It moved like a landslide.
The great skeletal mass lunged, dragging half its bulk with it, the earth splitting beneath the weight of its form. Ribs screeched against one another as its arms—if they could be called that—swung like siege hammers. Each motion was chaos given shape. A whirlwind of bone, a cacophony of groaning marrow and snapping teeth.
Koda barely shouted a warning before the first limb came down. Terron braced with his hammer, catching the blow with both arms. It drove him into the dirt with a crash that sent dust spiraling, but he held—screaming through clenched teeth as cracks formed in the haft of his weapon.
To the side, Elise and Renn moved like wind—slipping between errant bone and shattered debris. Arrows flew, perfectly aimed, only to splinter against armored humerus and sternum plates. The thing didn't bleed. It didn't feel. And it was learning—slowly, hideously, it began to shift its body to intercept even their most precise strikes.
Seta, her eyes wide but clear, whispered in an urgent mantra. Her construct—hovering above them in its silent, birdlike glide—flickered in the dimming light. Glowing threads ran from her wrist into the device, and with a sharp motion, it sent out a pulse of blue energy. The magic washed over the battlefield, slowing the colossus just enough to buy precious seconds. But seconds were lifetimes now.
Koda stood at the center of it all, his breath ragged, his muscles on fire. Blood seeped from a dozen cuts across his arms, chest, and face—but it didn't flow freely. The wounds shimmered faintly, blood coagulating mid-air, knitting skin together with eerie precision. Not healing—binding. As if his body now refused to acknowledge the damage.
His newest gift, the lingering touch of the Eternal Guide, worked without thought. But it cost him. Every injury bound in place stole something—his strength, his heat, his sense of time. He felt cold.
But he didn't stop.
With a roar, he drove himself forward, blade gripped in both hands. He dodged low under a sweeping arm of fused ulna and spine, feeling the wind of it scrape inches above his head. Then he struck—a wild upward arc aimed at the knee-joint, where several femurs interlocked.
The sword clanged. Chips of bone flew. The beast staggered.
But it didn't fall.
Instead, a secondary arm launched from its side—like a scorpion's tail, built of infant-sized bones bound in a cable—and slammed into Koda's side. He flew. Crashed through a dead tree. Hit the ground and rolled.
Darkness threatened him. A flash of light. A sound like war drums echoing through water. He tasted blood.
But the pain… dulled.
He sat up.
Maia was there, hand already on his chest, magic pouring into him. Her eyes were wild, but not afraid—furious. Protective.
"I told you," she hissed. "No dying."
He tried to respond. Couldn't.
She stood and turned just in time to raise a wall of shimmering energy that caught a spray of bone spikes meant for both of them. They scattered like hail against her shield.
The creature had turned on the others now. Eno's cloak fluttered as he leapt onto a protruding rib, scaling it like a cat. He reached the crown—one of the grotesque skulls that twitched like it still lived—and drove a short blade through its eye socket. It shattered with a sound like shattering crystal.
The beast screamed.
It wasn't a sound. It was a vibration—a rumble that passed through the soles of their feet and up their bones. Elise doubled over, hands clamped on her ears. Terron swore and rolled to avoid a sweeping blow. Seta's drone veered off course, crashing to the ground in a flicker of light.
Koda rose, one step at a time. Maia stayed close, hand glowing faintly behind his back, supporting him without words.
Seta had recovered—barely. She sent out a second pulse, slowing the behemoth's movements just enough for Renn and Eno to find another perch. Blades struck. Arrows followed.
Limbs vanished, absorbed. Chunks of its torso collapsed. Its towering height shrank—but what was left grew denser. More focused. Its shape less monstrous, more humanoid, twisted like a knight carved from nightmare.
It looked at them now.
Not with fear. Not with rage.
With desire.
The battle had reached its final shape.
The bone giant leaned forward, rearing for another strike. Koda stepped into the path.
The others followed.
And the war of flesh and bone was not yet over.
Koda took a single breath.
Then he ran.
He shouted as he charged—loud enough to draw the colossus's gaze, loud enough to shake the air. The skeletal behemoth turned, silently roaring without lungs—a clattering of dry bone, rearing back a malformed arm thick as a wagon and crusted in ivory plates. It struck where he'd been, cleaving a trench into the earth, but Koda was already airborne.
The force of his leap bent reason—his boots crushed stone, and his shoulder dropped as he twisted through the air like a comet of flesh and steel. The movement wasn't reckless; it was orchestrated, the exact level of chaos needed to conceal his true intent.
The feint worked.
The giant turned to face him—but too late.
He landed not on it, but beyond it—vaulting off a ridge of jagged bone with the precision of a duelist.
And straight toward the lich.
The skeletal abomination stood still, arms raised in unnatural prayer, its form barely humanoid. Vertebrae that didn't belong to it wove around its chest like a crown of thorns, its skull canted in a way no neck could allow. Its presence distorted the air—a ripple in the world's skin. Eyes were empty voids, but they saw him.
Koda gave no chance to speak.
His sword came down in a storm.
A horizontal strike to the ribs—bone cracked and folded like rotted wood. A vertical cleave next, splitting through a shoulder as the lich raised a clawed hand too slowly to parry. Sparks of black magic hissed where the blade kissed necrotic energy, tearing loose the howling of imprisoned spirits.
The lich countered—long fingers tipped in bone shards lashed out in a blur—but Koda moved like he had trained for this moment all his life. He ducked under the arc, driving his pommel into the thing's pelvis with enough force to shatter a normal skeleton outright. The lich reeled, its jaw opening in a voiceless scream.
Koda didn't stop.
He spun with the momentum, dragging the blade low before sweeping it up—an arc of sheer force aimed for the ribs, the neck, the face—every inch he could reach. Each strike was met with resistance, as if the air around the creature was trying to remember it back together even as it was torn apart.
And still he pressed on.
Until—there.
A moment's gap.
Koda shifted his grip, drove the blade inward, two hands on the hilt, leaning into it with his full weight. The tip of his blade pierced the lich's chest just below the sternum—bone screamed as it cracked, splintered, gave way.
The sword sank deep.
The lich's arms dropped, hanging limp at its sides.
The air stilled. The battlefield seemed to exhale.
Everything paused.
And Koda stood, his breath heavy, eyes locked on the thing before him, blade buried in its heart of bone and malice.
He expected a death rattle.
Instead—
The silence deepened.
The lich's skull tilted downward, as if… realizing. Its empty sockets gazing at its chest, its jaw quaking—not in fury, but in something colder. Horror. As though it had expected this end for centuries, and now, facing it, understood just how wrong it had been.
Then—
A soundless collapse.
A singularity of stillness formed around the lich's chest, drawing in the world around it. The scream of the wind was snatched from the air. The clatter of distant bones stopped short. Even Koda's own heartbeat seemed to fall away—his body trembling with a primal instinct to run, even as his limbs held their ground.
The sword still buried in the creature's chest began to shudder violently—metal groaning, vibrating beneath his grip.
Then—
It inverted.
A brilliant, soundless implosion collapsed inward with a sickening twist, sucking the very air into a fist-sized core of impossible darkness—and then, all at once, exploded outward with the fury of a thunderstorm unchained.
Sound returned with a vengeance.
A detonation of raw noise burst from the lich's body, tearing across the plains in a shockwave of shrieking energy and concussive force. The ground buckled, trees bent, birds died in the sky from the sheer volume of it. Every bone fragment for a hundred paces was hurled backward like shrapnel. Even Koda—braced as he was—was thrown off his feet, rolling across the scarred dirt as his vision spasmed white from the overload.
The light died.
The noise stopped.
Smoke, bone dust, and settling ash drifted like snowflakes across the boneyard.
Where the lich had stood was now a crater—a wound in the world's skin, scorched and unnatural. In its center hovered a single burning glyph. It pulsed in faint violet, like an ember too stubborn to die.
Koda pushed himself to his knees, still gasping, ears ringing. He looked up.
Words etched themselves across his vision—no voice spoke them, no hand had written them. They simply appeared:
[Shard of the Dead God's Fragment]
[Incomplete]
[Loading…]
The glyph flared once, brighter now, as something in the world strained to interpret it.
And then, again:
[Do you wish to upgrade a skill?]
He stared at the words, panting, chest heaving. Around him, the team was slowly recovering—some rising, others stunned. The earth still hummed with residual power. This wasn't just another battle.
This had been an encounter.
And now, it was offering him a piece of something older than memory.
Something… altered by the lich.
Something no longer bound to its creator.
His hand flexed.
The system waited.
The moment Koda gave the silent acknowledgment—yes—a wave of subtle warmth pulsed through the air around him. The violet glyph hovering in the ruin of the lich's demise shimmered brighter, rotating gently, and then shattered into a cascade of symbols and script that only he could see.
[Skill Fortification Options Detected]
[Dead God Fragment recognized. Offering compatible augmentations…]
[Select one skill to Fortify]
The list formed in his vision, ghostly but crisp. Each entry shimmered with faint runes of the dead language the fragment had inherited—each option paired with a strange new line below it, glowing in soft crimson:
> Blade of Conviction
Your summoned weapon, a reflection of will. When fortified:
— Gains a second form based on your deepest unspoken truth.
— Reflects fragments of your emotion into each strike, overwhelming the unworthy.
— Can momentarily pierce through planar interference.
> Mantle of Echoes
The shell of souls past, allowing glimpses into borrowed moments. You will manifests striking fear in your foes and resolved in your ally's. When fortified:
— Echoes can linger longer and act independently for brief moments.
— One Echo may speak once per day.
— The mantle remembers more… unlocking buried truths of those passed.
> Unbroken Vow
Your defiance made manifest. A healing factor fueled by will. When fortified:
— Vital regeneration can persist through fatal damage once per day.
— Pain is delayed for up to ten seconds after an injury.
— Wounds that should scar may instead strengthen flesh.
The system awaited him, the weight of choice sharp in the air. The shard pulsed—once, twice—then settled into stillness, listening for his will.
[Blade of Conviction—Fortified]
[Aspect: Twinfang Blade]
[Manifesting…]
Koda felt the answer settle in his chest like a heartbeat. No hesitation. No fear. His first skill—his first truth—was still the most honest one he'd ever known.
The Saber in his hand wavered, flickering as if caught between states. Then, without sound, it began to melt—no heat, no flame, just liquefying into a swirling, smoky silver light. It curled around his forearm, binding him in threads of resolve and purpose.
The light pulsed—then split.
A new form forged itself in real-time, metal folding inward and outward like blooming steel. A single grip—angled horizontally—formed the core, and from either side extended blades. Not straight like before, but curved outward in opposite directions, tapering into long, twin headed points. The metal was thickest at the grip, narrowing with elegance and menace as it stretched.
The appearance of an elongated teardrop split in two held together by the handle and a mid-joint halfway up the blade.
From just beneath his wrist to well past his head, the dual blades shimmered with weight and intent. Like the antlers of a god or the fangs of a titan.
But it didn't stop.
With a quiet crack of finality, the light pulsed once more—and the weapon divided. Two identical copies hovered for a breathless second in the air, then dropped into his hands with satisfying weight.
They were heavier than a standard longsword, their twin blades denser and built for trauma as much as precision. Each strike now bore the power of momentum—of conviction reinforced by mass. The balance was unique, but familiar. His muscles remembered. His stance adjusted.
He tested a flourish—swift, then faster. The blades sang through the air with a low hum, close to a growl. Stabs. Hacks. Arcing cuts. It was all there. Beautiful and brutal.
Only one flaw—he noticed it almost at once. These were not the weapons of a parrying duelist. Blocking would be harder now, the dual blades offering less coverage, less catch on a clean edge. But that wasn't how he fought anymore.
He didn't block.
He ended things.
Behind him, the others had gone quiet, their eyes catching only a glimpse of what was unfolding—of the subtle pressure in the air that now curled around Koda like smoke and thundercloud.
And at his back, the shattered bones of the Lich's army lay still for the first time.