Lu Yuan scaled the Aethelstan Tower with the terrifying grace of his war-wolf form, his claws gouging handholds into the reinforced concrete as he ascended like a silver nightmare. The wind whipped around him, but he was an unstoppable force of nature, driven by a singular, burning purpose.
He exploded onto the top floor, the scene before him confirming his worst fears. Lilith was pinned in the center of the room by a crackling cage of black energy, her face a mask of strain, her power visibly muted. Victor stood before her, his hands raised in invocation, a dark, swirling vortex of energy beginning to form above the decoy box. The four mercenaries guarded the humming technological devices that sustained the cage.
Victor's head turned, a look of genuine surprise flashing across his features at the sight of the colossal war-wolf. "The Alpha! And in such a… magnificent form. The emotional catalyst is even stronger than I anticipated! Perfect!"
Lu Yuan didn't waste breath on words. With a roar that shattered the remaining windows, he charged. He ignored Victor for the moment, his first objective was to free Lilith. He lunged for the nearest energy generator.
The mercenaries opened fire with their enchanted rifles. Bolts of searing light and corrosive magic slammed into his thick hide. They stung, sizzling against his fur and muscle, but they were like bee stings to a grizzly. He swatted one mercenary aside, the man's body crumpling against a steel beam with a sickening crunch. He gripped the first generator and, with a surge of immense strength, ripped it from the floor, wires and conduits sparking violently.
The black energy cage flickered.
That was all the opening Lilith needed. The moment the nullifying field wavered, her power, pent up and furious, erupted. She didn't use telekinesis; she unleashed a wave of pure, destructive mind power. It was invisible, silent, and devastating. The three remaining mercenaries screamed as their minds were simultaneously and violently scoured into oblivion. They dropped to the floor, lifeless.
Victor snarled, his concentration broken. "A minor setback!" He gestured, and the dark vortex above the decoy box lashed out, not at Lu Yuan, but at Lilith, a tendril of pure entropy seeking to unmake her.
Lilith met it with a shield of solidified will, the two forces colliding with a sound like a universe tearing in half. The air warped and screamed around them.
Lu Yuan, now free to engage the main threat, turned his fury on Victor. He was a primal engine of muscle and fang, a force that could level buildings. He closed the distance in a heartbeat, his claws sweeping down to cleave the sorcerer in two.
Victor was ready. He spoke a single, guttural word in a language that predated human speech. Ancient, glowing seals materialized in the air around him. Lu Yuan's claws slammed into them and stopped dead, as if hitting a mountain of solid diamond. The impact sent a shockwave through the entire floor, cracking the concrete beneath their feet.
"The strength of the primeval wolf!" Victor mocked, even as sweat beaded on his forehead from the effort of maintaining the seals. "Impressive! But brute force cannot break the laws of creation!"
He countered with a blast of black magic that felt like concentrated death. It hit Lu Yuan in the chest, throwing the massive war-wolf backward. It wasn't a physical blow; it was a necrotic attack that sought to wither his life force. Lu Yuan roared in pain, feeling a cold, dead patch spread across his chest, his silver fur turning grey and brittle.
"Lu Yuan!" Lilith cried out. Abandoning her defensive posture, she redirected her power. She couldn't break Victor's seals directly, but she could attack the environment. With a monumental effort of telekinesis, she tore a massive section of the ceiling and the floor above from its moorings and hurled it down onto Victor.
The sorcerer was forced to divert his power, raising a shield above his head to block the tons of falling debris. The distraction was enough.
Lu Yuan shook off the necrotic chill, his immense vitality already healing the damage. He saw his opening. While Victor was occupied with the collapsing ceiling, Lu Yuan bypassed the frontal seals and attacked from the side, his jaws snapping shut on the sorcerer's arm.
bone crunched. Victor screamed, a sound of genuine pain and rage. The seals flickered. Dark energy erupted from his injured limb, blasting Lu Yuan in the face and forcing him to release his grip.
The battle descended into a cataclysmic, three-way melee. Lilith used her telekinesis with surgical precision, dismantling the remaining generators, deflecting Victor's spells, and creating openings. Lu Yuan was the unstoppable physical force, a battering ram of fang and claw that tested the absolute limits of Victor's defensive magic. Victor, in turn, wielded black sorcery and ancient seals with terrifying skill, countering their every move, his spells designed to corrupt, to decay, to unmake.
They were a perfect, if chaotic, counter to each other. Lilith's finesse disrupted Victor's complex workings. Lu Yuan's raw power overwhelmed Victor's concentrated defenses. But Victor's ancient knowledge and willingness to use forbidden power kept him in the fight.
The clash of Vampire telekinesis, Werewolf savagery, and Black Magic reached an unprecedented extreme. The top of the Aethelstan Tower became a maelstrom of conflicting energies. The structural integrity of the building, already compromised, began to fail completely. Great chunks of the floor gave way, plunging into the abyss below. The city lights swayed drunkenly as the tower groaned and tilted.
Victor, bleeding and enraged, realized he was losing. The confluence of energies was too chaotic, too unfocused. He couldn't complete the ritual with them actively trying to kill him.
"Enough!" he bellowed, raising his good hand high. The partially activated Nocturne Key fragment he truly possessed—not the decoy—flared to life in his palm. "If I cannot have my sacrifice, I will take this city with me!"
He channeled all his remaining power, and the chaotic energy of their battle, into the Key. The obsidian shard glowed with an unstable, terrifying light, and a beam of pure, chaotic energy shot from it, not at Lilith or Lu Yuan, but into the heart of the city below, aiming to trigger a chain reaction that would unravel the fabric of reality itself.
The fate of C City hung in the balance, and the limits of their strength had been reached. To stop this, they would need to become something more.