The air in the grand hall was not merely cold; it was predatory.
The Black Knight stood at the far end of the nave, a towering monolith of anthracite steel. The red flames in its visor pulsed with the rhythm of a dying star. As the cohort stepped onto the cracked marble floor, the darkness clinging to the vaulted ceiling began to drip down like viscous oil, pooling around the knight's greaves.
"The sword," Alista whispered, his eyes locked on the massive, notched claymore the creature held. "The soul isn't in the armor. It's in the blade. Break the steel, and the Devil dies."
The Black Knight did not move so much as he ceased to be in one place and appeared in another. He merged with the shadows, crossing thirty meters in a heartbeat.
"Artemis! Now!" Alista roared.
Artemis slammed her hands toward the floor. The air became soup. The marble tiles groaned and pulverized under the sudden, crushing weight. The Knight, caught mid-lunge, was slammed into the floor. The sheer force of the gravity should have crushed a tank, but the anthracite armor merely sparked.
"Klaus, distract it!"
Klaus lashed his whip at two fallen stone angels. The statues shuddered to life, their stone wings cracking as they grappled with the fallen giant.
"Fors, find the angle!" Alista shouted, drawing his own blade.
Fors Wall was a blur of motion. Blink. She appeared on a high ledge. Blink. She was behind a pillar. She notched an arrow, waiting for the moment the Knight's guard dropped.
Alista stepped into the fray. He didn't strike yet. He reached into his pouch and threw a handful of glowing Soul Shards—not at the Knight, but into the shadows surrounding it.
The Knight's silent, methodical movements stuttered. The "debt" of the bribe forced a surge of irrational confidence into its ancient, cold mind. The creature, which had been fighting with the efficiency of a machine, suddenly let out a muffled, metallic roar. It ignored the stone angels, batting them aside with enough force to turn them into pebbles, and lunged directly at Alista in a reckless, wide-arched swing.
"It's working!" Klaus yelled, though sweat was pouring down his face. "He's getting sloppy!"
But "sloppy" for a Fallen Devil was still lethal. The Knight's speed, bolstered by the darkness, was terrifying. He swung the claymore, and the shockwave sent a gust of freezing wind that knocked Gwen off her feet.
"Gwen, don't let the darkness touch us!"
Gwen stood her ground, her whip cracking in a circle. Healing Field. A dome of golden, iridescent light erupted. The darkness hissed as it touched the perimeter, sounding like water on a hot griddle. Within the circle, the cohort's wounds closed, and their fatigue vanished—but Gwen's face turned paper-white. The drain on her essence was immense.
The Knight realized the light was the source of their resilience. He turned his red gaze toward Gwen.
"Protect her!" Artemis screamed, increasing the gravity around the Knight to the point of structural collapse.
The Knight struggled, his armor groaning. He looked at Alista, then at Gwen. In a final, desperate burst of power, he commanded the darkness. The hall went pitch black. Even Gwen's light was stifled to a faint glimmer.
In the dark, the Knight was immortal. Every crack Artemis had forced into his armor healed instantly.
"Fors! The sword!" Alista's voice rang out through the gloom.
Alista didn't retreat. He did the unthinkable. He charged into the darkness, away from the safety of Gwen's light. He used his last Bribe—his own life's blood smeared on his blade—and thrust it toward the Knight.
"Take it!" Alista spat.
The Knight, blinded by the forced arrogance of Alista's aspect, didn't parry. He welcomed the blow, intending to crush Alista in return. Alista's sword pierced the anthracite chest plate, but the Knight's claymore descended like a falling sky.
The heavy steel sheared through Alista's shoulder and chest. He fell, blood spraying the marble, but he held on to the Knight's arm with a death grip.
"Now, Fors! Do it!"
Fors Wall used her final teleport. She didn't appear behind a pillar or on a ledge. She appeared on the Knight's shoulders.
She didn't use an arrow. She dropped her bow, grabbed the hilt of the Knight's massive claymore with both hands, and poured every ounce of her essence into a single, localized space.
"Break!" she screamed.
Artemis pivoted her gravity field, focusing all the pressure not on the Knight, but on the single point where Fors was pulling.
CRACK.
The black steel claymore, the vessel of the Devil's soul, shattered into a thousand jagged shards.
The red flames in the Knight's visor didn't fade—they exploded. A shockwave of pure, dark energy radiated from the broken blade.
Fors was thrown backward, her body slamming into a stone pillar with a sickening crunch. She fell to the ground, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, her life essence extinguished in the blast.
The Black Knight began to dissolve. The anthracite armor turned to ash, falling in a heavy pile over Alista Tudor.
Klaus and Gwen rushed forward as the darkness finally receded, leaving the hall illuminated by the pale moonlight through the broken roof.
"Alista!" Klaus cried out, reaching the pile of ash.
He pulled the Blood Emperor out. Alista's chest was a ruin. The claymore had struck true. Gwen dropped to her knees, her hands glowing with a frantic, desperate light, but the wound was too deep. The life was already leaving his eyes.
Alista looked at the broken shards of the black sword, then at the distant form of Fors. A small, sad smile touched his lips.
"The... Shore... has hope now," he whispered.
His hand fell limp. The light in his eyes dimmed, and the Blood Emperor, the man who had dared to challenge the Bright Lord, was gone.
Gwen let out a silent, heartbroken sob, her glowing hands trembling over his cold chest. Klaus stood up, looking at the two fallen members of their cohort. They had won. The Fallen Devil was dead. But the price... the price had been the soul of their group.
The Ruined Cathedral stood silent once more, a tomb for a Knight and the King who had slain him.
******
The air in the subterranean passage was thick, tasting of cold stone and the bitter tang of grief. Artemis led the way up the winding stone staircase, her footsteps heavy and mechanical. Behind her, Klaus and Gwen followed in a silence so profound it felt like a physical weight pressing against their chests.
The mood had not recovered. It wouldn't for a long time.
The image of the Cathedral's floor was burned into their minds: the ash of the Fallen Devil, the shattered remains of the black claymore, and the two bodies that would never rise again. Before the final, catastrophic exchange that claimed their lives, Alista and Fors had spoken of a "Good Memory"—something they believed was hidden deep within this sanctum, a tool intended to help Alista in his future confrontation with the Bright Lord.
Now, that future was a ghost.
Gwen walked with her head bowed, her shoulders shaking with quiet, rhythmic tremors. She was still crying, the tears carving clean tracks through the soot and dried blood on her cheeks. She had been their healer, the one who kept the threads of their lives woven together. To lose two of their own—to lose their leader and their scout in a single breath—was a failure she couldn't yet process.
As they reached the base of the spiraling stairs, they faced a massive door forged from lusterless black steel. It stood as a silent sentinel, illuminated by two burning torches mounted on the walls. The flames were eerie, flickering with a pale, ghostly light that provided visibility without a hint of warmth. The chill in the air was spiritual, a biting cold that seemed to emanate from the steel itself.
Gwen stopped a few paces from the threshold. She raised her hands, her movements slow and weary as she signaled to Artemis and Klaus.
[Let me stay here,] she signed, her eyes red-rimmed and hollow. [You two go inside. Someone needs to stand guard out here. Someone needs to watch the path back.]
Klaus looked at her, wanting to protest, to tell her she shouldn't be alone. But he saw the absolute gloom in her posture. She didn't want to see whatever prize lay beyond that door; she wanted the silence of the corridor to match the silence in her heart.
Artemis gave a grim, understanding nod. Without a word, she and Klaus pushed against the heavy steel doors and disappeared into the chamber beyond.
Left in the ghostly pale light, Gwen leaned against the cold masonry. She felt small in the vastness of the ruins. Seeking any distraction from the darkness behind her eyelids, she slowly tilted her head back, looking up at the high, vaulted ceiling of the antechamber.
Her breath hitched.
There, stretching across the expanse of the ceiling, was an intricate mural