The flash whitened out the world.
One heartbeat passed. Grand Marshal Beren allowed hope to blossom in his chest. He lowered his gauntlet to observe the damage. The combined might of the last heroes had struck true. A convergence of magic and steel detonated directly over the altar. He prayed to the Earth God for salvation.
The light died.
Dust drifted downward. The residue settled over the cratered marble. It formed a crust atop the blood. The smoke cleared from the sanctuary.
The eternal death stood in the center of the devastation. The creature remained immaculate.
Plasma had scorched the surrounding stone into glass. The obsidian plating gleamed without a blemish. Shrouds drifted around the armored limbs. The entity had not absorbed the strike. Beren realized the tactical truth. The monster had occupied the microscopic seams of space between the intersecting spells. It possessed a reaction speed defying mortal physics. It rendered the attack mathematically meaningless.
Darkness spilled outward from its boots. The aura carried the scent of forgotten graves. This miasma suffocated the incense. It extinguished every remaining torch in the nave.
The assassin decided the intermission was over. The entity displaced itself.
Beren opened his mouth to scream a warning. The words died in his throat. He lost visual tracking entirely.
Hovering thirty feet in the air, the lead Archangel Tyrant jerked backward. The Eternal Death materialized directly upon the back of the construct. It prioritized the primary source of healing magic. Claws sank deep into the divine armor. The metal yielded like wet parchment.
A crunch echoed through the nave. The nightmare gripped the roots of the bladed wings. It applied calculated leverage. It tore the appendages from the celestial spine.
Ichor sprayed across the ceiling. The assassin discarded the ruined construct. The wingless angel plummeted into the crowd below. Unyielding boots immediately crushed the entity. The enthralled citizens did not blink. They trampled the dying angel in silence.
Then the needles erupted.
Thousands of blades exploded outward from the shadow of the creature. The attack formed a spherical blast of necrotic energy. These projectiles ignored predictable trajectories. They curved through the air with sentience. They bypassed raised shields entirely.
The needles sought microscopic gaps in plate armor. They found the iron slits of visors. They pierced the unprotected throats of chanting mages.
This ceased being a battle. It became an industrial harvest.
Horror gripped the Grand Marshal. He processed the collapse of his entire military doctrine. Every defensive formation proved useless. Every holy word shattered like brittle glass. He watched the Iron Will Battalion dismantle in seconds.
A veteran paladin stood to his left. Beren had knighted the man himself. The knight raised his kite shield. The projectiles hooked around the reinforced steel. Fifty needles impacted the warrior simultaneously. He transformed into a pincushion of glass. Blood froze instantly within his veins. The man shattered into ice before his shield could hit the floor.
A scripture leader roared to the right. "Flank the abomination!" The zealot gripped his [God Slaying Iron] spear. He charged the creature as it landed upon the polished stone. He aimed for the center mass.
The Eternal Death refused to acknowledge him. It sidestepped the thrust with liquid grace. Passing the warrior, the monster casually swiped its lowest limb.
The leader halted. His spear dropped. One second passed. The armor separated into neat ribbons. The physical body beneath followed suit. The man collapsed into a steaming pile of gore.
Moving through the ranks, the creature resembled a reaper harvesting wheat.
The assassin weaponized the momentum of the paladins. It parried broadswords. It guided lethal steel directly into the chests of allied knights. It utilized the explosions of dying mages as smokescreens. These detonations masked its relentless teleportation. It never wasted a single motion.
The last three Archangel Tyrants fell in rapid succession.
They dived in a triangle formation. Swords aimed directly at the core of the assassin.
The Eternal Death met them in the air. It butchered the constructs with clinical speed. A flick of a wrist cleanly decapitated the first angel. The monster caught the sword of the second celestial being barehanded. It shattered the blade. It disemboweled the angel using the broken shards.
Blurring directly in front of the final construct, the entity punched a fist straight through the chest plate. The hand closed. It crushed the core into powder.
The guardians dissolved into fading motes of light.
Ten minutes later, the screaming stopped.
The nave resembled a lake of blood. Over four hundred heroes belonging to the Slane Theocracy lay in heaps. Bodies twisted into mocking shapes.
Enthralled civilians stood perfectly still along the edges of the room. Blood splattered their blank faces. Their eyes remained vacant pools of nothingness.
The dripping of ichor falling from the rafters served as the only remaining sound.
Grand Marshal Beren stood alone in the center of the charnel house.
Dents marred his armor. His breath came in ragged sobs. Decades of holy war had forged his tactical mind. Now, the mind fractured under the crushing weight of hopelessness. He had sworn to buy the Cardinals time. He realized his sacrifice had barely delayed the inevitable.
Steel meant nothing. Magic meant nothing. The gods themselves had gone silent. Only the Sorcerer King remained, represented by the manifestation of death sent to claim them.
Beren raised his weapon one last time. He shifted his stance into a final guard.
The blade was dark. The luminescence had faded completely. The magic of the relic remained tied to the faith of its wielder. That faith was broken. The sword functioned now as nothing more than a piece of useless iron.
The eternal death materialized directly in front of him. No air was displaced.
It did not strike. It did not draw a weapon. A freezing claw reached out. It bypassed his guard entirely. It gripped Beren by the throat.
Steel groaned. The gorget buckled inward under effortless pressure. The assassin lifted the Grand Marshal off the floor using one arm. Beren weighed no more than a leaf in the grip of the monster.
He grasped desperately at the forearm. Boots kicked uselessly in the empty air. He looked deep into those multifaceted eyes. He searched for a shred of malice. He sought anything a human mind could comprehend.
He saw only the void. An endless abyss devoid of empathy or triumph.
Kill me, Beren wheezed.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Vision tunneled as the grip severed the flow of oxygen to his brain. He wanted to die here. He wanted to rest surrounded by his men. He did not want to see the fall of the final sanctuary.
The creature denied him mercy. It squeezed the artery with calculated pressure. The world faded to black.
The Eternal Death stepped backward as the consciousness of the Grand Marshal vanished. It melted into the shadows. It dragged the supreme commander of the Theocracy down into the dark. Nazarick had claimed its prize.
High above the slaughter, the bruised sky looked down upon Kami Miyako.
The capital resembled a tapestry of fire from an aerial view. Embers replaced residential districts. The marching dead choked the grand avenues. Columns of smoke blotted out the moon.
Yet, the Holy Plaza remained unnaturally dark amidst the sea of flames.
The Cathedral of Darkness stood at the center like a jagged tooth. It radiated no light. It emitted no sound. The structure formed a sphere of absolute silence. It had successfully swallowed the hearts and the finest heroes of the human resistance.
The night was not over.
Bronze doors belonging to the Earth Cathedral remained locked across the plaza. Tens of thousands of refugees huddled in the interior. They shivered in the freezing dark. They whispered prayers to deaf gods. They listened to the silence outside. They remained entirely unaware that the shield of humanity had just been shattered. The true horrors of the dark were now turning their gaze toward the final sanctuary.