The sun never truly rose over Asael's Vigil. Dawn here was more a soft graying of the dark, as if the sky hesitated to bring light upon a place so steeped in duty and quiet sorrow. Kael stood at the edge of the crystalline bridge leading out of the village, the amethyst-lined lanterns flickering faintly behind him. His scythe rested against his shoulder, veiled in cloth, yet its weight was a constant pressure.
He was no longer the boy who had arrived here broken and desperate. That child was buried under layers of sharpened focus, blood-ridden rituals, and a hollow kind of leadership. He could feel the eyes of Asael's sentries watching from the towers, and perhaps, far above them, the ever-gazing Surveillance Eye that hovered at the heart of the village.
Today, Kael was not here to reflect. He was here to hunt.
A trail of desecration stretched along the outskirts of the Vigil. Cattle drained of blood. Glyphs carved in forgotten tongues. It reeked of rogue cultists, possibly an offshoot of the Whispered Maw—a heretical group of blood-mages who had broken off from Kael's resistance months ago. Fanatics, too lost in rapture and self-mutilation to follow any greater goal.
"Are you ready, Kael?" asked Iliria, stepping beside him.
She was one of the few who still existed independently of him—or so he hoped. Her blade, a saber etched with void runes, shimmered faintly in the pre-dawn air. Her armor bore the insignia of the Eye, but with a red smear of wax marking her allegiance to Kael's cause.
"We're not here to ask questions," he said, eyes narrowed. "We end this. No survivors."
Iliria nodded. "Then lead."
The cultist camp was nestled within a hollowed ravine, the walls slick with moss and dried blood. Bones were arranged in concentric circles, and a thick mist lingered unnaturally low. Kael moved first, vanishing in a blur. His aura cracked the silence, a ripple of pressure shoving against the fog.
Two sentries stood at the entrance—barely had time to turn.
Schlik!
His scythe tore through the first, blood exploding upward in a silent bloom. Before the second could scream, Kael drove a spear of crimson magic into his throat, pulled from the blood he carried in hollow bone flasks at his hip. A single twist of his finger turned the spike into a web of tendrils, shredding the vocal cords and spine with brutal precision.
Behind him, Iliria danced forward, slashing through a charging cultist who wielded twin bone daggers. Her sword sang in short arcs, the runes flaring as if reacting to the taint around them.
"They've already begun a ritual," she warned, nodding toward a central stone slab, where a man writhed, bound and chanting.
Kael growled. He extended his hand, and the blood on the ground responded, swirling into the shape of a great serpent.
"Crush them."
The blood serpent surged forward, coiling around the altar. Screams erupted as its fangs sank into three kneeling cultists, lifting them into the air before flinging their lifeless bodies into the fire pit.
A figure emerged from the shadows beyond—masked, armored, taller than the rest.
"Kael of the Bleeding Path," the man said, voice like gravel and rain. "We once followed you. But you feared the truth. We embraced it."
"Then you embraced death."
The cult leader raised his arms. The ground trembled. From the soil, hands emerged—a dozen undead, blood-fused thralls whose limbs were blades, their faces featureless.
Iliria cursed. "Revenant spawn."
Kael didn't flinch.
"Clear the left. I take the center."
He lunged forward, blood erupting from the seams of his cloak, shaping into jagged scythe-wings. He spun mid-air, cleaving three thralls in one arc. Their limbs burst apart like rotted bark.
Iliria darted right, her saber a blur of silver as she engaged two revenants. Each strike she made left a trail of black fire, unraveling the enchantments holding them together.
The cult leader hurled a sigil of boiling crimson. Kael caught it mid-air with a blood shield—absorbed it.
"You're not the first to test me."
He pulsed the shield outward—a wave of kinetic blood magic that flattened the circle around the altar. Cultists screamed as bones snapped, torsos twisted.
The leader rushed forward, twin scythes forming in both hands. Kael met him mid-leap.
The clash cracked the stones beneath them.
Blade met blade, blood screeched against blood.
Their weapons locked, and the cult leader hissed, "You fear becoming the god they need."
"No. I fear becoming the god they deserve."
Kael released a blast of aura from his core, forcing the man back.
Then came the final sequence.
He leapt high. The blood he carried lifted with him, spiraling into the air like a maelstrom.
"Sanguis Ultima."
The spell collapsed gravity within a radius. Everything was drawn upward—rocks, bodies, flames. The cultists screamed as they were lifted and crushed by invisible force.
Only Kael floated steady at the center.
With one final whisper, the storm ended.
Ash and blood fell like rain.
Silence followed. Only the crackle of dying fires and Iliria's slow footsteps echoed in the ravine.
"They're gone," she said.
"No. One remains."
He turned to the slab. The one chanting cultist—his mouth sewn shut, but his eyes blazing. Kael approached.
"Your spell failed. Your god won't come."
The cultist smiled.
And then Kael saw it.
A second symbol, hidden beneath his back. Carved into the stone.
"Iliria—!"
Boom.
A flash of white light. A ripple of time magic.
When the light faded, the ravine was gone. So was the body. So was the altar.
Kael knelt at the epicenter.
His scythe had shattered.
Iliria stumbled beside him. "What... did they do?"
Kael didn't respond.
The cult hadn't been trying to summon something.
They'd been trying to send something back.
Far above, within the eye of the Surveillance construct, something flickered. A soft glow at first.
Then a pulse.
And the Eye blinked.