The labyrinth narrowed into a cloister of cracked ribs and sagging arches. Heat clung to the stone like skin. Noctis staggered through, blood trailing behind him in thick streaks. The wound in his abdomen pulsed with every step, his back scorched raw from near-misses. The angel's light pressed into the space ahead of it, erasing shadow wherever it fell.
He could not run forever. His Grid screamed, essence dwindling. His body shuddered with every movement. He set his feet, turned, and raised his hand.
[Skill: Blood Chains — Activated]
[Skill: Predator's Bind — Activated]
[Relic Trait: Sanguinastra Resonance — Applied]
Chains erupted from walls, floor, and ceiling, converging around the angel as it entered the cloister. Red coils knotted with scripture-forged links, barbed hooks dripping essence, all converging in a braided net. The Arsenal circled in rhythm, blades screaming through the air as the bindings cinched tighter.
For the first time, the angel halted.
Its wings strained against the chains, light flaring as scripture cracked link after link. The cloister trembled. Noctis bared his fangs and pulled harder, his claw outstretched, veins bulging with strain.
The angel's mask turned toward him. Radiance surged across its face, blank and endless. The voice hammered through the corridor:
"USURPER."
The word broke half the bindings in a single pulse.
Noctis snarled, pouring more essence into the chains. His Omen Eye blazed, outlining seams across the angel's chest and wing joints. He lunged, twin Bloodfang Reapers striking for a weak point.
The Arsenal hammered forward—scythe digging into the wing base, guan dao drilling at the sternum seam, sword-form stabbing low. For an instant, the angel staggered under the pressure.
Then the light erupted.
Chains turned to steam. Radiance shredded every bind, scattering fragments of crimson essence into the air like ashes. The angel tore itself free, its wings snapping outward, filling the cloister with a gale of holy fire.
Noctis raised the guan dao to block.
The angel's blade came down in a vertical arc.
Steel shrieked, light flared, and the guan dao's shaft splintered. The blade bit into his back, ripping through armor, flesh, and muscle. The cut ran from his shoulder down across his spine, deep enough to scrape bone.
Blood sprayed the wall in a thick arc. His body lurched forward, knees buckling. The wound burned, smoke rising from the edges as divine fire seared it open wider. His vision blurred; breath caught in a choking gasp.
He staggered, nearly falling to his knees.
The angel advanced, its wings dragging light across the cloister, its mask blank. Its voice struck again, a sentence carved into marrow:
"IMPUDENT."
Noctis clenched his teeth, forcing his body upright despite the gash that split his back. Blood streamed down his sides, his abdomen wound reopening under the strain. His hand gripped Sanguinastra tight, claws sinking into the hilt until they drew his own blood.
[Doctrine: Tempo Ledger — Rhythm Breaker]
The angel's next step faltered. A half-beat skip. Noctis shoved himself forward, every nerve on fire, every muscle screaming. He threw his Arsenal into a storm, scythe and sword slashing low while the guan dao spun overhead.
Sparks cascaded as steel met light. Weak points flickered across the angel's armor, but none held long enough. Every strike slid away, shallow and impotent. His Grid howled with the wasted expenditure.
The angel's blade lashed out in a horizontal sweep.
[Skill: Wraith Step — Activated]
He vanished into mist an instant before the cut, reappearing further down the cloister. His body shuddered, blood dripping from the torn gash across his back, every movement agony.
The angel turned its faceless head toward him again.
"HERESY."
Light filled the space like a verdict made flesh. The cloister walls cracked, stone bursting into molten shards. Noctis staggered backward, lungs dragging air thick with smoke and fire. His body was breaking.
But his eyes still burned gold-crimson. His silence held. His fangs glistened with blood.
He would not kneel.
The labyrinth was dying.
Stone glowed like a forge, cracks venting light instead of smoke. Beams sagged and ran into molten curtains. Heat blurred the edges of the world until everything seemed to ripple. The cloisters and halls were no longer corridors but furnaces lined with hymn and flame.
Noctis stumbled through, one hand pressed against the hole in his abdomen, the other clenched around Sanguinastra. His back bled freely, every step leaving a trail of droplets that hissed into vapor. His body trembled with strain, his Grid screaming at the loss. He could feel his essence bleeding out with every breath.
Behind him, the angel's wings beat once.
The gale tore through the halls, carrying fire, carrying judgment. The blade swung, and half the ceiling disappeared.
Noctis blurred aside, ribs cracking as he slammed into a pillar.
[Skill: Wraith Step — Activated]
He flickered into shadow, dissolving into smoke. The strike passed through where he'd been and carved the pillar in half. The collapse buried him in stone, pressing down with searing weight.
For a heartbeat, silence. Then the rubble shifted.
Blood and mist erupted as he burst free, coughing up smoke and ash, chest heaving. His eyes glowed crimson-gold, narrowed against the furnace heat. His silence cracked into a rasping snarl.
He couldn't fight the angel head-on. He couldn't bind it. The Omen Eye showed seams, but every weakness flickered away before his blades touched.
So he hunted.
[Doctrine: Assassin's Surge]
His body vanished into a blur, weaving between collapsing arches. Ward-knights poured in from side corridors, shields raised. He met them with silent fury, twin Bloodfang Reapers cleaving in arcs. One shield split, another helm crumpled. He dragged a knight down, fangs tearing into its neck, drinking greedily as his body shook with need.
[Skill: Devour — Activated]
Faith and iron bled into him. It wasn't enough, but it was something. The hole in his abdomen knit a fraction tighter. The gash in his back oozed slower. His essence ticked upward by slivers.
The angel's voice struck through the burning halls:
"HERESY."
The air itself caught fire. White flame poured through the nave, flooding the space like water.
Noctis leapt, grabbed a hanging chain, and swung wide as fire consumed the ground beneath him. The heat licked up his legs, cooking skin, peeling it back in red sheets. His claws dug into the chain so hard it cut through flesh.
He dropped onto the back of a golem, driving his guan dao down through its chest. Sparks burst as he ripped the core out and bit it apart with fangs that felt too sharp for a man. His veins drank iron heat until they burned.
He threw himself sideways just as the angel's blade fell again. The strike erased the golem and a quarter of the floor. Noctis slammed into the wall, blood spraying from his wounds. His breath rattled in his chest, lungs torn, voice gone hoarse.
Still he moved.
[Doctrine: Tempo Ledger — Rhythm Breaker]
The angel's cadence faltered. Its step hit too early. Its wing swept too wide. Noctis dove into the opening, twin swords flashing. He struck at the seam in its wing joint—his Omen Eye showed it glowing bright.
The strike landed. Sparks flew. For a moment he thought he had cut deep—
Then the weakness blinked out. The blade slid, harmless, across divine plating.
The angel turned its faceless mask toward him.
"BLASPHEMY."
The word shattered stone. Noctis flew back, smashing into the wall hard enough to crater it. His back screamed, his abdomen tore wider. He dropped to the ground, coughing blood, vision narrowing.
He dragged himself upright on trembling arms. He was covered in burns, his armor slagged into warped plates, his skin blistered and torn. One arm shook uncontrollably. His essence reserves guttered low, the Grid choking.
But his eyes still burned. His fangs still shone.
He ran again.
Through broken vaults and burning chapels, he hunted what scraps he could find—golems torn apart, knights drained dry. Every swallow bought him another ten steps, another heartbeat of defiance. He wove through collapsing ceilings, slipping between firestorms, striking from shadows like a beast cornered but not yet dead.
The angel pressed him, each step a judgment, each word a sentence.
"FUGITIVE."
Its blade fell again, erasing half the hall. He leapt, twisted, slid under fire that turned his hair to smoke. He came up with a lance of blood in his hand and threw it into the mask. The lance burned away before it struck.
Noctis staggered, chest heaving. His body was at its edge, broken and bleeding, every wound screaming. He could feel the abyss waiting for him.
And still he would not bow.
The angel's wings filled the hall, radiant, unstoppable. Its blade lifted for the final stroke.
Noctis bared his fangs, eyes blazing, and raised his Arsenal.
The labyrinth burned around them.
Noctis collapsed to one knee, smoke rising off his body. His armor hung in melted plates, fused into the flesh beneath. Blood poured from his abdomen in heavy streams, pooling at his feet before hissing away into vapor. His back was split open by a gash that still burned, ribs grinding with every breath. His left hand trembled, pink and raw from regrowth, barely strong enough to clench.
The angel stood over him. Its wings stretched wide, filling the hall with white fire. Its mask glowed like a second sun. Its blade of radiance rose, the light so intense that the very air screamed.
"ABOMINATION."
The word shook the labyrinth. Pillars crumbled. Chains snapped. Even the floor buckled, stone collapsing into molten pits.
Noctis swayed on his knees. His Grid flickered at the edge of collapse, essence bleeding out with every heartbeat. The Omen Eye burned in his skull, but no weakness stayed long enough to matter. His body was broken, his resources gutted.
The angel swung.
Something in him tore loose.
[Skill: Blood Frenzy — Activated]
A guttural roar ripped from his throat, raw and feral. His veins ignited crimson, eyes burning gold-red until they shone like furnaces. Pain dissolved. Thought scattered. Instinct took command. His body surged forward, movements wild, primal, unstoppable.
The Arsenal screamed awake.
[Skill: Orbiting Arsenal III — Overdrive]
Five Bloodfang Reapers converged on the angel in a storm of blades. The scythe cleaved across its wings, the guan dao drilled into its chest, the twin sword-forms hacked in brutal rhythm, Sanguinastra shrieking through the air like a serpent uncoiled. Steel met radiance, sparks cascading like meteors.
The angel staggered.
Noctis hurled himself bodily into it. Claws sank into divine plating. His legs coiled around its torso, pinning its arms. He willed his Arsenal forward again, forcing all five Reapers to strike at once.
[Bloodfang Reapers — Binding Execution]
Blades pierced the angel's shoulders, chest, and wings, nailing it to the shattered wall of the labyrinth. Radiance flared, struggling against the binds, but the frenzy fed the steel. For the first time, the angel strained to break free.
Noctis roared, lowering his head. His fangs found the glow at its neck. He bit.
Golden blood erupted, burning like liquid fire as it spilled across his lips and down his throat. His flesh should have dissolved. Instead, Blood Frenzy turned agony into fuel. He clung to the angel's body with claws buried deep in its chest, fangs sunk in its throat. His Arsenal drove again and again, five blades hammering into radiant armor until the wall behind them cracked.
The angel's body writhed, wings erupting in gales of fire. White flame seared Noctis's flesh black, cooking him alive where he held on. The stench of charred muscle filled the collapsing chamber. But he did not release. His jaw locked, his silence broken only by the ragged sound of drinking.
The angel screamed.
Its wings exploded in a gale of holy fire, white flame flooding the chamber. The heat peeled skin from Noctis's back, charred his arms to bone, but the frenzy made him blind to pain. He drank harder, tearing chunks out of its throat, swallowing mouthfuls of sanctified blood.
His Grid convulsed. Crimson essence howled through him, clashing with divine radiance until his body trembled on the edge of collapse. He ignored it. He wanted more.
The angel lifted its blade, though bound, and brought fire down across his back. The strike seared into him, splitting flesh, melting muscle. He did not let go. His jaw locked tighter, his claws digging in until they reached bone.
The angel screamed its verdict, the final word echoing across the labyrinth:
"ABOMINATION!"
Noctis roared into its throat and drank deeper. He devoured light itself.
The angel's body convulsed. Radiance collapsed inward, armor cracking, wings withering. Its blade faltered, dropping from its hand as essence drained away. Noctis tore free with a savage wrench, ripping its throat open, and the last of its blood poured into him in a stream of gold turned crimson.
The husk collapsed, little more than ash wrapped in light. Noctis stood over it, trembling, his body ruined — burned, broken, bleeding. He raised one claw and crushed the husk.
[Skill: Devour — Activated]
The angel's essence tore through him like a flood. His Grid screamed, channels bursting, essence erupting in chaotic rivers. Blood boiled. Veins glowed crimson-gold beneath his skin. His body convulsed, arching backward as power scoured him from within.
Chains of blood and light burst out of his flesh, wrapping his torso, his arms, his neck. They tightened, searing runes into him. Gold and crimson tattoos crawled across his body, burning lines and circles of power into his skin. His back split open with a wet tear.
Wings burst out.
Not feathers. Not radiant. But vast, jagged things of blood-forged sinew and inverted light, their membranes crackling with crimson arcs. Six meters wide, they spread with a thunderclap, spraying droplets of sanctified blood that hissed against the ground.
Noctis's scream shook the labyrinth.
The blood frenzy state stabilized.
His body stood upright, transformed. His skin bore gold-crimson runes across chest and arms, glowing like molten script. His eyes blazed vertical gold slits rimmed in crimson fire. His fangs were lengthened, dripping essence. His new wings flexed once, flooding the ruined chamber with a gale of heat and blood.
The angel's judgment had been consumed. Now it lived inside him.
[Blood Grid Mutation: Dawnshroud Vein → Celestial Shroud Vein]
[New Form Unlocked: Devil's Ascendant Form]
He stood in silence, wings slowly folding, blood dripping from his claws. Not vampire. Not angel. Something else entirely — a predator of both worlds.
The chamber stank of burned stone and ash. The husk of the angel lay scattered in cinders across the floor, its judgment silenced, its hymn broken forever. Noctis stood at the center of it all, wings spread wide, crimson arcs flickering from their edges. The runes scorched into his flesh glowed faint gold, crawling across his chest and arms like molten veins.
The transformation trembled inside him, begging to be unleashed again. But he could feel it — the drain. Even in Frenzy, even with the angel's blood burning in his Grid, the Devil's Ascendant Form was a furnace chewing through his essence. If he kept it active, he would hollow himself out.
With a thought, he forced the runes to dim. The searing power receded. The form fell back into silence, leaving behind only the ache of what it had carved into him. But the wings — the wings he could call without the full cost. He flexed them once, arcs of crimson-black energy spreading through the broken hall.
[Skill: Wings of Ruin — Activated]
Stone shattered beneath the downstroke as he launched forward. His body surged through the corridor like a spear, faster than he had ever moved. The labyrinth's passages bent around him, collapsing arches tumbling behind his flight.
The labyrinth itself groaned in protest. Chains snapped in distant halls. Pillars cracked, spilling dust and glowing scripture. Mechanisms hidden for centuries clattered awake, gears and wards screaming like angry spirits. It felt less like stone and more like a living thing — a beast that realized it had been wounded, and was trying to heal or defend itself.
Noctis dove through the wreckage, eyes burning.
[Skill: Devour — Activated]
[Skill: Blood Flood — Activated]
Blood rushed out of every corpse, every shattered knight, every broken golem scattered across the labyrinth. It spilled into him in crimson torrents, painting the floor and walls in rivers that flowed only toward him. Even the dust of the angel's cinders yielded fragments of essence. He drank them all.
His veins swelled with power. His Grid pulsed hot, refilling what the Frenzy had emptied. The hole in his abdomen shrank to a scar. The gash across his back pulled closed, leaving runes seared over it like a brand.
A collapsed arch blocked the next corridor. He beat his wings once, vaulted high, and slipped through a jagged gap near the ceiling. When the next hall sealed itself in falling stone, he vanished.
[Skill: Wraith Step — Activated]
His body flickered into shadow, bypassing the collapse, reappearing on the far side with a streak of blood mist trailing him. He kept moving, weaving between stone teeth, wings carrying him in lunges that ate entire passages in moments.
Again the labyrinth shifted. Corridors sealed, floors dropped into molten pits, scripture flared bright as wards tried to choke him.
[Skill: Ghost Vein II — Activated]
[Doctrine: Tempo Ledger — Cadence Step]
He became mist, passing through half-formed walls. His steps fell perfectly in time, never missing the narrow sliver between collapse and fire. The world itself tried to pin him, but rhythm carried him through.
At every pause, he devoured. Corpses long-dead, their marrow dried to dust, were stripped to nothing as his Grid inverted their remnants into Blood Essence. Puddles of ancient ichor pulled themselves from cracks in the floor and flew into his mouth. Even the shattered remnants of sanctified constructs bled iron-light into him.
The labyrinth screamed.
Distant halls shook with mechanical groans. Chains rattled like bones. Walls shifted, rearranging themselves into new shapes. Something deeper had been disturbed — mechanisms hidden beneath the sanctum's skin, now waking in answer to his intrusion.
Noctis's wings carried him higher into a spiraling stairwell. From above, he could feel the pull — a pulse, steady, immense. The core. The heart of the labyrinth.
He flexed his claws. His silence pressed harder into the air.
There, at the core, he would test his new form.