CHAPTER 89: THE FALL OF CAELGORR PART 2

The grand stage was soaked in blood and shadow.

Caelgorr the Hollow stood victorious—his monstrous, shifting frame looming beneath the shattered visage of Nyxaris. Every member of Lucy’s cohort lay scattered across the ruined temple floor—bodies broken, breath shallow... or gone altogether. Only one remained.

Lucy.

The lone human stood before the snarling beast, his chest rising and falling with every shallow breath. His armor was a ruined mess—jagged tears exposed pale, blood-specked skin and bruises that bloomed like bruised violets across his ribs. Strips of fabric clung to him like ash after a fire. Dirt and dried ichor caked his hands. Behind his wind-battered hair, his eyes burned—golden, furious, and hollowed by exhaustion.

Caelgorr grinned. That awful, jagged grin split across his warped, beastly face. A face that seemed like it had once tried to mimic a man, then given up halfway through—horned, lopsided, and wreathed in smoke. His maw pulsed with black ichor between rows of uneven teeth, and his chest—riddled with twitching eyes and writhing veins—heaved with the effort of its unholy hunger.

That smile lit something in Lucy’s gut.

’Oh, you’re laughing? After everything you’ve done?’

His soul thread still clung to the living. He could feel them—those who still breathed: Gindu, Fenric, Llarm, Bruma, and Eri. Their threads pulsed like fraying cords soaked in agony. They wrapped around his chest like barbed wire.

’How dare you laugh, you bastard?’

His lips curled into a snarl. ’You’re going to pay. With your fucking intestines.’

Now that the others were out of the fray—either unconscious or worse—he could unleash everything. No more holding back from worry about hurting his cohort. This was it.

This was war.

A storm ignited within his veins—Atomic Radiation surged like fire made from glass shards. Divine mana churned beneath his skin, fighting the pain, feeding the fury. The Crucible of Grace burned in his core, keeping his shredded body from tearing itself apart.

And he walked.

Not ran—walked.

Each step sent sparks from his heels, wind spiraling around his feet, scattering broken stones across the floor. The heat radiating from his body shimmered in the air.

Across from him, Caelgorr moved too. Black limbs dragged across the floor like oil-drenched roots. The front-facing eyes opened wide, twitching, all locked onto him.

Lucy’s gaze sharpened.

’Right. Those eyes can unleash blastwaves. Too bad for you—I’m done dodging.’

This battle had always been fated. Human against Hollow—fire against shadow, but fate is a fickle thing.

Because that’s when everything shifted.

Suddenly, a chill slid down Lucy’s spine.

Not the kind of chill you feel on your skin. No, this was deeper. It slithered inside his bones, seeping into the marrow. His fingers twitched, and The Crucible within him dimmed.

And through the Soulthread, a new emotion surged.

Dread.

Not his own. Not Caelgorr’s.

Someone else.

It came from behind him, near the massive blackened doors of the temple.

Lucy froze.

Caelgorr did too.

The beast turned its malformed head toward the doors, limbs twitching. For the first time, Lucy didn’t see arrogance or rage on its face. He saw fear, Raw, primal terror.

What...?

Then it hit—an overwhelming wave of hatred, revenge, and hunger. It clung to Lucy’s skin like grave-cold silk. His knees nearly buckled.

And then—

The temple shook.

From cracks in the floor, from shattered window slits, from the broken dome high above—they came.

Shadows.

Human-shaped shadows.

They poured into the temple like smoke in reverse—dozens, hundreds. Cloaked in flowing black, weightless yet real, their hoods void of faces, their forms flickering like candlelight in a storm.

Lucy recognized them.

The freed ones. From the Church of Nyxaris...

They hovered. Suspended in the air like spirits unmoored, their presence thick and suffocating. The smell that came with them was like burning iron and old blood. The air tasted sour and wrong.

Then, the whispers began.

"Thank you.""Die.""Die.""Die.""Die.""Die."

Over and over again. They didn’t speak—they invaded. The voices slithered into his ears, then his skull. His teeth clenched, hands flying up to cover his ears, but it didn’t matter.

They weren’t talking to him.

They were inside him.

He screamed through his teeth and did the only thing he could think of—he flooded his mind with atomic radiation. A desperate attempt to burn them out.

All it brought was agony.

His brain seared, then rebuilt.

Caelgorr howled, thrashing. He covered his eyes with trembling limbs, swatting at the air like a mad thing, swiping at shadows he couldn’t touch.

Then—without a signal, without a sound—the shadows dove.

They swarmed him. A whirlpool of flickering darkness encircled Caelgorr’s massive form, laughing. High, broken, human laughter. A sound made of madness and vengeance.

He struck at them with his limbs, but it was useless.

One by one, they dove into him.

Into his mouth, Into the slits in his flesh, behind his eyes, and Into the cracks in his armor-like skin. They infested him.

Caelgorr screamed.

Not like before, not angry, not monstrous.

He screamed like a soul being shredded.

His body twisted and convulsed. His limbs stretched unnaturally, bones snapping as he grew, shrank, and bloated again. His eyes darkened as shadows filled them.

Lucy stumbled back, shielding his face from the blast of corrupted mana. The Soulthread shrieked with feedback—fear, rage, and death.

And then—silence.

Caelgorr exploded into nothing.

One second, he was there—a monstrous god-killer wrapped in nightmare and hate.

The next, he was gone.

Scattered like smoke in the wind.

The shadow humans dispersed from the church, slipping beyond its broken walls and vanishing into the Hollow like smoke carried by wind. One lingered.

It hovered just above Lucy, silent and still.

It didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Didn’t try to enter his mind or body. It simply floated there for a breath longer than the rest—watching him, maybe, or remembering.

Then it turned, and flew away with the others.

With it, the dread vanished.

The heavy, suffocating pressure that had clung to the temple like wet ash lifted. The air cleared. Lucy’s shoulders eased.

’Caelgorr’s dead? Just like that?’

The thought felt absurd. They’d already "killed" him once, hadn’t they? But whatever that was... whatever the shadows had done... he couldn’t imagine anything surviving it.

’The bastard got to keep his intestines.. Kind of.’

Still, he didn’t linger on the corpse that wasn’t there.

The Soulthread screamed in his chest.

Agony—his cohort’s agony—stabbed through him all at once, each thread sparking like a raw nerve. He staggered, eyes darting around the ruined temple.

Bruma.

She was the worst off.

Her arm was gone—ripped from the shoulder, a jagged mess of torn muscle and cauterized bone. Her abdomen was shredded. Blood soaked her robes, pooled beneath her. Her violet hair veiled her face, matted with grime and blood.

She was unconscious and barely breathing.

Lucy dropped to his knees beside her and didn’t hesitate.

Golden light erupted from his hands—the Crucible of Grace, divine and warm, weaving sinew, knitting flesh, restoring lost blood with miraculous speed. The spell drank from his reserves like a thirsty god, but Lucy didn’t flinch.

He was fast now.

It took moments.

Bruma’s breathing steadied, her wounds closed, and her arm... well, it didn’t grow back. Not yet. But she was alive.

Her eyelids fluttered. Slowly, she blinked herself awake.

"...Did we win?" she asked, voice barely a rasp.

Lucy hesitated. He didn’t want to explain the shadows or how Caelgorr had died for now.

So he gave her the simplest truth.

"Yeah. We won."

She followed his gaze to the far end of the temple—where the Obsidian Chronicle rested, cradled in the hands of Nyxaris’s fallen statue. It pulsed with quiet power, runes flickering across its surface like trapped lightning.

"There it is," Lucy said. "Everything you’ve wanted is right there. Just... give me a minute to heal the others, okay?"

Bruma nodded faintly and leaned back against the wall.

Lucy moved fast—healing the rest of the cohort one by one, giving each the same short reassurance. You’re safe. We won. Rest.

Llarm had a shattered collarbone. Eri had multiple breaks but was already reviving. Gindu had half his scales ripped off, but his internal organs were intact. All of them survived, barely, but they survived.

Then he reached Fenric... and Carlos.

Fenric was unconscious but alive—bloodied, but stable.

Carlos wasn’t.

The little shadow wolf lay curled beside his master, unmoving. His black fur was soaked in blood. His chest didn’t rise. His Soulthread was gone.

Lucy froze.

The breath caught in his throat. His hand trembled mid-air.

Carlos had fought with them. Traveled with them. Protected them. Made them laugh. Growled at danger and rolled in the dirt and snapped at Eri’s heels.

He had been one of them.

He was one of us.

Lucy’s eyes blurred, and a tear slipped down his cheek.

He checked Fenric’s injuries again—nothing fatal. Still unconscious. But stable.

So Lucy made a choice.

He didn’t heal him.

Not yet.

He couldn’t let Fenric wake up like this. Not in a blood-frenzied haze. Not with Carlos lying beside him—lifeless.

He whispered a prayer beneath his breath and backed away.

The others gathered slowly, no words at first—just silence.

Then one by one, they stood beside him, looking down at the fallen pup.

Llarm cried the hardest, tears slipping down his face without shame. Bruma wept quietly, her single hand covering her mouth. Gindu bowed his head.

Eri didn’t cry. But Lucy felt it through the Soulthread—sorrow like black ice. Cold, buried, but real.

"He was a good pup," Lucy said softly.

"A hero," Llarm added, voice trembling.

"A great Wyrmling," Gindu said with quiet pride.

"A wonderful piece of history," Bruma whispered.

"Our friend," Eri finished.

Then they fell into silence again. A final breath for the fallen.

Lucy knelt beside Carlos one last time, brushing a blood-matted tuft of fur from the pup’s brow.

"You didn’t have to stay," he whispered. "But you did. Right to the end... You brave little idiot."

His voice broke. "I should’ve protected you."

They wanted to stay longer, to mourn properly, to bury him, speak more words, do something. But time was against them.

The Hollow was still shifting, the temple’s foundation groaning with distant cracks, and the Obsidian Chronicle called from the far end of the chamber—its whispers no longer ominous but inviting, beckoning. Secrets waited.

Grief would have to share the moment with duty.

So together, as one, they turned toward the Obsidian Chronicle.

It waited for them, whispering secrets in the ruined silence.