He was there, over the platform, sucking in the endless mana pouring out from the Ancient Riftshards. The ecstasy, the thrill, the sensation of being in an ocean of mana. It was hard to describe. Hard to force his mind into action when all he wanted was to experience the pleasure of it.

He couldn’t.

The ground rose. It ruptured. The whole hall got lifted by an enormous palm jutting out of the Gate of Surges, dozens and hundreds of shadows stumbling to find their balance, the two Templars holding onto Lenora as they were sent reeling back with the sudden impact, Valens hanging dearly for his life to the platform as the ceiling above them got crushed by the pressure.

Then they were off, Nomad by his side, breaking through the floors one by one.

“Hold on!” Nomad growled as he pulled Valens with a rotten hand, the other hand fixed tightly into the crevices of the platform as they hurtled upward with the giant palm pushing the ground high.

Gravel rained down upon them in an endless tide, biting, scratching, leaving them completely out in the open. Breath hitched in Valens’s chest. He felt weightless, like a leaf being flung round by a mighty storm, tears trickling down his eyes.

He saw the ceiling of another floor coming close. Or rather, they were closing on it with impossible speed. A twisted scene from a twisted dream. They were being hauled off by a giant creature that, for some reason, wanted to get to the surface.

What do you do against a Dread? A creature that was higher than a Terror and was beyond the Fourth Trial?

You hold on.

No other way around it.

He saw out of the corner of his eyes the state of the former hall. Selin and Celme weren’t there. The Evercrest woman stood amongst the shadows, laughing hysterically even as her swarm got battered by the boulders. Everything around Valens had been swept into a flashing chaos, and another giant hand was moving out in the far, punching through the ceiling to make way for the creature.

Just then, the palm upon which they stood began closing like a fist with fingers tightening in slow deliberation as the Dread prepared to blast its way through another floor.

Where were they, anyway?

This was still the Golden Church, right?

A Gale picked the tails of his coat, giving his feet something to work with. Valens forced his eyes open and pushed himself into a standing position. Lights and the walls. They flashed past them in a craze. The platform tattered dangerously and its edges began crumbling down as giant fingers closed in on them.

They exchanged a glance with Nomad. Valens stumbled to the edge of what seemed like a mountainous pinkie before peering down.

It wasn’t a long fall.

Because below was the back of the creature, which barely fitted the giant floors of the Golden Cathedral.

“Get one of those Riftshards!” Valens said, screaming in the din to make his voice heard. He saw Nomad giving him a nod before the undead ripped a Riftshard from the platform. Valens got another one with the Gale, then gestured Nomad to get close.

Together they stood at the edge, and together they jumped down to the back of the Dread.

Gale slowed their fall, but the momentum of the creature was still strong. They hit its back like two differently shaped boulders; one’s a human and the other’s an undead. The shadowy swarm of the Evercrest woman welcomed them. Good thing they were busy trying to hold on for their lives.

This creature is even bigger than the Weeping Horror!

But it was being nice breaking through the floors with its fists rather than shouldering its way upward across. That would have left them vulnerable out in the open. Sure, Valens could have tried and opened a way for Gravitating Earth, but he was rather doubtful if he could match the speed at which the Dread was making its way out of the ninth floor.

A Blockage around the two of them made the air breathable. Gave him some time to stop and peer around. He blinked when he saw Garran and Dain dragging a miserable-looking Lenora toward them while the shadows remained silent against their march.

It was over. They were too late to stop the woman from releasing a true Dread upon the people of Belgrave. Who knew what other horrors waited to be freed after this creature? Surely the true apocalypse was only starting since the woman had already completed her trial and opened the damn gate.

No. My job is still not done.

Valens scowled through the passing walls, breathed in the reek of dust and blood of his wounds. Patching them would take no more than a second, but pain helped him keep his mind. Pain proved a good foundation to bring his focus to what truly mattered.

People.

He could feel the fog’s influence over the air, its insidious presence still trying to worm a way across his mind. Thousands in Belgrave were taken by it. Thousands of innocent souls being used as pawns in this wicked game.

His Trial demanded that Valens was to mend what the fog had broken, but Valens needed not a Trial to tell him to fix people. That was the job, it always was. The real question was how could he accomplish it.

He reached for the Hexsurge to feel the Void’s intricate dimensions. As a novice in the field, he knew scarcely what these dimensions truly represented, but he knew how to cleanse an outside influence out from a man’s mind.

I need to get a better sense of it. A better connection to it.

“I need you to hold me still!” Valens roared with all his might to Nomad, who looked him in the eye for a second before giving him a nod. Bony fingers clasped tight around his right arm, pinning him to this part of the Dread’s back. Its sticky, steel-hard skin felt cold. Colder than a blizzard, if that was even a thing in this world.

Then slowly, Valens sucked the fog in. Breathed a mouthful and sent it down his lungs. It oozed down through his throat, across his chest, tendrils of it being drawn toward his cavity. The true Gate of Surges there, Valens’s own gate, stirred against its presence, and this time, Valens opened with a Hexsurge to let it in.

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His mind reeled. Scenes around him flashed past in an unrecognizable mess. His mind tattered on the brink of confusion, overwhelmed by the sensations it was confronted with. Blood trickled down from his nostrils, warm against his skin. Too much. This was too much for him to manage.

Then suddenly, his mind tore everything around him into pieces and Valens found himself alone in the Spiritum, inside that old castle with nothing but fog keeping him company.

[You have arrived at the Spiritum.]

There were no voices there.

No distractions.

The old hall was the same, shrouded with thick fog, the mist of the Evercrest woman sticking like a sore thumb over its waves. They looked like thin worms wriggling impatiently inside the hall, fluttering through with curiosity, searching perhaps Valens’s soul to take him in.

Let me take a good look at you.

Before that, however, Valens needed to make himself comfortable, and he had just the place for it.

[You are seated upon the Throne of the Surgemasters.]

[The Throne acknowledges your presence.]

The moment he sat down on that old seat, the fog recoiled and peeled backward with a soundless shriek. Stone columns emerged from the shroud, towering over a circular chamber. Symbols flared to life across the floor, tracing a massive, sigil-rimmed circle around the Throne.

There were seats, and yet they were empty. Today wasn’t the day for the Midnight Assembly.

Valens immediately focused on the tendrils of the mist in the hall. He reached them with a Hexsurge, feeling the underlying dimensions from where they were being fed. Reached deep into them and found himself facing thousands of different lights blinking in and out in front of his eyes.

People who got their souls taken by the fog were being reflected as tiny bulbs in this scene. They were all connected to a singular entity much like a giant ocean with dozens of streams by its side, and there over its banks was another figure, directing how the source flowed through the other streams.

Is this the Endless Mist? So the fog is coming from that Ancient rather than the woman. She is just guiding it to how she sees fit.

The moment his eyes fell upon that ocean, Valens understood how small his soul was in the face of this grand entity. Its frequencies spanned reaches across the Spiritum with no end in sight. Truly endless, as its name suggested, but by the looks of it, it lay in a state of lull.

Almost mindless. I suppose Ancients have yet to awaken.

Their children, though, were a problem. Still, if he could cut the sourceline that fed these thousands of small streams, which was the Evercrest woman, then likely he could give the people their minds back right away. It was hard to tell whether this practice would leave a mark over their minds or not, but that could wait for further examination once Valens dealt with the immediate trouble at hand.

I can feel the mana being poured out from the Ancient Riftshards. I just need to put them in good use. Put them in good use…

He reached for his Lifesurges. He had once killed a Necromancer through a trick of mind, and now, he had to save people out of the woman’s influence.

Simple, eh? You never know until you try.

………..

The Blessed Father’s sword hacked a straight line across the Wretched Mother’s Eye, sending golden lights scattering about the sky, spattering pieces of the wicked thing down Belgrave, rivers of blood spilling to wash the streets with the fallen glory of the Forsaken.

Edric’s chest rose as he breathed in the stench of the defeated. He moved in, through the undead ranks, one Shifter after another, chest burning, fingers tingling, the inner flame roaring in his chest.

The disciples had moved closer to stand with him now. Ever the obedient kids, dreaming of the day they would become Templars, now battling amid chaos to save their city from the damned. Mas was keeping an order about them with stubborn consistency, refusing to let even one of them die a pointless death.

They pressed into the squirming horde. They pressed hard into them and forced them to draw back, the Liches further back in the army trying pointlessly to batter their armor with their filthy magic.

But so long as the Blessed Father’s presence remained in the air, so long as the sacrifice of the Dawnkeeper hung thick over their heads, they might as well throw pebbles and rocks at their armor from how weak their spells proved once they splashed against the sacred lights.

It didn’t take long for Edric to force a way to one of them. A nasty-looking guy, half of his human skin already rotten by the golden lights, back stooped as he barely held onto his staff fashioned from a great deal of skulls.

The moment he approached the bastard, a score of senseless men lunged at him. Little men with little means, clawing at his armor, trying to wrap their arms around his legs, dragging him to the ground. A dozen of them, with women and children in the mix, which halted Edric to a stop as he peered down at them.

It would be as easy as flattening out a fly dealing with them. Edric wouldn’t even have to use much force. A sweep of his sword would take care of the lot of them, then he would move in and take the Lich’s false skull as his prize.

He paused. Watched the people snap their fingers against his armor. Watched them try to sink their teeth into his arms with bloody mouths hanging under bloody eyes. They weren’t aware. The Blessed Father’s presence couldn’t save them from the wicked force that was controlling them.

A look around the back showed Edric a much similar sight. The disciples were dealing with the undead, but when faced with their own people, they lingered hesitantly and looked to Mas for an order. The most they did was to push them away, force them to their knees, or knock them out for a temporary measure, but that came with its own troubles.

Not everyone in that crowd was a master of their own strength.

The sky was bleeding. The horde of the undead and Shifters used the humans as their shields while the Church’s army came to a halt. If a sword through the Wretched Mother’s eye couldn’t save these people from their slumber, what else could they do? Kill them? Butcher them senseless?

Why do we fight, at all?

Edric had to find the reason behind it. He had to find it and deal with the main trouble that was behind all of this. He had to—

The people stopped.

Bloody stubs of their fingers halted in mid-air. Thousands of them across the lines froze all of a sudden without an apparent reason. Some had their teeth broken and some others remained clinging to the armors of the disciples, mouths bloody with their eyes growing slowly wide.

Edric peered at the lot he was dealt with. He saw the emptiness in the eyes of a young woman, no older than eighteen, blond hair smeared with her own blood, the nails of her right hand splintered into pieces. Just now, she was trying to push a hand through Edric’s back as if she believed with utmost certainty that she could do it so long as she tried.

Now, she was standing there, staring at her own hand, eyes still empty as ever.

“What is happening?” Edric muttered, then scowled out into the sky. Perhaps the Blessed Father’s sword—

But no. The sword was disappearing. After it hacked the Wretched Mother’s eye, it began disintegrating. Its job was done. The sacrifice had been heard.

Something else was at work here.

The ground shook. Edric shifted a step as an earthquake rocked the Golden Square from deep within. A part of the tiles rose toward the side. A bunch of them breaking outward in a burst of debris. He couldn’t see the entirety of it since the horde had crowded the whole square, but the hurtling boulders of rocks were hard to miss.

He nearly buckled down when another wave hit. This one, he felt it in the back of his teeth. The frozen people stumbled, and some fell like domino pieces. The disciples took a step back in hesitant fear, while Mas searched the ground for an answer.

“Oh,” Edric mumbled when a quarter of the whole square exploded outward. Crimson fingers lined with dark, pulsing veins jutted out from the hole while the sky rained pieces of undead and Shifters upon the rest of the crowd. Then came the whole hand, with another hand bursting from the opposite side.

His heart leapt to his throat as Edric watched the fingers clasping around the sides of the square. Then, they pulled. The ground gave way as a monstrous creature hauled itself up to the surface, its back bloating Edric’s view.

He didn’t know why, but rather than making a run for it, Edric remained in his place, peering up at the slowly rising back of the creature, blinking when it dawned on him that little dots were there over its dark surface.

Familiar dots, these were, with one of them hovering slightly over the creature, eyes closed tightly shut with flames wavering around him in waves.

“Is that…” Mas came stumbling closer to him, pointing a finger out to the creature’s back. “No way.”

“The Healer,” Edric nodded with difficulty. “Looks like he was right.”

But that wasn’t the plan. He wasn’t supposed to bring a Dread to the surface, with a host of shadows on its back. That wasn’t the plan at all, but Edric learned from a young age plans made in the heat of chaos almost always went astray.

……..