The sky had gone quiet too quickly.
The forest felt like it was holding its breath.
Mira stood at the edge of the stream, every hair on her arms prickling with unseen warning. The air shimmered strangely, like the heat off stone, even though it was cold. And the water… it had stopped flowing.
Behind her, Sael slowly slid his blade from its sheath.
"Something's wrong," he muttered.
Xerces didn't move.
Didn't speak.
He was staring at the trees—at something moving through them without a sound.
Then it stepped out.
No.
It poured out.
A mass of black bone and sludge, as if death itself had forgotten how to wear skin. The Devourer now had form—limbs bent wrong, its torso split with gnashing mouths, its eyes hollow and weeping shadow.
Mira… it crooned, a dozen mouths speaking her name in hunger and memory.
Mira stumbled back. The cold hit her chest like a spear. The ground pulsed beneath her boots.
"It's here—it's real—"
Then it lunged.
The first strike was chaos.
Sael barely deflected the fang-tipped tendrils with his curved blade, the impact cracking the air like thunder. The Devourer's limbs spiraled and tore at the soil, rending it into pits of rotting black. One tendril shot past Sael—aiming straight for Mira.
And then—
The forest shook.
"NO."
Xerces stepped forward, cloak billowing like the birth of a storm. The tendril snapped against a sudden wall of necrotic force—shadows twisted into the shape of ancient shields.
The illusion of humanity burned away from him in one breath.
His skin faded to white bone traced with runes of withered gold. His eyes blazed—a pair of blue fires behind an elegant skull. His robes twisted with the winds of the grave.
He was not a man.
He was a Lich-King reborn.
And death bent around him like a crown.
The Devourer paused.
Almost startled.
Almost afraid.
Ah… I know you now, it hissed.
Xerces raised both hands.
Dark sigils flared in the air—words older than kingdoms, magic carved from loss and vengeance. The ground beneath him burst open. Skeletal arms—not risen, but remembered—tore through the earth, clawing toward the Devourer.
A necrotic ward slammed into place around Mira.
"You will not touch her," Xerces said, voice like wind through a tomb.
The air turned green-black with power.
And then—he attacked.
The battle blurred.
Xerces danced between sigils and steel, raising barriers with one hand and lashing out with waves of bone and soulfire from the other. Each spell cracked the world louder than the last.
The Devourer thrashed, screeched, broke trees and tore the land, but Xerces never slowed.
Sael joined the fray—quick, precise, slicing through the Devourer's lesser limbs, his blade burning with warding fire.
But it was Xerces who stole the storm.
At the height of the battle, he raised his skeletal hands and roared a word that had no translation—only meaning.
And the grave answered.
Dozens of spectral warriors exploded from the earth, not undead, but echoes of knights lost to history. They swarmed the Devourer, buying seconds.
Seconds were enough.
Xerces summoned a soulflare sigil, condensed it into a single obsidian blade of raw magic, and drove it through the Devourer's chest.
A shriek tore through the forest like glass shattering across a hundred miles.
The creature writhed, imploding into its shadow form, wriggling back into the trees—not defeated, but wounded. Retreating.
Watching.
Waiting.
Silence returned.
And with it, Mira's slow breath.
She ran toward Xerces, still wrapped in a veil of undeath. He looked at her—regret flickering behind fire-lit sockets.
"I didn't want you to see me like this," he said.
Mira stared at him—at what he was, unveiled.
And then she stepped forward, and without fear or hesitation, wrapped her arms around him.
"I already saw you, Xerces."
She felt his arms slowly—carefully—return the embrace.
Above them, Sael stood quiet, eyes hard.
His grip tightened on his sword.
He had seen a hundred monsters in his time.
But none quite like the one who just fought to protect someone he loved