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The battlefield was a quarry.
Or had been one, long ago, before the stone was exhausted and the workers left. The cuts went deep, terraced levels dropping in wide steps toward a flooded basin fifty meters below, the water black and still. The walls on three sides rose sheer and high, the fourth open to the sky. Loose rock lined the edges, and narrow paths cut between the tiers. The air smelled of cold mineral and standing water.
Saladin manifested at the center of the quarry's upper level.
Not arrived. He manifested: the air around him curdling as he took form, robes of deep violet trimmed in bone-white, the staff in his hands carved from something that had not been wood for a very long time.
His face was skull-bare, the upper jaw exposed, the eyes sunken amber embers producing their own light. He was tall, taller than expected, the mana around him dense with centuries of accumulation.
The Curse Domain activated the moment he fully appeared. Its effect was quiet, the quiet of poison dissolving into water: a faint heaviness in the air, a slowing at the edge of each breath, the ambient mana in the quarry pulling toward him instead of moving free.
Passive degradation, Chu Xinghe noted, cataloguing it immediately. We lose mana and stamina over time. Every second in this space makes the next second harder.
Old Hans opened his eyes at the quarry's east entrance with Henry beside him. They had landed on the upper tier, thirty meters from Saladin, with solid ground under them and space to move.
Saladin turned his amber eyes on them.
"Insects," he said. The voice was old and dry, the sound of a mechanism rather than a throat. "This is what the living send against me. I am unimpressed."
"Old Han. Henry." Chu Xinghe said, from behind them. "You two first."
Han and Henry turned to him.
"I'll be here," he said, settling against the quarry wall with his arms folded.
If we need him, Henry thought.
If, Han thought.
Saladin raised the staff.
"Then die, insects."
The Black Plague Genesis arrived as a cloud of dark vapor spreading from Saladin's position in every direction, dense and low, moving fast. Han recognized the mana signature before it reached them.
"Henry, up."
Henry shifted mid-step, the werewolf transformation partial: arms elongating, legs restructuring for different movement, claws extending. He was already moving when the plague cloud hit the tier floor, the vapor spreading around the position he had just vacated.
Han launched the first Chimera.
Goliath came out of the storage array first: four meters of bone-plated muscle, every limb reinforced with grafted dragon scale, built to absorb a hit rather than turn it aside.
It landed between Han and Saladin with a concussive impact that cracked the quarry stone and pushed the plague vapor outward.
Buy me ten seconds, Han thought.
Goliath moved at Saladin. The Elder Lich held his ground, watching the Chimera close the distance, studying it like a specimen before he raised one hand.
Death Mark struck Goliath mid-charge, the curse settling into the Chimera's biological structure like dye into cloth. Goliath's next step was slower. The step after that was slower still.
Weakens defenses. Reduces luck. Increases damage received. Makes all other curses stronger, Henry noted. It's already layering.
He hit Saladin from the flank.
The werewolf transformation was fully committed now, the half-human frame running on moon-phase power at its daytime cap. His arms could take a calamity-rank hit and keep swinging.
He crossed twenty meters in under two seconds and slashed at Saladin's left shoulder.
The Curse Reflection activated.
The force of Henry's strike reversed direction and hit him across the chest, his own attack returned with added mana density. He took it on the shoulder, rolled with it across ten meters of quarry stone.
So it can bounce hits back, Henry thought, getting up with blood at his collar. That's the defense layer.
Goliath had reached Saladin and was landing hits. A blow to the ribs sent the Elder Lich three steps sideways.
But the Death Mark fed back. Every strike Goliath landed also struck Goliath, the curse turning the Chimera's offense into self-injury.
"Han," Henry called, repositioning to the far edge of the upper tier. "It has curse reflection and it's cursing your Chimera into hurting itself."
"Noted," Han said. He was not watching the fight. He crouched at the quarry wall, both hands flat on the stone, Perfect Analysis reading across whatever Saladin used in place of a biological structure.
The readout came back in fragments.
No muscle tissue. Preserved skeleton with active mana circulation. Curse pathways embedded in every major joint. Phylactery not on his person. The last one Han read twice. Phylactery not on his person.
Which means we can break this body completely and he comes back.
"Henry," Han said, recalling Goliath before the Death Mark degradation became critical. "The phylactery isn't on him. Destroying the body doesn't end it."
"So what are we doing."
"Damage the body enough to prevent him from acting while we find it."
"Where is it."
"I don't know yet. Give me more time."
Saladin watched the exchange. A skull expressed nothing clearly, but his stillness had changed: more deliberate, more settled.
"The insect understands," he said. "How tedious." He raised the staff. "Sevenfold Catastrophe."
Seven curses arrived simultaneously, each targeting a different system.
Henry felt them land: vision failing at the edges, mana bleeding out as a cold pull from his core, weakness spreading down from his shoulders. Three more he could not name, felt only as a general degradation of everything at once.
He could still move. His vision was compromised and his mana was bleeding fast, but his legs worked.
He ran at Saladin in a straight line. No tactic, all speed. If the Reflection bounced this hit, he would take the damage and so would Saladin. Close enough to grapple, close enough to make the staff useless.
The Elder Lich stepped sideways.
Faster than it had any right to be. A skeleton carried no muscle fatigue, no oxygen debt, no anticipatory hesitation before committing to a direction. Saladin sidestepped the charge with five centuries of practice and placed the staff against Henry's spine as he passed.
Hex of Bleeding Fate.
Henry landed on his hands and knees eight meters away, the curse settling into his status.
Every movement after that opened a wound. A step forward put a cut on his shin. Pushing up off the stone tore his forearm. The movement itself had become the weapon.
If I fight, I bleed myself out, he thought. If I stay still, the curses accumulate.
He stayed still and thought fast.
Han launched Umbra.
The assassin Chimera had been held back specifically because Saladin's detection would have categorized it on sight.
Umbra arrived from above, having scaled the quarry wall during the fight, dropping onto Saladin's shoulders from eight meters with both bone-blade arms driving down at the exposed skull.
One blade caught the left orbital ridge and sheared it away. The top-left quarter of Saladin's skull cracked and fell.
The amber light in his eyes flickered.
Saladin turned and hit Umbra with Shadow Rot at close range.
The cursed darkness corroded Umbra's organic structure in real time, living tissue dissolving at contact. Umbra disengaged, the left arm already losing coherence.
But the damage to the skull was done. Saladin was operating with thirty percent of his cranial housing compromised, the curse pathways running through that section disrupted.
Less casting precision, Han noted. His complex curses need full pathway integrity.
He recalled Umbra before it lost another limb, ran Flesh Reconstruction on the damaged arm, and launched Drakon from above to keep Saladin's attention split.
Henry, still on his knees, used the window to speak.
"The skull," he said, to Han. "Target the skull. It breaks the casting."
"Working on it," Han said.
The fight ground on across the quarry's upper tier. They traded position and Chimera, each exchange shaving at Saladin's structural integrity while they fought to manage the curse load piling onto their own bodies.
The Curse Domain worked on both of them without pause. Henry's vision was at sixty percent, his mana reserves down by a third. Han's stamina recovery was at half, his Chimera drawing from a shrinking pool of biological energy with each deployment.
The Curse of Withering Years landed on Henry in the eleventh exchange.
The aging effect settled into his joints immediately, stiffening them, trimming response time. He felt forty in his knees, fifty in his wrists. The werewolf regeneration pushed back, slowing the progression, but the years kept coming.
He was bleeding from seven different places from the Bleeding Fate hex. Minor cuts, each one opening when he moved, but accumulating. His shirt was dark with it.
Han had lost Tempest to a Black Plague Genesis that bypassed the Chimera's biological defenses entirely.
Goliath was operating at reduced capacity from the Death Mark feedback. Two of his eight Chimera were out.
Saladin stood at the center of the quarry's upper tier with one quarter of his skull missing. He showed no strain at all.
"Adequate," he said. "For insects. This lord is mildly entertained."
Henry caught Han's eye across the tier.
We're losing, Henry thought. Slowly, but we're losing.
"Chu Xinghe," Han said, not loudly.
From the quarry wall, Chu Xinghe unfolded his arms.
He walked toward the center of the upper tier without hurrying. His face was the same as when he had handed them the fight. His hands stayed at his sides.
"You did well," he said, looking at both of them. "Two S-rank hunters, an extinction-rank target, and you held your ground." He paused. "That's what Dao Guild hunters are."
We weren't holding him to a standstill, Henry thought. We were getting taken apart.
Slowly, Han thought. But still taken apart.
I didn't even get a bonus for this, Henry thought, bleeding from seven places for no additional compensation.
Saladin turned his remaining amber eye toward Chu Xinghe.
"Another insect," he said.
Chu Xinghe met the amber eye.
"Law Domain," he said. "All heads must fall."
The domain expanded in one motion, filling the quarry from wall to wall.
Saladin's skull separated from his spine. The portion Umbra's blade had already cracked fell first, the rest a beat behind.
The curse pathways in his skeleton lost coherence all at once, every active hex collapsing with no central structure left to sustain them.
The body of the Elder Lich fell. The staff hit the quarry stone and cracked.
The amber light in both eye sockets went out.
Three seconds. Start to finish.
Han and Henry stared at the collapsed remains of the Elder Lich on the quarry floor.
Then at Chu Xinghe.
What the absolute fuck, Henry thought, with the flat calm that arrived once enough had gone wrong at once.
We were in there fifteen minutes, Han thought. Fifteen minutes of curse management, Chimera deployment, live biological analysis under extinction-rank pressure. And real injury.
And he walked over and ended it in three seconds.
Without a bonus, Henry added, in his own head.
He didn't even ask if we were okay, Han thought.
He complimented us first, Henry thought. That was very thoughtful of him.
It doesn't change the fact that he stole the kill.
No, Henry agreed internally. It absolutely does not.
Neither of them said anything out loud. Chu Xinghe was already walking back toward the quarry entrance, unhurried, the kill filed away as a matter of routine.
Han began Flesh Reconstruction on Henry's Bleeding Fate wounds. Henry accepted it in silence.
Somewhere in the quarry's flooded basin, the phylactery sat undiscovered in the black water.
The body, at least, would not be getting up again.