As the clash dragged on, Sicily’s side suffered more and more. The endless tide of longnight spiders pressed them hard, outnumbering them many times over.

  “Can’t we really go all out, Mr. Acher?” Aaron gritted his teeth.

  Right now, under Acher’s order, he and Luther only targeted fierce-rank longnight spiders. They even had to pretend they were struggling, even though either of them could finish those creatures in a single move.

  “Absolutely not!” Acher snapped. “You think fighting above your rank is something simple? If you pull that stunt, all of them will start digging into you. They’ll track you down to your doorstep if they have to. Don’t drag yourselves into unnecessary trouble. Did you forget what happened to Orpheus?” He shot Aaron a sharp look.

  The two boys bit their lips, clearly unhappy, but they still held back and continued fighting only spiders one rank lower than them, pretending that their magic was suppressed as well.

  “Feels like everyone’s magic is getting pressed lower and lower. That owl’s almost down to elder-beast rank, damn it,” Aaron swore.

  He twisted his body and hurled his sword like a spear. The blade cut through the air in a streak of flame and punched straight through the skull of a longnight spider in the distance, saving a wizard-toad who had fallen onto her back and was flailing helplessly.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Luther. The boy’s face had gone pale, sweat streaming down his temples.

  “What’s wrong with you? You okay?” Aaron shouted.

  “Idiot,” Acher snapped. “He’s burning through too much magic. Absolute fool!”

  “What? He hasn’t cast anything big!” Aaron protested, confused.

  “Are you blind? He’s using his domain!!!” Acher barked.

  Amid the chaos swallowing the valley, something strange was happening.

  Sicily was clearly at a disadvantage. The lines were collapsing. Reinforcements were stretched thin. Elder-rank spiders were leading the monsters, carving their way through defensive squads.

  And yet, no one on Sicily’s side had died. Every time someone fell into certain, fatal danger, something bizarre intervened.

  Aaron glanced toward the eastern ridge just in time to see a wasp rider struck by a midnight prison spell. The man crashed to the ground, pinned in place as a longnight spider lunged, claws aimed straight for his chest… but at the last second, another spider, fleeing wildly from Cindara, slammed into it from the side. Both monsters tumbled, legs tangling, buying the rider enough time to roll away as a centaur spear came crashing down.

  In another direction, an elf girl was lifted off her feet, caught in a spider’s mandibles. Its jaws spread wide to swallow her whole, and out of nowhere, a stray flaming arrow shot across the battlefield and buried itself deep in the creature’s throat. Following was an explosion that tore through its head, dropping both the elf and the corpse to the ground.

  Again and again, blades slipped an inch off course, claws snapped shut on empty air, spells curved at the last second. Enemies collided for no reason, tripped over rubble that hadn’t been there a heartbeat before, or struck each other in blind panic. Fatal blows turned into scratches. Killing strikes dissolved into accidents.

  It was as if Death had decided to take the day off. No… not quite. The spiders were still dying in droves.

  It was more like Death had chosen a side.

  “Well done, Luther!” Aaron shouted. “But how long can you keep this up?”

  “Not long,” Luther gasped, breathing hard. His voice was strained. Drawing upon the power of Death made his magic drain from him like water spilling from a broken dam. “Fifteen minutes. At most. We have to end this fast.”

  Gradually, others began to notice.

  “What the hell is this?” Nicolas frowned, glancing around as another lethal strike somehow missed its mark. “This damned city has defensive magic on this level?”

  He clicked his tongue, suspicion rising. Maybe it was some ancient protection left behind from Sicily’s glorious days.

  Across from him, Leonardo held his ground, batting aside the priestess’s spells while summoning massive vines that coiled around the corpse servant, trying to pin the monstrous thing in place.

  “Relax,” Leonardo said with a calm smile. “There are still plenty of surprises waiting for you.”

  But behind that composed expression, he sent a telepathic message to Oowrie, who was dealing with the spider guy.

  What is this? Do you recognize it?

  There was a brief pause before the owl’s voice answered in his mind. It feels like… the authority of death. Has Sicily ever had ties with a Reaper in ancient times? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

  Leonardo’s heart tightened. Could there be a Death deity nearby, secretly aiding us?

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Impossible, Oowrie dismissed at once. The Dark Side of the Origin is still part of the Origin. Under the Pact of Sacred Fire, except His Divinity Epiphron, no god is allowed to be here. This can’t be a divine intervention.

  Then what could it be?

  It must be one of Sicily’s hidden defensive layers, Oowrie concluded. An emergency mechanism activating automatically under extreme threat.

  Leonardo nodded, though unease still lingered in his chest because, despite the strange protection, despite Death’s invisible hand tipping the scale, Sicily’s situation was still getting worse and worse.

  More elder-rank spiders crawled from the rifts. The sky grew darker. Defensive lines buckled under relentless pressure.

  Two of the five golems lay in pieces, not completely destroyed, yet no longer able to fight. Oowrie now limped with a missing leg, trying to regenerate, while Leonardo clutched his side, black blood seeping out, clear proof of venom eating away at him. Both could do little more than hold their ground and hope that reinforcements would arrive soon.

  “Bringing in these spiders was a clever move. Without worrying about this city, if this guy decided to run from the start, we’d never be able to corner him.” Nicolas grinned. “I wonder what kind of creation I’ll get if I piece together the remains of two grand beings. I can hardly wait.”

  Leonardo and Oowrie exchanged a glance, anxiety and worry reflected in both their eyes.

  “Luther, do you think if we sneak an attack, we could take down one of those three?” Aaron asked. “We need to do something.”

  “A head-on strike is too dangerous. There’s another way,” Luther replied, his voice low and steady. “I can sense that. If I can just touch that thing, I might be able to disable it.”

  His eyes locked on the shard of bone floating in the air.

  “So… is that doable, Mr. Acher?” Aaron asked.

  “Possible,” Acher said with a short nod.

  “Then let’s do it.”

  Luther turned to the pumpkins. “You guys stay here with Acher. Don’t move.”

  He raised a hand, and shadows spilled out, forming a thick cage around them. The darkness wrapped tight, like solid smoke, sealing them off from the chaos outside. Then he pulled part of his cloak free and draped it over the cage, the feathers blending with the shadows until the whole thing blurred and faded into the air.

  “Squeakkk!” the pumpkins screamed, thrashing, but the cage was too strong for them to break free.

  “Veil of Lies!”

  The two boys vanished amid the chaos. Luther also triggered his cloak of ambiguity to full strength, layering an extra shroud over them, and together he and Aaron slipped closer to the bone shard.

  They moved as though strolling through an empty ground. Not a single monster turned to notice them. But just as they neared the shard, a sudden change erupted.

  The energy within the remaining of the archdemon seemed to sense Luther’s presence. It shuddered, then released a surge of frenzied power that tore outward in every direction. A black sphere of force, a hundred feet wide, swelled up to swallow them whole. Yet the cloak fluttered in the storm, unraveling the attack before it could hurt them.

  Nicolas snapped his head toward the disturbance. Though his eyes couldn’t pierce the dark sphere, instinct told him what was going on.

  “Someone’s trying to mess with the Unresenting Bone!”

  The priestess and Carlios grew furious as well. All three of them broke off from the fight and rushed toward the bone shard.

  “Don’t you think you can leave so easily!” Leonardo roared, crushing the gemstone in his palm as he chanted a spell.

  A barrier of tulips bloomed around the three, holding them back for a moment.

  “Go! Kill whoever’s in there!” Carlios shouted at the spiders, throwing attacks at the tulip barrier with his bone swords.

  Hundreds of longnight spiders scuttled toward the black sphere. Aaron leapt forward, sword aflame as he carved down the monsters to keep them from closing in.

  Luther shot upward, cutting through drifting ash and falling debris. The bone shard hovered just ahead, pulsing faintly, as if aware of him.

  He reached out and grabbed it, and the shard reacted instantly.

  It thrashed in his hand, twisting and vibrating like a living thing. A cold force slammed into him, trying to burrow into his flesh. The air around them warped, and a sharp ringing sound echoed across the sky.

  Luther clenched his teeth and held on. Then, beneath his shirt, something began to glow.

  A crescent moon mark gradually appeared over his chest, faint at first, then shining brighter and brighter. Dark blue light spilled through the fabric, outlining the shape of the mark against his skin.

  The glow pulsed once, and the bone shard went still. The violent trembling faded. The sable aura around it weakened, shrinking back as if subdued. In Luther’s grip, the shard finally quieted, no longer fighting.

  “Make it look like you’re striking at the shard with light magic! Don’t let them suspect Luther’s the one behind this, hurry!” Acher urged.

  “Got it!” Aaron flung a solar blast, sending it streaking toward the dark sphere.

  “Solar magic! Stop!! How dare you!!!” Nicolas shouted.

  They had shattered the tulip barrier and were rushing toward them, but it was already too late. Inside the sphere of black light, Luther had reached the bone shard and seized it in his hand.

  The flare of the solar blast lit up the entire battlefield, giving him the chance to sneak away and fade back into the crowd beneath the cover of the cloak. From far off, Oowrie narrowed her giant eyes.

  “That… that was…” she muttered.

  As the dark glow slowly dissolved, the moon also returned to its natural color. From the outside, it looked as though Aaron had slipped close to the shard and struck it down himself.

  “Go! Now!” The priestess did not hesitate for even a heartbeat. She transformed all three of them into a streak of smoke and slid swiftly into the rift. They didn’t even spare a glance for the host of longnight spiders left behind. Once they were gone, the portal that led into the Nightmare World began to shrink.

  “You rats think you can just walk away like that?”

  Leonardo gritted his teeth, rage burning in his chest. His grand power rushed back into his body, knitting the wound in his side in only a few seconds. Having nearly been killed by these guys, there was no way he would let the matter end like this.

  “Silthorn!”

  The ground split open. Two enormous hands woven from grass and roses thrust upward, holding the rift apart so it could not close.

  Leonardo hurled his staff into the air, and it transformed into a wyvern, its scales like bark thick with moss. It exhaled a torrent of radiant green light into the rift, which detonated in a cataclysm that obliterated the altar and erased everything within five miles, sweeping away the entire horde of longnight spiders caught in the range.

  Then Leonardo leapt onto the back of the dragon and plunged into the Dream Realm. Oowrie cast one side glance toward some direction, then beat her wings and followed.

  Meanwhile, Luther landed back on solid ground with the bone shard hidden away. With the demonic artifact gone, Sicily people felt their magic surge back, and the remaining battles across the hill were quickly ending.

  Aaron swung his sword in a wide arc, severing the head of one spider. He turned, hurried back to Luther, and stepped into the folds of the cloak of ambiguity. His jaw fell open when he caught sight of the faint image that glimmered through the thick layers of fabric on the chest of the black-haired boy: a deep-blue crescent moon glowing dimly.

  “Is it…” he stammered.

  “I’ll explain later. Let’s get out of here first,” Luther said.

  They regrouped with Acher and the pumpkins and slipped away, vanishing as though they had never been part of the battle at all.