Barghest bared her teeth.
Duty crushed fear flat. Queen first. Country first.
Her ruined left arm shuddered—then rebuilt itself in a violent surge of fairy magecraft. Bone, sinew, and plated force snapped back into shape, crude but functional. At the same time, her broken sword answered her will. The severed halves tore free from the ground, expanded, and reattached into a single massive blade, heavier and longer than before, humming with brutal intent.
Power flooded her. Fairy magecraft ignited around her eyes, sharp and feral.
Black Dog Galatine awakened.
Barghest planted her feet and hauled the blade overhead like an executioner raising a guillotine. "Very well," she snarled, voice cracking with fury. "VERY FUCKING WELL."
She swung. The world split.
The blade came down like a falling star, carving a red line through the arena. Mountains behind Nihilus were cleaved apart, the ground sheared open as if reality itself had been cut. The impact hit like a meteor strike shaped into steel.
Barghest expected resistance. Collapse.
Instead . Nihilus caught it. His red lightsaber held the massive blade in place, sparks screaming as the two forces ground against each other. He didn't bend. He didn't slide. Agony rolled off him in waves, feeding the hunger instead of breaking it. Near-death had sharpened him .
And then he spoke. Basic.
"I crave hunger," Nihilus said, voice raw and furious. "And you are nothing but meaningless sand on a beach."
He leaned forward. "Now you DIE."
His blade shifted. It lengthened mid-swing, red light stretching impossibly, and the cut came through Barghest faster than thought.. Her body split cleanly in two.
For a single heartbeat, Barghest's mind stayed awake as she fell, the world tilting sideways.
Shit, she thought dimly. I should've retired like my queen said.
The arena shook as the pieces hit the ground.
Nihilus reached out, hunger widening, ready to drain every remaining fragment of Barghest's power—
Shadow tore through the space between heartbeats.
Black gates snapped open across the arena floor and sky, spilling cold silence and marching silhouettes. Jin-Woo's shadow army emerged in disciplined formation, the pressure of death itself folding inward. At their head stood Bellion.
He moved first.
Bellion seized Barghest's spectral form as it peeled free from the shattered body, catching her mid-fall. The giant was gone. In his grasp she was herself again—knight-sized, soul-bright, flickering but intact.
"You are the bravest woman I've met," Bellion said evenly, pulling her close like a child snatched from a battlefield. "And also foolish. Why didn't you retreat?"
Barghest, half-transparent and smirking through pain, snorted. "A knight never retreats in front of her enemy." Her eyes burned with stubborn fire. "Now where's the spare body? I'm ready for round two."
Bellion clicked his tongue and turned, already issuing commands. Shadow Knights surged forward, lifting what remained of her physical form with reverent precision.
"You didn't have a spare body," Bellion replied calmly. "Fool. You rejected it." His gaze cut back to her. "Knight pride."
He raised a hand. "Transport her to Kamino."
The shadows obeyed instantly, slipping away with Barghest's remains, vanishing between planes before Nihilus could interfere.
Bellion turned back to the battlefield.
Nihilus stood amid ruin, hunger boiling, red runes pulsing across his robes. The shadows didn't flinch. They didn't breathe. They didn't offer life to consume.
Bellion's eyes swept his ranks—immortal soldiers, constructs of death and will, anathema to a devourer who fed on meaning.
"Do something violent," Bellion ordered.
A massive figure stepped forward, shadow coiling into muscle and tusk. Tusk, General-grade, legendary orc sorcerer, raised his arm as abyssal mana rolled off him in crushing waves.
"For the glory of the Monarch," Tusk growled.
The shadows advanced.
Time ground forward. Hours bled into the battlefield. Sand crept across the surface where Nihilus drained again and again, the ground bleaching under repeated pulls. The air filled with residue—burned hymn magic, shattered dragon heads conjured and destroyed, sigils collapsing into ash as Tusk poured everything he had into pressure and denial.
Nihilus staggered once. Then steadied.
Inside the hollow shell of cloth and mask, something like strain surfaced. A bead of sweat traced down from beneath the cracked mask—small, telling.
He spoke in Basic, voice rough, irritated. "This is a contest of stamina. How long will you last, mage from outside the galaxy?"
Tusk planted his staff harder, shoulders heaving, breath dragged from his chest in ragged pulls. He bared his teeth. "Long enough," he said, then forced a crooked grin. "And I'll tell you how long you have left."
The sky rippled. Water Mirror descended like a falling pane of glass.
It struck Nihilus without warning.
The reflection swallowed him whole, folding his presence inward and away. The battlefield went still as the mirror sealed and vanished.
Yavin 4 answered. Jungle air rushed in. Life screamed.
Nihilus reappeared among towering trees and ancient stone, arms spreading wide as hunger detonated outward. Leaves withered mid-fall. Vines blackened. The forest recoiled as he drank deep, power surging back into the hollow frame.
He laughed and spoke in Basic, voice sharp with fury. "That woman who scorched me—" his head tilted, hunger flaring brighter, "—I'm going to gut her."
A step sounded behind him. A transfiguration portal unfolded, clean and deliberate.
Morgan le Fay walked out, posture immaculate, eyes fixed on him with dry amusement. "Gut her yourself," she said lightly. "Rather than lashing out at the forest."
She lifted her hand.
A demonic spear formed—black and green intertwined, the shaft etched with ancient geometry This wasn't borrowed authority.. No transfiguration rewrite. Around her, space answered as weapons followed.
They came quietly.
Relics slid into alignment behind her like an honor guard: sealed blades, crystallized curses, holy constructs inverted for execution, artifacts taken from timelines that ended badly for gods. Morgan stood at their center, calm, composed, fully prepared to finish this with her original strength.
Across from her, Nihilus ignited his lightsaber. The red blade stretched, then shortened again, responding to his will with liquid obedience.
He assessed.
She's like that darkness army, he realized. Immortal . Persistent.
Killing her outright is inefficient.
Best outcome is displacement. Incapacitation .
Behind the cracked mask, the ghostly figures hovering around him curled closer. One of them smiled.
Greedy. He didn't have a mouth—but the hunger behind him did. It leaned forward, eager, whispering appetite into the space between them.
Better to savor her, Nihilus thought, cold and covetous. While she restrains herself.
Morgan felt it. The calculation. The intent.
Her eyes flicked briefly to the lightsaber, then to the hollow beneath the mask. Holy objects damage him, she noted. Excalibur proto would bite deep. But that isn't necessary.
She smiled.
"I could kill you," Morgan said evenly, "even if there were three of you."
The weapons behind her locked into position. She shifted her stance, spear angling forward, weight settling into a form older than Britain and crueler than myth. No wasted motion. No flourish.
Nihilus mirrored her. Blade leveled. Hunger compressed. The forest held its breath as two immortal wills aligned for impact.
He struck first. The red blade lengthened mid-swing, cutting for Morgan's center with predatory precision. Morgan stepped in and met it head-on, her demonic spear locking against the lightsaber with a violent crack. Force and magecraft ground together, sparks screaming as the weapons held.
Nihilus recoiled a fraction—surprised—but his stance recovered instantly.
ghost peeled off him.
Force phantoms surged forward, ghostly spirits tearing free from behind his form, clawing toward Morgan from multiple angles. They weren't illusions. They were echoes of consumption, hungry and fast.
Morgan didn't retreat. Her left hand snapped up and ignited a shoto lightsaber, pink light flashing into existence. She cut once, then twice, precise and merciless. The ghosts didn't return to Nihilus. They were erased, severed cleanly, dissipating into nothing before they could be reclaimed.
Nihilus tried to process—
The ground detonated. Light erupted upward in a concussive blast. Then another. Then a third. BOOM. The forest floor split as buried sigils ignited in sequence, holy charge and inverted curse collapsing inward at once.
Nihilus staggered, forced back by the shockwaves. He scanned the space, confused—not by the attack, but by the timing. . No setup he had seen.
Morgan stood exactly where she had been.
She only smiled, smug and silent. The mines had already been there.
It was the opening exchange. No words followed.
Then Nihilus spoke.
His voice slid into her mind, Dun Möch sharpened to a needle. "You feel it, don't you," he said softly. "The dark side creeping through your veins. It calls to you."
Morgan laughed. "Unlike the Jedi," she said, voice bright with contempt, "I don't pretend it isn't there."
She stepped forward, pressure rising with her. "I was damned the moment I was born. For two fucking millennia I guarded a dying world and a people trapped in a mistake." Her eyes burned. "The Monarch of Shadows freed me from that burden."
She inhaled once, slow, almost savoring it.
"I have never been more alive, Nihilus," Morgan continued. "Arriving in this galaxy is the best thing that's ever happened to me."
She swung her spear through the air.
Reality answered. Fairy portals tore open in a radiant arc, an armory unfolding behind her—blades of the Fairy Round Table interlocking with weapons pulled from proper human history. Light, myth, and execution aligned into a single converging form.
Morgan's voice cut clean through the forest.
"Excalibur Galatine: Sword of Revolving Victory."
The blade fired. Light exploded upward, the sword extending impossibly, growing until it became a thirteen-kilometer column of solar brilliance. it was noon itself, a disciplined sun held in shape. Morgan anchored the sky to keep it shining, refusing to let the world dim.
Nihilus reacted instantly.
Alarm spiked. He tore sideways, cloak snapping as the blade carved through space where he had been. The cut missed him by a fraction.
A graze. Even that was enough.
Heat ripped across him like a stellar lash. His robes scorched. The hunger recoiled, screaming, the sensation identical to standing inside a sun's breath.
Nihilus steadied himself. Then he smiled. . Adrenaline flooding what passed for his veins.