Chapter 37
A WEARING BATTLE
—Do you feel it? —Max looked at his trembling arms, the veins standing out like roots about to break through the skin.
—Like your muscles are screaming they can do things your mind still doesn’t understand? —Diya smiled. It wasn’t a kind smile; it was the smile of someone who had already accepted the slaughter.
—Exactly…
Max closed his eyes. He inhaled slowly. The air smelled of dust, iron, and death.
When he opened them again, something ancient was breathing through him.
Contempt.
The scythe responded to his pulse, tracing lazy circles around him while his body swayed lightly, his guard high like a boxer ready to step into range. He invited the enemy to try their luck.
The first creature fell into the trap.
The tentacle shot toward his head.
Max pivoted on the ball of his foot —a short, precise movement— and with a flick of his wrist the chain whistled. The black blade cut through the air.
A clean cut.
The severed limb fell twisting, spilling a dark sap that crackled against the ground. The beast’s scream was brief; the scythe returned like an obedient predator and opened its throat before it could finish it.
A few meters away, the clash of steel rang out like funeral bells.
Diya’s spear slammed against the hardened arms of another aberration. She did not retreat out of weakness, but calculation: she stepped back, lowering her guard just slightly, offering a crack.
The creature took the bait.
It lunged with all its weight.
At the last second, Diya dropped her body weight downward in a clean, calculated motion; she bent her front leg while the other extended behind to hold her balance, and her knee brushed the ground for barely an instant before the strike passed above her. It was a fluid descent, precise, without abruptness, as if she had anticipated the trajectory of the attack from the very first heartbeat. At the same time, her hands spun the spear with impossible skill; the shaft traced a swift arc through the air and the energy running through it stretched, sharpening, until it formed a second gleaming point in front of the original.
The blade traced a perfect horizontal line.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the upper half of the monster slid to one side.
The battlefield became a whirlwind.
Fragments of rock rose around Max, orbiting him like furious moons. Every ambush attempt was deflected by that savage system; every enemy mistake was punished.
A colossus tried to run him over.
Max stepped forward instead of fleeing.
He slid into the attack rather than retreating, shortening the distance with a firm, decisive step. He twisted his torso slightly and raised his forearm, wrapped in lavender light, intercepting the blow with a sharp deflection that altered its trajectory at the last instant. There was no pause. From that same close range, he compressed his body and launched a short, brutal hook straight into the center of the creature’s torso.
The impact was not only physical: the gathered energy burst into a shockwave that shook the air, lifting dust and fragments of bone around them. The creature was ripped from the ground and hurled several meters back, crashing violently into the rubble.
Another appeared behind him.
The scythe needed no command.
The chain slithered, caught the neck, tightened.
Max did not step back. He planted his support foot, driving it into the ground, and let the force rise from below: the heel pushed, the knees bent just enough, and the hips rotated with contained violence, dragging the torso into a compact and devastating turn. The motion was not wide, but concentrated, precise, like a tensed whip released in a single instant.
The lateral impact knocked the enemy’s body off balance; inertia lifted it slightly from the ground and flung it to the side. It did not fall. It was dragged midair, straight toward the suspended blade that waited motionless in the air. The floating edge needed no momentum of its own: the body surrendered to it. A cold flash crossed the scene and, in a dry heartbeat, the decapitation was completed before gravity could reclaim what remained.
His fists burned. Each heartbeat expanded the violet glow covering his knuckles. He struck, blocked, countered; knees into joints, elbows shattering jaws, sweeping blows that toppled impossible masses. He fought as if a thousand forgotten wars were speaking through his flesh.
Diya was an execution in motion.
She impaled throats, pulled the weapon free, spun, and pierced again. When a claw managed to come too close, small shields burst forth at the exact point of impact; the enemy limb crackled, charred, while she responded with a descending kick that split skulls or a full spin that opened bellies.
There was no doubt in her eyes.
Only destiny.
The monsters began to understand something terrible:
they were not hunting.
They were the sacrifice.
—We have to split them up! —Max shouted, calculating impossible routes through the tide of flesh.
—Alright!
Diya did not hesitate.
Shields sprouted beneath her feet like petals of arcane crystal, emerging from the void with a translucent flash and sharp edges of light. She did not wait for them to stabilize: she propelled her body upward and placed her foot for barely a heartbeat on the first surface before it began to crack into bright particles. Each jump was measured to the extreme; knees bending as the weight landed, ankles firm, immediate momentum toward the next platform that formed just in time beneath her trajectory.
She ascended diagonally, light but precise, chaining fleeting footholds that vanished behind her like traces of light in the air. There was no hesitation in her rhythm: it was a continuous sequence of thrust, contact, and release.
The creatures lunged from below with open claws and tense jaws, trying to cut her off. But they always arrived a second too late. When they brushed the fading trail left by the shields as they extinguished, they found only burning flashes that scorched their skin and forced them to recoil with harsh howls, while she continued rising, unreachable, supported by fleeting fragments of crystallized power.
Max opened his arms.
The ground responded.
Rocks, charred corpses… everything tore free from gravity and formed a suspended path. With a telekinetic surge he propelled himself forward, his coat whipped by the energy, the scythe floating at his side like a chained beast pulling its master toward war.
They ran in opposite directions.
Divide to break them.
When they jumped, the world seemed to inhale.
Diya landed first.
Her spear pointed downward and, upon touching the ground, a lavender discharge exploded outward in a circle. Electricity crawled across carapaces and tendons; the smell of burning flesh filled the air as bodies arched in silent spasms.
Max descended a second later.
He did not land.
He crashed.
The impact opened a brutal crater; the shockwave lifted dust and tore limbs apart. The creatures beneath him were compressed against the stone, reduced to unrecognizable matter.
When the smoke began to fade, Max no longer looked like a boy.
He was a verdict.
His breathing was slow. His eyes cold. Every gesture, an equation of death.
A tentacle shot toward his face.
He barely tilted his head.
Another sought his ribs.
He rotated his torso just enough, wasting not a single muscle; only a sharp adjustment of shoulders and hips that shifted his axis out of the attack’s line. There was no wide motion or dramatics, only pure economy: a compact, measured movement that preserved every ounce of energy for the next heartbeat.
The chain answered the turn as if it shared his pulse. It tightened, traced a precise arc through the air, and the blade at its end carved a shining curve that intercepted the bone blades mid-advance. The clash was not silent: it burst into a shower of violet sparks that splashed through the darkness, while the metal vibrated and the chain danced, alive, around his arm.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Too slow.
He pulled one closer with telekinesis, broke its balance, and stepped inside the attack; forearm to deflect, rising elbow to the center of mass, hip turn. The scythe completed the sentence, opening the body from shoulder to hip.
Behind him, another tried to immobilize him.
The chain snapped back with a sharp pull and slithered through the air before closing around the monster’s limb. It was not a simple entanglement: the tension tightened with surgical precision, shifting the pivot point and forcing the joint beyond its natural limit. The twist was brief, brutal; a clean break accompanied by the wet crack of bone giving way under an impossible lever.
Before the creature understood what was happening, the pressure shifted angle and the traction became absolute. With a final snap, the chain tore the limb from its root, ripping it away in an explosion of flesh and energy, leaving the monster staggering in a fraction of a second of belated disbelief.
A few meters away, Diya stopped thinking.
She became instinct.
The spear steady in her right hand; in her left, the shield deployed across her forearm. Concentric circles rotated in opposite directions, filled with runes that pulsed like ancient hearts.
One of its bone blades struck the surface.
The burn was immediate.
The creature screamed, paralyzed.
Diya advanced without mercy: thrust to the throat, withdrawal, turn, a transverse cut across the abdomen. A front kick to bring down the next one, a descending strike that pierced skull and ground at the same time.
One of them revealed a mouth where there had seemed to be none, rows of fangs snapping toward her from the side.
Block, shove, knee to the joint. The bone gave way.
The spear finished the work.
She breathed fast, her muscles burning, yet the power kept growing, guiding her hands, correcting her angles, teaching her a violence that had always slept inside her.
Minutes—or perhaps seconds—later, the ground around them was a pulsing cemetery.
Bodies split apart.
Limbs still moving.
Blood evaporating into purple smoke.
But the murmur continued.
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From the center of the village, the shadows kept emerging.
More.
Always more.
—They won’t stop, Max! —Diya shouted as she raised the shield just in time to stop a rain of slashes. Each impact made the runes vibrate like bells on the verge of shattering.
—Hold on a little longer! —he answered, though his attention was no longer entirely there.
He felt it.
Like a gigantic heart about to open its eyes.
The energy emanating from the sky, powerful and familiar.
Then the sky roared.
The beating of wings displaced the air with violence, crushing dust, extinguishing fires, forcing the creatures to crouch like animals before a greater predator.
—Take cover! —Max raised his arm—. Scutum!
The word exploded into space.
A lavender dome closed around him, so bright it cast black shadows over the ruins. Rocks disintegrated the moment they touched the surface of the field.
Diya acted instantly. She drove the spear into the earth; her shield dissipated, but the runic circle reappeared beneath her palm. The lines began to rotate, to align, to sing.
A dome rose, surrounding her in violet light, dense as living crystal.
The wind died.
The creatures stopped attacking.
They looked upward.
They hated.
There he was.
Suspended in the air, his wings spread like a blasphemy against the firmament, Raían descended slowly, upside down, observing the mass of monsters with a calm that did not belong to the world of men.
—Wretched things… —he murmured, and his voice needed no volume to impose itself.
The monsters began climbing over one another, forming a grotesque tower of bones and saliva, desperate to reach him, to touch him, to receive something they themselves did not understand.
Raían chose the one that had climbed the highest.
He held it by the face.
The gesture was intimate. Almost loving.
He stroked its cheek with his thumb.
And kissed its forehead.
The creature trembled.
Pink veins emerged beneath the skin like invasive roots. They spread across the neck, the chest, the arms… glowing brighter and brighter.
Raían touched another.
Then another.
The infection leapt in a chain, spreading through contact, through proximity, through fear. Within seconds, the entire tide was marked by that sickly luminescence.
Max watched from inside the dome.
He did not breathe.
He understood he was witnessing true power.
Raían rose a few meters, contemplating his work with infinite disappointment.
His eyes were bottomless pits.
—Kill yourselves.
The command fell softly.
Irrefutable.
At first they hesitated.
Then they began.
Claws opening throats. Jaws tearing off arms. Some, in a devout frenzy, separated their heads from their bodies as an offering. The shrieks filled the village, but there was no rebellion in them… only obedience.
The massacre lasted minutes.
Perhaps an eternity.
Until the last body fell.
The silence afterward was so absolute that the crackling of evaporating blood sounded like thunder.
Diya and Max let their defenses fall.
The lavender light dissolved into particles that the wind carried away like ash.
—Raían…? —Max’s voice barely cracked.
He was looking at him, but he could not find his friend in that face. Something was different in the posture, in the way he occupied space… as if the world belonged to him by ancient right.
From the side, Gabriel ran toward him.
Raían descended with unnatural slowness, his feet touching the stone without a sound. Gabriel slowed down, hopeful, vulnerable.
Then Raían lifted his gaze.
The look pierced through him.
It was not anger. Not fury.
It was the kind of evaluation given to something that might cease to exist at any moment.
Gabriel stopped dead.
—Raían… it’s me. Gabriel.
The winged one’s eyes moved over his body from head to toe, as if examining a damaged memory.
—Angel… —he finally said, but the word sounded foreign in his mouth.
—Raían, do you remember us? —Max stepped forward and instinctively placed himself in front of Gabriel, the chain of the scythe vibrating as if it sensed danger.
The air grew thick.
Something was coming.
The roar shattered the ruins like thunder rising from the underworld. Stones trembled; the corpses shook as the beast passed.
In the distance, a monstrous silhouette advanced, crushing everything in its path.
The Totnes.
Diya reacted before she could think.
She ran.
Each stride was an absolute decision.
When she was a meter from Raían, she extended her hand and the shield formed between them at the exact instant the monster’s living sword descended.
The impact was apocalyptic.
Energy fractured into luminous cracks. The dome held for a second… two…
Then it shattered.
The shockwave pushed Diya backward; she rolled across the ground, gasping, while the remnants of her defense evaporated into the wind.
—My shield…! —she whispered, and terror froze her blood.
Nothing.
Nothing had ever broken one before.
The Totnes advanced, dragging the blade that formed its arm. The metal screeched against the stone.
—Trai… tor… —it accused, each syllable like a judgment.
Max tightened the chain.
Gabriel raised his scythe.
Diya recovered her spear, though her hands trembled.
And Raían…
Raían looked at them.
Not as allies.
As pieces.
As memories struggling not to sink.
Something in his expression faltered, a tiny fracture in the mask of divinity, as if he were trying to cling to a name the power wanted to erase.
Far from there, Tatiana ran toward the Great Tree, every muscle screaming with exhaustion.
—Tatiana!
The voice forced her to stop.
She turned.
The woman from the Atlantis Order emerged from the rubble. She was alive… but barely. She limped, covered in dried blood.
Tatiana ran to her without hesitation and slipped the wounded woman’s arm around her neck to support her.
—Come on —she said, trying to sound firm while the world fell apart—. When the sorceresses wake up, they’ll heal you.
Behind them, destiny sharpened its fangs once more.
The scream split the air.
The battle against the Totnes had not yet begun when the sound tore through something deeper than concentration.
Gabriel was the first to turn.
And the first to understand.
The woman of the Order advanced with terrifying calm. Her blade was already buried in Tatiana’s abdomen, and Tatiana twisted on the ground, crawling, leaving a red line behind her.
The attacker walked slowly.
As if time belonged to her.
—No! —Gabriel roared.
He ran.
He did not think of strategy, enemies, or survival. He only ran.
Max tried to move, but the world turned viscous; his legs would not respond. His eyes were locked on Tatiana, on the way her hand searched for help where no one was left.
The woman raised the sword to finish it.
She lunged.
Gabriel arrived at the same time.
He threw himself over Tatiana, covering her with his body.
The blade entered through his back.
It came out through his stomach.
The sound was wet. Final.
Gabriel’s eyes widened in disbelief as the steel left his flesh. The attacker withdrew the weapon coldly, and the boy collapsed, falling over Tatiana.
Then the woman’s skin began to come apart.
A black mist evaporated toward the sky, carrying away the disguise, tearing the lie away.
Beneath it was the true face.
—Frida… —Tatiana whispered, broken more inside than by the wound.
Something struck Frida like an invisible hammer.
Max.
He had arrived.
The telekinetic fury hurled her through the air, sending her vanishing among ruins and dust. Max did not even look where she fell. He dropped to his knees, pulling Gabriel away with impossible care, trying to hold them both, trying to hold the world.
There was too much blood.
His hands slipped.
—No, no, no… —he repeated, pressing on wounds that refused to close—. Damn it… damn it!
In the distance, the clash thundered.
The Totnes against Raían.
Living swords colliding in a rain of sparks. Diya raised barrier after barrier, but the ground split open, buildings gave way, time was running out.
Max was in two places.
And he could not save either.
—Just hold on… please, hold on —he begged, as if bargaining with death were possible.
Tatiana looked at him.
There was pain, yes.
But also clarity.
—You must go help them… —her voice was barely air.
—No! —Max shook his head, tears falling uncontrollably—. I can’t leave you.
Gabriel coughed blood. Even so, he searched for Max’s hand and squeezed it with the little strength he had left.
His eyes shone, wet.
Human.
—You have to go… —he pleaded—. Please…
Max trembled.
He wanted to stay.
He wanted to scream.
He wanted someone else to decide for him.
But when he lifted his gaze, he saw the fight: Diya retreating, the shields breaking, Raían facing a hatred that could swallow the entire village.
They needed him.
And behind him, the lives of his friends were slipping away second by second.
The scythe floated at his side as Max stood up.
His hands were shaking.
Ahead of him: violet sparks, steel against steel, Diya’s shields shattering one after another while Raían held back the Totnes’ brutal advance.
Behind him: blood.
Gabriel.
Tatiana.
The price.
Max lowered his head slightly.
One rock rose.
Then another.
And another.
The fragments began to vibrate, to gather, to obey. They embedded into one another, compacting, fusing until they formed an impossible mass, a meteorite suspended above the battlefield.
Runes awakened on his skin.
They appeared like burns glowing from within, spreading across his arms, neck, and face. Each symbol pulsed violently, and the pain… the pain was real. His muscles protested, his bones creaked, as if the human body were a prison too fragile to contain what was trying to be born.
The tears kept falling.
Max opened his mouth and the scream came out shapeless: rage, guilt, fear, helplessness, all turned into sound.
The meteorite fired forward.
It tore through the air like a divine bullet, pushing the wind aside, ripping through the darkened sky.
When it was about to reach the Totnes, Max extended his arm.
His hand open.
Final judgment.
—Ruptis!
His eyes exploded in lavender light.
The rock cracked mid-flight. The fractures multiplied, glowing brighter and brighter, until the impact turned the world white.
The thunder was absolute.
The shockwave tried to devour everything.
But Diya was still there.
With a scream, she planted her feet on the ground and stretched both arms forward. Runes appeared one upon another, layered, growing until they formed a colossal wall that embraced the detonation.
The barrier vibrated.
It bent.
It threatened to die.
Diya screamed louder.
The explosion finally surrendered.
When the light vanished, the silence took time to return.
Dust floated like dark snow. Burning debris fell from the sky. The smell of pulverized stone scraped at the throat.
Where the Totnes had been… only fragments remained.
Diya tried to take a step.
Her legs did not respond.
She fell to her knees, then onto her side, exhausted beyond any limit she had ever known.
In the distance, Max remained motionless.
The runes flickered.
They went out.
His body tilted forward and collapsed onto the ground, unconscious, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
The scythe fell beside him.
For the first time since the nightmare had begun… no one remained standing.
From inside the Great Tree, Cristina emerged.
She could still feel the magic vibrating across her skin when she saw him.
Raían stood among dust and ruins, watching the fallen Diya with strange concentration, tilting his head slightly, like a child contemplating a phenomenon he did not know how to name.
There was no cruelty in his gesture.
There was discovery.
Cristina raised her hand.
—Delusio.
The word opened a wound in the air.
A silver mist began to coil around Raían, covering him gently, filtering the world, isolating him from the horror that still pulsed around him.
Cristina ran.
She crossed through the mist and stopped in front of him.
Heart racing. Pulse trembling.
—What did you do? —she asked, unable to hide the fear.
Raían looked at her.
Confused.
Lost in a labyrinth where memories had closed doors.
—You’re not completely yourself… —she whispered, stepping closer slowly, like someone trying to calm a wounded beast.
He took a step back.
Cristina did not.
She placed a hand on his cheek.
The skin was warm. Real. Human.
—I know you’re still there. Look at me… I’m Cristina.
If anyone else saw him like this—vulnerable, uncertain, corrupted… she didn’t know what they might decide to do with him.
Raían’s lips trembled.
—Cris… ti… na…
He searched her eyes like a castaway searching for solid ground. He lifted his hand and rested it on her face; the caress was slow, uncertain. His finger moved down until it brushed her lips, as if confirming she existed.
—Cristina.
Something gave way inside him.
He fell to his knees, bringing his hands to his head. The wings dissolved into particles, the supernatural pressure left the place, and the boy became only that again: a boy trapped in forces far too large.
He collapsed.
Cristina knelt beside him immediately, fear returning with force.
She searched his chest.
He was breathing.
—Raían? —she asked, leaning over his face.
He opened his eyes, pained.
—Oh… my head…
He saw the expression of absolute relief on Cristina’s face.
And he smiled sideways.
—It’s the effect I have on people.
He winked at her.
For a second, the world was the one from before.
—Idiot —she replied, and a broken laugh escaped her throat.
Then the mist began to fade.
And reality returned.
Cristina lifted her gaze.
She saw Max lying on the ground, motionless, surrounded by dust and the remains of extinguished magic.
And farther away…
her heart stopped beating.
A group of sorceresses advanced in silence, levitating two bodies covered in blood.
Tatiana.
Gabriel.
They did not move.
They did not speak.
Time froze in Cristina’s throat.
—What happened…?
