It was close.
Samuel blinked sweat from his eyes, coughed, and staggered up. The sword in his hand buzzed with Lyra's abyssal energy—cold, unnatural, whispering.
"Okay," he muttered. "Big stupid idea part two."
He took one step.
The beast lurched. Samuel nearly lost his balance, arms windmilling.
He growled and charged the final stretch, boots slipping, bones aching.
Ravok's eye locked onto him. Its pupil dilated.
The beast knew. Samuel didn't care.
He jumped.
The wind screamed past him. His stomach dropped. For half a heartbeat, it felt like falling into a grave—one carved out of air and madness. Then impact.
Wet. Slippery. Wrong.
Samuel crashed through something soft and fibrous—sinew and fluid bursting like overripe fruit—and slipped down into Ravok's hollow eye.
Everything went black.
Thick membranes clung to his skin. His breath caught. The stench hit him like a punch to the soul—rotting flesh, burning ichor, and a hint of something eldritch, like the breath of a corpse that had dreamed too long in the dark.
He gagged. Stumbled. And for a single, mad moment, he prayed.
Not to the Abyss. Not to his rune. To every god. Old, dead, forgotten.
Anything listening.
Please, please let this thing not have laser eye beams.
Outside, the beast shrieked. A guttural sound that tore through the air like a war horn dipped in madness. Its limbs thrashed. The ground shook. Trees snapped like twigs. Samuel could feel it—Ravok was losing it. Thrashing blindly, trying to claw him out like an infection.
Good.
He could work with that.
His fingers clenched around the hilt of the blade. The abyssal energy around it sputtered weakly—barely a flicker now.
But what remained… still pulsed.
Faint. Cold. Alive.
He tightened his grip until his knuckles turned white.
Let's finish this.
He pressed forward.
Slipping. Sliding. Wading through a tunnel of gore and pulsating tissue. The walls around him convulsed, twitching with every heartbeat of the monster. Nerves sparked and quivered beneath the surface like angry veins of lightning. Fluids sloshed underfoot.
Samuel didn't care.
***
The battle hadn't stopped. It had only grown quieter.
Not because things were safer—but because there were fewer left to scream.
The clearing was a graveyard waiting to happen. Ash and smoke curled lazily into the air. The earth was painted with blood—some fresh, some old, some that still twitched.
Lyra stood amidst the chaos, panting.
Her limbs were shaking. Her fingers stung from channeling too much abyssal energy. Most of it had been poured into Samuel's sword, and the rest had just... vanished into the void.
She could no longer see him.
Somewhere up there—on the back of that cursed monster—Samuel was doing something reckless. Something insane. She couldn't tell if he was alive or dead.
And at this point, it didn't matter. Because Ravok was moving again.
The beast's bulk carved through the battlefield like a divine punishment. Its remaining eye glowed with primal fury. A white robe didn't even get the chance to scream before being swatted like an insect—his body disappearing into the undergrowth, never to be found again.
Two white robes remained.
Six black.
Most of them were running. Some cast spells in desperation. One was trying to climb a tree, crying for his mother.
Lyra didn't move. She couldn't.
Her legs trembled beneath her. Her arms hung limp. The ache in her chest had gone numb now. The reserves of her energy were dry, cracked, and echoing.
She glanced toward the treeline.
Aurion was still fighting the thunderbird—if it could be called a fight. Their duel was like a hurricane stitched with lightning, distant and irrelevant.
The real storm was here.
And it had seen her.
Ravok's head turned.
Its one eye locked onto her—a slow, grinding movement like a mountain realizing it could hate.
Then it began to charge.
Each step was a nightmare. The earth quivered. Trees snapped. The air thickened, pressed in on her chest like invisible hands.
Lyra stared.
She didn't flinch. Didn't scream.
What was the point?
She couldn't even lift her arms anymore.
Her lips parted, just a breathless whisper as she exhaled.
"I guess this is it…"
Then it happened.
Ravok shrieked.
It wasn't a roar of dominance. Not a howl of rage.
It was something else—a scream. Pure and mad and broken.
The beast stumbled mid-charge, its limbs spasming. Its head jerked back as if something inside it had... bitten down.
A sound like tearing meat echoed across the battlefield.
Lyra's eyes widened, heart pounding like a war drum against her ribs.
She stumbled back, breath catching in her throat.
Fuck...
He pulled it off...
The beast roared one last time—ragged, hollow—a look of bitter regret twisting its monstrous eye.
No, not regret. Betrayal.
The disciples stood frozen, stunned into silence. Lyra didn't wait.
She sprinted toward the beast's side, eyes sharp—focused on saving Samuel.
'Let's hope that idiot doesn't suffocate in there.'
***
At Aurion's side, a cruel smile curved his lips as he muttered,
"Oh? Someone killed it. Interesting... So, what will you do now?"
The Thunder Bird's sharp gaze wavered, its focus shattered—just as
Aurion intended.
With deliberate slowness, he began to chant his only Rank 2 spell, voice low and measured, each syllable dripping with malice.
The spell struck the Thunder Bird like a shadow's cold blade, disrupting its final defenses.
The beast's eyes flickered with panic, a twisted, desperate scream trapped in its throat.
Then, with a shuddering roar, it exploded—self-destruction.
***
Samuel awoke with a quiet gasp, like a man surfacing from beneath a black tide. The first thing he did was check his fingers, his toes, the hollow of his chest.
Still breathing. Still whole.
Somehow.
He blinked. The ceiling above was canvas—or what remained of it. Torn and flapping in the wind like the skin of a dead beast. The air stank of ash and blood. His ribs ached. Muscles screamed. Every inch of him felt used, like a blade dulled on stone.
He sat up with a grunt, groaning as pain bloomed in waves. The bed beneath him was nothing more than a tattered roll half-covered in soot. A tent, maybe? Or what used to be one.
Outside, the world looked like the aftermath of a massacre.
Tents torn to shreds. Scorch marks painting the earth in jagged scars.A few disciples limped around like ghosts in a nightmare. Some had bandages. Others just stared blankly at the ground.
Then he saw her—Lyra.
Sitting cross-legged beside a sputtering fire, stirring something in a blackened pot. Her hair was matted with blood, her arm wrapped in cloth dark with dried ichor. But she was alive.
Samuel let out a breath. Relief, then guilt, then something colder.
He rose slowly, each movement a war against the dull throb of bruised flesh. He took a step outside. Gravel crunched beneath his bare feet.
Then he saw it—Beneath a broken tree. A white robe, slumped. Still. Too still. Samuel's gaze darkened.
The same bastard who had once whipped him.
Samule almost smiled. What a pity. He couldn't kill him himself.
He opened his mouth to call Lyra—
And stopped. A flicker. A twitch.
That bastard's finger… moved.
Samuel's breath hitched, eyes narrowing.
The wind howled softly through the ruined camp. And the silence was suddenly too loud.
Samuel moved. Slow. Silent.
That bastard was still alive. Barely. His limbs didn't move—but his eyes did. Blood-crusted. Glazed. Blinking slowly, as if begging for some last shred of mercy.
Samuel knelt beside him, his shadow falling over that mangled face. The man looked up at him. Hope flickered.
Samuel smiled—cold, sharp, without warmth.
"Hello, motherfucker."
The bastard's mouth twitched. A breathless laugh, maybe. Or the start of a plea.
But Samuel said nothing else. He reached for a torn piece of tent cloth—dirtied, soaked—and draped it gently over the man's face. Like a shroud.
Then, without urgency, he sat down beside him. Legs crossed. Hands folded in his lap. Eyes cast downward in a picture of ....grief.
He just… sat.
Moments passed.
A white-robed disciple approached through the smoke and ash, gaze wary, scanning bodies. He paused as he reached them—two silhouettes in the gloom. One clearly breathing. One… still.
"Was he… one of yours?" the disciple asked gently, his voice low.
Samuel gave a quiet nod. Didn't lift his gaze.
"He saved me," he murmured. "Died doing it."
The white robe sighed. "He looks at peace," he said, placing a comforting hand on Samuel's shoulder. "We'll honor him."
Samuel gave him a smile. Empty, tired.
The disciple turned. And walked away.
Silence fell again.
Samuel exhaled slowly. Like letting go of something heavy.
Then, in one fluid motion, he stood.
His boot moved—not violently. Not with anger. Just purpose. Cold and simple.
He stepped down—hard—onto the hidden throat beneath the cloth.
There was a soft crunch. A twitch. A final rattle of breath.
And then… stillness.
Samuel looked down once more.
He adjusted the shroud over the dead man's face, covering him fully now. Sealing him away. Like a bad dream folded under a blanket.
Then, without a word, without a glance, he turned and walked back into the ruins.
Another secret buried under ash.
Samuel limped toward the fire like a man twice his age. His robe was torn, his face a map of dried blood and ash, and one of his boots was somehow missing.
He didn't care.
He found Lyra hunched near the fire, poking at something unidentifiable roasting on a stick.
She looked up and blinked. "Well, well. The Eye Diver returns."
Samuel groaned as he dropped beside her, cracking his back like a broken ladder.
"If I ever willingly climb into another monster's eye, just kill me."
"No promises. Depends on my mood."
He rubbed his face, dragging soot down his cheek.
"Gods, I smell like regret."
Lyra raised an eyebrow. "You good?"
Samuel leaned back on his elbows, breathing like someone who'd sprinted through hell barefoot.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Alive. Somehow."
She eyed him for a long second, then asked, "Did you get a spell? You know, after... killing it?"
He blinked. "I… blanked out after stabbing it. Kinda hard to think clearly when you're buried in brain fluid."
Lyra chuckled darkly.
But Samuel's eyes narrowed.
"Wait. You collected the core, right? You didn't absorb it, Right?"