I raised my twin daggers—curved, black, and laced with Deepdark—and cut through the first knight like I was slicing through wet foil. The corruption that had once been steel parted with a whisper, and its armor clattered apart in halves, collapsing into data ash that fizzled and sparked against the cold ground beneath my boots. The Deepdark humd through my veins, satisfied with its work of severing the bonds that held corrupted matter together.
The next knight raised its rusted greatsword, the blade weeping black ichor that stead where it hit the ground. I could taste the wrongness in the air—corruption magic, twisted and sick. I ducked low, slashed once across the hamstring, once across the neck, and it dropped too, without drama. The familiar weight of my daggers felt reassuring as I exhaled, standing amid the ruin of twisted plate and bone.
Then I looked left. And I pursed my lips.
Rose and Rachel were doing their work. And by "doing their work," I an systematically disassembling every knight within a ten-ter radius as if it were an exam they'd studied for and I hadn't.
Both of them were a year younger than .
And both of them were stronger than at the sa mana rank. The math shouldn't have worked that way, but watching them fight was like watching soone explain a joke I'd never quite understood.
Rose hovered just slightly above the ground, her long coat fluttering behind her like she didn't quite agree with gravity's attitude toward basic physics. Her Gift spun outward, blooming petals of blue roses that shimred like bent glass in a particle field. Seven-circle spells coiled through her limbs like muscle mory—gravity distortion, bubbles of water, and intense pockets of wind, all stitched into spells that didn't ask reality for permission.
One knight raised its shield, tried to charge her. The thing had to weigh three hundred pounds, moving with inexorable montum. Rose didn't even look directly at it. One petal floated by its side.
Then it wasn't there anymore.
No flash, no boom—just absence. Like soone had taken an eraser to existence and got a little carried away.
I felt my eye twitch. Rose made warping reality look about as difficult as brewing tea.
anwhile, Rachel was less subtle.
She moved forward, light collecting in a halo above her back like she was being powered by a nuclear heart. Her hair floated around her like she was underwater, each strand moving in currents of pure magical energy. The hamr she conjured from her magic was made of Purelight, but it had the weight of sothing far older—like it had been carved out of ancient purpose and divine wrath.
She brought it down on one of the knights. It didn't explode. It decomposed, atom by atom, breaking into motes of golden dust that scread as they left the world. The sound made my teeth ache and my Deepdark recoil instinctively.
Another knight leaped at her, sword raised overhead. She sidestepped with dancer's grace, swung the hamr sideways, and caved in its chestplate like she was knocking down a door she didn't like. The corpse flipped twice before skidding into the rubble, where it quietly burst into white fire.
I blinked. Again.
Rachel took another breath and lifted her other hand—magic swirled around her fingers, forming runes that pulsed with divine authority. Lightning lanced through the sky, aid precisely between the eyes of the next knight. It didn't just fall. It submitted, whatever twisted consciousness animated it acknowledging its fundantal wrongness before allowing itself the rcy of destruction.
"Ridiculous," I muttered under my breath.
A group of three ca at next, two with halberds and one with a longsword too big for any real person to wield. I rushed in to et them anyway, Deepdark crawling up my arms like a second skin. The magic felt cold and hungry, eager to resu its work.
I parried the first halberd with a dagger flick, spun past the second one, and let my montum carry into a low dash. My left dagger scraped along the gap in the sword knight's thigh armor—found it—and I plunged the right one into the underside of his jaw. The body spasd, then dropped like a marionette with cut strings.
But there were too many. Undead knights spilling out of the fog like cockroaches from a broken wall. Endless, armored, and ard. I twisted, dodged, slashed. I was clean, clinical, efficient. Everything my instructors had drilled into about precision combat. But not untouchable.
Rose was.
She spun once, her petals orbiting her like blades on a gyroscope. A dozen knights were turned into collapsing possibilities. Another tried to sneak up behind her. She didn't turn. The petal cut it in half diagonally, and both halves fell away like they'd never belonged together.
Rachel took a bolt of spectral fire to the side but grunted and kept moving. She didn't retreat. She advanced. Her eyes glowed with sothing more than power. With conviction. And then she started chanting.
I felt the mana respond. The air rippled like heat shimr, power gathering around Rachel like a visible aura. Her next hamr strike didn't just break a knight—it vaporized a crater into the landscape behind it. A knight tried to stab her during the windup. She back-kicked it into a tree. The tree lost.
The two of them were devastation in motion. One warping reality, the other purifying it with divine authority. And I was... keeping up, I supposed. Barely.
The last knight fell with a shriek that fizzled into digital ash, its helt rolling to a stop near my boot like so final punctuation mark. All was quiet, save for the distant groaning of the battlefield and the flickering afterglow of too many spells burned too quickly.
Rachel stood a few paces ahead, her hamr dissolving into particles of Purelight. She turned her head slightly, brows knitting together as if so inner tension had tugged at her spine.
Then she spoke.
"…He's fighting."
I blinked, still catching my breath. "Who?"
"Arthur." Her voice was soft, but certain. "He's inside a Domain."
Rose looked up from wiping blood—real or otherwise—off her hand. Her eyes sharpened. "A Domain? He must be in danger even with Reika."
Rachel didn't answer. She had already begun moving, her hand reaching toward her back—except there had been nothing there monts ago. And then there was.
The air shimred as she pulled it into existence: an ancient-grade artifact, one whose power even the dead might hesitate before approaching. A bow, silver and gold and singing softly in a language the world had mostly forgotten. Runes scrawled along its limbs like constellations from so holy map, alive and whispering.
I stared at the weapon and felt my blood go cold. The bow radiated power that made my Deepdark magic cower like a frightened animal.
"That's…" My voice cracked despite my best efforts. "That's a relic of the First Choir."
Rachel didn't acknowledge . She simply notched an arrow, one sculpted from Purelight itself, and raised the bow toward the distant battle.
The arrowhead flared.
She didn't fire.
"…The Domain's stopping ," she muttered.
Rachel's jaw clenched. She drew the bow anyway, holding the pressure, the artifact humming louder now—almost protesting.
"I can't reach him."
Rose exhaled.
"Then let's cheat."
She stepped closer, lifted her palm, and pressed two fingers to the arrow's shaft. Her petals began to swirl again, this ti not just blue. Golden hues bled into the swirl like they were being painted mid-air, a fusion of Purelight and Rose's warped, reality-defying magic.
Petals spun outward from the arrow, orbiting it like satellites. Each one was forged from Rachel's will and Rose's command of unreality, shaped into sothing that could touch the untouchable.
The bow changed too. A new ring ford behind the string, like a ripple in ti. The arrow brightened. The air buzzed with potential energy that made my bones vibrate.
Together, they had made sothing that didn't care about Domains.
Rachel breathed in. Her eyes locked on the distant clash, where flickers of Arthur's swordplay and Reika's desperation sparked against the backdrop of darkness.
Then she loosed.
The arrow tore through the world like a falling star, reality parting before it like curtains being drawn aside. It didn't follow a normal trajectory—it curved through dinsions I couldn't perceive, guided by Rose's manipulation and powered by Rachel's divine authority.
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