The cathedral roof exploded.
Stone, bone, and living flesh tore apart as something colossal forced its way down through the foundations of the city. The chamber filled with a deafening roar as the Devourer crashed through the ceiling like a collapsing mountain.
Kael barely moved.
He stood in the center of the chamber as the creature descended.
Now that it had abandoned the tunnels, its true size became clear.
The body they had fought earlier was only a fragment.
What dropped into the cathedral was vast.
A swollen mass of bone, muscle, and pale flesh poured into the chamber like an avalanche of living nightmare. Thousands of arms clawed into the walls and pillars to anchor its enormous body as it unfolded into the space.
The faces screamed.
Hundreds of them.
Every stolen mouth shrieked in overlapping voices.
Some begged.
Some laughed.
Some called Kael's name.
Mara covered her ears.
"…that is absolutely horrifying."
Aurelion's crescent blades ignited with pale lunar light beside Kael.
"Yes," he said calmly.
"It is."
The Devourer's central face pushed forward through the writhing mass.
Its eyes locked onto Kael.
And for the first time since they had encountered it…
The creature hesitated.
It could feel the change.
Kael felt it too.
The Seraph fragment inside him burned like a second heart. Power flowed through him in steady pulses, reshaping the air around his body. The shadow wings behind him stretched wider now, brushing the floor like living darkness.
The Ascendant System whispered quietly in his mind.
DEVOURER CORE LOCATED
THREAT LEVEL: EQUAL
Kael cracked his neck.
"Good."
The Devourer roared.
The sound was no longer curious.
It was furious.
Thousands of arms surged forward all at once.
Kael vanished.
The first wave of limbs slammed into empty air, smashing the stone floor into powder. Before the creature could react, Kael appeared above it—suspended in midair on wings of black shadow.
Nightrend burned in his hands.
He swung.
The blade carved downward through the Devourer's upper body like a falling comet.
Shadow and starlight exploded outward.
The strike split a massive section of the creature open, severing dozens of arms and tearing through layers of pale flesh. Black blood erupted across the chamber.
The Devourer screamed.
Kael landed lightly on one of the creature's bone plates.
"…you're slower than I expected."
A thousand arms lunged toward him.
Kael lifted one hand.
Gravity folded.
The limbs froze midair.
Invisible force crushed them together until bones snapped like dry branches. Kael closed his fist and the entire cluster imploded, spraying black fluid across the cathedral walls.
Below him, Mara stared.
"…yeah okay he definitely leveled up."
Aurelion did not look surprised.
But his voice held a rare note of approval.
"The Seraph fragment is integrating well."
Kael leapt again.
This time he dove straight into the Devourer's mass.
Nightrend became a storm.
Every swing carved through flesh like lightning through clouds. Limbs fell. Faces burst apart. Entire sections of the creature collapsed under the onslaught.
But the Devourer adapted.
The wounds began sealing almost immediately.
New arms grew where old ones had been severed. The flesh shifted, thickening around Kael's attacks like armor forming in real time.
Then the creature retaliated.
A massive jaw erupted from its torso.
The mouth was enormous—easily wide enough to swallow Kael whole. Rows of grinding teeth slammed together where he had been standing a moment earlier.
Kael appeared beside Mara and Aurelion in a flash of shadow.
"Okay," he muttered.
"It's learning."
Aurelion nodded.
"All Devourers do."
The creature's many faces turned toward them.
Then something new happened.
The mouths opened.
Words poured out.
"Eclipse…"
"Broken star…"
"Seraph thief…"
The voices layered together in a horrifying chorus.
Then the Devourer spoke clearly.
"We will eat you."
Kael laughed.
"You can try."
The creature's body began expanding.
The walls of the cathedral cracked outward as its mass continued unfolding. Bone pillars shattered as the Devourer forced more of itself into the chamber.
But it didn't stop there.
The entire city moved.
Above them, streets split apart. Towers collapsed as the Devourer dragged the rest of its massive body downward through the foundations.
Buildings crumbled.
Stone peeled away.
Within seconds the cathedral chamber was no longer underground.
The Devourer had torn the city open.
Moonlight flooded the battlefield.
The night sky stretched above them as the creature's colossal form rose higher and higher from the ruins. Its body now towered over the shattered city like a grotesque mountain of flesh and bone.
Hundreds of meters tall.
Thousands of arms.
Countless screaming faces.
Mara stared up at it.
"…that thing was inside the city?"
Kael rolled his shoulders.
"More like the city was inside it."
The Devourer's body twisted.
A massive section of its torso opened like a blooming wound.
Inside it…
Something glowed.
A pulsating core of black-red energy buried deep within the creature's body.
The System reacted instantly.
PRIMARY CORE EXPOSED
Kael grinned.
"There you are."
He launched into the air.
Shadow wings exploded outward as he rocketed toward the Devourer's heart.
The creature saw him coming.
Every arm in its colossal body moved at once.
Thousands of limbs shot upward into the sky like a forest of spears.
Kael cut through them.
Nightrend became a streak of black lightning as he tore through the forest of grasping arms. Severed limbs rained down across the ruined city below.
But the Devourer was faster now.
A massive tendril wrapped around Kael's leg mid-flight.
Then another around his torso.
A third locked onto his arm.
The creature slammed him downward.
Kael crashed into the ruins with the force of a meteor, pulverizing half a city block.
Dust and rubble exploded into the air.
Mara cursed.
"Kael!"
The Devourer began dragging him upward again toward its massive mouth.
Kael wiped blood from his lip.
"…okay."
"Enough playing."
The Seraph fragment inside him ignited.
His body erupted in blinding starlight and shadow.
The tendrils wrapped around him disintegrated instantly.
Kael rose slowly into the air again.
This time the shadow wings behind him had changed.
They now stretched nearly thirty feet wide.
Black feathers formed along their edges.
And faint constellations glowed across them.
The Devourer hesitated again.
Kael lifted his hand toward the creature's exposed core.
The Ascendant System activated.
STAR-SHARD DOMINION
The sky bent.
Gravity twisted.
An invisible force slammed into the Devourer's chest like a collapsing star.
The massive creature screamed as its enormous body was forced backward through the ruins. Entire sections of flesh collapsed inward as the pressure crushed its internal structures.
Kael spoke quietly.
"You're not the only thing that eats worlds."
He pulled his hand back.
The Devourer's core tore free from its chest.
A massive sphere of pulsing black-red energy ripped loose from the creature's body and floated into the air in front of Kael.
The Devourer shrieked.
Its body began collapsing immediately.
But the creature wasn't done.
Even dying, thousands of arms surged upward toward Kael in a final desperate attack.
Kael stared at the floating core.
Then he raised Nightrend.
"One bite," he said quietly.
And drove the blade straight through it.
The core detonated.
The explosion of starfire and shadow tore through the Devourer's body like a supernova. The creature's colossal form disintegrated in seconds, dissolving into ash and black dust that scattered across the ruined city.
Silence fell.
The Devourer was gone.
Kael hovered in the air for a moment longer before slowly descending back to the ground.
Mara looked around the destroyed city.
"…so."
She gestured vaguely at the devastation.
"Good news is the monster's dead."
Aurelion glanced at the smoking ruins.
"The bad news is…"
Kael finished the sentence.
"…we just announced to every Devourer in the universe that a Seraph fragment woke up on Earth."
The Ascendant System flickered quietly.
GALACTIC SIGNAL DETECTED
Kael sighed.
"…yep."
Far above the planet, something in the darkness between stars began turning toward Earth.