Kaelen stared at me, his brilliant tactical mind instantly catching up to my lethal logic.
"A paradox," Kaelen rumbled, a dark, feral grin spreading across his face despite the towering apocalypse looming over us. "You want to cross the streams. Pure light and the cursed dark."
"It thinks my magic is a feast," I said, stepping out from behind him, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Lycan King. "Let's give it a banquet."
The Abyssal Weaver surged forward, a massive tendril of darkness whipping toward us, eager to consume the White Wolf.
"Take my hand," Kaelen commanded.
I reached out, my smaller, unarmored fingers intertwining with his massive, gauntleted hand. The moment our skin touched, the mate bond didn't just flare; it detonated.
I channeled every ounce of White Wolf energy I possessed, not outward, but directly into Kaelen. Simultaneously, Kaelen opened the floodgates of his ancient, abyssal Lycan magic, pouring it into me.
The two magics—the purest, most ancient light, and the darkest, most violent shadow—collided within our shared psychic and physical tether. Normally, these energies would annihilate each other. But bound by the absolute, biological permanence of the Lycan mate mark, they fused.
A shockwave of gray, iridescent energy exploded from where our hands joined.
"Now!" Kaelen roared.
Together, we thrust our joined hands forward. We didn't shoot a beam of fire or a spike of ice. We unleashed the Eclipse.
A massive sphere of swirling, chaotic energy—pitch black but radiating a blinding, ethereal white glow—shot directly into the gaping, formless maw of the Abyssal Weaver.
The entity swallowed the sphere eagerly, expecting another meal of pure light.
For a fraction of a second, the Weaver froze.
Then, the paradox took effect. The Weaver's necrotic biology tried to absorb the light, but the light was intrinsically bound to Kaelen's abyssal dark—an energy the Weaver could not process or consume. The violently opposing forces began to tear the entity apart from the inside out.
The creature let out a shriek that shattered every glass window in the Oakhaven square.
NO! the chorus of voices screamed in our minds, thrashing violently as the gray, iridescent light began to leak from its formless body. IT BURNS! THE DARK LIGHT BURNS!
The Weaver swelled to a grotesque, unstable size, the paradox reacting violently with the void in its stomach.
"Shields!" Kaelen bellowed, wrapping his heavy cape completely around me and turning his armored back to the entity.
With a concussive blast that felt like a falling meteor, the Abyssal Weaver violently detonated.
The shockwave knocked Kaelen and me to the ground, tearing through the cobblestones and leveling the statues in the square. A rain of thick, foul-smelling black ash descended over the city.
Then, total silence.
Kaelen slowly uncoiled, lifting his cape. I coughed, brushing the necrotic ash from my face. The towering monster was gone. The torches in the streets slowly flickered back to life, the natural winter cold rushing back into the vacuum the Weaver had left behind.
In the center of the square, where the creature had exploded, a single object lay smoking on the ruined cobblestones.
I walked over to it, Kaelen a protective shadow at my back.
It was a jagged piece of black obsidian, carved into the shape of a twisted, chaotic rune. But stamped directly into the center of the obsidian, glowing with a faint, corrupted golden light, was the official, unmistakable seal of the Supreme Councilor of Solaria.
"Lucius," Kaelen spat, staring at the seal with absolute, murderous disgust. "He opened the Forbidden Vaults. The coward couldn't face us with an army, so he sent a demon."
I reached down and picked up the obsidian relic. It was cold to the touch. I turned to look at the terrified citizens of Oakhaven, who were slowly emerging from their hiding places, staring at the ruined square in awe.
I held the relic high into the air.
"Look closely!" I yelled, my voice ringing with righteous fury. "This is the 'Holy Magic' of the High Council! They preach of the Goddess, yet they summon demons of the void to slaughter innocents to protect their gold!"
A murmur of shock and outrage rippled through the gathering crowd.
I looked at Kaelen, a cold, ruthless smile touching my lips. Lucius had just made a fatal miscalculation. He hadn't just failed to assassinate me; he had handed me the absolute proof of his heresy.
"Silas," I called out to the Gamma, who was approaching the crater. "Send riders to every pack in the Neutral Zone. Tell them the High Council has fallen to dark magic. Tell them the White Wolf is marching to cleanse Solaria."
The political war was won. Now, it was time for the execution.