Chapter 16: Horror
The crimson veil descended like a curtain of rot, coiling around the arena's edge. Sound thinned. Light bent. The air shivered.
Sol stood in the middle, arms extended as the shadows he had summoned congealed into form. Where his Crownlight had been, something else now bloomed — a shape, tall and bone-thin, cloaked in strips of ash-grey flesh. Its antlers curved upward like broken ribs. The creature's eyes were black and full of movement, as if shadows were trapped behind them.
A collective cold settled on their skin as the wendigo-like graven started its hymn again.
It seemed to send this sound out not with a mouth but just from its very being.
What came out felt wrong, like it was punching into the folds of the brain like needles of hot wire. The words didn't make sense, but they didn't need to. Meaning cracked around the edges of thought. Kael dropped to a knee, gritting his teeth. Veyna stumbled back with a hand to her ear. Soahc froze — but not from pain. His pupils dilated, and the moment his breath returned, he began weaving again.
"I don't feel like that's its voice," Soahc muttered under his breath, backing up with a twitch of his fingers. "No, for sure, it feels like the embodiment of its will."
Kael's heart slammed in his ribs. He pushed up, lifting his head toward the entity. It hadn't moved. Not yet. But something behind its back — some kind of claw or jointed appendage — jerked once, fast and crooked.
"Veyna," Kael said, breathing hard. "Don't get too far forward. Watch for blindspots."
Sol, still focused, flicked his wrist. A split image of the nightmare split off, flickering with starless light. It circled the Graven and feinted a lunge.
But the Graven moved first.
A soundless blur. Veyna cursed as she rolled aside, barely escaping a swipe that cracked the tiled ground where her legs had been. Kael blinked and lost track of its arm entirely.
He snapped his eyes left. "Sol!"
"I see it."
Sol's expression twisted. He muttered a phrase Kael didn't recognise — a string of syllables that bled warmth from the air. His summoned shade surged forward, and this time, it reacted: the nightmare twisted its fingers and dragged a trail of spindled darkness across the Graven's chest, pulling its strike just long enough for Kael to get inside its reach.
He dashed.
Dashed with fists of hot white flames.
The Graven turned its skull, inhumanly slow. Kael didn't aim for the centre body; instead, he angled for the joints — wrists, shoulder crooks, and the tendons in its legs. A punch to its side passed through with resistance, but to no avail.
"Too soft," he muttered. "It's not muscle."
It responded by keening — that same broken tongue — and in an instant, Kael's wavered. A cold pressure swelled in his mind like vertigo and hate.
Soahc growled. "I told you—don't listen. Don't listen."
He pressed his hands to the ground, and the symbols beneath his feet pulsed outward in a wave, rolling across the floor like silver oil. Where it touched, the air thickened, and the Graven's whispers bent sideways — distorted, quieter.
Sol's avatar lunged again, claws extended this time, not to attack but to block. Its chest took the full brunt of the Graven's strike, and when it shattered into mist, Sol didn't flinch. He had already repositioned, whispering again.
Kael used the opening.
He vaulted up, flipped behind the Graven's left shoulder, and smashed his fists across the base of the creature's spine.
The Graven shrieked. Its entire form spasmed, and from its back, a cluster of needle-thin limbs erupted outward.
Kael's breath caught.
"Fall back," he called. "Now!"
Veyna fired a bolt at the cluster before dodging behind the far wall. The Graven's limbs wriggled, then twisted into an impossible shape. It didn't attack immediately. Again watching, waiting for their next move.
Soahc narrowed his eyes. "It's…learning from us."
Kael cursed and glanced at Sol.
Sol, now pale and sweating, was already forming another summoning mark beneath his feet. This one is slower. More deliberate.
"You sure?" Kael asked.
Sol looked up through his curls, eyes gleaming faint gold.
The air split.
Sol's summoning mark pulsed once, and from within the crimson veil, another shape pulled itself through.
This one was different.
It was grotesque like a beast but stood like a man It unfolded — like smoke taking the form of a towering shape, draped in gauze, its body humming with restrained potential. Thick chains looped around its shoulders, as if it had broken out of something ancient.
The viridian humanoid dragon displayed its fearsome fangs and distorted head with grotesque horn-like structures growing out of it; it roared at the graven.
The Graven twisted its head toward it.
Even it hesitated.
Kael flinched. He had seen Sol summon terrifying things before, but this... this thing felt older. more primal and eerie.
Veyna's voice, low, carried through the barrier.
"Is that thing... even part of you?"
Sol didn't answer. His eyes had gone distant again — not lost, but anchored elsewhere. The way his fingers moved, how steady his shoulders remained... he wasn't only summoning it this time.
No, instead he was sharing control with it.
The nightmare lifted one hand. Its long fingers curled, and the chains on its back dragged forward with a metallic groan. They swirled once around its wrist, then lashed outward.
The Graven moved fast. But not fast enough.
One of the chains wrapped around its leg and yanked it halfway off the ground. It landed with a sickening thud, shrieking its alien tongue again.
And once more, Kael felt his head split. This time worse — a jagged pressure pressing against his thoughts like someone trying to write over his memories.
Soahc slammed his palm into the floor.
A ripple shot out — inverted light spreading across the marble. Where it passed, the whispers folded in on itself again saving them from the onslaught of the noise again.
Soahc exhaled slowly. "That's the best I can do for. I'll try my best to keep it up . But be quick; I have to understand things like this to reverse them."
Kael nodded tightly. "Then we end it."
"Or trap it," Veyna added, shifting into a ready stance again. "This one's smarter. It's not berserking like the last. It's watching us."
She wasn't wrong. The Graven, even with no eyes, were tracking them.
Kael flicked his wrist, letting his gauntlets' lines blaze again. Star Arc wrapped around his fists in a blue corona. "Sol, can that thing of yours hold it?"
Sol didn't speak — just tilted his head slightly. His summoned terror lunged.
Chains wrapped around the Graven's torso this time. It screeched, flailing, and this time its limbs weren't simple bone and muscle. The back split open slightly.
Kael swore under his breath.
He dashed forward. Sol's summoned avatar yanked the chains tighter. Kael's form blurred, sigils flaring brighter the closer he got. He drove low, slashing toward the exposed glyphs.
The Graven twitched unnaturally. Its limb unfolded and batted him sideways with more force than before. He hit the ground hard, scraping backward across the arena tiles.
Recovering Kael got up dusting himself off and preparing for what's to come again.+
The Graven's skin, if it could be called that, started shifting again. But not regenerating — adapting tighter mass. Leaner. Faster. It had learnt that wide strikes didn't work. It was going to kill smarter.
Sol's summoned entity lunged once more — but the Graven slipped past it. And this time, it was headed for Veyna.
Kael's body screamed as he forced himself up.
"Veyna, roll—!"
Too late. The Graven was already mid-leap. But Veyna didn't freeze. She met it, Voltarm swinging up in a sharp diagonal arc. The air flashed with a lightning snap, and her gauntlet flared to maximum output.
Still, it wasn't enough.
The Graven tanked it, reeled back slightly — then slammed her shoulder with a bony spike. She fell hard, air knocked clean from her lungs.
"Do something!" she choked out.
He didn't think.
His crown at full force. His Crownlight became a burning halo as he launched forward, pure momentum.
He smashed into the Graven's ribs with enough force to knock it from Veyna, following up with a reverse spin into its midsection. His fist connecting the injury on it back
A sound — a terrible, wet clicking — echoed as the creature reeled.
Soahc moved in instantly, layering a reverse seal over the wound. The whispers bled from the gash, but they didn't take root. The reverse sigils sucked the noise in, burying it.
It stumbled.
Veyna stood.
Sol's summon wrapped another chain around its head.
Kael looked up, sweat dripping into his eyes.
"Now."