His eyes were brass spheres that rotated independently, scanning the room, taking in each of us with the cold efficiency of a predator assessing prey. His chest was open; literally open, the flesh peeled back and replaced with a glass window that showed a mechanical heart ticking in a rhythm that was neither human nor clockwork.
He was rotting.
Where flesh met brass, the skin had turned grey and soft, sloughing away in places to reveal the metal underneath. His face was a ruin; half human, half machine, and all of it decomposing around the edges.
His smile was too wide. Too many teeth. It didn't match his eyes at all. Both his eyes burned with something that yearned for destruction and agony and death and despair.
"My Phylactery," he said, and his voice had multiple tones layered over each other, harmonics that shouldn't exist in the realm of mortals.
"You took my Phylactery."
Damian stepped forward. Shadows writhed around him.
"We're ending this, Vekros. Before the coronation."
"Ending?" Vekros laughed. Wet, grinding noises followed every exhale.
"Sweet Prince. I've been dying for three hundred years. You think one more day matters?"
He raised one hand. Too fast for a dying man. The brass fingers clicked open like a flower blooming.
Then the air itself began to scream.
Blood erupted from the floorboards. Boiling hot, gushing out like geysers. Red and black death in liquid form.
Damian threw up a shadow barrier.
The blood hit it. Sizzled. Burned through.
"Move!" Nyssara grabbed Silas. Pulled him aside.
I dove to the left.
The blood geyser oozed down and melted the spot where I'd been standing. Through the floor. Through the foundation. Down into nothing.
Vekros stepped forward. Each step clanked.
"The Phylactery," he said. "Where is it?"
None of us answered.
His mechanical eye whirred. Focused on the table.
The black stone pulsing.
"Ah."
He raised his withered hand.
The Phylactery flew across the room. Into his palm. He pressed it against his chest. The rotting flesh grabbed it. Pulled it inside. Absorbed it.
"Now I'm whole again."
The grey flesh started regenerating. Black veins spreading outward from where the Phylactery sat embedded in his chest cavity. Strings of muscle emerging, pulsing and layering themselves with wet sounds like a homunculus reassembling itself.
We had failed.
"He's regenerating!" Malgrin shouted. "Kill him now!"
Damian's eyes went fully red. Azrathel took control.
"Rise."
The floor exploded and dozens of corpses emerged. Buried beneath the building. Old. Ancient. Damian chose the Sump as his place of residence because the district was a mass grave.
They clawed upward. Rotting fingers. Exposed bone. Hollow skulls coated in dark gloom.
Azrathel pointed at Vekros.
"Kill him."
The dead charged.
Vekros smiled.
Raised his brass hand.
Snapped his fingers.
Every corpse stopped. Mid-step. Mid-lunge. Frozen in place.
Then they turned toward us.
"Blood magic is the essence of necromancy, young prince." Vekros' voice was stronger now. Healing. "I invented half the techniques you're using. Did you think I wouldn't have counters?"
The corpses lunged at their new prey.
Nyssara cut through three in one fluid motion. Her blade was efficient. But there were dozens more approaching.
Silas threw acid vials. Undead faces melted, dissolved into shadow, made place for new ones. They kept coming.
Azrathel screamed in frustration while the corpses ignored him. Tried to reassert control with anger that was palpable in the air.
I had seen Malgrin display emotion; now I knew all demons did.
I activated Blood-Sense. The world went black and red and slowed. Every corpse lit up; dried old blood, but blood nonetheless.
And I had the Blood Ring.
I focused. My hands shaky as I grabbed and squeezed from afar.
Five corpses collapsed. Their dried blood responded to my will.
Vekros looked at me.
"Interesting. You have my ring. And you are using it well, too."
He raised his brass hand.
I felt resistance. Pressure. He was fighting me for control.
And he was winning with ease.
The corpses stood up and lurched toward me.
I pushed harder. My nose bled. The ring burned cold.
"You can't overpower him!" Malgrin shouted. "What the hell are you thinking?"
"Then we don't overpower him." I deactivated Blood-Sense. Pulled out a knife.
I ran toward Vekros. Cutting, dodging and diving through the corpses.
A withered hand grabbed my ankle while I was off balance. I fell hard. The corpse started to drag me back.
Nyssara's blade severed its arm.
"Get up!"
I scrambled to my feet. Three meters from Vekros now.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He watched. Amused.
"You're quite lively, Yozi. For someone closer to death than me."
"I'm not dying."
"Aren't you?" He gestured at my neck. "The black veins. Demon corruption. You have about a day left."
"Then I have a few hours more than you.”
I lunged. Knife aimed at his throat.
He caught my wrist with his withered hand.
Shouldn't have been possible. That hand was barely functional.
But his grip was solid as iron.
"Blood magic doesn't need muscles. Just will."
He twisted. I heard my knife clatter to the floor. Then audible cracks in quick succession. The pain shot through my nerves as my wrist snapped.
He threw me.
I hit the wall so hard my ribs cracked. Couldn't breathe.
Vekros turned toward the others.
"Who's next?"
Damian charged. Azrathel aimed.
Shadows coalesced into spears. Dozens. Hundreds. Launched.
Vekros raised both hands. The brass one. The withered one.
A barrier formed. Blood hanging in the air, shimmering red and black.
The shadow spears hit the barrier.
They got stuck and dissolved.
"Azrathel has grown quite powerful," Vekros said conversationally. "Demon Prince, yes? Death and Shadow specialization. Very rare."
He gestured.
The blood wall shot forward. Turned to blades. Thousands of microscopic cutting edges moving faster than sight.
Damian threw up a shadow dome.
The blood blades hit. Cut through.
Not all of them. But enough.
Damian's scream was wet and wrong. He fell to one knee and I saw his left arm; not cut, but shredded, the flesh hanging in ribbons, white bone visible through the red ruin of muscle. Blood poured from a dozen wounds that went to the bone. His fingers twitched once and then stopped moving entirely.
"Azrathel," Vekros said. "I fought three Demon Princes during the Blood Pact War. You're good. But I've killed better."
He walked toward Damian. Slow. Methodical. Each brass footstep clanking like a funeral bell.
Nyssara intercepted.
Blade flashing. Fast. Professional. Strike to the throat. To the joints. To the weak points.
Vekros didn't dodge.
Took every hit.
The blade sparked off his brass side. Bit into his flesh side. Drew blood.
He didn't flinch.
Just reached out and grabbed her sword with his bare hand.
The blade cut deep. Through flesh. Through bone. Blood poured down the steel.
He didn't let go.
"You're Inquisition," he said. "I can smell it. The divine magic they used to erase your memories. Sloppy work. Left scars, didn't it?"
Nyssara pulled. The blade wouldn't move.
"You should thank me. I could remove those scars. Give you back what they took."
"I don't want anything from you."
"Pathetic."
He yanked the sword.
Nyssara held on.
He yanked harder; a sharp, vicious motion that lifted her off her feet. She flew across the room and hit the far wall with a crack that might have been plaster or might have been bone. She slumped and didn't get up. Blood trickled from her hairline.
Vekros looked at the blade still in his ruined hand.
"Good steel," he said. Threw it aside.
Silas attacked from behind. Knives. Acid. Smoke bombs.
Vekros spun. Impossibly fast for someone who is seventy percent brass.
Caught Silas by the throat.
Lifted him off the ground like he weighed nothing.
"You're the thief. The one who took my Phylactery." His mechanical eye whirred.
Silas couldn't breathe. Clawed at the brass hand with both hands, feet kicking uselessly in the air.
"You are very impressive for coming so far."
Vekros' withered hand pressed against Silas' chest. Pressed through his shirt. Touched skin.
Silas screamed.His face filled with horror.
His veins went black. Not slowly; fast, spreading like ink dropped in water, racing up his neck and down his arms. His skin started to grey where the blackness touched it. Started to wither.
"The curse I gave your friend," Vekros explained. "The one I cured. Now I'm giving it to you. Seems fair."
He dropped Silas.
The thief collapsed. Convulsing. His hands were curling in on themselves, the fingers twisting like dead branches. The black was spreading toward his heart.
He had hours. Maybe less.
"Stop!" I shouted.
Vekros turned. "Oh. You're still conscious. Good."
I tried to stand. Couldn't. Broken ribs. Broken wrist. Everything hurt in ways I couldn't separate anymore.
"Yozi," Malgrin whispered urgently. "The new power. Use it now."
"My hands…."
"Will heal. Your team won't. Use it."
I looked at Damian. Bleeding out, his arm destroyed.
At Nyssara. Unconscious against the wall. Maybe worse.
At Silas. Rotting alive while I watched.
All of us.
I closed my eyes.
Focused on the pain in my palms. The stigmata Malgrin had given me. The wounds that hadn't healed because they weren't meant to heal. They were meant to open.
Felt the blades waiting beneath my skin. They felt thirsty and ready and more than happy.
Schatten-Blades. Reaper Variant.
My hands exploded, literally.
The flesh split along lines that had been waiting since Malgrin first marked me; palms, wrists, forearms, all of it opening at once in a spray of blood that should have been red but came out black.
The pain was enormous at first, then it made me laugh.
From the wounds came darkness. It poured from my ruined right hand like smoke, like liquid, like something that had been waiting its whole existence to be born. It coalesced in the air. Took shape. Took form.
The scythe was long; longer than I was tall, curved like a question mark with no answer, the blade edge seeming to cut the light itself. It didn't reflect anything. It absorbed everything. Where it moved, the air screamed the way it had screamed when Vekros first attacked. Reality didn't want it to exist and it loved that.
I got up in one quick motion. My hands were ruins; split open from palm to elbow, blood pouring, the black veins spreading from the wounds like wildfire, feeding on the power I was channeling. The pain in my ribs didn't matter. The broken wrist didn't matter.
None of it mattered.
Because I felt thirsty and happy now.
Vekros saw them. His expression changed for the first time since he'd walked through that door. The amusement faded. Something else took its place.
"Ah," he said quietly. "Abnatural blood magic. High tier. That's expensive."
"I know."
"You'll die using those. Your body can't sustain that kind of channel. Six cuts, maybe eight, and your heart stops."
"I know.”
"You'll die."
I looked at him with eyes that had gone fully white, with hands that were pouring darkness, with a body that was already failing and loving every second of it.
"We both will."
I jumped.
--- SPECTACLE REPORT: THE GRAND FINALE? ---
Performance Rating: ????? (5/5) - CRITICAL Malgrin's Note: "I take it back. I don't want to watch you fail at being human anymore. Watching you turn into a living blender made of shadow and bad decisions is MUCH more entertaining. But Yozi? You realize you just opened the door to the Void and invited it into your bloodstream, right? There is no coming back from this one."
TEAM STATUS:
- Damian: [CRITICAL] (Arm shredded. Azrathel suppressed).
- Nyssara: [UNCONSCIOUS] (Blunt force trauma).
- Silas: [CURSED] (Rot spreading. Timer: < 10 Hours).
ABILITY UNLOCKED:
- [SCHATTEN-BLADES]
- Cost: Total Hand Rupture.
- Effect: Reality Severance. Also cool ass Scythe.
- Duration: Until you bleed out.
CORRUPTION:
- Level: 44% (▲▲▲ SPIKING)
Warning: Your eyes are white. Your blood is black. You are almost more me than you right now.