The moment Jeremiah’s eyes opened, the world cracked.

  A wave of pure void energy erupted from his convulsing form, surging outward with the force of a tidal wave. The polished marble beneath him blackened and crumbled into dust, and the very air shuddered as if recoiling from his existence. Leonard barely had time to conjure a dome of incandescent golden light to shield his men before the darkness crashed into them.

  Its sheer force rattled the entire fortress, even as it parted before his will.

  This wasn’t ordinary Void corruption. This wasn’t the slow, creeping taint that rotted away minds and bodies over weeks, nor was it the chaotic storms of the Incursion that he had fought so long ago. This was deliberate. Concentrated. Something designed to do one thing—consume.

  For a moment, all Leonard could hear was the roar of the Void. A thousand whispered voices screamed at him in a discordant chorus, scratching at his mind with promises.

  Come home.

  There is peace in surrender.

  You could be so much more.

  End the pain.

  Leonard almost laughed. His own psyche was much more insidious than this. “Begone.” He pushed, expanding his aura of Light, and the whispers dissolved into static.

  Even shielded by his buff, his men still staggered from the aftershocks of the attack but remained unscathed. The Void could try to worm its way into them, but his power would hold it at bay. He had managed the same with far less at his disposal.

  If Pollus thinks he can overwhelm me with this much, he’s sorely mistaken. I was a whole rank weaker when I led the kingdom’s armies and had to protect them from entire fields worth of voidlings.

  Then, the entity that had once been Jeremiah rose.

  His skin was gone—not burned or melted, but merely erased, as if he had never been meant to have it. What remained was a humanoid shape of pure blackness, an absence of existence standing in mockery of a man. The edges of his form shimmered and bled into the air, like ink dissolving in water, never completely stable, never truly whole.

  And yet, he moved. Flexing his fingers. Rolling his shoulders. Testing.

  Like a newborn creature trying on its new body for the first time.

  Fascination rippled through the entity’s stance. It turned its head, though it had no face, tilting it as if examining itself. Its hand reached for its chest, fingers pressing against the formless void it had become.

  “Interesting.” The voice that came was… wrong. Too many tones layered over each other, speaking in perfect unison, echoing in ways that should have been impossible. “I am still… here.”

  The rat-faced man—now reduced to half a body, still clinging to life even as his lower half had dissolved—laughed in breathless delight. “Yes…! Yes! It worked!” He coughed, black ichor spilling from his lips, yet his mad joy never wavered. “A conscious body that can contain the Void without unraveling! A bridge between what was and what will be!”

  Leonard’s instincts told him he had to end this now. The abomination had to die.

  He strode forward, Dyeus blazing like a miniature sun, and swung.

  The Light-forged blade carved a glowing arc through the darkness, moving too fast for the eye to track. Where it passed, the air itself shimmered, seared clean of the Void’s influence.

  And yet.

  The blade stopped. Not because it was blocked—but because there was nothing to hit.

  The Void entity simply wasn’t there.

  One moment, Jeremiah’s transformed body stood before him. The next, he had shifted, flickering like a mirage, standing several feet to the side—untouched.

  Leonard exhaled sharply. “Of course.” Any voidling above the fourth tier could temporarily phase out of reality. He had hoped it would still be too weak from its birth, but it seemed he wasn’t that lucky.

  The being clapped its hands together, slow and deliberate, mocking. It made no sound, of course. Unless it imposed its presence upon the world, it did not affect it. That meant lesser Light attacks wouldn’t hurt it.

  “Unexpected,” it murmured, that layered voice reverberating unnaturally. “I expected pain. Resistance. But this body… adapts. I do not burn by being in your presence. I do not break so close to the Anathema.”

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  Leonard was already moving.

  He launched forward, this time imbuing Dyeus with Smite, the full, undiluted wrath of the Light compressed into a single, devastating strike. A sun made into a blade. He brought it down with absolute force.

  The ground split apart from the sheer magnitude of the power. The entire hall trembled, and light exploded outward in a shockwave that sent debris cascading into the air.

  And still.

  The Void danced around it, shifting like smoke on the wind, impossibly fast. Where a man should have been cleaved in two, there was only the faint distortion of reality—a trick of light and shadow, a thing that shouldn’t be.

  Leonard had seen this before.

  He had fought Voidspawn that could do the same—creatures that slithered in and out of existence, moving between the cracks of reality.

  But this thing wasn’t a mindless monster. It was born from a man. It was thinking. Adapting.

  Jeremiah D’Ansan’s mind was being used as wetware for its purposes. It was probably what allowed the creature such clarity of mind.

  Leonard grimaced. This was dangerous. The longer Jeremiah’s mind existed in this form, the harder it would be to kill as it kept adapting. His personality and ego are gone, and nothing can be done to save him, but the least I can do is excise the rot festering in his body.

  The Void was a hunger without end. The more the being acclimated, the closer it would come to a true Incarnation.

  Leonard couldn’t allow that. It might mean the obliteration of Hassel and the loss of a significant chunk of his army. All simply because of how much power he’d need to bring to bear to kill it.

  Behind him, Pollus hadn’t moved. The old general simply watched. His holy pendant was still protecting him, but his frown had turned grimmer. However desperate he was, Leonard would not forgive the man for his sins.

  “Did you really sacrifice your adjutant?” Leonard asked, not taking his eyes off the entity.

  Pollus’ expression barely flickered. “I do what I must for the kingdom.”

  Leonard could hear a thousand thoughts buzzing behind that answer. No matter what justification he gives himself, this is not a level of depravity that can be hand waved away with mere pragmatism. He’s truly fallen off.

  The entity tilted its head, as if considering something. “You,” it said, its voice a reverberating whisper. “Are Leonard Weiss.”

  Leonard braced himself.

  “You do not repulse me,” it mused, almost disappointed. “Your presence does not hurt me, though I am of the Void. And yet… you shine brighter than anything I have ever seen.”

  It stepped forward, shifting, leaving no footprints, as though the world refused to hold it.

  “You would be a fine contradiction,” it continued. “The Light’s greatest warrior. The Void’s favored prey. If I consume you, would I know what you are?”

  Leonard exhaled.

  Then, he raised Dyeus again, leveling it at the entity’s chest. “Try it.”

  There was a pause. Then, the Void laughed.

  The sound was… soft. Amused. Not mocking, not cruel. As though the challenge genuinely entertained it.

  “Very well,” it whispered. “Let us see if the Light still burns bright enough for day to come.”

  Then it lunged. Leonard moved to meet it. The world trembled as Light and Void clashed.

  Leonard confronted the newborn Incarnation directly, Dyeus radiating golden light in great waves. Each swing of his sacred blade sent crescents crashing against the roiling darkness, while the entity, still exploring the limits of its new form, lashed out with void-forged talons that consumed the very air around them.

  They moved faster than mortal eyes could track, streaks of brilliant gold and deep black tearing through the ruined hall. Each impact of their blows sent out shockwaves, shaking the citadel's foundations and reducing centuries-old stone to rubble. Yet Leonard restrained himself—held back—because if he truly cut loose, nothing would remain of the city or the people still trapped inside it.

  The entity was resilient, adapting with every passing moment. Leonard had cut deep into its form more than once, yet each time, the void matter reformed, its essence refusing to be truly undone. He had fought such creatures before and knew their tricks and arrogance. The entity believed itself indestructible, as all its kind did before it reached its final shape.

  That was its weakness.

  Leonard adjusted his footwork, angling his next strike. The creature swiped at him, trying to consume his light with its clawed appendage, but he twisted just so, allowing it to overextend. With a fluid motion, he brought Dyeus up in a shining arc, forcing the Incarnation to leap upward, avoiding the blade at the last moment.

  A mistake. Leonard had been waiting for this.

  "[Smite.]"

  A column of Light erupted from Dyeus, slamming into the airborne Incarnation. Its left side exploded outward, obliterated by the sheer force of the attack along a good third of the ceiling. The seething energy that had saturated the air recoiled as golden radiance scoured it away, momentarily cleansing the hall just as the sun shone through the new hole.

  The Incarnation screamed, a sound like the wailing of the damned, and plummeted toward the ground, its form flickering and struggling to regenerate.

  His victory was brief. Pollus moved the moment the creature fell.

  Leonard had half a second to react before the Count lunged at him. A streak of black steel sliced through the space where Leonard had just been, narrowly missing him as he twisted away. Pollus didn’t hesitate; he pressed forward with another strike, forcing Leonard to parry.

  Clang!

  The impact sent a shudder through the floor even as Leonard remained unmoved. The weight behind Pollus’ attack was impressive, but that was to be expected. What caught Leonard off guard was the skill behind it.

  Pollus was not merely strong—he was a Champion.

  He flowed seamlessly from one attack to the next, his enchanted blade singing through the air and weaving a pattern of perfectly placed cuts and thrusts. Leonard deflected two, dodged another, and barely managed to angle his sword against the next. He was forced to take a step back despite being much stronger, as the old warrior pushed him hard.

  Leonard gritted his teeth. Strength? He had more. Power? There was no contest. But pure technique? Pollus was better.

  That gap resulted from the decades of effort the old man invested in honing his craft. No matter how monstrous Leonard's talent for wielding the Light was, he couldn’t catch up in just a few years. However, he didn’t need to match his technique; he only needed to overwhelm it.

  Pollus lunged, sword flashing like black lightning, but Leonard met him head-on. Instead of dodging, he absorbed the strike against his bracer, ignoring the force and pushing forward. He slammed his shoulder into Pollus’ chest, sending the older man staggering backward. That moment of imbalance was enough.

  Leonard struck with Dyeus. The count barely managed to block with his own sword, but the sheer power behind the blow sent him flying, skidding across the shattered stone.

  Before Leonard could press his advantage, however, the screaming started.

  The Incarnation—still weakened, still regenerating—was changing.

  The rat-faced mage had crawled toward it, chanting in a tongue that should not exist. He reached out, grasping the flesh made of the Void, attempting to feed it power and restore its strength.

  But the abomination did not need him.

  One clawed hand plunged into his chest, and the man’s body arched in exultation and agony. His face twisted into something unnatural, a mask of bliss and horror as his soul was ripped from him, consumed utterly. He did not die screaming.

  He laughed. And then he was gone.

  The Incarnation rose once more. The wounds Leonard had inflicted were gone, restored by the twisted vitality of its stolen victim. Its power surged, and the hall grew darker, colder.

  Leonard exhaled sharply. So be it. If he had to risk his men’s lives to eliminate the threat to all life, he would.