The golems continued backing away, their cracked bodies scraping against the frozen stone. Some sank back into the monoliths they had come from, vanishing without a sound, while others simply turned and fled into the forest with slow, jerking movements. That scared Eliot more than if they had screamed. Monsters fleeing silently from another monster made the whole scene feel far worse. The masked figure did not chase them. It did not move its head to follow them. It only stared at the two Dreamers, standing so perfectly still that it could have been mistaken for another statue if not for the pressure slowly gathering around it.
Then it took one step forward.
The ground beneath its foot cracked.
Not loudly or violently, it simply cracked, as if the stone had been unable to endure the figure's presence.
Raijin immediately felt the air change. It was not like the aura of a Nightmare Creature, wild and monstrous. No, this was sharper, colder in a way that had nothing to do with their surroundings.
Whatever this thing was, it was not some mindless beast acting on instinct. It had been stalking them, watching them struggle, waiting until they were injured and exhausted before revealing itself.
'A Saint?,' Raijin suddenly thought. Back in the Guild, and then with his uncle, Raijin had met many Saints. Many of them beating him into a bloody pulp too. But this was the first time he encountered a Saint that was ready to kill him akin to an insignificant bug. 'No way. No bloodydamn way.'
Before the figure could take another step, a distant explosion tore through the forest.
Both Sleepers flinched.
Somewhere far behind the masked figure, one of the monoliths shattered from the middle outward, sending massive chunks of black stone flying through the air. A second later, another explosion followed, closer this time. Then a third. Something was moving through the forest at terrifying speed, breaking through the monoliths instead of going around them. Each impact echoed like thunder, shaking the ground beneath Raijin's feet and sending loose frost sliding down the surrounding pillars. The masked figure finally turned its head slightly, not toward the Sleepers, but toward whatever was approaching.
A black blur crossed the distance between the monoliths.
Then another once more.
Then a crater erupted barely thirty meters away from Raijin and Eliot, the impact sending a wave of dust and shattered stone across the frozen ground. Raijin raised his spear on instinct, only to immediately realize how pointless that was.
The pressure coming from the dust cloud was not something he could ever handle.
Eliot stumbled back and nearly fell, his injured arm dragging uselessly by his side while the scythe trembled in his remaining hand.
As the dust slowly parted, a tall man stepped out of the crater with one hand resting casually near his side.
He wore smooth black armor that looked too light for how much destruction his arrival had caused, and strands of orange hair tipped with crimson drifted around his face as if moved by heat rather than wind.
Raijin had never seen him before, but he knew what he was immediately.
Another Saint!
The newcomer glanced at the two Sleepers for less than a second, his burning orange eyes moving from Raijin's form to Eliot's bloodied arm, before his attention shifted entirely to the masked figure standing between the monoliths.
He did not ask who they were. He did not waste time checking whether they were fine.
The two of them were not the problem anymore. They were barely even relevant.
The orange-haired Saint clicked his tongue softly. "Well, that explains the barrier."
His voice was calm, almost pleasant, but there was no amusement in it.
Raijin narrowed his eyes, confused for a moment before remembering what he had sensed earlier.
They had been unable to leave the forest because something had cut them off from the outside.
The masked figure had not merely followed them. It had sealed them in and trapped them completely.
The realization made his hands tighten around the spear again, though he knew there was nothing he could do if the two Saints decided to fight right where he and Eliot stood. 'Is he with Eirwen?' Raijin wondered, forcing himself to breathe despite the pressure pressing against his chest. 'Please oh great Gods don't let it be another psycho...'
The masked figure raised one hand.
The movement was slow, almost graceful.
The orange-haired Saint vanished in response.
Raijin did not even see him move. One moment he had been standing in front of them, and the next he was several dozen meters ahead, his fist colliding with something invisible in the air. The impact was ridiculous. The space between the two Saints bent for a split second before exploding outward, tearing through the ground and sending a line of shattered stone racing across the forest.
Raijin grabbed Eliot by the back of his clothes—making sure he doesn't touch his skin—and threw both of them to the side on instinct, barely avoiding the shockwave that ripped past them and pulverized the remains of nearby golems.
His back slammed against the base of a monolith, cold seeping from it and forcing the air out of his lungs, but he still kept his eyes open.
He could not look away.
The masked Saint slid back only half a step.
The orange-haired Saint landed on the ground in front of it, his black armor untouched, his orange eyes burning brighter than before. Around him, the air twisted strangely, forming thin distortions that looked almost like transparent blades. The masked figure tilted its head, and several crimson-gold lines on its armor pulsed once. In the next instant, the ground beneath the orange-haired Saint erupted upward in jagged black spikes.
He moved before they could touch him, stepping between them with impossible ease before turning his body and kicking one spike sideways.
The entire formation shattered, and the broken fragments shot toward the masked figure like arrows, but none of them reached it. They crumbled into dust halfway through the air, destroyed by some force Raijin could not see.
"Move!" the orange-haired Saint shouted without looking back, his voice cutting through the chaos like a command that left no room for argument. "Unless you two want to die from standing too close."
Raijin did not need to be told twice. He grabbed Eliot again, ignoring the taller boy's pained groan, and forced him to move deeper between the monoliths, dragging his large form.
Every step hurt, every breath scraped against his throat, and his legs felt like they were about to give out, but fear and adrenaline pushed him forward.
Behind them, the two Saints clashed again. The impact turned the air white for a split second, not from snow but from pressure. A monolith thicker than a house cracked from top to bottom and collapsed slowly, its fall shaking the ground as Raijin dragged Eliot away from the battlefield.
He risked one glance over his shoulder and immediately regretted it.
The masked Saint had finally drawn a weapon.
It was not a exactly sword. The thing resembled a long, thin blade made of blackened metal, curved slightly near the tip, with faint red light glowing along its edge. It looked ceremonial nearly.
The orange-haired Saint dodged the first slash by leaning back, but the attack continued beyond the blade itself, cutting through a row of monoliths behind him without slowing down.
Massive stone pillars slid apart diagonally, their upper halves collapsing with deafening crashes.
In response, the orange-haired Saint appeared above the masked figure and brought his heel down like a falling hammer. The masked Saint raised its weapon to block and the ground beneath both of them sank from the power behind their clash.
Eliot stared despite himself, his lips parted and his face pale. "What… what are they?"
"Saints, obviously!" Raijin hissed, yanking him forward again. The sound of his voice making him nearly shake in anger.
"Now stop watching and run before one of them accidentally breathes in our direction and kills us!"
The two stumbled through the forest while thunderous impacts chased after them. Behind them, flashes of orange, crimson and black lit the spaces between the monoliths, each burst of power followed by the sound of stone breaking, air screaming and the ground splitting open.
Raijin could still not sense Seraphiel. The barrier was still around them, but it was weakening. Every time the two Saints clashed, the invisible wall enclosing the forest trembled, and something in the air loosened a little more. 'Good,' Raijin thought, dragging Eliot behind a slanted monolith and pressing his back against the cold stone, 'Good, keep breaking whatever this is. Just please don't fucking break me with it!'
Eliot slid down beside him, clutching his injured arm with a trembling expression.
The whispers inside his head had fallen almost completely silent, as if even the they wanted to avoid attracting attention.
For a few seconds, neither boy spoke.
They simply sat there, gasping for breath while the battle raged somewhere behind them. Then Raijin slowly turned his head and looked through a narrow gap between two monoliths.
Far in the distance, he saw the orange-haired Saint get thrown through a pillar and vanish beneath a cloud of stone dust.
His heart nearly stopped.
But less than a second later, the dust exploded outward, and the Saint shot forward again, faster than before, his body surrounded by twisting distortions that tore the ground apart beneath his feet.
Raijin swallowed hard.
And somewhere deep in the forest, between collapsing monoliths and exploding stone, the two Saints clashed again.