The horn sounded three times to advance, cheers for our victory against the Terror Wolf travelling through the battlefield. We were all tired, but we had done it. We had managed to do something that seemed impossible, taking down a behemoth together. The surviving soldiers and mages advanced towards the church, pulling themselves upright, picking up weapons, stepping over things that definitely did not need to be looked at too closely. The battlefield had now finally gone quiet. I stood in the mud next to Luna and stared at the scorched crater for exactly three seconds.
'Yep, let's never do that again.'
"Move out!" Bakra's voice came from somewhere behind us. He still carried the tone of a man who had absolutely not just suggested feeding me to a giant dog. Did he think that I had forgotten about it? Far from it.
'Asshole. I'll deal with you later.'
Luna fell into step beside me without a word. She was clearly exhausted. Elia materialised on my other side, robes singed at the hem. She carried a look of both exhaustion and relief. The church spires grew larger as we battled our way through the remaining creatures. Nobody spoke much, although we really didn't need to. After that chaotic scuffle, we just wanted to get to safety. The Church of Prima Lux was smaller than the battlefield had made it look.
'Figures.'
From the battlefield, it had looked like some grand, untouchable sanctuary. Yet up close, it was old stone. The walls were scorched black in places, stained glass windows long since shattered, the great wooden doors hanging open like a wound.
But it was standing.
After everything on that field, the fact that it was simply still standing felt like a miracle worth acknowledging. But greatest of all was the lack of the plague's presence. It was as if this contagious, bioweapon-like force actively avoided the area. The infected individuals couldn't cross through, as if a barrier had been erected, which was very welcome. I had seen enough of those creatures for a lifetime.
Soldiers and mages filed through the doors in silence, or sat against the outer walls with the particular stillness of people whose bodies had stopped moving but whose minds hadn't caught up yet. Healers moved between them with quiet efficiency, glowing hands pressed to wounds that probably should have been fatal. Behind us, we could still see the chaotic battlefield filled with soldiers who had not yet made it to this safe haven. They were still battling in a war of attrition.
I sat on the stone steps, elbows on my knees, staring at nothing in particular. My hands had finally stopped shaking, which felt like progress.
Luna lowered herself beside me without a word, staff laid across her knees, frost still faintly trailing from her fingertips as her magic settled. She looked exactly as composed as she always did, which was frankly unreasonable given what we had just survived.
'How does she do that.'
Elia had found a wall nearby and was currently using it to hold herself upright. Her tight robes were somewhat worse for wear after the battle. I'm sure quite a few soldiers were gaining quite a view. She gave me a small, tired wave when she caught me looking. The girl was quite oblivious. I waved back before pointing towards her chest area. She glanced down, her face turning a bright beetroot red before covering herself and scurrying into the church. Taking a moment, I looked at the timer. 1 hour and 45 minutes had passed. There was still a little time remaining in the level. However, now that I was in the safety of the church, I could finally run down the time and relax.
'Damn, talk about a horror tutorial.'
Just as I was about to lay down, a voice came from my flank.
"You did well."
I looked to the side.
It was the flame mage from earlier.
He stood at the top of the steps with his arms folded, scorched robes still immaculate in a way that was honestly shocking. Whatever cleaning spell he was using, he'd have to teach me. Up close, he was older than I had clocked on the battlefield—somewhere in his forties, with a strong jaw and a short-cropped beard shot through with grey. His eyes were sharp and dark and currently fixed on me with an expression that sat somewhere between approval and mild exasperation.
"Vice Commander," Luna said, inclining her head slightly.
'Vice Commander.'
I straightened up approximately two seconds too late to look dignified.
Which somehow turned into me overcorrecting and sitting bolt upright like I'd just been possessed by good posture.
My back cracked audibly.
Loud enough for everyone to hear.
"…Nice, Vice Commander… erm…" I muttered under my breath.
"Vice Commander Elron," he said, dropping onto the step above us with the weariness of a man who had been doing this for a very long time. "Elron Vash." He paused. "You know, the person who had to drag your combined attack across the finish line."
"To be fair," I said, "we did the hard part."
He looked at me.
"The hard part."
"The blinding. The binding. The whole setup." I gestured vaguely. "You just added the finishing touch."
Something moved at the corner of his mouth. It wasn't quite a smile. It was the shape a smile would make if it was trying very hard not to exist.
"Lightning mage," he said.
"Kura."
"Kura." He said the name like he was filing it somewhere.
His gaze then moved towards Luna.
"Luna Glacies," she supplied.
He nodded once.
"I watched the two of you coordinate that sequence. The flash and the bind." He was quiet for a moment. "It was competent work."
Coming from a face like that, "competent work" landed somewhere near the highest possible praise. Luna said nothing, but her posture shifted almost imperceptibly. I got the feeling she didn't receive a lot of unsolicited recognition.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
Elron looked at me with the expression of a man who had learned that when young mages asked if they could ask something, the answer was inevitably going to cost him something.
"The plague," I continued. "The creatures. The black sludge on the wolf. What is all of this actually about?"
A beat of silence followed, as if I had asked the stupidest question imaginable.
'C'mon, don't look at me like that. I'm sorry I didn't get the intro world history class that you all did.'
Elron's eyes moved to the ruined stained glass above the church doors. A small sigh escaped his lips. A ghost of an image remained visible in the fragments—a figure of light, arms raised, radiating outward.
"Prima Lux," he said. "You've heard the name."
"Hard to miss."
"Prima Lux is the first light. The divine source that the Church holds as the origin of all mana, all life, all order in this world." His voice carried the flatness of someone reciting something many times, but still believing it. "The Church has existed for centuries, built on that faith. Their healers, their battle mages, their entire magical doctrine draws from Prima Lux's teachings."
"And Tenebrus?"
The name landed differently. The healer closest to us glanced over briefly before returning to her work.
Elron's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
"The opposition," he said. "If Prima Lux is the first light, Tenebrus is the yin to the yang. An ancient entity—some call it a god, some call it a force, the Church calls it an abomination."
He rested his forearms on his knees.
"Tenebrus does not create. It corrupts. It takes what exists and unmakes it slowly from the inside."
"The plague," I said.
"The plague," he confirmed. "Tenebrus's reach spreading into this region. The creatures you fought today were not born from nowhere—they were corrupted. Living things that the darkness found and hollowed out, then filled with something else."
'Ah. So nightmare fuel. Got it.'
He paused.
"The black sludge you saw on the Terror Wolf, that is Tenebrus's mark. Wherever it spreads, things stop being what they were."
I thought about the black veins crawling up my arm on the first run.
The cold spreading through my chest.
'Yeah. I noticed.'
"So this crusade," I said slowly. "The Church is fighting to push it back."
"The Church is fighting to survive," Elron corrected, not unkindly. "There is a difference. Pushing it back implies we have the upper hand." He looked out across the courtyard where exhausted soldiers sat in silence. "We are holding a line. That is all."
Luna who had been quiet through all of this, now spoke.
"Does it end?"
Elron was quiet for a long moment.
"The Church believes Prima Lux will answer," he said finally. "That if the faithful hold long enough, the first light pushes back the dark. Whether that is theology or history, I couldn't tell you."
The three of us sat with that for a moment. The sounds of the church filled the quiet. Low voices, the soft glow of healing magic, the distant echo of the battlefield finally beginning to fade. I stared at my hands. The lightning had gone still, just faint warmth beneath my skin now, like embers.
'A god of corruption and a god of light, and an entire world caught between them… and me. A lazy lightning mage from somewhere else entirely, sitting on the steps of a church in a tutorial that was supposed to be a practice ground.'
'Totally normal.'
"You have more questions," Elron said, not looking at me.
"I always have more questions."
"Then rest first." He pushed himself to his feet with a groan. "Questions survive. Mages who don't rest before the next wave frequently don't."
He moved toward the church doors, pausing once without turning back.
"You did well," he said again, quieter this time. "Both of you."
Then he was gone. Luna and I sat in silence for a moment.
"He likes us," I said.
"I'm not sure about liking you," Luna replied.
"Hahaha, Luna. Very funny."
She settled back against the stone, folding her hands neatly in her lap.
"You genuinely don't know who he is, do you."
It wasn't really a question.
"Should I?"
Luna looked at me the way people look at someone who has just admitted they don't know what gravity is.
"Elron Vash," she began, with the careful patience of someone deciding where to even start, "is one of the most decorated fire mages on the continent. He holds the title of Ember Sovereign, a rank that isn't given easily. He dismantled the Siege of Carath's Gate alone. Alone."
She paused to let that land.
"He has been vice commander of the third platoon for roughly two years now, rising through the ranks. The only reason he isn't a commander is because he refused the position three times. Apparently he finds the paperwork offensive."
I stared at the church doors he had just walked through.
'…That grumpy man in the scorched robes. That absolute bum.'
"And he told us we did well," I said slowly.
"Yes," Luna said. "He did."
So he was a big shot.
I leaned back against the cold stone and looked up at the sky above the church. Smoke still drifted, but thinner now, the faintest suggestion of actual light somewhere beyond it. The timer in the corner of my vision ticked quietly downward.
01:15:22
Still time left on the clock. In these few moments, I would get to spend time talking to the people I had fought alongside. Oddly enough, for NPCs, they felt incredibly real. As if they were real people at some point in time. Although I was probably overthinking it.
…
Right?