The world shattered in a burst of sound and movement.
The monster charged.
The ground shook as the abomination's feet crushed the mosaic tiles and tore through the red carpet. Kayden barely had time to understand how he was still breathing. The contract burned against his skin, pushing him forward. Running was not allowed. Fighting was the only option.
Two mouths roared out of sync, one deep and drawn-out, the other shrill and hysterical. The sound tore through the air.
The cathedral stretched before him, rows of dark wooden pews lined up, black basalt columns holding up the arches. Stained glass cast fragmented light across the floor. Kayden stood frozen on the steps before the altar, terrified, directly in the path of the attack.
The altar crumbled under the first blow. Kayden reacted before thinking, sliding behind the nearest column.
The creature stumbled from the impact, its movements clumsy.
Was that an opening? No, that thing could not be defeated.
Kayden stared at his dagger, hand trembling, breath ragged. Hiding would solve nothing. Against his own will, he threw himself out of cover and slashed at the monster's tendon, only managing to carve a shallow line. Its skin was too thick, the dagger too dull.
"Shit!"
With a short motion, the creature kicked him with its wounded heel.
Kayden flew through the wooden pews, crashing through three rows before slamming against the fourth. Shards exploded around him, splinters stabbing into his back. The pain burned, but it no longer paralyzed him as before. His body felt different.
What was he thinking?
That he could kill that profane thing? He wanted to run away as fast as possible. Kayden hated that his thoughts clashed, but it was his only way out.
"What the hell is that?!" Even with his blurred vision, he saw something terrifying.
The creature's flesh swelled like a lung about to burst. Veins lit up blue, pulsing beneath stretched skin, until the arm thinned and tore open from within like a blade of bone. The stench of rot and burnt meat filled the air.
One of its arms had become a spear, sharp and throbbing.
With a swift motion, it lunged at Kayden, faster, deadlier.
Kayden rolled aside, unable to stand in time. The spear pierced basalt and wood where his body had been just seconds earlier.
No time to rest. He rolled again, then again, faster each time. The wooden debris slowed him, but what truly stopped Kayden was a gut feeling.
The monster was not stupid. It was learning.
'Jump…'
A snap in his mind told him that if he tried the same move again, he would die.
He gritted his teeth, and mid-roll, when his face was pressed toward the bloodstained wood, he pushed off the ground with both hands.
To his left, the sound of wood splitting.
That simple sideways dodge had been read. He survived by inches, but not unscathed.
This thing also had a plan; its other arm had transformed into an equally lethal spear, its attack aimed at the end of Kayden's roll.
Heat trickled down his arm, dripping to the floor. His left triceps had been torn from shoulder to elbow.
He ignored it. His back was turned to the thing, caught between two spears. He ran forward, leaping over the pews.
His left leg shook under the weight of his battered body. Each movement sent waves of pain through his torn arm.
He drew in a deep breath.
"How the hell am I supposed to kill this thing?"
The contract pulsed in response. He remembered. He was an Oathbounder.
The creature's hysterical face stopped screaming and started laughing.
It stood still where they had been fighting. In a disturbing act, it licked the spear that had pierced Kayden's arm.
His eyes widened, stomach twisting at the thought of his fate.
That was no irrational beast. It was cunning.
He didn't know what his new ability could do, but he had to try it out to find out.
His arm began to tingle as if the contract were giving him hints about how to act. Naturally, he raised his right hand, could not waste the moment. Heat surged from his heart and down his arm. Pain turned to embers.
"LICK THIS, YOU BASTARD!"
Ash swirled around his hand as if the very air was being sucked into his skin. A flash came with a crack, a yellow bolt tearing space like solid thunder.
Light engulfed the entire nave. For an instant, the cathedral drowned in blinding radiance, as if the sun itself had appeared inside. Stained glass shattered into a cascade of colored shards. The pews before him burst into charred wood.
The recoil was brutal. Kayden felt his shoulder yanked half a handspan back, muscles straining under the pressure. His arm burned with a dry, electric pain. He collapsed to his knees, gasping, vision sliced by black lines.
In the distance, the muffled sound of flesh.
The creature did not scream at once. It hesitated. Its body trembled, blue veins stretched tight like pulled cords. Only then did its arm detach, flung aside like a rotten branch.
The severed arm struck the ruined altar and lay there, still twitching. The spear broke apart as soon as his arm hit the ground, and his hand had returned to normal. Fingers clenched and unclenched as if grasping something invisible. Blue veins pulsed beneath the skin, glowing even apart from the body.
The scream came late, and it was worse. Piercing, monstrous, making stone and bone tremble together. Both mouths cried in unison, one deep, one shrill, until the sound was like glass being sawn apart.
The ground shook. Columns cracked.
Kayden gasped, his arm numb, as if the bolt had drained not only his strength but his very life force. Sweat poured down his face in streams, salty on his lips.
'What kind of cursed power is this…' His breath came fast, searching for more air than his lungs could hold. 'If I use it again…'
His arm throbbed, driving the thought deeper.
'What will happen to me?'
But the contract pulsed, blind to exhaustion.
The creature, maddened, hurled itself against the walls, shattering columns and bringing down clouds of dust from the ceiling. Each impact echoed like an explosion. It never stopped roaring. The loss of its arm did not weaken its fury; it multiplied it.
But now, its rage was blind, without a target, destroying everything, with Kayden no longer its main focus.
Kayden seized the chance. Limping, he dragged himself among the shattered pews, searching for his dagger.
'Found you!' Wedged between two broken planks, the blade still gleamed.
The monster ended its frenzy and locked bloodthirsty eyes on him.
Flesh began to knit back together. Bones moved like gears. The severed arm crawled across the floor and reattached itself. The two heads merged into one. Muscles thickened, its body stretched. No longer a grotesque ball of meat, it now resembled a knight of rot, tall and defined.
Kayden swallowed hard.
"Goddamn it."
This time, the monster advanced not with clumsy steps but with precision.
Kayden spun aside, using a broken pew for support. But in the next instant, the spear reshaped into a battering ram of dense muscle, and with one swift strike, hit him.
It slammed into his back. The sickening crack of bones breaking stole his breath.
He flew across the nave, his wounded back smashing against the floor with a dry thud. He lay in the central aisle of the cathedral. His vision spun, ears ringing, yet his mind refused to surrender.
He pushed to his knees, too dazed from the last blow.
'That bastard only attacks in straight lines, fucking idiot'
"One more shot... just one more." Kayden breathed deep.
The dagger had flown far with the impact. He staggered through the wreckage until he found it trapped under a broken column. He needed a distraction.
Biting his lip in fury, he reached a bitter conclusion. 'I need to fight head-on. I have to risk everything.'
The knight threw the spear, but not in a natural way. It does not detach from his body, but instead stretches out with such speed that it makes the air scream. Against every instinct, Kayden ran toward it. Sliding under the blow at the last second, he hurled the dagger with surgical precision. The blade buried itself in the monster's left eye.
'Gotcha.' A slight smile spreads across the corner of his face.
The scream was so violent it shattered the remaining stained glass. Blinded in one eye, the creature ripped out pillars, stones collapsing.
"Throwing a tantrum won't help."
It snorted, eyes burning with bloodlust that sharpened into something purer, truer, hatred.
For a moment, silence. But not for long.
Its hatred took form. The monster shuddered as if tearing itself apart from within. The sound of bones deforming echoed through the cathedral. The merged mouths opened into one gaping maw, deep and endless.
One arm devoured the other, swelling into a monstrous spear, thick as a tree trunk, long enough to drag across the floor, yet sharp enough to split it apart.
The creature swelled with a final roar, then leapt, its legs exploding with power. A mountain crashing down on him.
Kayden did not retreat. He waited until he felt the wind of the strike. He slipped to the side of the spear, its tip grazing his ear. The sour stench of old blood and pus burned his nose.
The monster was so close he could feel the putrid heat of its breath licking his skin.
The fused maw opened before him, a wet abyss of jagged teeth.
The creature's left side was blind, and that made him raise his left arm.
For a second, Kayden froze. His mind screamed it was suicide. But his body, bound by the oath, hurled itself forward.
He thrust his arm into that gaping mouth. Viscous flesh clamped down on his skin, teeth scraping, piercing shallowly, drawing blood. The acidic stench seared his eyes, nearly blinding him.
'If I miss... It's over.'
He had a split second of regret, terrified his arm would be torn off before he could act.
But then heat surged from his chest like thunder. A wave of suicidal courage, burning away every worry.
"THEN I WON'T FUCKING MISS!"
The bolt tore through the abomination. It was not just light, it was annihilation. Flesh, bone, and blood exploded like rain. The blast engulfed the entire cathedral, painting the shattered stained glass in yellow and red.
The impact slammed him against the ground, ribs scraping the broken stone. He choked on blood but did not look away from the monster.
The abomination lay torn apart. It remains writhed on the floor, muscle spasms trying to reconnect, but the lightning burned through every fiber.
At last, the flesh collapsed, limp, dark, smoking.
[Inferior Djinn Defeated! Rank: Star.]
[Your Lumen shines brighter.]
The silence that followed was worse than all the deafening roars. The absence of sound weighed on him like stone. No crackle of torches. No wind through broken glass. Nothing.
Only blood dripping, hot and slow, filling the grooves between the mosaics like a crooked river.
Kayden looked around, cracked columns, shattered pews, ruined altar, stained glass reduced to colorful shards across the floor, and thought the cathedral might have become not only that thing's grave, but his own.
His eyes slowly drained the colors of the world until a bright screen filled his vision.
[Contract Fragment Acquired.]