The scream didn't come from a throat.It ripped through the reliquary's fused chest—through chalices bent into mouths, through crowns contorted into antlers, through scripture stretched into sinew—until the hall shook with a choir of prayers sung backward. The air went thin. The light bled. And the thing lumbered forward to finish what faith had failed to do.
[Boss: The Living Reliquary | HP: 9,800 / 12,000]Armor: Relic Fusion (35% Physical, 40% Blood resist | -50% Weak to Shadow & Sanctified)Phase: TWO (Choir intensifies, Relic Wraiths manifest, Collapse threshold @ 50%)
[Noctis — Current Status]HP: 70 / 1,050Blood: 0 / 294Faith: 0 / 8Iron: 12 / 15Soul: 2 / 6
Noctis lifted his blade in both hands. His vision tunneled. The reliquary's mass eclipsed the broken reliquary cases behind it. From within its ribbed body, relics rolled like stones in a flood—silver, bone, and scripture grinding together until sparks of crimson flew.
"Come," he breathed, steady as a vow.
The antler-crown re-grew in a rush of metal thorns. The thing stamped. Marble cratered. It charged.
He didn't Shadowmeld—he couldn't afford the penalty at this HP. He slipped across the fractured stone by footwork alone, blade angled, head low, breath thin. The first antler-thrust hammered down. He dipped past it, steel screaming as his edge shaved a spray of sparks from a jut of crown-bone.
[Damage Dealt] -120 (glancing, physical resist)Boss HP: 9,800 → 9,680
The reliquary's right body unzipped like a wound. A chalice-mouth belched a veil of crimson mist.
[Enemy Ability: Blood Chalice Drain]AoE siphon — 160 dmg | Boss heals 180HP: 70 → -90 → [GUTS: Last Thread] failsafe triggers → HP stays at 1Boss HP: 9,680 → 9,860
Noctis dropped to one knee, the world pulsing black-white. The failsafe scraped him back from oblivion like a knife catching on stone. He forced the breath in—hot, metallic—and staggered behind a toppled column as the mist hissed out.
He needed resources. Anything. Even scraps.
The choir keened. Above the reliquary's spine, three hymn-nodes swelled—bulbous knots of relic-script that pulsed in time with the backward prayer.
[Tactical Insight]Choir Nodes are amplifiers.Destroying one:– Deals -400 shared-core damage– Grants +2 Faith to attacker– Dampens Choir AoE by 10% each
"Found you."
He burst from cover low, sprinting into the reliquary's shadow. An antler-sweep howled for his head—he slid under it, letting shattered scripture flay his shoulder pauldron instead of bone. Pain cracked across nerves; he didn't slow. One cut, two, three—his blade bit deep into the first node.
[Damage Dealt] Node destroyed → Boss -400, +2 Faith, Choir -10%Boss HP: 9,860 → 9,460Faith: 0 → 2
The reliquary convulsed. The choir re-pitched down, still horrible—but less skull-splitting. It stumbled a half-step, antlers raking the ceiling. Plaster snowed. Noctis used the sag to vault onto a jut of fused ribs and carve into the second node before the thing could re-aim.
[Damage Dealt] Node destroyed → Boss -400, +2 Faith, Choir -10%Boss HP: 9,460 → 9,060Faith: 2 → 4
The reliquary bellowed. From its undercarriage, Relic Wraiths peeled free—thin, glass-boned specters wrapped in strips of scripture, each carrying a dagger made of chalice stems.
[Adds Spawned: Relic Wraith x2]HP: 260 each | Dmg: 45 rip | Drops: +15 Blood, +1 Faith on death
One skittered, insect-fast, for his legs. He met it with a short, vicious cut, snapping its wrist, then spun on the second node and smashed his pommel through it.
[Damage Dealt] Node destroyed → Boss -400, +2 Faith, Choir -10%Boss HP: 9,060 → 8,660Faith: 4 → 6
The first wraith leapt for his back. He half-turned, let it land on steel instead of spine, and wrenched his blade up in a cruel pry that split it from sternum to skull.
[Add Slain] Relic WraithBlood +15 | Faith +1Blood: 0 → 15Faith: 6 → 7
The second darted in low. Noctis planted, kicked the inside of its knee to buckle it, and severed its neck with an economy born of empty reserves.
[Add Slain] Relic WraithBlood +15 | Faith +1Blood: 15 → 30Faith: 7 → 8
The reliquary's antlers stabbed where he'd been—late. Marble burst. He sprinted across the crater's lip, chest burning, the whispering hall flickering at the edge of his vision. His HUD blinked a dull red in the corner of his eye.
[Status] HP 1 / 1,050 | Blood 30 | Faith 8 | Iron 12 | Soul 2Choir Intensity: -30% (2 nodes remaining? — All three destroyed) ✔
The abomination reeled, off-balance, the choir-thrum now a hoarse, hateful rasp. A chance—thin as bone—but a chance. Noctis scanned the wreckage for more leverage.
He saw it: in the fractures of the floor, a dark well bubbled—the runoff of the reliquary's own siphon, pooling where the hall dipped.
[Interactable: Blood Pool]+20 Blood on draw | -20 HP backlash (contamination sting)
He smiled without joy. "I'm already at one."
He plunged his left hand into the pool. The contamination tore up his arm like barbed wire dragged through veins—he bit down on the sound and hauled essence free, ripping it into his channels by force of will.
[Interaction] +20 Blood, -20 HP (backlash capped at 0 → converted to -stagger)Blood: 30 → 50HP: remains 1 (failsafe floor)
A sanctum sigil glimmered faintly atop a shattered dais—an old glyph of benediction that the reliquary hadn't fully smothered.
[Interactable: Sanctum Sigil]Touch → +5 Faith one-time | Applies Minor Sanctify (next sanctified strike +10%)
He vaulted the dais, two steps, palm down. Light stung his skin; a ghost of warmth slid into the cold architecture of his essence.
[Interaction] Faith +5Faith: 8 → 13
The reliquary rallied. Its center yawned open, showing a grinding heart of fused relics. It scissored forward, antlers low, to gore him into the dais.
Noctis didn't have the room to roll. He dropped instead—one knee, blade turned horizontal, elbows locked—using the antlers' own rake to guide the thrust up and past his head. The crown scraped stone sparks into his hair. He was already moving.
The window was three heartbeats wide.
"Now."
He bared his fangs and forced his essence to ignite in patterns that should have been impossible on an empty tank. The choir was damped. The sigil's warmth linted his channels. The wraiths' scraps gave him just enough.
He tore the trigger.
[Skill Activated: Exsanguinate II]Cost: -60 Blood, -15 Faith, -5 IronFaith insufficient by 2 → converts to -2 BloodBlood: 50 → -12 → 0 (excess underflow absorbed by pain → -stagger)Faith: 13 → 0Iron: 12 → 7Effect: Siphon detonations along exposed reliquary seamsDamage: -900 | Heal: +450 HP
The reliquary's seams erupted inward. Blood-threads shot from the fissures to his hands and mouth, a torrent of scalding essence that should have burned him hollow. He swallowed it like fire. Flesh knitted. Nerves stopped screaming. The world widened back to full color.
[Noctis HP] 1 → 451 / 1,050
The abomination convulsed so hard it staggered into a leaning column.
Noctis didn't waste the gift.
He shouldered hard into the reliquary's flank—one long shove that changed the trajectory of a tumbling giant by inches. It was enough. The leaning column's center of weight slipped past its saving angle.
"Fall."
The pillar came down like the lid of a sarcophagus.
[Environmental Damage]Boss -1,200 (crush, sanctified flecks in stone amplify)Boss HP: 9,860 → (after nodes/wraiths/siphon) 7,500 → 6,300
The reliquary screamed under the rubble. Antlers corkscrewed the pillar into ruin, but the mass had to reconfigure, buying seconds. Noctis took them. He ripped past his fatigue and hacked through a knot of scripture-strands binding the abomination's left side.
[Damage Dealt] -150 (sever tendon)Boss HP: 6,300 → 6,150
A crack spidered through the floor from the altar to the far wall, bleeding thin lines of red.
[Threshold Approaching]Reliquary Collapse @ 50% — Pending…
Stone popped. Heat surged from below like a breath from a furnace.
The reliquary tore free of the broken pillar and slammed both forelimbs down.
[Enemy Ability: Crown Antlers — Rake]Damage Taken: -80 (glance, pauldron absorbs)HP: 451 → 371
It overcommitted weight to the blow. Noctis pivoted off the rake and cleaved low at its ankle joint—where a rosary of linked chalices formed a hinge. The blade bit. Metal screamed. One chalice burst like a gourd.
[Damage Dealt] -200 (joint crit)Boss HP: 6,150 → 5,950
The floor gave.
[Phase Transition] Reliquary Collapse — Triggered (≤ 50%)
Everything dropped.
Arena Shift — Collapse
The nave shattered in a rolling cave-in. Pews, pillars, and cases folded into a churning undercroft where catwalks of fractured marble hung over rivers of blood coursing through the foundations. Choir-light poured from cracking walls like stained glass melting. Blocks the size of sarcophagi slammed into new perches. Whole sections slid until they re-locked at crooked angles.
Noctis hit a skidding slab and rode it down in a shower of powdered bone and scripture strips. He landed in a three-point crouch on a broken balcony. The reliquary crashed across from him on a lower ledge, rearing back like a bull trying to find its feet in a mud pen.
[Hazard] Blood spray scald | Damage Taken: -60HP: 371 → 311
[Boss: The Living Reliquary | HP: 5,950 / 12,000]Phase TWO+ (Collapsed)New Hazards:– Blood currents (tick dmg if submerged)– Falling reliquary-case debrisNew Adds: Relic Wraiths spawn in waves from undercroft (2–4)
A brace snapped above him. A reliquary case fell end-over-end, edges flashing with sanctified inlays.
He didn't think. He stepped through the fall line as the case scissored past his shoulder and exploded on the slab behind him, a shockwave of glass dust ringing his ears.
Two wraiths rose from the blood-river below, climbing hand-over-hand up scripture-lashed pilasters like spiders.
"Come on, then." His voice was raw, but steady.
The reliquary hurled a beam of Reliquary Choir—not sound this time, but a band of force that rippled the blood-river into a crown of spikes. The balcony crumbled where the band struck.
[Enemy Ability: Reliquary Choir — Lance]Damage Taken: -95 (psychic/force)HP: 311 → 216
His teeth rattled. He didn't have the Blood to Shadowmeld away from any more of those. He did have angles—and gravity.
Noctis cut left and dropped, landing on a lower catwalk that bowed under his weight. The first wraith lunged. He grabbed its wrist, pivoted, and fed it into the second—dagger-first. Scripture screamed as their frames tangled. One stroke severed them both.
[Adds Slain] x2 Relic WraithBlood +30 | Faith +2Blood: 0 → 30Faith: 0 → 2
The reliquary bounded, shoving its bulk along the walls, shedding and regrowing structural ribs to fit the terrain. It reached him in two heaves, antlers slamming for a gore.
He sold a shoulder to get inside the radius.
[Damage Taken] -70 → HP 216 → 146
Inside the crown, the thrusts were awkward. He hammered the flat of his blade across an antler tine to jack the crown sideways, then drove his edge down the seam where the breast fused to the belly.
[Damage Dealt] -260 (seam)Boss HP: 5,950 → 5,690
The blood-river below surged up in a geyser at the reliquary's command. He leapt, caught a hanging chain, swung—let go on the back-arc—and fell into a roll on a spine of marble jutting from the wall like a rib.
His HUD crawled numbers in the corner. Blood 30. Faith 2. Iron 7. Soul 2. Not enough for anything big; enough for one bet.
The reliquary hauled itself around the wall's curve and started up the rib toward him like a beetle climbing bark. The climb forced more of its undercarriage open—ribs splayed to brace, seams yawning.
"Open." He set his stance, breath threading down to a needle.
The choir banded again. He did not have the HP to tank another lance.
He sprinted straight into it.
The band ripped the outer foot-wide layer of marble into powder. He took the shock across his forearms, let it lift him, and turned that forced momentum into a shallow aerial arc. In that split-second over open blood-river, he lined the strike.
He cut—clean—straight into the yawning seam.
[Damage Dealt] -300 (seam)Boss HP: 5,690 → 5,390
He hit hard on the far stub of balcony, knees screaming, lungs on fire. The reliquary tore free, enraged, and leapt the gap.
He had one move left before it landed.
He lit the last of his soul.
[Skill Activated: Soul Spire II]Cost: -2 Soul, -100 HP penalty (Blood/Faith insufficient)Soul: 2 → 0HP: 146 → 46Effect: Blood–Faith tower for 8s | Sanctified damage x2
The tower roared up out of him—thinner than before, wavering in the hot winds of the undercroft—but there. His blade drank it like a dying man drinks rain.
He cut into the landing.
[Skill Synergy] Eucharist Blade II (sanctified carrier) — Unable to pay cost→ Fallback: Sanctified Base Strike (Minor Sanctify persists from sigil)Damage: -420 (x2 from Soul Spire → -840)Boss HP: 5,390 → 4,550
The reliquary screamed—a sound like a cathedral organ forced to inhale fire. It smashed its crown down blind, flailing. He rolled under, ribs crackling, vision going snowy at the edges, and hacked out another strip of scripture-sinew to keep it listing.
[Damage Dealt] -180Boss HP: 4,550 → 4,370
The tower in him guttered, seconds dying.
The blood-river below rose into a wall.
Noctis hauled breath through his teeth and burned what little was left.
He jumped into the blood-wall.
[Hazard] Blood scald -60HP: 46 → -14 → [GUTS: Redline] triggers → HP clamps at 1 (10s lockout on death)
He stabbed into the reliquary's underside as the blood carried him up its belly—a drag-cut, both hands, edge grinding along chalice-lip ribs and rosary hinges.
[Damage Dealt] -320 (drag-cut)Boss HP: 4,370 → 4,050
The wall collapsed, dumping him onto a lower ledge so hard the bones in his forearms sang. He lay there for half a second, staring at the dusty stars of powdered glass swirling in blown light, while the tower in him finally went out.
No more soul. No blood. No faith. A blade. A heartbeat. A wall of monster still trying to crush the world into a hymn it could own.
He got up.
The reliquary, maddened, slammed its entire weight down to pancake his ledge.
He stepped off nothing.
It wasn't a skill. It was a refusal. His foot found the one jag of stone left hanging. He landed on a span no wider than his palm, the ledge behind him atomized into a red cloud. The shockwave shoved him sideways; he caught a rusted chain with two fingers, skinned to blood, swung, and slammed shoulder-first into a stanchion that held.
The reliquary missed. Its mass carried it across—overcommitted—exposing its back to the river for a heartbeat.
Noctis did not waste heartbeats.
He drew in the last of the air his chest would take and ran the chain like a tightrope, blade low, body empty, mind bright.
He leapt.He fell like a nail.He hit the reliquary's scapular seam and drove his edge in to the hilt with a sound like tearing silk soaked in mercury.
[Damage Dealt] -300 (seam)Boss HP: 4,050 → 3,750
The reliquary spun to shake him off, antlers scything scars in the air. He ripped free, dropped, and tumbled to the same rib of marble where he'd started, knees buckling. His heart thudded in his throat. Every vein hissed.
[Status]HP: 1 / 1,050Blood: 0 | Faith: 0 | Iron: 7 | Soul: 0
Across the shattered undercroft, the boss hung off the wall like a crucified engine, lines of red sluicing off its flanks into the river below. Its choir had gone ragged. Its motions, less certain. It had broke the hall to win—and given him a broken hall to survive in.
He raised his blade. The edge shook. He willed it still.
"One more," he whispered to nobody. To everybody. To the knight's ash behind him and the iron sun above he'd never prayed to.
The reliquary flexed, antlers flaring, readying the Lance again.
He had nothing left but timing.
The light band snapped across the undercroft.
He stepped into it again, let it carry him—one last time—over the cut of the blood-river, and lined the strike at the seam that mattered most: the sternal knot, where all the fused scripture lines crossed like a woven heart.
He cut through the hymn.
[Damage Dealt] -300 (sternal knot—major seam)Boss HP: 3,750 → 3,450
The reliquary reeled. The band shattered. The undercroft heaved as if the hall itself gagged.
Noctis hit hard on his back on a splint of stone. He stared at the ceiling he couldn't see. He could taste iron and smoke and the far, clean hint of wind through a crack somewhere above, like a memory of air that wasn't full of prayer.
He rolled. He forced his elbows under him. He got his knees beneath him. He stood.
On the opposite ledge, the Living Reliquary drew itself up to its full ruin of height. It looked down at him with a thousand stolen faces, and the choir that had been a weapon spoke, for the first time, like a voice:
"Return thy blood."
Noctis grinned, feral and tired and alive.
"Come take it."
The hall held its breath.