Chapter 84: The First Wave (8)
Malrik’s cracked lips curved into a faint, joyless smile.
"...Perfect."
He raised his good hand, palm facing forward. Soul Rend bloomed across his palm again, smaller this time and more precise.
The green flame split into three thin strands, each one reaching toward a different target and passing straight through flesh and bone to tear into the souls beneath.
The Morveth didn’t even get a scream out. A muffled gurgle, and their bodies locked mid-climb before dropping off the wall in a heap.
Malrik crawled forward, leaning on the broken spear, every step sending fresh fire through his ribs. He dragged the three corpses into position — one, two, three — arranged in a triangle, took his place at the center with wide gaps between each body, and raised his hand.
Corpse Explosion.
All three detonated at once, their explosions overlapping in the center and erupting into a thick cloud of fire, ash, and pulverized flesh that swallowed Malrik’s position whole.
Smoke rolled across the scorched ground, thick enough to erase him from sight completely. Even the soldiers fighting nearby lost track of him.
Inside the smoke, something began to change.
A shape slowly emerged within the fog, long and curved, its coal-black blade honed into a perfect crescent. Green and black mana pulsed around it, casting a dense glow through the smoke.
Two eyes appeared behind the blade, burning with an intense emerald light. Their glow remained steady and cold as the figure stayed hidden within the fog.
The scythe rose higher, its blade radiant with the same green and black mana. For a moment, the only thing visible through the smoke was that glowing crescent and those two emerald eyes.
Then Malrik’s hoarse voice came from within the fog, low and steady.
"...Reaper’s Blessing."
Where the two matching giants were still fighting, the Fallen had forced Lokris down onto one knee.
It stood over him, axes raised, savoring the moment like it savored everything.
"...There it is," it said, almost gently. "The moment the copy remembers that no matter how perfectly it wears my face, it will never be the ori..."
The words died in its throat. Something had changed.
Lokris’s emerald eyes flared brighter, and the mana surrounding his body suddenly grew denser. The air around him seemed to tighten as his presence rose another level.
The Fallen’s smile vanished "...What."
The next time Lokris swung, the Fallen barely got both axes up in time.
The impact drove it several steps backward, its feet gouging deep furrows through the scorched earth as it struggled to absorb the blow.
It recovered just in time for another strike. This one came faster, forcing the Fallen to twist its body and catch the axe at an angle, but the force still drove it back another step.
The Fallen’s movements grew more desperate with each exchange. It was still blocking, still fighting, but the balance between them had shifted completely.
The copy that had struggled to match it moments ago was now forcing it backward with every swing, leaving less and less room for it to recover.
"Impossible." The word came out broken. "You were....a second ago, you were.."
Lokris didn’t answer. His smile just widened.
Then he laughed. "Hahahaha."
It wasn’t a laugh that belonged on a battlefield. It rose from the scorched ground, low and unsettlingly delighted, spreading far enough to make nearby soldiers turn toward it without meaning to.
Weapons froze mid-swing as humans and Morveth alike instinctively backed away, retreating well beyond fifty meters and putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the battle raging at the center.
The battlefield around the two combatants gradually emptied, leaving a wide stretch of scorched earth between them and everyone else, as though the fight unfolding there belonged to an entirely different level of power.
Only a handful held their positions, close enough to actually see what was happening.
Ronan, Kael, Seren, and Garrick were among them, but even they didn’t dare step closer — they stood tense, weapons half-raised, while the pressure rolling off the fight made every breath heavier than the last.
The battle had crossed into territory where an ordinary Awakened could barely stand upright, let alone follow it clearly.
"Are the Morveth... fighting each other?" a soldier stammered, backing away.
"Why do they look the same?" another muttered, voice shaking. "Like one’s a reflection of the other?"
"No," a third said, staring, unable to look away. "Look — that one. The one glowing green. It looks stronger than the other."
As if to prove him right, Lokris brought his axe down again.
Every strike now landed with enough force to drive the Fallen backward. The one that had spent the entire fight dictating the pace was now trapped behind its own axes, doing little more than blocking. Each blow that missed its body tore into the ground hard enough to leave another crater behind.
"Damn you."
Lokris’s expression never changed — still a perfect match for the Fallen’s bull-like face. The smile stayed exactly where it was, only widening, growing more unhinged with every passing second. And his attacks started turning into something savage. Something built purely to kill.
Inside the smoke, Malrik followed the fight in silence. Lokris was pressing hard, but his own body was falling apart fast — the pain in his ribs sharpening, his knees starting to shake under his own weight.
He didn’t have much time left to spend. His body had hit its limit.
He raised his hand, and the green flame lit above his palm.
"Time to end this."
The fight kept going without pause. Axe met axe again and again, each collision pushing them a step back before one of them surged forward once more.
Then, mid-swing, the Fallen froze. Its eyes went wide.
Something had torn through its soul — far more violent than the last time.
Its axe veered off course, its whole body trembling from the sudden assault.
That was enough. Lokris’s axe shot forward in one precise strike and severed the Fallen’s arm at the shoulder. It hit the ground before the creature even understood what had happened.
Blood erupted from the wound. The Fallen staggered back before one knee finally gave out.
Every trace of fighting spirit drained from its face at once, replaced by something it probably hadn’t felt in a very long time.
Fear.
It clutched at its chest, heart slamming, eyes wide as it stumbled a step back without meaning to.
Lokris stood over it, smiling.
It wasn’t mockery this time. The smile stretched too wide across his rigid, bull-like face, his shoulders shaking with a low laugh he couldn’t quite hold in.
"Ha... hahaha..."
He tilted his head slightly, like he was enjoying the sound of its fear more than the fight itself.
Then his axe swung in one straight line, and the Fallen’s head left its shoulders in a single clean arc.
"Die for the King."
Blood sprayed across Lokris’s face. The smile never moved.
Across the field, the Morveth froze at the sight of their leader’s head hitting the dirt. The savagery drained out of their eyes, replaced by something closer to panic.
Then they broke — one after another, streaming toward the treeline in total chaos, leaving the battlefield behind without a single look back.
Smoke already hanging over part of the battlefield drifted across the ground, gradually swallowing Lokris from view.
For a moment, his silhouette remained visible through the haze. Then his body began to come apart.
His features faded, dissolving into green and black particles drifting into the smoke, until nothing remained of the creature that had stood there seconds ago.
A few moments later, someone stepped out of the smoke.
His face was pale, clothes soaked through with blood, one hand gripping a broken spear he was clearly trying to lean on. He looked barely able to stay upright.
It was Malrik.
His body swayed once, then started to tip forward, about to hit the ground.
Before he could, an arm caught him by the shoulders and pulled him upright. Malrik lifted his eyes to find Ronan beside him, grinning that bright, restless grin of his.
"We did it."
Malrik stared at him for a beat, then glanced down at how Ronan was holding him and spoke through a broken breath.
"Easy... could you put me down? I’d rather people not get the wrong idea."
Ronan didn’t hear a word of it. He hauled him higher, laughing, shaking him with enthusiasm, seemingly not noticing that the man in his arms was about thirty seconds from passing out.
He kept him pinned with one arm, turned toward the battlefield, raised his other fist to the sky, and shouted loud enough for every soldier still standing to hear.
"WE DID IT!"
For a heartbeat, the battlefield seemed to hold its breath. The retreating Morveth were already disappearing toward the forest, while the soldiers simply stared after them, bloodied and exhausted, as if none of them quite believed what they were seeing.
They had spent the entire battle certain they would die here, certain this war would end with their names among the dead, only to finally realize that they had actually won.
Someone started laughing. Another started crying. A soldier dropped to his knees in the dirt and broke down completely, hands over his face, shoulders shaking.
Then someone screamed.
A cheer tore out of the crowd, ragged and half a sob, and it caught fast, soldier after soldier picking it up until it was no longer scattered noise but one voice rolling across the battlefield.
"WE LIVE!"
Someone screamed it first, hoarse and cracked, barely managing the words. Then it wasn’t one voice anymore. Dozens took it up, then hundreds, fists and weapons raised toward the smoke-choked sky as the chant crashed over the ruined walls in wave after wave.
"WE LIVE! WE LIVE! WE LIVE!"
A soldier grabbed the man beside him and hugged him hard enough to lift him off the ground, both of them laughing and crying at once. Someone began beating a broken shield against the stone like a drum.
It wasn’t discipline. It wasn’t order. It was everything they had been holding back finally breaking loose, and nobody tried to stop it.
Ronan’s group gathered around Malrik, exhausted and bloody, smiling as the roar of the crowd crashed around them like a tide.
And for one short, aching moment, none of them thought about tomorrow.
The war wasn’t over. This wasn’t the end.
But this victory was theirs. And today, they were still alive to scream about it.