The sickening crack of Jin's body hitting the tree echoed in the clearing, a sound that snapped our fraying morale. He slumped to the ground, motionless. One of our strongest fighters, neutralized in an instant. Panic, cold and sharp, threatened to consume us. Derek's team was a well-oiled machine of death, their skills weaving a perfect net of curses, gravity fields, and illusions. They weren't fighting us; they were dissecting us.
My mind raced, cutting through the terror with icy precision. A head-on fight was suicide. We were outmatched in synergy and raw power. We couldn't break their formation by force. We had to shatter their coordination. We had to turn their symphony of ruin into a cacophony of chaos.
"Eric!" I roared, my voice a lifeline in the storm of battle. "Forget defending! Full power, Shield Bash! Knock Derek off balance, now!"
It was a suicidal order. Dropping his defense, even for a second, could get him killed. But Eric didn't hesitate. With a guttural bellow, he poured every ounce of his stamina into his shield. It glowed with a blinding white light as he charged forward, not blocking Derek's next swing but slamming his entire body into the larger man.
The impact was like a thunderclap. Derek, caught completely by surprise, was thrown off balance, his greatsword swinging wide. It was only a two-second opening, but it was everything.
"Talia!" I screamed. "The gravity mage! Now!"
Her face was a mask of strained concentration, sweat beading on her brow as she fought against the crushing weight of the Graviton spell. But her Kinetic Eye was still active. In the momentary chaos from Eric's charge, she saw her path. She didn't try to overpower the spell; she flowed with it. Pushing off the ground with all her might, she used the artificial gravity to launch herself forward in a low, spinning arc. Her rapier, guided by her predictive sight, wasn't aimed to kill. It stabbed deep into the Graviton user's thigh.
The mage screamed, his concentration shattering. The oppressive weight on Talia and the distant, crumpled form of Jin vanished instantly. The spell was broken.
"Masha, stop trying to find the real illusionist!" I commanded. "Blanket the entire backline! Absolute Zero, now!"
It was a command born of desperation. Masha, tormented by phantom images of Derek, clenched her jaw and obeyed. She stopped trying to aim, stopped trying to distinguish friend from foe in the enemy's rear. She thrust her hands out and unleashed her power not as a focused attack, but as an indiscriminate, explosive wave of cold.
The air flash-froze. A blizzard of razor-sharp ice shards erupted from her position, blanketing the enemy's casters. The illusions flickered and died as the Phantasm user shrieked, diving for cover. The curse user, who had been draining Erica, was forced to abandon his spell to avoid being shredded.
The battlefield had been thrown into chaos. Their coordination was fractured.
"Rina!" I yelled, turning to our healer who was desperately trying to keep Eric on his feet. "Stop healing! The boy with the snake tattoo, the poison user! Use your Vitae Weaving on the ground beneath him!"
"What?" she cried, confused.
"He's a Toximancy user! His power comes from decay! Reverse it! Use your life magic on the plants! Overwhelm him!"
Understanding dawned in her eyes. It was a wild, unprecedented use of her ability. She slammed her palms onto the forest floor, not to heal, but to give. A vibrant, emerald-green light pulsed from her hands, pouring life into the earth. The moss, vines, and roots around the poison caster and his Wardcraft protector exploded into monstrous growth. Thick, thorny vines erupted from the ground, coiling around their legs and arms, trapping them in a cage of supercharged life. The Toximancy user, whose magic thrived on rot, was being suffocated by its polar opposite.
"Erica!" I bellowed, my throat raw. "You're free! Burn him to ash!"
Erica's head snapped up. The siphoning curse was gone. Her eyes, filled with rage and humiliation, locked onto the entangled poison caster. All her fear, all her frustration, all her desperate need to prove herself, coalesced into a single point of searing hatred. She didn't conjure a fireball. She held her hands together, and the air between them compressed and ignited, forming a blindingly bright spear of pure, white-hot plasma.
"Disappear," she whispered.
She thrust her hands forward, and the spear of light shot across the clearing. The Wardcraft user, still struggling against the vines, tried to form a barrier, but it was too late. The plasma spear hit the trapped Toximancy user square in the chest.
There was no explosion. There was only a silent, all-consuming flash of white light. The boy didn't even have time to scream. His body, the vines, and a chunk of the earth around him were instantly vaporized, leaving behind nothing but a smoking, glassed crater.
One down.
The psychological shockwave was as powerful as the blast itself. The enemy team faltered, their eyes wide with horror at the empty space where their teammate had been.
Derek, enraged, let out a furious roar. "You'll pay for that!" He ignored Eric and charged toward the still-recovering Jin, his greatsword raised for a killing blow.
But Talia was already there. Freed from the gravity spell, she was a phantom. Her rapier was a silver blur, striking not at Derek, but at the brawlers who tried to support him, hamstringing one and disarming another. Her movements were so fast, so precise, they seemed to defy reality.
As Derek's blade fell, Eric intercepted it, his shield meeting the greatsword in a shower of sparks that illuminated the savage grin on his face. He was no longer just defending; he was fighting.
The chaos reached its peak. Masha's blizzard raged, forcing the enemy casters to stay scattered and defensive. My team, though wounded and exhausted, was fighting with a desperate, synchronized ferocity.
And in the center of it all, I finally had what I needed. A fresh corpse.
I stepped out from behind the rock that had been my command post. I extended a hand toward the smoking crater where the Toximancy user had died. I didn't need to see the body; I could feel its lingering essence, its echo in the world. I pulled on that echo with all my might, pouring my cold, hungry power into it.
"Rise," I commanded.
From the edges of the crater, shadows began to congeal. Dust, ash, and blackened earth swirled together, pulled by an unseen force. The shape of a person began to form—a silhouette made of pure darkness and malice. It solidified into a perfect, shadowy replica of the dead Toximancy user. Its eyes opened, glowing with the same violet, unholy light as the goblins I had raised.
The remaining members of Derek's team froze, their blood running cold. The Wardcraft user, who had just freed himself from the last of the vines, stared in abject terror as the shadow of his dead friend turned to face him.
The fight wasn't over. But their perfect symphony was broken. And now, they would face the discordant shriek of their own fallen comrade, conducted by me.