Each wound Liam dealt sent a thread of stolen life-force flowing back into him.
Not much – Aldric was protected by blessed armor and holy wards – but enough. A trickle of warmth that helped offset the Essence he was burning.
Aldric felt it. The wrongness of it. Each cut didn't just hurt—it drained something fundamental.
"Abomination!" he spat, bringing his sword down in an overhead strike that would have cleaved Liam in half.
Liam didn't dodge, or even use blink.
Instead, his off-hand came up, and Hell's Flame erupted, a shield. A roiling barrier of black-and-crimson fire that caught the blessed blade inches from his skull.
The two energies collided. Holy and infernal. Light and darkness. Both absolute in their nature, both refusing to yield.
The ground beneath them cracked from the pressure.
Aldric pushed. Channeled more divine energy into his blade, pouring twenty years of faith and fury into the strike.
Liam held. His Hell's Flame shield consumed his Essence at a terrifying rate, but it held.
[-450 Essence]
They stood locked in that stalemate for three heartbeats. Close enough that Liam could see the sweat on Aldric's face, could smell the ozone of holy magic mixing with the sulfur of infernal fire.
Close enough to speak.
"Your god isn't answering, Commander," Liam said softly. "Because he knows what you're too proud to admit."
"What?" Aldric snarled through gritted teeth.
Liam's grey eyes reflected the chaos of their warring energies—and something colder underneath.
"That you've already lost."
He pushed.
With more than strength. With technique. A twist of his wrist that redirected Aldric's force sideways, unbalancing the Commander's perfect strike.
Aldric stumbled. Just a half-step.
It was enough.
Liam's blade—freed from the deadlock—traced a precise, surgical line across Aldric's sword arm. Not deep enough to cripple. Deep enough to matter.
The Commander's grip faltered. His blessed sword dipped.
[Soul-Drinker Activated: +15 EP]
And before he could recover, Liam was already moving into the opening, Igar's Shard coming around for a strike that would end—
A lance of pure holy light erupted from behind Aldric, fired by a paladin mage who'd broken free of his opponent.
It caught Liam square in the shoulder, holy fire searing through cloth and into flesh.
Liam jerked back, his own blood now mixing with the battlefield's carnage.
The pain was immediate, brutal—holy magic burned differently than normal fire. It didn't just destroy flesh; it tried to purify it, and there was nothing pure about what Liam had become.
Aldric used the opening. Staggered back. Created distance. His arm hung slightly limp, but his eyes burned with renewed determination.
Around them, the battle still raged. But the circle around their duel had grown larger. More soldiers on both sides had stopped to watch.
To see if the human was truly what he claimed.
Or if he was just a man playing at godhood who would bleed out like any other.
Liam pressed his hand to his shoulder. When he pulled it away, his palm was slick with red. Human blood. Human weakness.
For a moment—just one—doubt flickered across the watching demons' faces.
Then Liam smiled.
The smile of something that had forgotten pain meant it could lose.
"Good," he said, his voice carrying across the sudden hush. "I was worried this would be boring."
He raised Igar's Shard.
The Hell's Flame along its edge pulsed brighter, feeding on his blood, on his pain, on the Essence flowing through him from the fear of three hundred men who'd thought they were bringing light to darkness.
"Shall we continue, Commander?"
On the walls, Koth's fists clenched so tight his claws drew blood from his own palms.
"He's bleeding," Varg said, and it wasn't quite a question.
"He's smiling," Zara corrected, her analytical mind trying to process what that meant.
In the melee, Torrgh found his voice returning, found himself shouting to the demon beside him.
"Did you see? Did you see him hold against the Commander's strike?"
"I saw," his companion growled, renewed fury in his voice as he threw himself back into battle. "I saw the human fight like he was born in the pits!"
The belief was spreading. It wasn't faith—these demons had been burned by faith before. But something harder to dismiss.
Evidence.
[Collective Belief - Outpost Garrison: +23% → +31%]
The human was bleeding. But so was the legendary Commander of the Radiant Empire.
The human had been struck by holy magic. But he was still standing.
The human fought with demon fire and teleportation and psychic screams pulled from nightmares.
And he was still. Fucking. Smiling.
Aldric felt it too. The shift in the battlefield's energy. His men were still fighting, still blessed, still outnumbering the demons.
But doubt had entered the equation. And doubt was the crack through which defeat flowed.
He raised his sword, calling upon reserves of holy power he'd been saving for true emergencies.
This, he decided, qualified.
"In the name of—"
Liam didn't let him finish the prayer.
[BLINK]
The world flickered.
Aldric's prayer cut short as Liam materialized directly beside him, inside his guard, too close for the long sword to be effective.
Igar's Shard drove toward Aldric's exposed side.
The Commander twisted desperately, his blessed armor flaring, holy wards activating.
The black blade scraped along blessed steel, found the gap between plates, and pushed through.
Aldric's eyes went wide. Not with surprise. With the sudden, terrible understanding that came when twenty years of survival instinct recognized a killing blow.
"No—" he gasped.
"Yes," Liam breathed, his face inches from the Commander's.
He twisted the blade. Just slightly, just enough.
[Soul-Drinker Activated: +87 EP]
The flow of life-force was different this time. Not a trickle. A flood. Aldric's blessed magic, his divine protection, his very essence—all of it draining into Liam through the connection of steel and flesh.
The Commander's blessed armor flickered. Dimmed. The holy light that had made him a burning silhouette faded to nothing, leaving just a man.
Just a dying man.
Liam pulled the blade free. Aldric collapsed to his knees, one hand clutching the wound, the other reaching for his fallen sword.
He never made it.
Liam's boot caught him in the chest, sending him sprawling onto his back. Igar's Shard came down, the point resting against Aldric's throat.
"Tell your god," Liam said, his voice soft but carrying across the suddenly silent battlefield, "that the light has failed."
The blade descended.