The sound of the leviathan horn did not fade. It was a deep, resonating groan that vibrated in Asterion's very bones, a physical weight in the air.
"Good," Kaelen had said. "It means you're ready to learn why…"
"Sir!" A knight in the soot-grey plate of the fortress legion sprinted across the parapet, his face pale beneath his visor. "The Wave is here! All units to their stations! The Arch Priest summons the Great Knights!"
Kaelen's grim smile vanished, replaced by the iron mask of command. He looked at Asterion, his explanation cut short. "The lesson will have to wait. Or perhaps," he looked out at the darkening horizon, "it will not."
He slammed his gauntleted fist onto the stone merlon. "To the central bastion! Now!"
The fortress of Fortitude's End exploded into a frenzy of disciplined chaos. The heavy thud of thousands of armored boots echoed from the courtyards. Bells tolled, a frantic, clanging alarm that cut through the horn's groan. Shouts of sergeants and the high, clear commands of warrior-priests pierced the air.
Asterion, Elian, and Kaelen ran, their lighter footsteps a counter-rhythm to the legion's heavy tread. They moved against the tide of soldiers, heading for the central command tower, the fortress's highest point.
When they reached the top, Asterion understood the meaning of "Wave."
The horizon was gone.
It was not a horde. A horde is a group, a mass. This was a sea. From one end of the weeping plains to the other, a tide of black, writhing corruption surged toward the wall. Asterion's 33-year-old mind, practiced in analysis, tried to calculate the numbers and failed. It was not tens of thousands. It was hundreds of thousands.
The "chatter" they had culled for four years—the mindless Grave-kin "Echoes"—formed the frothing, crashing vanguard. Behind them marched the "Formed"—the Greater Husks, twelve-foot-tall engines of black-plated bone and muscle, their steps shaking the ground. And behind them, Asterion saw them for the first time: the "Listeners."
They were tall, robed figures that glided over the ground, their forms indistinct. They were the generals. And as they advanced, the very air warped around them, rising into the sky to form a roiling, black-purple thunderhead—a "Lament" storm, ready to be unleashed. The sour, psychic pressure of it washed over the wall, a wave of pure, alien malice that made Asterion's teeth ache.
"Gods be good," a knight beside him whispered, his voice shaking.
"Gods have little to do with this," Kaelen rumbled. He drew his massive greatsword, the sound a low, hungry shiiing. "Archers! First volley on my mark! Priests, prepare the Font!"
On the bastion, five High Priests, including the seventy-four-year-old warrior Asterion had seen on his first day, moved to the edge. They slammed the butts of their staves onto the stone, their voices rising in a single, powerful chant. The carved symbols on the fortress wall itself began to glow, the ambient Faith of the entire region being drawn and focused. The fortress was the Font.
"Fire!" Kaelen roared.
A black cloud of arrows, their tips glinting with sanctified oil, hissed into the sky. Catapults launched massive, clay-potted barrels that shattered on the Tainted, showering them in a mixture of salt, Holy Water, and burning pitch.
The Tainted vanguard hit the wall. Thousands of Grave-kin slammed into the black stone, ignoring the arrows, and began to climb, their bone-claws finding purchase in the weeping rock.
"Engage!"
The battle for the wall began. It was a meat grinder. Holy Knights, their liquid Faith making them dense and immovable, held the line, their greatswords cleaving the TAIN-infused bodies. Asterion and Elian, "Kaelen's Monsters," moved into the fray.
Asterion was a perfect storm. His 33-year-old mind, fueled by the cold rage of his Curse, was a flawless killing computer. His body, at the absolute peak of a Holy Knight, was a blur. He didn't just fight; he dissected. He used his liquid Faith for speed and power, his blade a silver arc.
Thrust. A Grave-kin's head was severed. Parry. He used the Tainted's own momentum to spin, his back-swing cutting the legs from another. Anchor. A Greater Husk's fist slammed down, and Asterion met it with his forged arm, the impact cracking the stone beneath his feet, but he held. He was a whirlwind, a blur of red-eyed, efficient fury. In five minutes, a pile of black ichor and shattered bone surrounded him. He was, by every metric, the perfect warrior.
And he was already breathing hard, his rage a furnace burning through his stamina.
A roar echoed from his left. A Greater Husk, larger than the others, had broken through the line. It was the same "Formed" Tainted Kaelen had imploded four years prior, or an identical copy. It swatted a Holy Knight from the wall, sending him screaming into the sea of bodies below.
Asterion met its charge. He channeled his rage, his Faith, every ounce of his "perfect" technique into a single, flawless, liquid-powered strike. His sword bit deep into the creature's black-plated shoulder.
The blade stuck.
The creature roared, not in pain, but in anger. Its hide was too dense. Asterion's liquid Faith, for all its power, had blunted. It didn't have the density to penetrate.
The Husk raised Its massive claw to swat him into oblivion.
A shadow moved. Elian.
He stepped inside Asterion's guard, his face a mask of perfect, terrifying calm. He didn't draw his sword. He didn't roar. He simply raised his open palm.
Asterion felt it. Elian's Faith… it wasn't a storm, like his. It wasn't liquid. It congealed. All the power in his body focused, compressed, not with heat, but with an absolute, terrifying cold. His Faith became viscous, almost solid, a single point of absolute, unmoving weight in his hand.
He didn't strike. He touched.
His small, fourteen-year-old palm made contact with the Tainted's chest.
There was no sound. No explosion.
The creature froze. A spiderweb of hairline cracks appeared on its black carapace, radiating from Elian's hand. A second later, the Tainted's entire torso didn't implode—it crumbled, collapsing into a pile of dry dust and brittle, shattered bone.
Elian pulled his hand back, his breathing perfectly even. He had not overexerted. He had not wasted a single drop of energy. He had simply… unmade it.
Asterion stared, his sword still stuck in the creature's dissolving shoulder. He saw it. His own furious, powerful attack had failed. Elian's single, slow, calm strike had succeeded, with devastating efficiency.
The psychic assault of the Lament began. The roiling black cloud unleashed its "Whisper," a wave of pure despair that washed over the wall. Knights faltered, their movements becoming sluggish as their own grief and fear attacked them.
For Asterion, it was just Tuesday. His Curse was already screaming in his head; the external "Whisper" was just noise in the storm. He gritted his teeth and fought on, the tears of his own memory-fueled despair streaming down his face as he cut down another Tainted.
For Elian, it was nothing. The "void" could not be filled. He simply advanced, a silent, graceful dealer of death, untouched by the psychic storm.
The Wave broke six hours later. The "Listeners," their vanguard shattered, glided back into the mists, the Tainted sea receding with them. The wall was held.
Asterion stood on the parapet, his body aching, his hands slick with ichor. He was breathing hard, the furnace of his rage finally banking, leaving him exhausted. Elian stood beside him, looking as clean and composed as if he'd just awoken from a nap.
Kaelen's heavy boots stopped behind them.
"You see it now, don't you?" the Great Knight's voice was low, rough with his own exhaustion.
Asterion didn't turn. He just stared at the spot where Elian had shattered the Formed Tainted. "His Faith… it's heavier. It penetrates. Mine just… hits."
"Your method is built on rage, Asterion," Kaelen said, his voice flat. "You use your hate as the hammer to forge your Faith. It's what got you to 'liquid' in seven months—a feat of pure, brutal will. It makes you a peerless Holy Knight. Fast, strong, relentless. A perfect storm."
He stepped up beside them, his gaze fixed on the retreating Tainted. "But the next step… the Singularity… it is not forged by the hammer. It is condensed by the cold."
Asterion turned, his 33-year-old mind grasping the terrible, simple truth.
"To make Faith solid," Kaelen continued, "you cannot beat it into submission. You must still it. Your mind must become a perfect, absolute zero. A void. The mental pressure required is not from rage, but from absolute, unwavering control. A single emotional ripple, a single stray thought, and the compression fails. It shatters."
Kaelen gestured to Elian, who was calmly cleaning his blade, indifferent to the conversation. "He can do it because he is a void. His trauma scoured him clean, made him empty. That is his terrible gift. He has a natural, perfect 'stillness' that allows him to compress his Faith."
Kaelen's gaze, heavy and almost pitying, settled on Asterion. "You… you are full. Your mind is a screaming, eternal storm. It is the 'loudest' mind I have ever felt. That storm is the very thing that forged you into what you are… and it is the barrier you now stand before."
He summed It up with brutal simplicity.
"You cannot achieve the 'cold' while you are 'burning'."
Asterion looked down at his own hands, calloused and stained. Kaelen was right. His Curse, his Perfect Memory, his rage—they were his greatest weapons, the very source of his power and his will to live.
And they were the very things preventing him from ever growing stronger.
He looked at Elian, his only friend, his only rival, who was now on a path he could not follow.
To reach the next level, to achieve the power of a Great Knight, he had to do the impossible. He couldn't erase his Perfect Memory. He couldn't stop the trauma from replaying.
He had to learn to control it. He had to learn how to stand in the heart of his own personal, screaming inferno… and find a point of perfect, absolute cold.