The skeletal army crashed into them like a tide of death.
Sky lunged forward, jaws crackling with lightning. He clamped down on the first skeleton's skull, and electricity exploded outward in a blinding arc. Three more skeletons shattered, bones scattering across the cracked earth.
Sea moved like liquid shadow, water swirling around her massive form. She swept her tail in a wide arc, and a pressurized wave of water slammed into a dozen charging undead, pulverizing them into fragments.
But for every skeleton destroyed, two more clawed their way from the graves.
"They're endless!" Cana shouted, cards flying from her hands in rapid succession. "Lightning!" A bolt struck down from the bruised sky. "Explosion!" Three skeletons detonated in showers of bone. "Binding!" Golden chains erupted from the ground, tangling a cluster of undead.
Levy was already moving, her Solid Script magic blazing. "WALL!" A massive barrier of hardened air materialized, blocking a flanking group. "FIRE!" Flames roared to life, incinerating a charging line of skeletons.
But her eyes kept darting to the Gashadokuro.
The bone colossus moved with terrible purpose, each step shaking the ground like an earthquake. Its hundreds of skulls turned in unison, all those glowing green eyes focused on one target:
Yume.
"Nue! Viperion!" Yume's voice cut through the chaos.
Stormwing materialized in a explosion of dark feathers and crackling energy—massive, armored, a living thunderstorm given shape. The Corviknight-like beast screeched, and lightning arced across the battlefield.
Viperion burst from Yume's shadow, the Great Serpent's blade-tipped tail slicing through three skeletons before they could react. The Seviper-inspired shikigami coiled protectively around Levy, fangs dripping with venom.
"Thanks," Levy gasped, already writing again. "SHIELD!"
Yume's four blade-form Pandora orbs orbited him in a deadly dance, each one cutting through bone with surgical precision. The four shield-form orbs protected his back, deflecting rusted swords and ancient spears.
The Gashadokuro roared—that terrible sound of a thousand dying voices.
And then it moved.
For something so massive, it was impossibly fast. One moment it was thirty feet away. The next, its enormous skeletal hand was sweeping down toward Yume like a falling building.
Yume's eyes widened. "Max Elephant!"
Tuskus manifested between Yume and the descending hand—a mammoth-sized behemoth with glowing tusks and armored hide. The Great Tusk-inspired shikigami caught the Gashadokuro's hand with its massive tusks, and the impact sent shockwaves rippling across the graveyard.
Tuskus pushed back, muscles straining, then opened its trunk and unleashed a high-pressure water cannon directly into the bone giant's torso.
The water blast tore through several fused skulls—
—and they immediately began to regenerate, new bone growing like crystal, filling the gaps.
"It's regenerating!" Cana called out, her cards flickering with frantic energy. "Physical damage isn't working!"
Yume's jaw clenched. Think. Analyze. Adapt.
The Gashadokuro was made of death magic. Negative energy given form. Physical attacks could damage it, but the death magic holding it together simply repaired the damage.
He needed something that could attack the magic itself.
"Enma!"
Purple fire exploded into existence as the Flame King materialized—a lion-ape hybrid wreathed in violet flames, golden armor gleaming, retractable staff extending to full length.
Enma landed with a thunderous impact, his purple mane blazing like a bonfire.
"Enma—purple flare! Burn away its magic!"
The Flame King grinned, baring fangs, and unleashed.
Purple flames erupted from his entire body, washing over the Gashadokuro like a tidal wave of magic-consuming fire. The flames didn't just burn—they devoured, eating away at the death magic binding the creature together.
The Gashadokuro shrieked, stumbling backward. Dozens of its component skulls crumbled to ash, and for a moment, Yume thought it might collapse entirely.
Then the creature did something unexpected.
It turned toward the skeletal army.
And it absorbed them.
Skeletons began flying through the air, drawn by an invisible force. They crashed into the Gashadokuro's body, merging with it, replacing the destroyed skulls. The bone giant grew even larger, even more massive.
"It's using the army to regenerate!" Levy shouted, her Solid Script barrier cracking under relentless assault. "As long as there are more undead, it can rebuild itself infinitely!"
Cana's expression was grim. She pulled a card—and hesitated.
The Death card stared back at her.
She'd been avoiding it, cycling through every other option. But her magic was stronger here in the Threshold. The cards were resonating with the death energy saturating this dimension.
If she used it—truly used it—she could unleash devastating power.
But cards like Death always came with a price.
"Cana!" Yume's voice snapped her attention back. He was being forced backward by the Gashadokuro's relentless assault, all his shikigami working in concert just to hold the line. "Whatever you're thinking—hold it! We need another option!"
Sea yelped as a massive skeletal hand swatted her aside. Sky lunged to protect her, lightning exploding outward, but he was overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
Viperion's shadow magic created tendrils that paralyzed dozens of skeletons—but hundreds more kept coming.
Nue's thunder boomed across the graveyard, but it couldn't stop the tide.
Tuskus was holding the Gashadokuro back, but barely—the creature was strong, fueled by centuries of accumulated death.
Enma's purple flames were working, but not fast enough. For every skull he burned away, three more were absorbed from the army.
They were losing ground.
Levy's mind raced, analyzing everything she'd seen. There has to be a weakness. Everything has a weakness. Think!
The Gashadokuro was made from people who died of starvation—their resentment and suffering given form.
The skeletal army was maintained by the Keeper's magic.
The Keeper herself was a vessel for the Master's will.
And the Master—
"Yume!" Levy's eyes widened with realization. "The source! We have to target the source of the magic! The Keeper is maintaining all of this!"
Yume's head snapped toward her. "She disappeared!"
"No—she's still here! She has to be! You can't maintain a summoning like this from a distance!" Levy's hands moved frantically, writing in the air. "DETECT!"
Golden letters spread across her vision, revealing hidden magical signatures.
And there—barely visible, watching from atop a distant mausoleum—the faint outline of a small figure.
The Keeper hadn't left. She was watching.
Yume saw it too. His eyes narrowed, and a cold, calculated fury settled over his features.
He made his decision in an instant.
"Sky! Sea! Nue! Hold the army back! Tuskus, Enma—keep the Gashadokuro occupied!"
"What are you—" Cana started.
"I'm ending this."
Yume's remaining four Pandora orbs shot forward, merging together into a single massive form—a sleek, black transport. The orbs reshaped themselves into something resembling a flying platform.
But he didn't step onto it.
Instead, he turned toward the greatest darkness in his arsenal.
"Rika."
The air froze.
Reality seemed to crack at the edges as something vast and terrible began to materialize.
Cana's cards exploded with chaotic energy. Levy felt her translation magic scream warnings she couldn't understand.
And then she emerged.
Rika—the Queen of Curses.
Towering. Spectral. Feminine but utterly inhuman. A hybrid of shadow and cursed energy that shouldn't exist in this world. Her form flickered between solid and translucent, wrapped in tattered ethereal robes that moved like living smoke.
Her eyes were voids deeper than the Keeper's facelessness—but they held intelligence. Loyalty.
She manifested behind Yume like a Stand, her massive hands hovering protectively over him.
The Gashadokuro actually stopped, all its skulls turning toward this new presence.
Even the skeletal army hesitated.
Rika's voice was a whisper that somehow carried across the entire graveyard—soft, feminine, but layered with the weight of countless consumed souls:
"Command me."
Yume's voice was cold. Absolute.
"The girl on the mausoleum. Capture her. Don't kill—we need answers. And Rika—"
He met those void-like eyes.
"Copy her magic."
Rika's form blurred.
One moment she was behind Yume. The next, she was simply gone—moving faster than sight, phasing through the skeletal army like they didn't exist.
The Keeper turned, her void-face registering something that might have been surprise.
"Oh—"
Rika's massive hand closed around the small girl like a cage, lifting her effortlessly into the air.
"How rude! I wasn't done watching—"
Rika's other hand pressed against the Keeper's chest, and dark energy pulsed.
The Queen of Curses could copy any technique, any magic she witnessed or touched.
And the Keeper was a vessel of pure death magic—the very essence of the Threshold's power.
Rika's eyes flared with stolen knowledge.
And then she turned toward Yume, carrying the struggling Keeper.
"Magic acquired. Death magic: Necromantic Authority. Shall I lend it to you?"
Yume felt it—the offer hanging in the air like a poisoned gift.
If Rika lent him the Keeper's magic, he could command the undead himself. Turn the skeletal army against the Gashadokuro. End this fight in seconds.
But using death magic in a dimension made of death...
He could already feel it—the black veins on his arms from his earlier exposure to the Threshold's energy. They hadn't faded. They were still there, faint but present.
Taking more death magic into himself here could...
"Yume, don't!" Levy's voice cracked with desperation. "You don't know what that will do to you!"
The Gashadokuro roared, realizing its commander had been captured. It began to move toward Rika with murderous intent.
The skeletal army surged forward, trying to rescue their Keeper.
His shikigami were being overwhelmed.
Cana was running out of cards.
Levy's magic was nearly exhausted.
They had seconds before the situation collapsed entirely.
Yume looked at the black veins on his arms.
At Rika, waiting patiently for his command.
At the Keeper, her faceless void somehow conveying amusement, as if she knew exactly what choice he would make.
"Tick tock, Darkbound. Your friends are dying. What will you choose?"
"Your principles... or their lives?"
The Gashadokuro's massive hand swept down toward Sky and Sea.
Yume's fists clenched.
And he made his choice.
"Do it. Lend me the magic."
"YUME, NO—!" Levy screamed.
But it was already done.
Rika's hand extended toward him, and a tendril of pure death magic shot across the distance, slamming into his chest.
The pain was immediate.
Ice and fire and wrongness flooded through every nerve. The black veins on his arms flared to life, spreading like cracks in glass—up his shoulders, across his chest, crawling toward his neck.
His vision blurred. His magic destabilized. His shikigami flickered, their forms wavering.
But he felt it—the power.
The authority to command death itself.
Yume raised one trembling hand toward the skeletal army, and his voice came out layered, echoing with stolen necromantic power:
"KNEEL."
Every skeleton in the graveyard stopped.
Their hollow eye sockets turned toward him.
And as one, thousands of undead warriors knelt.
The Gashadokuro stumbled, its connection to the army severed. Without their energy to draw upon, it couldn't regenerate.
Enma's purple flames surged forward, consuming more skulls. This time, they didn't repair.
Yume's eyes had changed—still his own, but now flecked with the same sickly green glow that marked the undead.
He raised his other hand toward the Gashadokuro.
"RETURN TO THE EARTH."
The bone colossus shrieked—and then began to collapse.
Not destroyed. Not defeated.
Commanded.
The thousands of skulls that made up its form separated, falling like rain, burying themselves back into the open graves. The skeletal army followed, warriors dissolving into dust and shadow, returning to their rest.
Within seconds, the battlefield was empty.
Silent.
Only Yume, his team, his shikigami, and the captured Keeper remained.
Levy ran toward him, her face pale with horror. "Yume—your face—"
He could feel it. The black veins had spread to his jawline. When he breathed, he could *taste* death magic on his tongue.
Cana was beside Levy in an instant, her hands shaking. "What did you do? What did you do?!"
Yume's voice was hoarse, strained. "What I had to."
The Keeper, still held in Rika's grasp, began to laugh—that terrible, layered child's laughter.
"Yes! YESSSS! Do you feel it, Darkbound? The power? The rightness of it?"
"You say you did what you had to—but you enjoyed it, didn't you? Just a little? The feeling of absolute control?"
Yume met her faceless void with eyes that were still mostly human.
"Where. Is. The exit."
The Keeper tilted her head.
"Oh, but the trial isn't over yet. You defeated the army, yes. You claimed the Keeper's power, yes. But you haven't survived untildawn."
She raised one small hand, pointing toward the horizon where the bruised sky met the earth.
"And look... the real test is just beginning."
The sky began to crack.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
Fissures of burning red light split across the purple-black clouds like a shattering window.
And through those cracks, something was descending.
Something vast.
Something that made the Gashadokuro look like a toy.
A presence so immense that reality itself seemed to bend around it.
Levy's translation magic screamed a single word into her mind:
MASTER.
The Keeper's laughter echoed across the graveyard as the sky continued to break apart.
"He's coming. The Master is coming. And oh, Darkbound—"
"He's so very pleased with you."
Yume staggered, the black veins pulsing with each heartbeat. His shikigami moved closer, protective, sensing their summoner's distress.
Cana grabbed his arm, steadying him. "We need to go. NOW."
"There's nowhere to go," Levy whispered, staring at the fracturing sky. "We're trapped. We were always trapped."
The cracks widened.
Through them, a massive skeletal hand—far larger than the Gashadokuro's, wreathed in black flame—began to reach through.
And Yume, fighting to stay conscious as death magic warred with his own power, realized the horrible truth:
The trial was never about surviving until dawn.
It was about preparing him—marking him—for the Master's arrival.
He'd played right into their hands.
The Keeper dissolved into mist in Rika's grasp, her laughter the last thing to fade.
"Welcome home, wayward son. The Master has been waiting so long to meet you."
---
[END CHAPTER 57]
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Next Chapter Preview:Chapter 58: The Drowned Village - As the Master descends, reality collapses. The team is pulled through a vortex—and emerges somewhere impossible. Underwater. In Serenity Creek. But the village is wrong. The dead walk. The coffee trees have faces. And Levy discovers the truth about what the Master really wants...