"This ends next."
He stepped forward into the pull—toward the Corrupter. The world dragged at him like a mouth swallowing light. Palisades screeched across the dirt, trees bowed, ash twisted into a black spiral that clawed at sky and soul.
Andy planted the Draconic Oathblade point-first and let its hum flood his bones. The ground shivered back. Veins of corruption snapped like overstretched cords.
He whispered to the living iron in his hands. "Hold."
A low, ear-deep thrum answered, and the blade's fourth undertone—old as cliffs, patient as mountains—rose beneath the roar.
He set his heel on a blue node of Nia's lattice and drove the sword deeper.
Terrafang—Stoneheart Anchor.
The earth obeyed. A pulse of clean force rippled outward from his stance, anchoring him against the Maelstrom's drag. The pull eased by the width of a breath—just enough to move.
"Now!" he called.
Nia's answer came as light. Astral Aegis flowered wider over the villagers, the dome grainy with stress-lines but whole; her off-hand etched new lattice threads that stitched tighter, the pattern shifting—three bright nodes aligning like a belt on the night. Or—he smiled despite the heat—like a hunter's sign in the sky.
Aurelia sprinted that sign as if it had been drawn for her alone. "Path's pretty," she laughed, hair a bright flare in the murk. "I'll make it bloody."
She cut across the wind with a Predator's Dance, twin spectral fangs shrieking gold. Her heels kissed a node, and speed bled into force. Comet Lunge—she struck into the Maelstrom's gale and kept going, line straight, jaw set.
The Corrupter ripped his claws free of the ground and the vortex bucked, a whirlpool collapsing inward. He half-spread wings of smoke and bone and raked a claw straight for Aurelia's heart.
Andy moved.
"Gale Rift—Shear Cut!"
The Oathblade sang; wind split the claw apart at the knuckles. Black ichor sprayed, hissing where it fell.
Nia's voice was a clear strike of glass: "Starbind—Cross!"
Chains of light lanced and crossed over the Corrupter's chest, pinning the half-formed wings for a blink that might as well have been a minute.
The system chimed in Andy's head—small, bright, and his alone:
[Constellation Sync: Orion]
[Bond Pulse → Nia ⭐ 55% → 57% | Aurelia ⭐ 49% → 51%]
[Orion Tier I Progress: 85% → 90%]
He tasted their courage in his mouth—salt and starlight. He rolled the Oathblade in his hands, and flame coiled the length of steel.
"Ember Edge—Ripple Spiral!"
Fire unwound in tight, hungry rings. It should have burned him in that screaming wind, should have failed against the Maelstrom's suction—but the Stoneheart Anchor held his feet, and Nia's lattice lifted the inferno like a sling. The Spiral cut upward and around the Corrupter's torso, flaying scale from muscle.
The half-dragon shrieked. Its wings bent inward, spectral seams bursting.
"WE TAKE," the Corrupter roared, a dozen voices layered. "WE DO NOT ASK."
Aurelia slid beneath the Shadow's guard, heel sparking a glyph—her breath a laugh and a snarl. "Then choke on what you took." She flicked her wrist. Starfall Volley—arrows of light stitched the Spiral's path, each shaft detonating in a clean burst inside split plates.
The system breathed against Andy's ribs:
[Bond Pulse → Aurelia ⭐ 51% → 53%]
[Orion Tier I Progress: 90% → 93%]
[Shared Resonance: Tri-vector alignment ↑]
The Maelstrom lurched. For the first time it staggered.
"Press," Nia said, and the word was prayer and command. She swept Lumina high. Glyphs rose from the ground like stars freed from soil. "Starlight Cascade—Converge!"
The rain of light she'd used as a wash became a river. It folded into the Spiral's groove, threading fire with radiance. The stink of burnt iron gave way, for a heartbeat, to cold air.
The Corrupter planted both feet and roared again, jaw unhinging. Abyssal Pyre flared in a cone that would have erased anything soft and living.
Andy stepped into it.
"Tide-Singer—Aqua Fang (Wall)!"
Water bucked up, a crescent shield. Black fire chewed it to steam; the hiss hammered his eardrums; heat blistered the skin along his collar. He held.
"Tighter!" he shouted over his shoulder.
Nia's answer came as Starbind rethreaded, the chains crossing at new angles, wrapping the ribs. Aurelia's spectral fangs flashed in those gaps, slicing tendons, seeking the heart.
The system ticked upward, heartbeat-true:
[Bond Pulse → Nia ⭐ 57% → 60% | Aurelia ⭐ 53% → 55%]
[Orion Tier I Progress: 93% → 96%]
The Corrupter lurched—then laughed. It drove a knee into the earth and channeled the Maelstrom downward. The ground answered with a gout of shadow like a geyser. The world tilted.
Villagers stumbled; a child fell, a mother screamed. Nia flinched, split focus—Aegis or attack?
Andy made the choice for her.
He tore the Oathblade from the node. Earth-light clung to the blade's fuller; flame and wind whistled along its edge; water trembled in a sheet along the flat. He ran, not away but through the line of the Maelstrom, with it, so its pull made him faster, not helpless. He let it teach him its direction and then betrayed it, cut across its current and up the slope of its spin.
He raised the blade.
"On my mark," he said, and they understood him. They always did.
Nia whispered: "Orion."
Aurelia bared her teeth. "I'll hit the star you give me."I'll hit the star you give me."I'll hit the star you give me."I'll hit the star you give me."
Andy planted in the center of the lattice. The three brightest nodes burned—one beneath his feet, two more at Nia and Aurelia's. Lines drew between them in strokes of light, and the old picture men had seen in the sky since they dared look up stood on the ground—belt, shoulder, arm.
He breathed. The Oathblade breathed with him.
"Orion Lattice—Lock."
Chains of constellation light seized the Corrupter, yanked wings and arms to those angles, bound its ribs to this geometry. The Maelstrom shrieked as if cut with glass.
Nia's voice rose, ringing: "Astral Aegis—Overcast!" The dome surged past the villagers and onto the Corrupter, flipping from shield to cage, shimmering like a downturned bowl of night.
Aurelia leapt, blazing. "Huntress—Crown!"
She struck four times in the space of a heartbeat: throat, axilla, liver line, between the eyes. Each hit found a star on the Lattice and detonated inwards, folding light into black flesh and leaving clean wounds that didn't bleed but emptied.
The Corrupter howled. Its spectral cloak tore free in ribbons. It wrenched a hand up, fingers like spears, and drove them at Andy's face.
Andy lifted the Oathblade to meet it and spoke quietly to the steel. "One more oath."
Flame lashed the edge. Wind shrieked thin and savage. Water kissed the flats in a mirror sheen. Stone hummed slow and deep, a heartbeat old as hills.
He stepped. The world narrowed to the place where edge would meet neck.
"Dragon Oath—Horizon Sever."
The strike wasn't loud. The Maelstrom was. The villagers were. The Corrupter's scream was. But the cut itself made a sound like a silk thread drawn once across a knife.
The head didn't fall so much as stop belonging. Spectral wings shattered into soot. The body convulsed. Black fire sputtered. The Maelstrom collapsed from a whirl into a cough, then into nothing, and the wind of its end snapped banners and hair backward.
Silence arrived like a held breath released.
The Corrupter's torso hit the ground. Its head rolled to the lattice line and melted there, unmaking itself on a star.
The system chimed—three soft notes that climbed his spine.
[Enemy Defeated: Dragon Corrupter — Tier I]
[Drop Acquired → Corrupted Core Fragment ×1]
[Passive Unlocked → Corrupter's Bane I: +15% damage vs corrupted entities]
[Orion Constellation — Tier I Progress: 96% → 100% (Complete)]
[Bond Pulse Stabilized → Nia ⭐ 60% | Aurelia ⭐ 55%]
A final line slid across his vision, quiet and practical:
[Shared Inventory (Tier I) → Auto-store: Corrupted Core Fragment]
[Verification: Soul-tags matched → Andy / Nia / Aurelia]
Andy let the Oathblade's point dip. The lattice faded; Aegis thinned to a mist and lifted. He heard the villagers before he looked—first the sound of one person sobbing, then a shout, then the thunder of feet and voices: a cheer that grew and grew until it filled the clearing and pushed the stink of battle back a full pace.
Warm fingers caught his wrist. Nia's sapphire eyes were wet and steady. "You did it without Tier II," she whispered, pride threading the words.
"We did it," he corrected, and meant it.
Aurelia bumped his shoulder with her own, feral grin softening as she slanted a look up at him. "Prize later," she murmured, voice husky from breath and laugh both. "But I'll accept an advance."
He huffed a laugh, breath trembling now that the danger had bled out of him. "Later."
She rolled her eyes. "Tease."
Nia laughed—tired, sweet—and pressed her forehead to his for a heartbeat. The bond's heat eased to a glow. He felt it in his chest like a second pulse. He felt theirs.
Behind them, villagers knelt or clasped each other's hands. An elder came forward on shaking legs and touched the ground where the Corrupter had died. When he stood, his palm was clean.
"The stain recedes," he whispered. "You carry the old light."
Andy swallowed. He didn't feel like light. He felt like a man whose hands shook after holding the sky up. But he nodded once, and the elder bowed anyway, as if that nod were sunrise.
Nia's wards dimmed. Aurelia slid her blades back into mere daggers and tossed her hair, peacocking for children who had stopped weeping and started grinning.
Andy turned the Oathblade sideways and watched a last line flicker in his vision:
[Orion Tier I — Completed]
[New Party Passive → Bond Sync Efficiency +10% (Tier I)]
[Next Unlock Path visible at 0% of Orion Tier II]
Only he saw it. Only he heard the chime. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat and let the knowledge settle where it needed to. Then he faced his partners.
"Food," Aurelia declared, shameless. "Then sleep. Then you can tell me exactly how you did that last strike so I can claim I taught you."
Nia's smile curved bright and knowing. "He listened."
Aurelia snorted. "To me."
"To us," Nia said, and took the huntress's hand. Aurelia squeezed back without looking like she meant to, and for a moment their fingers linked in the middle—light and amber, star and flame.
Andy slid the Oathblade to his back. The ground didn't pulse anymore. The sky was only a sky again. For now.
He breathed, long and even, and let the cheer wash over him like tide.
Somewhere in that sound he heard the truth of the strike he'd made—why it had landed where it had, how it had cut as clean as dawn.
Bonds don't break, he thought. They become swords.
He turned toward the camp with them at his side, and the night—though still scorched—felt breathable again.
[Chapter Resolution Logged]
[Constellation: Orion — Tier I (Complete)]
[Bond Status Update → Nia ⭐ 60% | Aurelia ⭐ 55%]
[Loot Secured → Corrupted Core Fragment ×1]
[Passive Active → Corrupter's Bane I]
Tomorrow would have its own alarms, its own horizons. Stronger Corrupters. Darker winds.
But tonight, the first fell and stayed fallen.
And hope, which had been a whisper, spoke in voices.