Midnight found Ebonheim walking toward Corinth with her divine essence uncloaked.

Light haloed her form, a soft white-gold luminescence that pushed back the darkness around her. The Ebon bow materialized in her hands, its wood warm and familiar against her fingers. Essence flowed through her, clear and potent, the petals floating above her shoulder glowing with stored elemental energy.

Not the subtle approach of a delegation. This was a god arriving.

Behind her, Ryelle, Evelyne, and the Silverguard team remained cloaked in shadow, their presence invisible to mortal and divine senses unless she willed otherwise.

Their mission: keep the path clear. Handle the chaos. Manage the aftermath.

But this confrontation would be hers alone.

The town walls rose ahead, pale limestone catching starlight. Guard towers punctuated the ramparts at measured intervals, each one occupied by sentries watching the countryside.

One guard raised a crossbow. The weapon trembled in his hands, string drawn but finger frozen on the trigger. Divine pressure rolled over the battlements like a wave hitting stone—inexorable, irresistible, absolute.

"Lower your weapons," Ebonheim said. Her voice carried through the midnight stillness without shouting, reaching every ear that needed to hear. "I have not come for you."

The crossbow fell from nerveless fingers. Clattered against stone. The guard sank to his knees, and others followed. Not in worship—they served Xellos still, or whatever compulsion he'd woven into their minds—but in the simple recognition that something far beyond their capacity to resist had arrived at their threshold.

The main gates remained closed.

Ebonheim stepped forward, rested her palm against ancient timber, and pushed.

Metal shrieked. Iron hinges tore free of stone. The double gate swung open as if tossed aside by an indifferent storm, crashing into the town square with enough force to shatter cobblestones.

She stepped through the gateway into Corinth proper.

Windows ignited with light as citizens woke to commotion. Doors cracked open. Figures emerged—sleep-tousled, blinking, drawn to disruption like moths to dangerous flame.

Ebonheim stood in the center of the square, her light washing across expressions slack with the peculiar emptiness that marked Xellos's gentle chains. She could feel the wrongness thrumming through the town like a buried heartbeat—seven points of wrongness scattered through the city like splinters driven beneath skin.

The network pulsed, aware of her.

The temple squatted three streets ahead, its white stone façade pristine in the moonlight. She walked toward it while her perimeter team spread out through shadowed alleys.

Ryelle's divine signature blazed from the eastern quarter, already shepherding confused civilians away from the coming storm. Lorne and the Silverguards moved through the southern districts, intercepting guards who might otherwise rush into the line of fire. Evelyne's sensors pinged in Ebonheim's awareness, mapping the network's surge in power as it reacted to divine intrusion.

The temple doors opened before she reached them. A dozen figures emerged, robed and hooded, faces painted with ceremonial symbols. They arranged themselves in a perfect arc, blocking the temple steps.

"Goddess Ebonheim." The one who spoke stepped forward, his painted face composed around serenity that had never been earned, merely applied. "We greet you, but ask that you depart. Your presence disturbs the harmony Xellos has established."

"You serve the master who enslaved you."

The serenity cracked—just for a moment, around the edges. "Our devotion is real, chosen, freely given. It is—"

"Compulsion." The word struck like a thrown stone. "Whispers made chains. A choice so carefully curated it ceased to be choice at all." Her head tilted. "Do any of you remember before Xellos? Remember the doubts you had, the questions you asked? The parts of yourselves you surrendered for his comfort?"

She felt a ripple through the painted faces. A flicker of something like unease in their carefully manufactured calm. Their composure held—too strong, too perfect for genuine conviction.

"You speak as though you understand us," the spokesman said. "But your concern is not for us, but for territory."

"I am not here to claim Corinth." Light gathered around her fingers. "I am here to free it. Step aside."

They raised their arms. Shadows coalesced around them, given substance and form. Dark tendrils lashed out, seeking purchase on her divine light.

Ebonheim didn't even move. Her aura flared outward, expanding in a silent shockwave that smashed through their shadow magic. The tendrils dissolved into nothingness as her light washed over them. Painted faces stared at hands suddenly bereft of power.

She walked through the space they'd guarded, up the marble stairs, through the temple doors into sanctuaries that gleamed with white gold and obsidian.

There. At the altar's heart. Four fingers, thumb, perfect anatomical detail. An eye set in the palm, iris made from crystal that shifted colors as she drew closer.

The network pulsed through it, reaching for her, trying to reshape her thoughts into patterns of compliance and peace.

Gentle compulsion. Invisible chains. She almost admired the subtlety of it.

Her bowstring sang. One arrow, pure white, shaped from her own Essence, struck the eye. The artifact flared violently—blinding light and concussive force that sent shards of stone flying in every direction.

Ebonheim stood unmoving as the wave of power washed over her, her aura absorbing the damage.

The artifact dissolved.

The wrongness that had pulsed from this corner of Corinth faded, leaving behind an emptiness that felt cleaner, healthier.

Priests emerged from side chambers, robes rustling, mouths opening to speak synchronized protests.

Shadows ripped open between Ebonheim and the altar.

Bhutava demons materialized from darkness given teeth, hulking forms wreathed in sulfurous smoke. Six of them, claws extended, burning red eyes fixed on the intruder. They slammed stone fists against marble floors, creating tremors through the entire structure.

They were nothing. Less than nothing.

Essence Bolt after Essence Bolt, amplified by crackling lightning petals, erupted from her bow. Each shot struck true, detonating against tough, rocky skin with concussive force that staggered the demons. They were tough—damage reduction that shrugged off conventional strikes, but they weren't immune to divine power.

They roared, swiping at her with claws the size of daggers, but her Divine Aura held, absorbing the kinetic blows. The floor beneath them cracked as one threw itself forward, trying to close the distance.

Ebonheim stepped aside, nocked and loosed another arrow—this one wreathed in swirling, freezing petals. The bolt struck the demon's chest, and frost bloomed across its rocky hide, encasing it in a thin sheath of brittle ice. Its forward momentum broke against her immobile form like a wave against a cliff, cracking the ice but failing to budge her.

Her remaining bolts flew with unerring precision, the petals floating above her shoulder shifting between elements. Lightning for stunning force, fire for raw damage, ice for slowing their advance. Two demons fell, then three, their rocky forms dissolving into smoke and gravel.

She moved past the wreckage, finishing off the remaining two with quick, efficient shots, not slowing to watch them fall. As she turned towards the exit, her senses stretched out, feeling the remaining network pulses across Corinth.

Council Hall. Market Exchange. Three residential shrines. Fortified warehouse.

The remaining artifacts flared, overcompensating, their power surging through the web of influence. Across the city, lights flickered. The pleasant harmony that always colored the town's atmosphere faltered, revealing raw edges of discord.

A bell tolled from the council hall, then from the marketplace. Not the musical chimes of day, but frantic, overlapping alarms.

She could hear Ryelle's terse instructions echoing through the streets, the faint clang of Silverguard arms as they intercepted panicked residents and nervous guards who, freed from the compulsive peace, didn't know what else to do but react to the sounds of conflict.

Time was wasting.

Ebonheim moved, flowing through Corinth's streets with the speed of divine will, her body shedding the mortal-seeming restraints of motion. The townspeople she passed saw only a streak of white-gold light, a feeling of overwhelming pressure, a shudder in the ground as her divine energy compressed the space between steps.

The Market Exchange loomed ahead, a three-story trading house where merchants conducted business during daylight hours. The second artifact hid beneath its foundations, buried in stone and earth where casual inspection would never find it.

Shadaksha demons launched from rooftops as she approached, leathery wings spread wide, their multiple glowing eyes locking onto her divine signature. One let out a paralyzing screech, a sonic assault that would have frozen mortals in their tracks.

The sound washed over Ebonheim's Divine Aura and dissipated, its frequency smothered before it could take hold. Eldritch bolts of shadowy energy shot from their clawed hands, but her bow was already in motion.

No single bolts this time. She channeled Essence more deeply, the weapon humming in her grasp. An arrow formed of swirling golden light, larger and more potent than before. She loosed it not at one demon, but into the space between three of them.

It detonated mid-air in a silent explosion of divine power. The Shadaksha shrieked as they were thrown back, their wings torn, their eldritch energy nullified. Two smashed against the Exchange's stone walls, leaving dark smears. A third fell to the cobblestones, thrashing.

She didn't wait for them to recover. Three more lightning-quick shots took down the stragglers before they could launch another coordinated assault.

The entrance to the Exchange's lower level was sealed with an iron gate. Ebonheim rested a hand against it. Metal warped, groaned, then tore free of its stone housing, crumpling like paper.

Stairs led down into darkness. Her own light illuminated them as she descended, revealing a basement filled with crates and forgotten goods. And there, embedded in the far wall, the second artifact. Its pulsing eye stared at her, the color shifting from amber to blood-red.

She didn't hesitate.

Another Essence Bolt struck true. The artifact exploded, its death shriek different from the temple's—higher-pitched, a tearing sound of magical bonds broken under duress. The network thrummed again, compensating, but weaker this time. Five points remaining.

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From the shadows between crates, Mayakara emerged, not in his guise as a merchant, but in something closer to truth. His form had elongated, the pleasant human face stretching, breaking apart into a smooth, featureless ovoid of polished obsidian. Two new limbs, jointed wrong and tipped with chitinous claws, unfolded from its back.

"You cannot unmake this, Ebonheim." His thoughts were acid in her mind, a telepathic scrape of nails on slate. "The peace we have offered them is real. You replace comfort with the terror of choice. You—"

A blink, and she was already beside him, severing the demon's head with an ethereal blade conjured from Essence. The body collapsed, twitching, then dissolved into acrid smoke that clung to the basement's stone walls.

She moved on, working her way across the city like a cleansing fire.

The residential shrines were smaller, nestled in quiet neighborhoods. Their artifacts were easier to reach, their guardians lesser. A couple of desperate Asuras, one a more powerful Bhutava who roared defiance before being silenced by a volley of lightning-infused bolts. Three more artifacts shattered into dust.

Five down. Two to go.

The warehouse crouched at Corinth's eastern edge, fortified and walled off from the surrounding streets. Ebonheim approached from above, hopping between platforms of her own creation, leaving glowing steps of light that dissolved behind her.

From her vantage point, she could see the town's state in microcosm. Some people still huddled in their homes, peering through shutters at the chaos unfolding outside. Others clustered in confused groups in the streets. A few, mostly the younger ones, were wandering with a bewildered, vacant expression, like sleepers shaken awake too quickly.

Ryelle and her team had things under control, creating perimeters, directing the dazed away from the conflict zones. Lorne's commanding tones cut through the panic, bringing order where there was none. But they couldn't stop the underlying tide of confusion spreading through the settlement.

The warehouse roof splintered as she descended through it, landing lightly in the center of a vast, dusty space stacked high with goods. Demons stood guard here—Shadaksha on rafters, a contingent of Bhutava arranged in defensive formation around the central artifact.

They had been waiting.

The Bhutava slammed their crude weapons into the floor, a concerted act of earth magic that made the stone heave beneath her. She leaped, twisting in mid-air, and rained lightning down upon them. The blasts illuminated the massive room, revealing the artifact pulsing against a stone plinth at the room's center, its eye now a furious, baleful red.

The demons were a nuisance, nothing more. But behind them stood a figure in robes as dark as the void—a Mayakara who had abandoned its human pretense entirely. A long, serpentine head reared over its shoulders, its smooth, featureless face splitting open to reveal a glistening, multi-fanged mouth.

A Mayakara Vashkara. Not a coordinator, but a commander.

"You tear apart what your rival has built, and yet you have nothing to offer in its place." The Vashkara's telepathic presence was stronger, more focused than its underling's—a burning coal in her mind. "Tell them, little goddess. Tell the poor, bewildered humans that they are free, and watch them turn on you for breaking their lovely chains."

Ebonheim answered with arrows, each one a torrent of pure Essence. They slammed into the commander's chest, forcing it back, cracking its obsidian carapace. The lesser demons pressed forward, a wave of flesh and malice.

She called upon the stored energy swirling above her shoulder. Petals of green, life-infused magic drifted down to merge with her bolt. When she released it, it didn't detonate. Instead, upon impact with the stone floor, it bloomed. Vines erupted from the cracks, thick, thorny, and impossibly fast, ensnaring the Bhutava, anchoring them to the earth they commanded.

Their roars of frustration were short-lived.

Another two bolts, imbued with white-hot light, tore through the Vashkara. The creature dissolved into a spray of ichor and fractured obsidian.

She didn't even break stride, walking through the carnage to the artifact. One last arrow. The warehouse echoed with the sound of fracturing crystal.

One remaining pulse.

One last wrongness to extinguish.

The Council Hall.

It was the heart of Corinth's governance, its power, and now, its corruption. The building's white stone seemed to drink the dim light, its windows dark and unblinking. A single, heavy door of bronze and iron barred the entrance.

Bovikara demons stood in formation across the steps, their sinuous, four-armed bodies coiled and ready. Each of their upper arms gripped a brutal-looking axe, serrated and blackened by fire. Bull-like heads glared, their horns wreathed in acrid smoke.

Behind them, Shadaksha demons circled overhead while Bhutava stalked the perimeter. It was a combined force, a last-ditch defense led by the most powerful and intelligent of the Asura.

Their commander stood at the top of the stairs. Its serpentine body was armored in plates of jagged obsidian, interlocked and shimmering with trapped starlight. Six crimson eyes glowed from its elongated skull, and it held not an axe, but a long, sinuous whip crackling with violet energy.

Ebonheim landed before them, the light of her arrival driving back the shadows clinging to the hall.

"You have won this battle," the Vashkara's thoughts pressed into her mind. "Xellos is a fool to have been discorporated by an avatar, and a greater fool for thinking such delicate control could last."

Its serpentine tongue, black and forked, flickered in the air. "But tell me, Goddess of Nothings... What have you truly accomplished? These mortals will beg for their chains to be reforged. They will tear you apart to feel that peaceful certainty again."

Ebonheim lifted her bow, an arrow of pure, divine Essence nocked and ready. She gave no reply. There was nothing to say.

The Bovikara attacked first. The ground cracked and heaved as they charged, their four arms swinging in a deadly concert. The Vashkara commander cracked its whip, and a bolt of violet energy shot towards her, coiling through the air like a living thing.

Ebonheim's Divine Aura flared. The whip of energy struck it and shattered, scattering into motes of harmless light. The Bovikara crashed against her unmovable form, their immense strength redirected, stumbling over their own momentum. Before they could recover, her bolt flew.

It punched through the lead Bovikara's chest, then through the one behind it, and the one behind that. Three of the massive demons collapsed, their rock-like skin dissolving into gravel and dust.

She moved before the others could regroup. Not back, but forward. Into their ranks. Close quarters, where their size became a liability. She sidestepped a wild swing from an axe, the heavy weapon shattering against the ground where she had been an instant before.

A thought, a surge of will. The bow vanished from her hands. In its place, the Ebon Bow elongated, its sleek white wood shifting, flowing like liquid. It condensed and solidified into a long, gleaming staff of pale silver wood.

With a flick of her wrist, it extended, sweeping the legs out from under a charging Bovikara. The creature crashed to the ground with enough force to crack the stone steps.

She spun the staff, its polished wood a blur of motion.

A crack against a Bovikara's temple sent it staggering. A swift, upward jab shattered another's bull-like jaw. She flowed through them, her movements a seamless pattern of evasion and retaliation.

For every bone-shattering impact, a petal of light—pure divine energy—floated away from her shoulder, absorbing the retaliatory blows that her aura couldn't quite repel.

The Shadaksha dive-bombed from above, their eldritch blasts raining down. She didn't look up. A shield of shimmering white light materialized above her, deflecting their attacks back at them. Several of the winged demons shrieked as their own power turned against them, falling from the sky like broken dolls.

Finally, only the Vashkara commander remained. It discarded its useless whip, its six crimson eyes narrowing. "You fight like a mortal, with borrowed weapons and fleeting power. You have no idea what true dominion entails."

It charged, a blur of obsidian armor and coiled muscle. Its claws raked against her Divine Aura, the force of the blows staggering her, pushing her back a half-step. Its tail whipped around, tipped with a venomous barb that hissed through the air.

Ebonheim brought her staff down, blocking the tail. The impact sent a shockwave up her arms, but she held. The stave's wood glowed with an inner light. With a sharp twist, she wrenched the weapon, throwing the Vashkara off balance.

The staff in her hands pulsed with warm, golden light. She lunged forward, driving its tip into a seam in the Vashkara's obsidian armor. Light flared, a solar burst contained within a single point. The armor cracked.

Before the demon could recover, she wrenched the staff free, spun, and brought it down again on the same spot. The obsidian shattered, fragments flying. A thin, viscous ichor seeped from the wound.

The Vashkara roared. It lunged, ignoring its grievous injury, all its strength focused on a final, desperate attack.

Ebonheim met it head-on. She sidestepped, allowing the demon's momentum to carry it past her. As it did, she drove her staff through its back, pinning it to the bronze doors of the Council Hall. The weapon glowed, white light pouring from it, incinerating the demon from the inside out.

It let out one last, silent telepathic scream—a curse, a lament, a promise of retribution—before it dissolved into a pile of sizzling dust and obsidian shards.

Silence descended on the square. The last remaining wrongness pulsed behind the bronze doors.

Ebonheim walked up the steps, passing the remnants of her foes. The doors were no barrier. She rested her palm against them, and the bronze groaned, buckled, and melted away like wax, pooling in glowing rivulets on the stone floor.

She stepped inside.

The Council Hall was empty. Dust motes danced in shafts of moonlight piercing through grimy windows. The only sound was the hum of the final artifact, its power resonating through the entire building, a desperate, frantic effort to maintain control.

It rested in the center of the main chamber, atop a raised dais. Its eye stared at her, the iris now a deep, pulsing purple, streaked with veins of black. It was weaker than the others, its energy depleted, but still functioning.

She walked toward it. Each step she took caused the hum to rise in pitch, becoming a frantic, desperate whine. Cracks spread across the floor. Dust and small bits of debris rattled, vibrating in time with the artifact's distress.

Ebonheim paused before the dais, her bow returning to her hands. She drew an arrow, this one simple, unadorned. Just a pure, focused bolt of Essence.

She watched the artifact, studying it, feeling its last vestiges of power thrumming through the building. Then, with a quiet, deliberate motion, she released the string.

The arrow struck true. The artifact's eye widened for a split second, then imploded, collapsing in on itself with a silent, violent implosion of light and force. The resulting vacuum sucked in all the dust and debris, leaving behind only a scorched, empty space on the dais.

The final wrongness vanished.

Dawn painted the eastern sky in shades of amber and rose.

Ebonheim stood on the temple steps, where she had begun. Her divine light had softened to a gentle glow, no longer the overwhelming force that had shattered gates and thrown demons into ruin.

The sun's first rays spilled into the square, revealing the destruction she had wrought.

Broken glass glittered in the streets. Cobblestones were shattered and uplifted. The walls of buildings bore the scorch marks of eldritch energy and the gouges of claws. The town, once a paragon of clean perfection, now looked like a battlefield.

But it was quiet.

People were emerging from their homes. They didn't rush or shout. They moved with a slow, uncertain gait, as if learning to walk for the first time. They looked at the destruction, at her, at each other with expressions that were no longer empty, but blank with confusion.

Ebonheim met their eyes. Each one. All eight thousand, divine perception allowing her to see every face simultaneously, to recognize every emotion, every fractured hope, every dawning horror at realizing what had been done to them.

What she had done for them.

"Xellos enslaved you," she said. Her voice carried without shouting, reaching every ear that needed to hear. "He wove compulsion into your thoughts, shaped your choices, turned you into puppets who believed they were dancing rather than being pulled by strings."

Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Protests, denials, but also growing certainty as people compared memories, discovered gaps, and realized the truth of what they'd lost.

"I have freed you," Ebonheim continued. "I destroyed the artifacts binding you. I have dispelled his influence that stole your agency. I did this without your permission because you could not give permission—you were not free enough to choose."

Silence now, thick and heavy.

Freedom, Ebonheim understood, had a terrifying face when you'd forgotten how it felt.

The townspeople looked at her, and she felt the sheer scale of what she had done. They were not a unified, grateful mass. They were eight thousand individuals, some weeping, some furious, some lost in a haze of disorientation.

Evelyne and the Silverguards had withdrawn to the edges, their duty to keep order now irrelevant. They were observers, like her. This next part, the human part, was beyond their ability to manage.

"I am NOT here to replace him. I will not be your new master. You will choose your own path." She paused, letting the words settle. "But while you choose, I will protect you. From Xellos, should he return. From other gods who would claim you. From anything that would steal your freedom again."

She gestured toward Ryelle, who stood at the crowd's edge, her posture a careful balance of alertness and non-threat.

"She is Ryelle, my avatar. She speaks with my authority. She will remain here, ensuring you have time to choose without coercion." Ebonheim's gaze swept across the gathering. "I claim protective oversight of Corinth. Not conquest. Not rule. Protection. Until you can stand on your own."

Her last act in the square. With a thought, she called upon a fraction of her divine essence. A sphere of soft, white light manifested in the air above her. It pulsed gently, then dissolved into thousands of motes that drifted down over the assembled townsfolk.

Where they touched, injuries healed. Fear faded into calm. Confusion remained, but it was a clean confusion, the blank slate of a mind untethered.

This was her final offering. Not answers, not direction, just a moment of peace to face the daunting reality of their restored will.

And with that, she vanished in a quiet ripple of golden light, leaving only the echoes of her words behind her.

Ryelle stood there, the embodiment of Ebonheim's will. She felt the collective gaze of eight thousand bewildered souls settle on her. They were all looking at her now.

She just grunted, resting her kanabō against her shoulder. "Well, let's get this place cleaned up."

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