Elaine's vision blurred — HP dropping hard.
HP: 18%… 11%…
Revenant held up two fingers.
"Watch closely."
Ian's voice cut through the darkness:
"Elaine—!"
Then silence.
Elaine's heart broke.
Her scythe vibrated violently in her grasp — a pulse through the hilt, like a heartbeat waking.
A voice — ancient and cold — whispering from the metal:
"Choose.
Power… or life."
Shadows slithered along the blade and reformed into curved wing-like blades … yet her hands flickered with a price she did not yet knew.
Revenant observed, not fear.
"There it is," he purred.
"The Reaper's Ascension."
His grin widened.
"The gift you stole from our family."
Elaine froze.
"Our… what?"
Before Revenant could speak, footsteps echoed —
slow, confident.
Another masked figure emerged from the fog — armor blacker than void, a symbol carved into the chest:
🜂 A Broken Mask with Shadow Wings Behind
(the Night Reaper Guild emblem)
The figure removed their hood — long obsidian hair spilled free.
A voice like Elaine's, but older… colder:
"Little sister," she whispered.
"You were never meant to survive the night you were born."
Elaine's knees almost buckled.
Family?
Betrayal?
Lies since birth?
The new figure produced a pair of daggers coated in shadow flame. "Hand over the Scythe of Ascension."
Her smile was venom.
"And we may kill you quickly."
The shadowy tendrils surrounding Elaine burst protectively — her evolved scythe snapping in to place.
The weapon whispered again:
"Who will you sacrifice?
Them… or yourself?"
Elaine's decision will define her legend —
Night Reaper feared… or Night Reaper dead.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
It brushed against Elaine's skin — the heartbeat of every soldier, every shadow — waiting for her signal.
Valeria was at the end of the shattered corridor of the room at the full draw of her blade which shone with divine code.
Revenant remained behind her and smirked as if he had already known the ending of the story.
Elaine's scythe gleamed.
The black aura enveloping it beat once… twice… then stilled — as if questioning her, Are you sure?
She was.
Her eyes rose and locked with Valeria's.
"Tell your gods," Elaine said softly, "the Night Reaper doesn't bow to anyone."
And the world broke.
The shadows beneath her army shifted — not forward, not back — but sideways, like an inky liquid slowly pouring onto the battlefield.
SCREAMS rang out, steel clanged, but Elaine heard none of it.
Behind her, her will coursed through the pitch black darkness, changing every loyalty, every bond.
The Night Reaper Army turned — not on the foe, not even for a moment on the foe — but on everyone.
Revenant's smirk wavered. "What have you done—"
Like glass, Elaine's voice split him.
"I've let them go."
Valeria's divine light blazed, wings of light unfurling from her armor. "You've doomed them! "
"Maybe," whispered Elaine, "but at least this decision was mine."
The ground cracked, symbols of shadow and light swirling up — swirling, smashing, ripping open the fabric of reality. The air shuddered with static, like a world trying to reload while under fire.
"Perhaps," Elaine breathed, "but this one was mine to make."
The earth cracked, symbols of shadow and light coiling — clashing and interlocking and ripping the fabric of reality itself open. The air rippled with static, like a world trying to reload mid-fight.
When the strife abated, half the citadel had been razed.
Only ash. Silence. And one figure who had not turned away from the void: Elaine.
Her scythe dimmed, the last vestiges of her army fading into mist.
Behind her, Revenant's voice echoed, distant but steadfast.
"You've set in motion something you can't steer."
Elaine shifted a little, eyes faintly glowing red. "Good. Then it will not control me."
And deep beneath the ruins, a system woke — a cold voice whispering through the cracks of the world:
"Shadow Protocol initiated."