Golden lights condensed into great fingers spanning the length of the sky, clasping slowly the outline of a handle grander than anything Edric had ever seen. Its tip split the clouds wide open, sending a shower of golden lights across Belgrave, motes of it merging to his armor and feeding into the inner flame, giving him sacred strength.

“Blessed Father,” he muttered as he carved a Shifter’s body with a fist, the monster exploding into a heap of flesh and blood. Parts of it spattered over his armor, but Edric moved on, beating against the horde, a man and his armor, weapon in the hand his sole company. The disciples around his back were glowing with strength. Divine strength, now coursing through their veins.

Stories told of men who braved the dark tides for years and centuries, of honorable warriors resisting the filth of the Tainted Father with no salvation in sight.

That was the first breaking. Blessed Father himself broke the world into continents, lending his believers space to breathe. To cumulate their strength and wrap their wounds for another battle. Swarms of the Tainted Father drowned in the endless depths of the oceans, and what few of them managed to cling to the continents of the humans were cleaned with dutiful precision.

His sons and daughters descended upon the land, and taught the mankind the ways to get better. Centuries and thousands of years of effort. The world broke and it got patched again. It broke a total of nine times to no avail.

At least that’s what the stories said. Edric never much believed them. When you have too many Divine Orders you get too many tales about how the world came to be. And the moment you peeked underneath them you see the various inconsistencies riddling those times.

If the Blessed Father and the other Divine Orders were all mighty and strong, then why did humanity have to rely on Resni to do the Carving? Couldn’t they have interfered with their boundless divinity and saved them like they did in so many tales? And yet they cowed, in their eternal glory, to the unknown that were the Ancients and their inconceivable existences.

Good thing the people never read too much into it. Good thing they preferred to be told about their history rather than making an effort to learn it for themselves.

That was how the Golden Church managed to keep itself alive after all these years. That and the sheer stubbornness they cultivated in times of need. Ask any man in the Broken Lands, however, then you’d get a scoff and a pat on the back. They didn’t care for the Divine Orders. They had cast away the golden veil shrouding their eyes from the truth long ago after dealing with the damned with their own means.

But they had never seen this sight before. Nobody did, which was why Edric couldn’t resist the Thrill burning in his heart. A zealous, he was not, but it was getting harder to ignore the inner flame flaring in his heart.

The Wretched Mother’s Eye in the sky watched, helpless, a tiny speck against the incoming sword. It alone bloated the sky.

Was this how the Blessed Father butchered the Eyeless in those times? A sword through the eye. Seemed simple enough. Edric would’ve done the same if he could hold a weapon of that magnitude.

“Blessed Father,” he mumbled as a tide of undead stumbled clumsily back from the lights covering his armor. The green fog in their eyes wavered as if unsure, as if in doubt whether it’d be wise to try and take this Templar of all people. He was alone, wasn’t he? Deep in the lines with Mas and the disciples further into the back.

Then why did he feel in control? More than ever, he trusted his strength and the doubts clouding his mind gave way to an absolute conviction. The Divines were real. The boundaries were real. Here, they were coming to life, and they were coming for the Damned.

Poor souls, they were. Perhaps, Edric thought, just like him they had never believed it. Perhaps they thought the tales were just that, tales. Stories of a time that no one remembered.

“Blessed Father,” Edric muttered as the Bishop’s form in the sky crumbled into motes of light.

A worthy sacrifice from a Dawnkeeper. Feeding the boundaries with his own life. That was a good way of dying, unlike how Edric’s father killed himself with a rope round the neck. A good way of going off with hundreds to witness the last seconds of his glory.

But the job was not yet done.

…

We are done for.

The moment Nomad reached him and stabbed his sword through a particularly stubborn Shrieker trying to get to him was the moment Valens understood how great of a distance they had to the dais. It was right there, painfully close, a dozen or so steps away from where they stood.

Trouble was, that distance was full of the swarming horde of shadows squirming toward them under the orders of their Mistress.

Inferno’s flames ate away at the Hollows and scorched them clean, but against the Shriekers they were struggling. The twisted creatures could phase through them, and raising a block of solid earth only stalled them for a few seconds since Valens had to pay attention to all the sides.

“We’re too late,” Nomad huffed a labored breath as he swept his sword around to give them some space. There were holes in his skin, sturdy bones visible through them. “That damn Gate is about to be opened. We should get away while we can, Val. You can’t stop this.”

A deep tremor ran through the ground, rattling the walls around them, sending Valens stumbling back as earth groaned and fissured with the pressure. Boulders being ripped out from the thick shroud that covered the Gate’s metallic face hurtled across the hall, squelched into the swarm of shadows, and crumbled into thousands of pieces.

All the while the frequencies of the Resonance shambled in a nauseating mess. High-pitched screams over the din, Valens heard, and there were deeper frequencies there trying to ooze from the small slit that had opened around the Gate. Their outline was bleak, but the sheer might they radiated from beyond the Gate of Surges sent shivers down his spine.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Whatever it was that tried to escape from the earth… These Shriekers and Hollows were nothing in the face of that creature’s size.

“We’re in too deep!” Valens said wearily as Inferno blasted a group of Hollows coming at his face. He then cast a gaze through the chaos and saw Garran and Dain were close to Lenora now. If they could somehow stop her from bleeding… if they could somehow put an end to her sacrifice—

Then what?

Help wasn’t coming. There was a giant horde before the Golden Cathedral, scores of undead and Shifters keeping the Church’s army busy. Valens also surely doubted the others in the city were aware of the dark work going under the Cathedral to flock here right away. The Magi and the so-called adventurers of various Guilds. Most of them had already fled, leaving the people of Brackley alone against their fast-approaching end.

But then, that was what Percival had told him, right? Those people could talk all they want of the deeds and their pasts, of their skills and their grand guilds, but when things get too hard and dark for the people, you couldn’t even see a speck of them in the heat of it.

A claw nicked him by the arm. The warmth of his own blood forced Valens’s mind back to the hall. He scowled out into the distance while sending a tendril of his Inferno blazing toward that Shrieker. Wormed it deviously up its mouth when it looked like the creature was about to scream.

It, instead, choked on a great deal of blazing fury.

A notification popped up.

‘Ding’ You have managed to defeat [Shrieker - lvl 167]! For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.

Your First Trial hasn’t been completed yet. The gained experience has been stored.

Again, this. He must’ve killed dozens of creatures of dark origins by now, but the most he had gotten from that haul was a few skill levels. His First Trial kept him pinned in the same spot, away from the glorious rush of new stats. Still, the mention that the experience had been stored meant that he would get the result of that haul if he could manage to be done with this Trial.

Question was, could he do it before that damn woman relieved Belgrave from being the capital of Melton? Before Terrors and Dreads escaped from that Gate underneath their feet? Even if he could do it, would it make a difference?

He had dealt with a Remnant Terror before, but that wasn’t about his stats or his level. The Weeping Horror was just a stray soul, bound still to the Spiritum, waiting for its Mother to actually be brought back to the real world. Snapping the threads that had summoned it to the mine had been easy enough, but to actually kill it with sheer force?

That would’ve been impossible.

“We have no other choice,” Valens said, sweat trickling down the side of his face. When Nomad snapped back at him, he pointed a finger to the dais ahead. “I need to get to those shards. That’s the only way—”

Golden lights exploded, screaming and tearing into the shadowy swarm, illuminating the dreary hall as if the sun itself had descended upon this dark tide. Valens reeled back with one hand over his eyes, his sound vision a mess of dancing lines, ears popping and heart thumping in his chest.

He blinked from between his fingers to see about the sudden change and saw the two Templars out there over the swarm. Their armors were alive, golden swords smothered in holy flames that hissed against the touch of anything damned that dared to come close.

“This…” Valens swallowed.

Something was happening above the Cathedral, and that something was affecting the Templars here. He could feel the invisible strength being poured into those two, the outside force feeding into their bodies. It felt boundless, endless, like the time when he saw the eye in the sky.

Nomad broke under the pressure. His knees buckled down, the sword slipping from his fingers. He rasped as he tried clumsily to raise his head, but failed as he slowly stooped as if he had lost all his strength.

“The boundaries,” he spattered, the skin across his bones rotting visibly, rot and pus oozing from the false teeth in his mouth. “The boundaries…”

Even the Evercrest woman stumbled back against the sight.

That decided it.

Valens made his decision.

“Come on,” he said, pushing a hand onto Nomad’s Heartstone. “This is our chance.”

Lifesurge threads poured in to relieve him of the sacred pressure. Lifemana waves washed him through and through. Slowly, Nomad pulled himself to his feet with Valens’s help, blinking around at him as if he’d been in a dream.

“Move!” Valens sent the Inferno’s flames drilling into the wavering lines ahead. The shadows were a mess as they reeled against the holy lights, wailed in their sorrowful melody as the two began bounding through their horde.

One step at a time, then it became two. Valens felt with each Light Feet his mana pool taking another hit. He was about to dry, and if that happened before he could reach those Riftshards, then the help of the Blessed Father would go to a terrible waste.

Can’t let that happen, can we?

Onward, through the broken lines, Shriekers holding their eyes in pain, Hollows scrambling to get away, the fog churning mindlessly about. The Evercrest woman worked her mist into tendrils and tried to establish something of an order, but it wasn’t easy when the two suns overhead refused to die out.

They reached Lenora, then they paused. The Hexmender didn’t seem to care for them. She was bleeding, drops of dark blood feeding into the Gate underneath the earth, her wings corroding at a visible rate as the scales across her skin peeled.

Burning swords hacked at her wings, carved through the pulsing veins, hissing, screeching, sending out a reek across the hall. She didn’t fall. She didn’t reach. She just stood there, taken by fog, more blood pouring from the newly opened wounds.

No! They’re making it worse!

The ground shook uncontrollably as Valens and Nomad stumbled closer to the dais. When they reached it, Nomad opened the path with his sword, allowing Valens to step through and into the embrace of the intense mana clouding the platform.

With one deep breath, he sucked the ambient mana in.

His mana source roared in answer, absorbing greedily the heavenly source like a patch of earth left dried for centuries. The mana was everywhere around him, spilling from the Ancient Riftshards, enough to fill his little source hundreds of times over.

Had there ever been a Mage back in the Empire fortunate enough to come across such an amount in their lifetimes?

Valens didn’t know, but the mana pouring into his body made his head light. The doubts and the worries, the swarm of shadows crowding the hall, the Templars hacking at the Hexmender, the Evercrest woman looking as though she ate something wicked…

Everything fell into a lull, in which Valens remained the sole person in control. The Inferno flames rose impossibly high now that they weren’t being fed by what little mana Valens could host. They burnt through the Hollows and scattered their ashes down the ground.

Then came the fog. The sticky, slimy, insidious fog ever present in the hall. The frequencies of it were never this clear. Valens could feel its touch everywhere, down across his arms, close to his chest, seeking holes to seep through.

Enough.

Hexsurge answered his call as he probed the woman’s mist. The Void’s layers opened up before his eyes, allowing him to see the lengths at which the fog managed to pass through. Hundreds and thousands of lines across the hall, being fed by the woman who stood in the midst of the horde, looking straight into his eyes with hatred.

It was a web. Much bigger than that Necromancer’s, grander than anything Valens had ever seen, and this time Valens had to cleanse it.

He looked at the Ancient Riftshards around him.

Good thing he had enough mana to work with.

Good thing—

The ground blasted off into splinters as the hall gave way. The Shriekers and the Hollows fell in through cracks, losing themselves through the debris. An earthquake shook the pews and sent them crumbling away. Walls came off. Boulders rained down.

And a hand stretched out from the Gate of Surges.

A scaled, giant hand with its fingers long enough to bloat the hall.

Then came the tell-tale notification of its existence.

[You are in the presence of a Dread.]

“Shit,” Valens muttered, before he lost his weight as the whole ground rose like a giant tide.

……