Sister Tavira finished the last of her blessings with shaking hands. She pressed one palm to Rhyla's shield arm, the other to Edrin's back, murmuring prayers meant for muscle and bone reinforcement. Strength settled into them like weight being lifted away—frames steadied, muscles reinforced, pain dulled to something distant.
Tavira stepped back, heart pounding, as Professor Vauldin moved forward without waiting for acknowledgment. He raised his hand and traced the opening sigils of Starfall, and the air around the clearing tensed. This level of magic had already alerted their target.
Rhyla moved first, stepping ahead of the others with shield raised and axe loose at her side, placing herself between the clearing and the forest beyond. Her stance widened, boots grinding into the dirt as she braced for impact, eyes fixed on the dark between the trees. Edrin followed a distance behind, circling to take position slightly behind her, angling himself so that his line of fire ran past her shield while keeping his body squarely between Professor Vauldin and the treeline. No one spoke. The air vibrated with gathering power, the Starfall sigils climbing higher, and somewhere in the forest something answered—branches shuddering, leaves scattering, the sound of movement coming far too fast for anything natural.
The forest exploded into motion. The Blackmaw burst from the trees in a rush of shadow and fur, its focus locked not on the steel before it but on the blazing sigils rising above Professor Vauldin's hands. It ran low and fast, limbs blurring, corrupted mana rippling off its body as it tore across the clearing with a sound like breath dragged through broken glass. Rhyla met it head-on. She drove her shield forward just as the beast lunged, the impact slamming through her arms and into her chest, boots skidding back through the dirt as claws shrieked against reinforced steel. The charge stopped there—barely—but it stopped, the nightmare beast snarling inches from her face as she held the line.
Edrin loosed his first arrow the instant the Blackmaw stalled. The shaft struck high in the creature's shoulder, biting deep enough to draw a spray of dark tar like blood that hissed as it hit the dirt. The beast recoiled with a shrill, furious sound, its head snapping away from Rhyla and toward the archer instead. Edrin fired again, and again—each shot measured, deliberate, meant less to kill than to annoy, to provoke. The Blackmaw shifted its weight, claws gouging the earth as it strained against Rhyla's shield, torn between the steel wall in front of it and the source of pain behind her. Rhyla held firm, muscles locked, shield trembling under the pressure but never giving ground, her axe poised low and ready as she waited for the beast to make a mistake.
The Blackmaw lunged, jaws snapping wide as it surged forward to tear at Rhyla's throat. She met it without hesitation, ramming her shield up and into its open mouth. Teeth scraped and cracked against reinforced metal as the beast snarled around the edge, hot breath washing over her face. Its momentum stalled just long enough. Another arrow struck, then another—both driven deep into muscle already slick with blood. The Blackmaw recoiled with a violent shake of its head, thick, dark blood pouring freely now, forcing the shafts loose. One by one they were spat out by sheer motion, clattering wetly to the ground at its feet as the creature staggered back, wounded but far from finished.
With a guttural snarl, the Blackmaw abandoned the exchange entirely. It coiled and sprang, vaulting over shield and bow in a blur of motion, its body sailing between Rhyla and Edrin as it hurled itself toward the burning sigils of the ritual. Rhyla reacted without thinking. She tore her axe free and threw it hard, the weapon spinning end over end before biting deep into the beast's hind leg. Bone cracked. The Blackmaw screamed as it hit the ground short of its target, momentum ruined, its injured leg buckling beneath it. It skidded across the dirt and came to rest between the two lines—wounded, furious, and still dangerously close to the ritual.
Professor Vauldin knew it was not ready. The sigils wavered under his hands, their geometry strained and incomplete, the flow of astral mana uneven and screaming for more time. Releasing Starfall now meant surrendering precision, trading control for immediacy. He felt the instability coil through the spell as clearly as his own pulse. Still, he released it. The sigils flared outward, tearing open the sky in a violent rush as the spell lurched forward half-formed. Light split the clouds, and something massive answered too quickly, dragged down through the heavens with a sound like stone grinding against the firmament. The falling meteor burned erratically, shedding fragments of molten fire as it screamed toward the clearing, unstable long before it reached the ground.
The meteor struck before anyone could think to look away. Light and heat swallowed the clearing in a single, deafening instant, the impact hammering the world flat as the ground convulsed beneath them. The Blackmaw vanished without sound or struggle, erased so completely that nothing recognizable remained. A shockwave tore outward, flattening brush and hurling debris through the air as Rhyla and Edrin were driven to their knees, Tavira screaming as the force ripped the breath from her lungs. When the light finally faded, the clearing was a smoking wound of scorched earth and broken stone. Somewhere beyond the ruined trees, far enough to escape notice in the chaos, a fragment of the falling star sheared away and plunged deeper into the forest, burning briefly before vanishing into the dark.