A pillar of pure, concentrated sunlight, so brilliant it was painful to look at, slammed down from the unseen ceiling of the cathedral. It didn't just strike the Black Knight; it enveloped it, consuming its form in a torrent of divine fury. There was no sound at first, only that overwhelming, silent radiance.
Then, the clash began.
The Knight's darkness fought back with a violent, desperate will. Tendrils of absolute blackness lashed out from within the core of light, trying to claw their way free. They were met by lashing whips of incandescent gold. It was a primordial battle, light against dark, creation against void, happening within the space of a single creature's form. The air itself screamed with the contradiction, a high-pitched whine that felt like it was shredding reality.
The Knight's form was the battlefield. We watched, awestruck and horrified, as its dark self boiled. It bubbled and blistered, patches of it flashing into non-existence while others writhed and resisted. The darkness was a seething, formless mass of hatred that pushed against the consuming light, only to be burned away layer by layer.
Finally, the tension reached its breaking point. With a final, silent shriek that was felt rather than heard, the darkness could hold no longer. The Knight's form imploded for a split second, and then*detonated outwards in a shockwave of pure, cleansing light.
The explosion was silent but immense. It washed over the entire cathedral, scouring the lingering shadows from every corner, bleaching the stone floor, and forcing us all to shield our eyes. When the light faded, there was nothing left of the Black Knight. No ash, no dissipating shadow. Just a profound and absolute absence. The oppressive gloom that had defined the hall was gone, replaced by a serene, natural darkness and the gentle, ambient light of the Starlight Cloak. The purification was total, violent, and complete.
It was over. We stood panting in the sudden silence, the five of us bound together by a shared, dangerous victory. Gemma's wounds were already closing into silvery scars. Seishan's form twisted and cracked back into her humanoid guise, though her eyes held a new, weary depth. Effie leaned on her spear, grinning through bloody lips. Sasrir materialized beside me, silent and watchful once more. We had survived the fight, and killed a Fallen that even the main cast had struggled against.
Then again, we also struggled and were probably closer to death than it appeared.
Making my way over to where the Knight had died, I rummaged around the ground and, after several seconds, found what I was looking for. It was not a shard, not in the common sense. It was a gem, utterly and profoundly black, as if carved from a piece of the void itself. This darkness was not mere absence of light; it was an active, suffocating entity.
Deep within that impossible blackness, a heart of crimson fire burned. The flames did not flicker, but pulsed with a slow, menacing, and bizarre rhythm, like the heartbeat of some forgotten leviathan. Each throb of red light seemed to push back against the consuming darkness for a fleeting moment before being swallowed once more.
This was no ordinary soul shard. It radiated an intense, palpable aura of power, feeling less like a fragment and more like a complete, condensed soul. A closer look revealed the source of its strange rhythm: within the crimson core, four distinct flames twisted around one another, representing the four Soul Cores of the Fallen Devil-the Black Knight's very essence, a crystallized manifestation of its malevolent power and the profound darkness it had commanded.
And what did I do with this rare and beautiful gem?
"Here, catch."
Casually tossing it to the taciturn Stone Saint, she caught it and stared at it quizzically for a moment, before bringing it up to her mouth and devouring it, much to the surprise of the others (bar Sasrir.) After doing so, she vanished into a pyre of silver sparks, returning to my Soul Sea for evolution just like in the novel.
Brushing my hands off and ignoring the questioning looks from the others, I peered around at the cathedral hall and sat on the base of the statue that served as the altar.
"Well then...anyone up for some tea?"