The boom of the stone doors echoed the slamming of a cage. The torchlight painted the cavern in flickering, hellish shades of orange and red, revealing the sheer scale of the ambush. Elite cultist warriors lined the walls, standing on carved ledges like silent, porcelain-faced gargoyles. They were clad in dark, hardened leather armor, each one armed with wickedly curved swords that pulsed with a faint, corrupt energy. The High Priest let out a soft, condescending chuckle. "Such a clever plan," he said, his voice dripping with mockery. "The bait, the hook. We were so very impressed. It is a shame you are merely actors in a play we wrote long ago." He gestured to a large, ornate stand next to the fleshy altar. Resting upon it was a sphere of polished, black obsidian, about the size of a human head. As they watched, a single, glowing red iris opened within its depths, swiveling to fix its gaze directly on Edward. "You see," the High Priest continued, his tone that of a lecturer explaining a simple concept to a child, "our god is a generous one. To its most faithful, it grants gifts. This is the All-Seeing Eye, a Divine-Grade artifact, bestowed upon us by a System Avatar itself. It does not merely see what is. It sees what will be. It sees the threads of fate. I saw your little meeting in the observatory. I saw you follow my acolytes. I saw this very moment, this very trap, weeks before you even conceived of your plan." The air crackled with energy as the cultists on the ledges drew power from the altar. The tips of their corrupted swords began to glow with a malevolent, purple light. There was no time for a strategy. There was no room for retreat. There was only the fight. "Fenris! Left!" Edward yelled, his voice cutting through the priest’s monologue. The battle erupted in an explosion of sound and violence. Edward, Selene, and Fenris fell back into the center of the cavern, forming a defensive triangle, their backs to each other. The cultists swarmed them from all sides, a tide of silent, masked killers. The combat was a desperate, swirling melee. Edward was a whirlwind of black steel. His Sovereign blades, Regret and Resolve, became extensions of his will, a blur of motion that met the cultists’ charge head-on. He didn’t have time for finesse. It was pure, brutal efficiency—a parry, a thrust, a spinning kick, another body falling. His movements were economical and deadly, honed by a thousand life-or-death struggles. Fenris was a force of nature. She let out a defiant, earth-shaking roar and met the swarm with the sheer, unstoppable power of a brawling berserker. Her adamantite gauntlets were twin battering rams, shattering swords, denting armor, and sending bodies flying with every thunderous blow. She was not a soldier; she was a natural disaster, a living wall of fury that protected their flank. Selene was a ghost in the chaos. She moved between her allies, a fluid dance of evasion and death. Her twin daggers flashed, finding the gaps in the cultists’ defenses with surgical precision—a hamstring, a wrist, a throat. She was not fighting a battle; she was performing a cull, her movements graceful and terrifyingly precise. But for every cultist they cut down, two more seemed to take their place. They were hopelessly outnumbered. Nᴇw novel chapters are publɪshed on 𝔫𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔩•𝗳𝗂𝗋𝖾•𝕟𝕖𝕥 On the altar, Seraphina struggled against her shadowy bonds, her face a mask of frustration. She was a warrior forced to be a spectator, watching her last, best hope being slowly drowned in a sea of enemies. The High Priest watched the spectacle with an air of detached amusement, as if observing a particularly interesting insect infestation. "Impressive," he commented loudly over the din of battle. "The legendary Soul Devourer, the Unchained Brawler, the Crimson Shadow. You are everything the stories say. But stories end. And yours ends here." He turned his attention back to the altar, raising his obsidian dagger once more. "You have served your purpose," he said to the struggling princess. "You have brought the key to the lock. Now, the final sacrifice must be made." As he began to chant again, the fleshy altar pulsed violently. The red light intensified, and the air in the cavern grew heavy, thick with a pressure that made it hard to breathe. Edward saw it then. A faint, shimmering tear in the very fabric of reality was beginning to form in the air above the altar. It started as a hairline crack, a splinter in the world, but with every word the priest uttered, it grew wider, darker. The cultists redoubled their attack, their movements growing more frenzied, more desperate. They were no longer trying to just kill them; they were trying to keep them occupied, to pin them down until the ritual was complete. Edward and Seraphina locked eyes across the battlefield. An unspoken understanding passed between them. They were out of time. In that moment, their strange, forced alliance was forged into something real. They were no longer a fugitive and a princess. They were two soldiers fighting back-to-back in a war against a force that would consume them all. Edward shifted his fighting style. He was no longer just defending his position. He began to push forward, cutting a bloody path through the cultists, trying to get to the High Priest. At the same time, Seraphina, using a hidden blade in her boot she had managed to free, began to saw at the tendrils binding her wrists. Their enemies fought with the strength of fanatics, but Edward and Seraphina fought with the fire of the truly desperate. He fought for the millions who would die. She fought for the kingdom she was sworn to protect. He parried a downward slash from one cultist and drove his dagger, Resolve, into the throat of another. He could see the rift widening, the darkness within it swirling like a hungry vortex. "You are too late, Soul Devourer!" the High Priest cackled, his voice rising in triumph as he plunged his dagger down towards Seraphina’s heart. "The door is open! The Great Cleansing begins now!"