While they advanced, it happened.
A flash tore across the battlefield.
Too fast.
Lusian barely had time to look up.
—Lusian…!
Adela managed to clutch onto his clothes just as the attack fell upon them.
Lusian reacted on pure instinct.
The darkness came out before he could stop it.
He crossed his arms in front of them both, and the Void covered his body at the exact instant the Herald of Dawn unleashed the attack.
The world turned white.
The explosion struck the mountain terrace like a sun crashing onto the earth. Fire devoured rock, bodies, and structures within seconds. The heat was so brutal that even the air itself seemed to ignite.
Aurelius had attacked from afar.
Without warning.
Without caring who stood in the middle.
Allied soldiers vanished inside the flames alongside the semihumans. To him, it made no difference. If the demon died, the rest was acceptable.
And then… something changed.
The darkness inside Lusian stopped obeying like a simple ability.
It came out of him.
It did not explode.
It did not roar.
It simply broke free.
As if it had been trapped for far too long.
A white light expanded from the center of the impact, swallowing everything it touched. The fire disappeared first. Then the stone. Then mana itself, as if that thing were erasing everything it touched.
The mountain trembled.
The entire terrace was reduced to blackened, ruined ground.
And when the light finally began to fade…
only three figures remained standing.
Lusian.
Adela.
And the Ice Tiger.
The silence lasted only a second.
But it felt eternal.
Below, at the foot of the mountain, the battle stopped on its own. Soldiers of the Faith looked upward without understanding what they had just witnessed. Some stepped back without realizing it. Others simply stood frozen.
The semihumans felt a chill crawl down their spines.
Something ancient.
Something instinctive.
As if the body understood before the mind that this was no longer a normal battle.
For a few seconds, nobody thought about glory, orders, or kingdoms.
They only stared at that white light covering the mountain.
And they felt fear.
The Void continued moving around Lusian like something alive.
It had not tried to stop the attack.
It had tried to erase it.
Darkness spread from his arms like shattered wings, wrapping around the divine explosion as both forces collided head-on.
Lusian was dragged several meters backward. His feet shattered the rock beneath him while his entire body cracked under the pressure.
It was not just power.
It was rejection.
As if that light were trying to impose a single truth upon the world.
That Lusian should not exist.
That something like him should never have come into this world.
Lusian screamed inwardly.
The Void answered.
The darkness expanded from him like an ancient tide, something that did not belong to the present nor to the world of the living. It did not move quickly. It simply… existed there, covering everything.
For a brief instant, Lusian stopped feeling separate from it.
His body.
His mind.
His pain.
Everything sank into that primordial blackness.
Aurelius' explosion collided against the Void… and the world stopped making sense.
The light bent.
The fire vanished.
Sound died.
Then, at the exact center of the collision, a black point was born.
Small.
Perfect.
It pulsed once.
And everything went out.
The world returned all at once.
Sound came back like a brutal slap. The air rushed toward the emptiness left behind by the clash, lifting pulverized rock, frost, and fragments of dying light.
The terrace trembled.
Massive cracks spread across the mountain, glowing faintly like fresh wounds across the skin of something gigantic.
Where they had stood… nothing remained.
Only white ash scattering with the wind… and a black mark carved into the stone.
An incomplete circle.
As if even the Void had failed to erase something completely.
Lusian fell to his knees.
His arm trembled as he tried to support himself.
His breathing came out broken.
He had reached his limit.
Adela leapt onto the back of the White Tiger, catching Lusian before he could collapse again.
His body barely responded.
His breathing was weak.
Unsteady.
The darkness continued moving beneath his skin like something asleep… but still alive.
Adela settled him against the tiger's thick frozen fur with a care that felt out of place amidst all the chaos around them. Her small hands trembled as she held his face.
—Don't fall asleep… —she whispered, trying to keep her voice from breaking—. Lord Lusian… my love, don't fall asleep.
The Ice Tiger let out a deep roar and began moving through the ruins of the destroyed terrace.
Fast.
Far too fast.
Adela looked toward the rear lines.
Emily.
She had to bring him to Emily.
She could heal him.
She had to be able to.
Even if it cost her life.
Adela's fingers tightened around Lusian's bloodstained clothes.
And for the first time since she had arrived on the battlefield…
she was truly afraid.
Aurelius coughed blood.
The light around his body flickered for an instant.
His knees nearly gave out.
Being the bridge for divine mana was destroying him from the inside. The veins marked across his neck and arms no longer looked human; they glowed like golden cracks on the verge of breaking apart.
And yet he smiled.
Because the mission was almost complete.
The demon was wounded.
He had felt the clash. He had felt that monstrous thing inside Lusian react desperately just to survive.
And that meant something important.
It could bleed.
It could tire.
It could die.
Aurelius raised his gaze toward the ruined mountain.
Smoke still covered part of the frontlines. The Void still moved up there like an open scar upon the world.
Even now… it was still terrifying.
But it no longer mattered.
The heroes would finish the job.
Valerius was still alive.
Caelum was still alive.
And the gods…
Emily came running through smoke and frost.
And when she saw him… she froze.
Lusian was covered in blood.
His arm destroyed.
His breathing irregular.
His skin cracked from the pressure of the Void.
For an instant, Emily could not understand how he was still alive.
Her legs trembled.
Because those no longer looked like wounds someone could heal. It looked like the body of a person who should have died several minutes ago.
—Lusian…
Her voice came out broken.
She dropped to her knees in front of him almost immediately and pressed both hands against his chest while trying to steady her breathing.
She could not panic.
Not now.
She forced mana through her body.
Light appeared around her hands, unstable at first, then brighter and brighter as the healing spell activated.
Lusian's body reacted instantly.
Flesh began slowly closing.
The fractures stopped cracking.
The bleeding began to slow.
But then something happened that Emily had never seen before.
The healing light did not simply enter Lusian's body.
It was absorbed.
Not like a normal spell.
As if something inside him were devouring it.
Emily's eyes widened in shock.
The wounds began closing at an absurd speed. Destroyed flesh rebuilt itself almost instantly, bones slid back into place, and even the burned skin started regenerating before her eyes.
It was too fast.
Far too fast.
—What…?
The mana Emily poured into him vanished inside Lusian and returned multiplied, as if it were passing through something that refined it before sending it back into his body.
The darkness beneath his skin continued moving.
But now Emily could feel something else.
It was not just power.
There was… intention.
A presence.
And that chilled her blood.
Because divinity was not magic.
It never had been.
The gods were not simply powerful beings. Power came afterward.
First, there was something else.
Divinity.
The right to impose an existence upon the world.
A human used mana to alter reality.
A god did not.
Reality was the thing that adapted to them.
That was why divine blessings could ignore logic, distance, or resistance.
That was why heroes could accomplish impossible things.
That was why some ancient monsters remained alive even after being destroyed.
It was not raw power.
It was authority.
Emily swallowed hard while continuing to heal him.
When Lusian awakened, the Void slowly withdrew, almost reluctantly.
The darkness left Lusian's body like a tide unwilling to release its prey, leaving black marks running across his arms. Dark blood dripped from his forearms… evaporating before it could even touch the ground.
His lungs burned.
Every breath felt wrong, as if he had inhaled something far too vast for a human body.
Everything hurt.
But he was still alive.
—Lord Lusian…
Adela's trembling voice reached him.
And the next second she was already on top of him, hugging him so tightly it seemed she had completely forgotten he had been torn apart only minutes earlier.
Lusian let out a small grimace of pain.
—I thought you would call me "love" now…
Adela froze.
Her face turned bright red instantly.
—T-That was at another moment!
—Ah… so you really did say it.
—N-Now was not the time to remember that!
She tightened the hug even more before quickly lifting her head again.
Her eyes were still wet.
—Is… is he alive? —she asked softly—. That's what matters.
Lusian slowly lifted his gaze.
Emily was still kneeling in front of him, breathing heavily after using so much mana. Her hands still glowed with remnants of healing light.
Further behind, Isabella had just arrived alongside several soldiers.
And the moment she saw Adela practically lying on top of Lusian, she frowned.
—…How convenient that you arrived just in time to hug him.
Adela instantly turned her head.
—I saved him!
—That doesn't give you the right to crush him.
—He's not complaining!
Emily only let out a long sigh.
Then she looked back at Lusian.
And her expression shifted slightly.
Because now that the battle was over… she could feel it more clearly.
The mana inside Lusian no longer moved the same way.
Emily felt a small chill.
—…What are you becoming…? —she murmured without realizing it.
—I don't know —he replied—.
Before they could continue speaking, a thunderclap shook the entire mountain.
The sound was so loud that even the cracks in the ground vibrated.
Thunder appeared tearing through the storm like an unleashed beast. Electricity coursed across his body as he descended onto the ruined terrace, hurling rock and ash aside with every step.
And on top of him…
Elizabeth.
The instant she touched the ground, she broke into a run.
—LUSIAN! LUSIAN!
Her voice sounded broken. Desperate.
Tears still marked her face, and her hands trembled so violently that demonic mana spilled uncontrollably around her. Black lightning began tearing through the air in her wake, shattering fragments of stone simply by passing too close.
The pressure suddenly increased.
The sky darkened once more.
Emily's eyes widened when she felt it.
—No… wait…
Isabella took a step back.
She understood before anyone else.
Elizabeth was on the verge of awakening the Demon Queen once again.
And this time… there would be no control.
Elizabeth reached Lusian and grabbed his clothes tightly.
—WHY DID YOU DO THIS?! —she screamed through tears—. WHY DID YOU END UP LIKE THIS AGAIN?!
The mana continued overflowing.
The mountain began to creak.
Thunder lowered his head uneasily while the air filled with black electricity.
Adela immediately tensed.
Emily stopped breathing for a second.
If Elizabeth lost control there…
Lusian forced himself to stand before something worse could happen.
His entire body screamed in pain.
His legs nearly gave out.
But even so, he moved forward.
And embraced Elizabeth.
She froze.
—I'm alive… —Lusian murmured with broken breathing—. Calm down… look at me.
Elizabeth trembled in his arms.
The demonic pressure continued escaping for several more seconds… until little by little it finally began to fade.
The lightning stopped falling.
The sky stopped breaking apart.
Elizabeth buried her face against him while continuing to cry.
—Idiot… —she said with a broken voice—. I thought you had…
Lusian let out a small tired laugh.
—You're not getting rid of me that easily yet.
Behind them, Emily finally released the breath she had been holding.
Isabella closed her eyes for a moment.
And Adela…
Adela looked at Elizabeth hugging him so tightly and slowly puffed out her cheeks again.
—…How unfair."