The great hall erupted into violence that made the ancient stones sing with steel.

Knights who had moved like marionettes moments before now fought with the fury of men reclaiming stolen souls. Swords rang against demonic claws while voices that had spoken in mechanical unison now roared individual battle cries that echoed from the vaulted ceiling.

Marcus—his spider-limbs uncoiling like nightmare made flesh—swept three knights aside with a single gesture. Bodies struck stone pillars with sounds like breaking timber, but more warriors pressed forward to fill the gaps. The Order remembered its purpose now, and that purpose had teeth.

Ryelle ducked a claw-strike that gouged furrows in the wall behind her, stone dust raining down like ash. The Mayakara's true form towered above the melee, his borrowed human face now a memory burned away by dragon fire. Multiple arms struck at angles that violated the rules of earthly combat, each talon trailing wisps of shadow that made the torchlight gutter and flee.

Belenton shrieked something in a language that predated human speech, his six-armed form dancing between Lorne's blade-work and the press of recovering knights. Where his claws touched metal, armor corroded and weapons grew brittle. Where his feet touched stone, the floor cracked in patterns that suggested frozen lightning.

"Elena!" Ardeunius's voice cut through the chaos, calling to shadows near the hall's entrance. "Get the others! Free whoever can be freed!"

A figure detached itself from the darkness—Elena, her sword already red to the hilt, leading a group of knights whose eyes held clarity instead of the pale emptiness that had marked the corrupted. How many had they saved? How many remained lost?

Questions for later. Marcus came at Ryelle again, his form blurring between positions like smoke given murderous intent.

She met his charge with the kanabō's iron head, the weapon's weight driving one spider-limb aside while her momentum carried her past his guard. Divine fire coursed through the metal as she brought it around in a rising arc that should have caved in his skull.

Should have.

The demon flowed like water around the strike, his body bending in directions that made her eyes water. Claws raked across her back, parting leather and finding flesh beneath. Pain blazed white-hot, but the wounds sealed themselves almost immediately—divine constitution knitting torn skin back together with threads of silver fire.

"Resilient little godling," Marcus said, his voice carrying harmonics that made the stones weep moisture. "But resilience merely prolongs inevitable outcomes."

He pressed his attack, driving her back toward the hall's eastern wall. Behind him, she caught glimpses of the broader battle—Lorne weaving between Belenton's strikes like a dancer partnered with death, knights falling and rising and falling again as they learned to fight enemies that moved like liquid nightmare.

But the corrupted were losing. Whatever hold the Mayakara had maintained over the Order was crumbling as more knights broke free from their mental chains. Bodies in red and gold surged forward with renewed purpose, and even demonic speed couldn't stand against sheer weight of numbers indefinitely.

Marcus seemed to recognize the shift. His attacks grew more desperate, less precise. Claws that had been surgical in their placement now struck with wild fury that spoke of something approaching panic.

"Your resistance delays necessary improvements," he said, but sweat—or something like sweat—beaded on his borrowed human features. "Cooperation ensures—"

Ryelle's kanabō took him in the center of his borrowed chest, divine fire erupting on impact. The blow launched him backward through the air, his spider-limbs windmilling as he struck the eastern wall with force that cracked ancient masonry.

The wall held. Barely.

Marcus peeled himself from the spider-web of fractures, his form wavering between human and demonic as whatever magic sustained his presence began to falter. Blood—black as midnight and thick as tar—dripped from wounds that couldn't decide what shape they wanted to be.

"Enough," he said, and the word carried power that made the damaged wall shiver. "If cooperation cannot be achieved, then elimination serves equivalent purposes."

He hurled himself at her with the fury of something that had abandoned all pretense of subtlety. But instead of meeting her charge directly, he angled his leap toward the cracked wall behind her.

The impact shattered stone that had stood for centuries.

Ryelle threw herself aside as the wall exploded outward in a cascade of masonry and mortar dust, but Marcus was already through the breach, his form disappearing into the corridor beyond. The message was clear—this fight would not be contained to a single room.

She plunged through the gap after him, her boots skidding on loose rubble as she emerged into a narrow hallway lined with tapestries that depicted the Order's victories against demonic incursions.

The irony would have been amusing if she'd had time to appreciate it.

Marcus waited thirty paces down the corridor, his spider-limbs braced against walls and ceiling in a configuration that let him strike from multiple angles simultaneously. His human head swiveled to track her approach, and his mouth split open to reveal teeth like obsidian daggers.

"Running already?" she asked, raising the kanabō to guard position.

"Recalibrating," he replied, and the room seemed to bend around him like soft wax. "Demons do not run. Demons adapt."

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He launched himself at her like a bolt from a siege engine.

The hallway became a whirlwind of claws and iron, each exchange driving them further from the great hall's chaos. Marcus used the confined space exactly as he'd promised—wall-walking and ceiling-crawling to attack from angles that her earthbound combat training hadn't prepared her for.

But Ryelle had advantages of her own. Divine strength let her punch holes in walls when she needed new angles of attack.

Dragon fire turned the air itself into a weapon that could strike anywhere she could breathe. And her kanabō's weight, which should have been a liability in tight quarters, became a tool for demolition that opened new tactical possibilities with every swing.

A particularly vicious exchange sent them both crashing through a wooden door and into what might once have been a library. Shelves lined the walls, filled with books and scrolls that spoke of accumulated knowledge spanning centuries.

Marcus used them as projectiles, hurling volumes of military tactics and demon-hunting lore with force that turned scholarship into shrapnel.

Ryelle answered by grabbing one of the massive reading tables—oak thick as her forearm and heavy as a siege engine—and swinging it like an oversized club. The furniture exploded against Marcus's guard in a shower of splinters and iron fittings, but the impact drove him backward through another wall.

This one gave way more easily than the last, revealing a spiral staircase that wound upward into the castle's higher levels. Marcus scrambled up the steps with his spider-limbs, moving across stone and mortar with equal ease.

She followed, taking the stairs three at a time while her kanabō's iron head struck sparks from the walls. Above her, the demon paused to tear loose stones from the staircase's interior wall, hurling them down with force that could crack skulls. She deflected what she could and absorbed the rest, divine constitution turning potentially fatal impacts into manageable bruises.

But each exchange was costing her. Not in terms of physical damage—her divine nature repaired wounds almost as quickly as they appeared—but in energy. She was burning through her power reserves at a rate that couldn't be sustained indefinitely, while Marcus seemed to draw strength from the shadows that gathered wherever torchlight couldn't reach.

They burst onto the castle's upper battlements in a cloud of stone dust and fury. Wind howled across the ramparts, carrying the scent of pine and snow from the peaks surrounding Old Drakon. Below them, the valley spread out in moonlit splendor that would have been beautiful if she'd had leisure to appreciate it.

Marcus crouched on the battlement's edge like some nightmare perched for flight, his spider-limbs gripping stone while his human torso swayed in the mountain wind.

"Admirable persistence," he said, his voice now carrying the whistle of air through broken teeth. "But persistence without purpose serves no constructive function."

"The purpose is stopping you," she said, raising her weapon despite the exhaustion that made her arms feel like lead. "Stopping whatever corruption you've spread through this place."

"The corruption is order imposed upon chaos. Structure granted to minds that lacked proper direction. Purpose provided to lives that served no beneficial function." His obsidian teeth glittered in the moonlight. "You oppose improvement itself."

"I oppose slavery dressed up in pretty words."

She charged again, but this time Marcus was ready. His form blurred as he launched himself not at her but past her, using the battlement's height to gain momentum that carried him in a diving arc toward the courtyard below.

The fall should have killed him. Would have killed any human.

Instead, he landed in a crouch that absorbed the impact, his spider-limbs spreading wide to distribute force across multiple points. Cracks spider-webbed outward from where he touched down, but he rose unharmed and looked up at her with something that might have been a smile.

The challenge was clear. Follow me if you dare.

Ryelle looked down at the twenty-meter drop to the courtyard's flagstones. A fall from this height would test even her divine constitution, but letting Marcus escape meant abandoning everyone still trapped in the castle's corruption.

She jumped.

Wind howled past her ears as the castle's walls blurred by. The courtyard rushed upward with terrifying speed, its ancient flagstones promising a landing that would make every bone in her body sing soprano.

At the last possible moment, she exhaled dragon fire downward, using the blast's recoil to arrest her fall just enough to avoid being smashed flat. She still hit the ground hard enough to drive every breath from her lungs and send shock waves through her divine essence, but she hit it alive.

Marcus was already moving by the time she struggled to her feet. The courtyard became their arena—a space large enough for the kind of wide-ranging combat that suited both their fighting styles. Ancient flagstones cracked under the force of their exchanges while the castle's walls echoed with the sound of iron meeting claw.

But the demon was faster here, unencumbered by walls and ceilings that limited his movement. His spider-limbs let him scuttle across the courtyard's surface like something that belonged in the deep places of the earth, while his borrowed human features maintained the facade of intelligence that made his every attack feel personal.

Ryelle gave ground, using her kanabō's reach to keep his claws at bay while looking for openings that never quite materialized. Each exchange left her a little slower, a little less precise. Divine power had limits, and she was approaching them fast.

Marcus sensed her weakness. His attacks grew bolder, more sustained. Claws that had been testing her defenses now committed to strikes that would end the fight if they connected. She blocked, parried, dodged, but couldn't maintain the defensive pattern indefinitely.

A claw-strike slipped past her guard, raking across her ribs with force that drove her to one knee. Pain blazed white-hot as demon talons found flesh, and this time the wounds didn't seal immediately. She rolled away from a follow-up attack that would have torn out her throat, but the movement cost her.

Blood soaked her clothes, staining the flagstones red in her wake. The kanabō felt like a lead weight in her hands, each swing now taking as much energy as she could give. Marcus circled her with deliberate steps, his human mouth curved in a smile that showed too many teeth.

"Weak little godling," he said, each word carrying the promise of cruelty to come. "You could have served as a useful instrument of improvement. Instead, you will serve as a useful example."

She tried to raise the kanabō, but the weapon's weight betrayed her. The metal head crashed to the flagstones and stuck there, leaving her gripping a stick that had become a tree.

"Your goddess cannot help you here," the demon whispered. "She is too far away, and you are too deep in my shadows."

But even as darkness closed around the edges of her vision, Ryelle smiled.

Because the demon was wrong about one thing.

Ebonheim was never too far away when her people needed her.

Light blazed across the courtyard like a second sunrise, bright enough to cast sharp shadows and make the demon recoil with a shriek of pain and fury.

Ebonheim materialized in the courtyard's center, her form wreathed in divine radiance that made the ancient stones sing with harmonics of their own. Her eyes burned with power that belonged to gods rather than mortals, and her presence filled the air with the scent of growing things and clean earth.

"You," she said, her voice resonating through the castle's foundations, "are not welcome here."

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