded, leaving behind only the ragged breath of the survivors and the oppressive silence of bloodstained rubble.
Gaël felt his heart pounding in his temples, still shaken by the intensity of the battle.
"Tough one," Maera muttered, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. "Probably still mid-mutation… a young HollowBorn, fresh out of a successful evolution. Lucky for us it hadn't mastered its new powers yet."
Brann, meanwhile, lowered his blade, his steely gaze fixed on the shattered corpse of the HollowBorn. Then, without a word, he sheathed his weapon, but he didn't stop there.
He stepped forward toward the still-smoking carcass, and without hesitation, plunged his bare hands into the creature's twisted, pulsating flesh. The fibers gave way with a wet, spongy sound. The Umbra resisted, for a moment… then surrendered.
A black shard emerged. Raw. Shapeless. Pulsing with impure essence, saturated with a life that should never have existed.
Brann seized it without pause, and with a clean, deliberate motion, sliced it free with his blade.
A black smoke hissed out, thick, dense Umbra, oozing upward in spiraling tendrils, like a pagan offering to a sky of ash.
Gaël suppressed a shiver. Every fiber of his being screamed at him not to come closer. Not to breathe.
But Brann… inhaled.
Slowly, his nostrils flared. He drew in a deep breath.
And the Umbra vanished into his lungs.