The Heart moved. Each step contained released frenzy.
Its massive form dragged itself forward, cleavers scraping stone in long, screeching arcs. The exposed red eye pulsed brighter with every step, veins of sickly gold crawling outward from its pupil like cracks in stained glass.
The air around it grew heavy with mana and guilt.
Alaric wiped blood from his eye with the back of his gauntlet and grimaced.
The street warped.
The broken buildings leaned inward.
The world dimmed, colors draining into dull ash as the Heart's presence pressed down on reality itself.
A bell tolled.
Not from the Heart's throat.
From inside Alaric's skull.
Alaric staggered backward, boots skidding.
"Tch—!" He planted the spear hard, electricity grounding into the stone. His breathing came sharp, controlled, but his jaw was tight.
"RE—GRET," it intoned, voice layered now, dozens of voices stacked atop one another.
"YOU—CARRY—IT—WELL."
Its cleavers lifted.
The air screamed.
Alaric barely raised his spear in time.
KRAAANG!!
The impact crushed him into the ground, stone spiderwebbing beneath his back. His lightning flared instinctively, but it flickered. Unsteady.
The Heart leaned down.
Its massive eye filled his vision.
"YOU—ARE—A—STRANGER," it rumbled.
"YOU—CARRY—SOMETHING. SOMETHING—"
The eye dilated.
"—WRONG."
Alaric gritted his teeth.
"Yeah," he said through clenched breath, lightning crackling weakly around his frame.
"Maybe I do. But I don't even remember it."
The Heart recoiled, cleavers lifting high.
Then it brought them down.
Lightning detonated.
Alaric vanished in a pillar of blue-white fury, the strike obliterating the space he had occupied a heartbeat earlier. The cleavers buried themselves into the street with a deafening impact, stone pulverizing under their weight.
He reappeared above.
Didn't pause.
Didn't breathe.
He thrust his spear downward.
"Collision."
Two streams of mana surged through the spearhead—precise, violent, intimate. They sank into the Heart's skull and collided.
The explosion did not expand.
It collapsed.
Reality folded inward with a wet, thunderous crack. The Heart's head imploded, flesh and bone compressing into nothingness as its massive body was hurled backward, slamming into the street hard enough to flatten what little remained of the surrounding buildings.
Shockwaves rippled outward.
Then.....
Silence.
Smoke drifted upward in slow, curling plumes.
Black sludge pooled across the shattered stone.
Alaric stood there, chest rising and falling as he exhaled shakily.
"…Stay down," he murmured.
"…Please."
The rubble shifted.
A hand emerged.
Human.
Tar-black and trembling.
Then another.
The Heart's body peeled apart, flesh unraveling like soaked parchment, layers sloughing away as something smaller dragged itself free.
A man.
Emaciated. Broken. Barely whole.
He looked up at Alaric with eyes that were no longer monstrous. Just tired. Confused.
"Wh… who…" His voice cracked, words slurring together. "Who… are you?"
Alaric froze.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
This wasn't normal.
Every instinct screamed at him, this was no ordinary Scourge. No hollowed beast. Something about this moment felt wrong in a way that cut deeper than fear.
"…Alaric," he said quietly.
"My name… is Alaric."
For a moment, just a moment, something like a smile touched the man's ruined face.
"That… is… not… your… name…"
Alaric smiled too.
Soft. Sad.
"You're right," he said. "I don't have a name."
He didn't know why he was still talking. Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was mercy. Maybe it was the unbearable weight of being seen.
The man lifted a tar-covered hand to his chest, fingers trembling.
"P… priest…"
Alaric's breath caught.
"Do you know Brutus?" he asked, voice suddenly thin.
The expression that crossed the man's face shattered something in him.
Pure disgust.
Then hatred.
Then rage so raw it burned through the corruption.
Black blood flooded the man's eyes as his lip quivered.
"…Betray…"
"…dark… mage…"
And then—
He collapsed forward.
"Revenge....regret" his final words were uttered.
Dead. Finally dead.
His body did not dissolve into blue mist.
In the cave, the Scourge-riddden disappeared into blue particles. But not here. Whatever system caused the lancers to disappear into blue mana mist, did not exist here.
Alaric stood there, frozen, the corpse slumped against his shoulder, tar-like blood dripping down his armor.
"…Brutus," he whispered.
And for the first time since the battle began...the lightning around him went completely still.
Meanwhile, Adam and Brutus were outside the city gates.
Brutus walked beside him, hands folded calmly at his front.
Smiling.
It wasn't wide.
It wasn't joyful.
It lingered too long.
Adam noticed because Brutus wasn't looking at the city.
He was looking at him.
"…Why are you smiling like that?" Adam asked, slowing a step.
Brutus blinked.
The smile vanished instantly, replaced by the familiar anxious, reverent expression. Shoulders hunched. Eyes soft. Harmless.
"Oh—ah! Forgive me," Brutus said quickly. "Just… thinking. You know. Praise, and all that."
Adam narrowed his eyes but didn't press. He adjusted Tani on his shoulder.
His scales were raised along his spine, darkened, rigid. His tail was wrapped tight around Adam's collar, claws biting into the fabric. A low, rattling hiss vibrated in his throat, so faint Adam almost missed it.
"Easy," Adam murmured under his breath.
Tani didn't relax.
His eyes were locked on Brutus.
Brutus inhaled deeply.
"…Awfully quiet, huh?" he said, voice almost conversational. "And the smell of rot....it's disappearing."
Adam froze.
He sniffed the air.
The coppery stench. The bile-thick decay that had clung to Redgate like a second skin.
Gone.
His eyes widened.
"…You think—?" He swallowed. "Did Alaric…?"
He turned fully to Brutus now, awe slipping through despite himself. "Did he defeat the Heart?"
Brutus's lips curled upward again.
"Yes," he said softly.
"…He did."
The word amazing escaped him like a prayer.
"If you don't mind me asking," Brutus continued, tilting his head, "how did you meet him?"
Adam relaxed, just a little.
"I was in the desert," he replied. "He found me when I was half-dead. We came here because my village Elder is sick. I already told you."
Brutus stopped walking.
Then he laughed.
Not a chuckle.
Not nervous breath.
A laugh that tore out of him in broken, shrieking bursts, wet and wrong, echoing far too loud for an open road.
Adam recoiled. "Brutus?! Hey—are you okay?!"
Tani snapped.
With a sharp, furious screech, the lizard lunged forward on Adam's shoulder, baring tiny fangs. His claws scraped against Brutus's robe as he struck, hissing violently, tail whipping like a lash.
"Gek—KRRSSS!"
Brutus's head snapped up.
His eyes were crazed.
Bloodshot veins spiderwebbed outward as something oily flooded the whites, swallowing them whole. He barely reacted to Tani's strike, only flicked a finger.
A pulse of ash flared.
Tani was knocked backward midair, thrown hard into the dirt. He skidded, rolled, and scrambled up instantly, crouched low between Adam and Brutus, teeth bared, body trembling with fury.
Before Adam could react, Brutus's arm twisted, flesh dissolving into a thick, shapeshifting sheath of red-and-black ash. It hardened mid-motion, jagged plates locking together with a sound like grinding teeth.
The arm shot forward.
Adam was yanked off his feet.
Air vanished from his lungs as the armored hand clamped around his throat and lifted him effortlessly into the air.
"B–Br—!" Adam clawed at the grip, boots kicking uselessly.
Tani lunged again.
He threw himself at Brutus's leg, biting down hard. Ash burned his mouth, but he didn't let go, snarling, shaking his head viciously.
Brutus didn't even look down.
His smile was wide now.
Ecstatic.
"I am a priest," he said calmly. "Just not of the Demiurgic Church."
Adam's vision blurred as pressure crushed his windpipe.
"I am a priest of The Walking God. The God of The Scourge!"
The ash-arm tightened.
"Your 'hero'?" Brutus whispered. "He was never meant to reach the Heart."
Adam's ribs screamed. Darkness crept in.
Then—
THOOM!!
A spear of lightning tore through the air.
Brutus barely had time to turn before Alaric's weapon slammed into him with explosive force, electricity detonating across the ground and hurling him backward in a storm of blue-white fury.
Adam crashed to the dirt, coughing violently as air rushed back into his lungs.
Brutus skidded across the ground, ash-armor cracking, smoke curling from his form.
Alaric stood between them now.
Lightning crawled over his armor, wild and furious, the spear snapping back into his grasp as his eyes locked onto Brutus with something far sharper than anger.
"Get," Alaric snarled, voice shaking the air,
"your hands off him."
He took a step forward.
"Brutus!!"