The elevator platform was a cage of screaming metal and sparks, plummeting through the throat of the Spire. The air roared past them, but inside the chaos, the silence of violence was deafening.
Elara didn't fight like a mage anymore. She fought like a wild animal cornered in a pit.
She lunged at Mara, her black-tattooed arm moving faster than thought. Mara tried to dodge, but Elara's hand clamped around her throat.
"Little captain," Elara hissed, her eyes burning violet. "No ship to hide behind now."
She slammed Mara into the metal floor. CRACK! The sound of Mara's head hitting the deck was sickening. Mara went limp, sliding dangerously close to the edge of the falling platform.
"MARA!" Kael roared.
He abandoned defense. He launched himself at Elara, his remaining sword a blur of silver aimed at her neck.
Elara didn't dodge. She caught the blade.
With her bare hand.
The runic tattoos on her arm flared blindingly bright. Her skin had become harder than diamond. Kael's sword stopped dead in her grip, the sharp edge cutting nothing.
Kael's eyes widened in shock.
"Steel breaks," Elara smiled, blood dripping from her nose but her grip unwavering. "Flesh evolves."
She twisted her wrist. With a sharp PING, the tip of Kael's blade snapped off. She drove her knee into Kael's injured leg. Kael screamed—a rare, raw sound of agony—as his femur fractured. He collapsed, clutching his leg.
"No!" Aarav screamed.
He was the last one standing.
Elara turned to him, tossing the broken shard of metal aside. She stepped over Kael's writhing body. The elevator jolted violently, dropping another twenty feet in a stomach-churning lurch, but Elara kept her balance perfectly.
"Just you and me, Tideborne," she panted, wiping blood from her mouth. "No magic. No friends. Just the truth. You are weak."
She walked towards him. Aarav raised his sword—the one Kael had given him. The blade felt heavy. His lungs burned. His ribs ached.
"I'm not weak," Aarav said, his voice low.
He didn't wait for her to attack. He charged.
He feinted high, aiming for her head. Elara raised her arm to block. But Aarav pivoted on his heel, dropping low. He swung the sword at her legs.
Elara moved with impossible speed, jumping over the blade. In mid-air, she kicked Aarav in the face.
The world exploded in white light. Aarav flew backward, crashing into the rusted railings of the elevator. He tasted copper. Blood filled his mouth.
Elara landed and grabbed him by the hair, hauling him up. She smashed his face into the railing.
"Weak!" Smash.
"Pathetic!" Smash.
"Nothing!"
Aarav fell to the floor, dazed. His vision was swimming. He saw Liora crawling towards Mara, trying to shield her. He saw Kael trying to stand on a broken leg.
Elara loomed over him, raising her void-glass dagger for the killing blow.
"Goodbye, Aarav."
Time slowed.
Aarav looked at the dagger. Then he looked at her arm—the arm holding him down. The black tattoos were pulsing rhythmically. Thump-thump.
Like a heart.
The Blade Sigil in his palm flared. He saw it.
Those weren't just tattoos. They were conduits. External veins carrying raw Aether directly into her muscles. That was the source of her strength.
If he cut the muscle, she would heal.
If he cut the conduit... the power would have nowhere to go. It would explode.
Aarav's hand moved. He didn't reach for his sword. He reached for the jagged shard of Kael's blade that Elara had snapped off and dropped on the floor.
As Elara brought the dagger down, Aarav thrust the shard upwards.
Not at her chest. At her armpit. Right where the tattoos converged into a major node.
SHLICK!
The jagged metal sank deep into her flesh, severing the nerve and the Aether-line.
"AAAAHHH!"
Elara screamed—a sound not of anger, but of shock and agony.
The result was immediate. The violet light in her tattoos turned volatile white. Her arm swelled, the magic backing up, having nowhere to flow.
POP!
Her arm exploded from the inside. Skin and muscle tore open as raw Aether burst out, blowing Elara backward. She crashed against the control panel of the elevator.
"NOW!" Aarav roared, spitting blood. "BRACE YOURSELVES!"
The explosion had destroyed the elevator's brakes completely.
The platform entered freefall.
They were falling into the abyss at terminal velocity. The wind roared like a jet engine.
"Liora!" Aarav crawled across the floor, fighting the G-force. "Cushion us!"
Liora grabbed Mara and Kael. She looked at the approaching ground—a floor of jagged metal spikes and debris deep in the Spire's foundation.
"I... I can't stop it!" she cried.
"Don't stop it!" Aarav yelled, grabbing her hand. "Deflect it!"
Liora screamed, pouring every last drop of her life force into a sphere of wind around them.
The platform hit the bottom.
CRASH!
The sound was the end of the world. Metal crumpled like paper. Dust, sparks, and debris erupted in a mushroom cloud, filling the massive underground chamber.
Silence followed. Long, heavy silence.
.
.
.
"Cough... cough..."
Aarav opened his eyes. Everything was grey. Dust hung in the air like heavy fog. He was lying on a pile of twisted metal. His body felt like it had been put through a meat grinder, but he was alive.
"Liora?" he rasped.
"Here..." a weak voice came from his left.
Liora pushed a piece of debris off herself. She was bleeding from a cut on her head, but her shield had saved them from being turned into paste.
Kael was groaning nearby, dragging himself into a sitting position. Mara was unconscious but breathing.
They had survived the fall.
"Is it... over?" Liora whispered, looking around the wreckage.
Aarav stood up shakily, gripping his sword. He scanned the ruins of the elevator.
There was a pile of rubble where the control panel had been. Where Elara had fallen.
Suddenly, the rubble shifted.
A hand burst out.
But it wasn't a human hand anymore. It was elongated, the fingers ending in claws. The skin was gone, replaced by raw, glowing violet muscle and black bone.
Elara rose from the debris.
Or what was left of her.
The explosion and the crash had destroyed her human form. Her right arm—the one Aarav had severed—was gone, replaced by a limb made entirely of unstable shadow energy. Half her face was torn away, revealing a skull of black crystal underneath.
She didn't look like a goddess. She looked like a demon. A glitch in reality.
"You..." Her voice was no longer musical. It was a distorted static scratch. "You... broke... my... vessel."
She stumbled forward. The air around her began to rot. The ground she stepped on turned to grey dust.
"Now..." Elara raised her shadow-arm. "I will consume everything."
She wasn't fighting for control anymore. She was a leaking nuclear reactor, ready to melt down and take the entire world with her.
Aarav looked at his friends. Broken. Bleeding. Barely able to stand.
He looked at the monster in front of him.
He stepped forward, standing between his friends and the demon. He raised his sword.
"Come and get it," Aarav whispered.