We burst through the double doors of the manor and onto the balcony overlooking the square.
The sight below defied logic. A massive, formless tide of pitch-black sludge was slithering through the streets of Oakhaven. It possessed no limbs, no faces, but it moved with deliberate, starving intelligence. Where the darkness touched the cobblestones, the frost instantly turned to gray, lifeless ash.
"Form a perimeter!" General Thorne bellowed from the square, his frost-forged halberd glowing brightly. "Protect the civilians! Shield wall!"
A dozen heavily armored Lycans stepped in front of a group of terrified Omegas, raising their enchanted shields. But as the creeping darkness washed over the soldiers, their frost-forged steel didn't shatter—it simply dimmed, the magical light sucked entirely into the void.
One of the Lycans swung his massive blade directly into the mass of shadows. There was no impact. The blade passed through as if cutting through smoke. But as the shadow coiled around the soldier's arm, the Lycan let out a bloodcurdling scream. His massive, muscular arm instantly desiccated, the flesh withering to bone in seconds.
"Fall back!" Kaelen's voice thundered from the balcony, infused with enough Alpha command to physically physically push his men backward. "Do not let it touch you! It feeds on kinetic energy!"
Kaelen vaulted over the balcony railing, plunging fifty feet to the square below. He landed with a heavy, localized earthquake, his dark armor radiating pure, abyssal Lycan magic. He swung his broadsword, unleashing a wave of highly concentrated dark energy that temporarily cleaved the shadowy mass in two.
It reformed almost instantly, the two halves slithering together with a horrifying, chittering sound that echoed directly in our minds.
The King of the Dark... the Abyssal Weaver clicked, its many voices overlapping in a sickening chorus. You taste of ancient blood... but we are hungry for the Star...
I didn't hesitate. I leaped from the balcony, using a localized burst of anti-gravity magic to land softly beside Kaelen.
"Get the civilians out of the square!" I yelled at Gamma Silas, who was already directing the evacuation with cold precision.
I turned my attention to the shifting mass of the Weaver. If physical attacks and dark magic couldn't destroy it, then I would simply burn it out of existence. I opened the vault of my power entirely.
My eyes flared into twin suns. I raised both hands, summoning a catastrophic wave of pure, concentrated White Wolf energy. The square was instantly bathed in blinding, holy radiance as a torrent of white fire erupted from my palms and crashed directly into the center of the Abyssal Weaver.
The impact was deafening. But instead of incinerating the creature, the white fire hit the darkness and... stopped.
The Weaver didn't burn. It expanded. The shadowy sludge rapidly swelled, gorging itself on my pure magic.
Delicious... the voices hissed in my mind, vibrating with horrific ecstasy. The pure light... feed us... feed us more!
"Elena, stop!" Kaelen grabbed my shoulder, violently yanking me back. "It's an Abyssal Weaver! It's a void entity! Your light isn't burning it; you're feeding it!"
I cut off the flow of magic, gasping as a wave of sudden exhaustion hit me. The Weaver, now twice its original size, towered over us like a tidal wave of living ink.
"If it eats light and ignores physical steel," I breathed, my mind racing as I analyzed the horrifying entity, "how do we kill it?"
"We don't," Kaelen growled, stepping in front of me, his body radiating a lethal, protective fury. "We survive it. I will hold it back with raw physical displacement. You run, Elena. It wants you."
"I am not running, Kaelen," I snapped, grabbing his armored forearm. I looked at the towering void, a sudden, dangerous realization dawning on me. "It eats light. And it ignores pure darkness."
I looked up at Kaelen, my brown eyes meeting his glowing crimson ones. The mate bond between us hummed with frantic energy.
"What happens to a parasite," I whispered, "when it swallows a poison it cannot digest?"