The priestess's eyes widened, not just with fear, but with the unspoken understanding that death had already claimed her, and the light she summoned was no salvation, only a final plea.
A pillar of radiance burst upward from beneath her feet, pure and trembling, the earth itself screaming for mercy in her stead.
It reached toward the sky like a desperate child grasping for a hand that would never come.
The boy's breath caught in his throat, his body stiff with the primal instinct to flee.
Run.Just run.
But there was no time.
Shingen stepped into the column of light with a gait untouched by urgency, his form gliding through the brilliance like rot slipping through silk.
The radiance bent around him, parted for him, as if the holy ground itself dared not resist.
He reached her— calm, unaffected, his fingers curling with surgical precision— and pressed a single finger against the center of her brow.
No violence. No spectacle.
Only silence, final and absolute, like a hymn drowned in a blood-soaked cathedral.
Her body gave way all at once, slumping forward like a puppet whose strings had been severed mid-sentence.
Her tears still clung to her lashes as her soul vanished, unwritten.
The pillar of light shattered into embers.
Four gone. Eight remained.
And hope had already begun to rot.
Among them, the red-haired warrior staggered upright, his frame shuddering beneath the weight of wounds that should have ended him.
His breath tore from his lungs in jagged bursts, a broken blade clutched in his trembling grip.
"We… we underestimated…" he choked out, but his voice failed.
Shingen returned— not in a blur, not in haste— but like a judgment coalescing from smoke, each step deliberate, a soft echo in the stunned hush of slaughter.
The earth felt it, even if they could not: death was walking.
Then came the sound— piercing, sharp, unnatural.
It wasn't a scream. It was the air itself being cut.
A body flew, headless, through the sky like a discarded relic, the neck stump trailing no blood, no twitch.
The head landed moments later, eyes still frozen in a question never answered.
The red-haired man stiffened, his sword rattling in his grip.
"We were supposed to win," he whispered, not to anyone else, but to the ashes of their plan now smothered beneath inevitability.
Beside him, the boy could only echo that truth in a voice already half-dead.
This wasn't a battle. It was a reckoning.
Shingen advanced, that faint smirk curving his lips like a knife meant for gods, not men.
His eyes glowed— not bright, but cold.
The kind of light found in a predator's eyes before the final bite.
The red-haired man's knees buckled.
He collapsed slowly, not from injury, but despair.
His pride drained with the warmth from his limbs.
"We thought we could stop you…"
He said, barely audible, as if ashamed to admit the thought had once been real.
His fiery hair began to dim, strand by strand, until only darkness remained, absorbing the crimson reflection of his own blood spreading beneath him like a silent requiem.
But one rose.
A beast— half-dead, perhaps more bone than flesh— dragged himself forward through agony.
Not crawling. Not begging.
Pulling with ruined limbs as if willing to split the world open with his bare hands.
His claws ripped trenches into the earth, defying its refusal to give way.
Blood spewed from his broken jaw, painting his snarling lips, but still he moved.
Still, he reached.
He seized Shingen's leg— not in desperation, but with a warrior's defiant wrath, fingers locking with the strength of a dying god unwilling to bow.
"Not… yet," he spat, the words tearing from him like shards of steel.
"I will not die… beneath you."
Shingen looked down, unshaken.
For a moment, something flickered behind his gaze— not pity, not scorn— but acknowledgment.
His hand rose, slowly, brushing against his mouth, as though to stifle a laugh too cruel for the moment.
And then, with merciless joy glimmering in those gold-lit eyes, he whispered, almost tenderly:
"That tickles."
The priestess stirred, eyelids fluttering beneath the crushing weight of dread that cloaked the battlefield like a funeral shroud, her mind drifting in and out of lucidity, suspended by a thread already fraying under the strain.
Each breath she drew felt borrowed, scraped raw against the bitter air, thick with blood, death, and the rotting stench of dreams defiled.
The sky above was no longer sky— just a bruised expanse of ash and ruin, and somewhere beyond the veil of smoke and slaughter, something ancient and monstrous stirred.
Not a beast. Not a man. But a force— his force.
It wasn't the noise of war that broke her; it was the sudden silence.
That unbearable hush that blanketed the world just before something unspeakable arrived to finish the work that screams had started.
The earth seemed to cower, pulsing with a dread that didn't belong to nature but to something older and more vicious.
Her soul recognized him before her eyes could— recognized the weight, the presence, the utter hopelessness that radiated in steady waves from the figure approaching through flame and ruin.
Shingen.
The name struck her like a nail through the heart, a brand seared across every memory of defiance she'd ever dared to have.
She gasped, choking on nothing, as the memory returned— not of being struck, but of being erased.
A single touch. Just one.
His finger upon her brow had felt more like a sentence than a gesture, not cruel in form, but cruel in outcome.
There had been no pain— just silence, cold and complete, the kind of stillness reserved for corpses and forgotten gods.
Her body had folded, but her soul remembered. And it trembled.
With teeth clenched and body wracked with tremors, she forced her fingers into motion, scratching glowing symbols into the dirt like a dying animal clawing at the void.
Symbols older than language, burning with meaning her mind barely held.
The world responded violently— jagged cracks splitting open beneath her, glowing veins of holy fire rushing up from the bowels of the earth as if heaven itself had grown desperate.
But even that divine brilliance seemed hesitant, flickering not with confidence but with dread—as if it feared him too.
She rose, or tried to.
Her knees buckled, her spine screamed, but her will held.
Mud and blood painted her legs as she staggered upright, leaning on her staff like a corpse might lean on its tombstone.
Her voice came next— hoarse, broken, carved from the last pieces of herself she hadn't already given to fear.
She spoke forbidden words.
Not prayers, but demands.
Pleas not to gods, but to whatever powers might still care enough to defy the coming slaughter.
Shingen watched.
He didn't move.
His eyes— molten, gleaming pits of golden malice— drifted to her as if acknowledging an insect that had crawled back from beneath his heel.
No contempt. No anger.
Just interest. Cold, quiet interest.
The kind you give to something that might briefly amuse before it dies again.
His smile returned, slow and cruel, not stretched wide but tight with certainty, as if he'd already seen the end of this display and found it lacking.
A storm without thunder. A fight without teeth.
Yet she kept going.
She screamed the final words, burning her throat raw, and the light surged.
Not beautiful. Not divine.
It was raw, untamed, and merciless, a storm born from agony rather than grace.
Wild in its fury, violent by nature, and desperate not in weakness, but in a hunger that refused to die.
The kind of light that knew it was about to be swallowed.
And still, he watched.
And still, he smiled.
"By the names forgotten," she choked out, voice cracking beneath the strain of power clawing up her throat, "by the pact unbroken… grant me strength."
The circle ignited like a wound torn open in reality itself, lashing outward with violent, radiant hunger.
The ground groaned.
The sky held its breath.
This wasn't silence born of peace— it was the suffocating, unnatural stillness that lingers just before something monstrous wakes.
The kind of stillness that listens. It watches.
The boy's eyes flew wide, breath hitching as the world around him grew wrong.
He didn't understand spellwork— barely knew the old folk tales whispered around hearthfires— but even a fool could feel the shift.
This wasn't healing. This wasn't protection. This was older than prayer and crueler than war.
The air pressed down on his lungs like soaked wool, thick and heavy, laced with the copper tang of blood and something else— something dead and dreaming.
The veins of gold threading through the ground beneath the priestess's feet pulsed like arteries, throbbing with light that seemed too knowing, too alive, as though the earth itself had begun to breathe in time with her chant.
These sigils didn't glow.
They twitched like muscle spasms. Like nerves misfiring.
They looked wrong in a way the eye couldn't explain— alive in all the ways sacred symbols shouldn't be.
And the boy swore, even over the hum of magic and the distant moans of dying men, he could hear whispering.
Not from the priestess, her mouth had gone still— but from the ground itself.
Dozens of voices, layered and hollow, murmuring in languages no human tongue had the right to speak.
The circle buckled. The world bent.
A single chime rang out— low, grim, and absolute.
It wasn't a sound so much as a vibration beneath the skin, a resonance that scraped through the bones like a forgotten bell tolling across a grave too wide and deep.
The battlefield didn't shift. It recoiled.
Warriors stumbled as their footing betrayed them, not from tremors, but from the staggering sense that something was now awake beneath their feet.
Time has stalled.
The wind froze mid-gust, caught in place like smoke trapped in glass.
Leaves and blood hung suspended in the air, trembling on the edge of collapse.
From the torn ground, where steel had shattered and blood had seeped deep into the earth, something began to rise.
Slowly and methodically.
Not like a creature summoned, but like a memory being unearthed.
A presence that hadn't been summoned— it had been remembered.
It wasn't man, nor beast.
It was shape and absence, mass wrapped in radiance so severe it left afterimages burned into retinas.
Its form was plated in brilliance, not armor, but condensed light, forged under pressures no sun could survive.
As it ascended, the colors of the world bled dry around it— greens dulled, reds curdled, and even the golds turned to grey.
The soil blackened beneath its feet, not rotting but yielding, overwhelmed by a presence it could no longer bear to cradle.
The warriors who remained standing— those with blades still clenched and breaths still dragging through torn lungs— turned.
Not to fight. Not to flee. But to witness.
Their mouths fell open, some in awe, others in dread, all in resignation.
A soldier with a bloodied axe dropped to his knees without thought, not in prayer, but because his legs refused to hold him.
The red-haired warrior, proud even moments before, murmured with dry, cracked lips, "She actually… called it."
His voice was hollow, barely more than a ghost riding the breeze.
Inside the splintering bones of the church, the boy gripped the windowsill so hard his fingers threatened to snap.
His gaze locked on the figure rising beyond the veil of dust and light, and every word he'd ever known failed him.
Guardian? Warden? Monster?
He didn't know. He didn't dare pretend.
His heart thudded against his ribs like it wanted to flee his chest entirely.
Whatever this thing was, it wasn't salvation.
It was a judgment given in form.
A divine executioner dressed in the skin of forgotten stars. And it had answered.
Then, it stirred.
Not with grace— there was no such mercy left in this thing— but with inevitability, like the cracking of a tomb long sealed. Its wings— if they could still be called that— unfurled with a groan that bent the air itself, drawing screams from the sky.
They weren't feathers.
They were convulsing currents of celestial fire, seething arcs of molten gold that carved open the heavens and left the sun weeping behind them.
The ground shuddered as the pressure deepened, not from any strike, but from presence alone.
Every window within reach didn't just tremble— they whimpered, fractured at the edges, unsure whether to shatter or beg for forgiveness.
And still, amid that divine wrath incarnate, stood Shingen.
He did not bow. He did not flinch.
He tilted his head, slow and almost curious, as though he were recalling a dream he once had and found it coming true in the flesh.
The spear dangled from his hand like an afterthought, its rusted tip kissing the earth as if drunk on the memory of older wars.
His posture wasn't that of defiance— it was comfort.
And that was the worst part. He was comfortable.
The beast warrior nearby— torn, broken, leaking from a dozen fatal wounds— refused to die clean.
Blood clung to his lips like oil, and each breath carved lines of agony through his chest, but still he pulled forward.
Not with hope but with defiance and hatred forged into pride.
His hands, now more bone than flesh, clawed at the earth, dragging his carcass across shattered stone.
Not toward salvation— toward Shingen.
Not for help— just to spit in the face of indifference.
He reached Shingen's boot, fingers twitching, nails cracking as they scraped over leather.
It wasn't an attack. It was the last sentence in a dying man's story.
"Y-You…" the warrior hissed, blood choking the spaces between his words.
"You… won't… walk away this time…"
But even he knew the lie tasted thin. His voice was falling apart.
His body was ash, held together by rage.
Yet still, he would not beg. He would not die silent.
That was the line he drew, and he etched it in pain.
And Shingen?
He laughed.
Not the laugh of a tyrant drunk on power, nor the howling of a madman broken by eternity. No.
It was worse. It was a laugh soaked in memory, hollow with recognition.
As though he'd seen this man before, or someone just like him, dragging themselves with the same words, the same fire, across countless fields beneath countless skies.
There was nothing new here. No surprise. Only repetition.
The boy watching from the ruined church clutched the stone ledge so tight his bones felt ready to break.
He wanted to scream, to pray, to move, but the truth settled in his gut like cold iron— Shingen had done this before, and he would do it again.
Above, the angel lifted its sword.
A monument, a blade sculpted from law itself, humming with the doctrine of higher order.
The sky dimmed, choking on its divinity.
Clouds twisted into spires of judgment, forming a halo of violence above the battlefield.
The priestess, nearly collapsed, fed her blood and soul into the circle at her feet, refusing to let this become history's final chapter.
But she knew.
They all knew.
Shingen moved.
No, not moved— vanished.
He did not sprint. He was not fast.
He simply was— where he needed to be, when the moment demanded it, as though the world bent to his decision rather than action.
His spear rose like a blade resurrected from myth, meeting the angel's strike not with resistance, but with inevitability.
The sky didn't scream. It broke.
Not in sound, but in meaning.
Trees curled inward like paper caught in flame.
The soil buckled, no longer loyal to gravity.
The boy's ears didn't ring— they ceased to function, overwhelmed by silence made tangible.
And through that rupture, every living thing understood: this was no duel.
This was desecration. This was truth peeling back the skin of myth.
The angel staggered.
Divine light flickered.
Its face, too perfect to display fear, cracked.
Fractures ran through its body like veins of ink, distorting the holy form into something brittle, desperate.
Its mouth opened— not in rage, but in disbelief.
It had never been struck before. Not like this.
The priestess whispered as if trying to erase the words with breath alone. "No…"
And with a flick— no, a suggestion— Shingen ended it.
The angel didn't fall but ceased.
Not like stone shattering, but like a lie finally exposed to daylight.
Its form unraveled, threads of existence peeling away before touching the ground.
No corpse. No trace. Nothing.
The sacred circle broke apart, no longer glowing, just old ink smeared across a desecrated altar.
The wind returned at last, timid, hushed, almost too scared to speak.
And Shingen stood at the center of it all, untouched, smiling faintly as if remembering a song he used to hum in another life.