Ozerin coughed, the metallic tang of blood filling his mouth. His back screamed from the impact, sharp, splintered brick digging into his cloak. The biting mist of Czarna swirled around him, obscuring the precise outline of the broken wall, but not the searing rage that now poured through it. He pushed himself to his knees, his hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of his weapon, the long, curved blade of his Vaskoi Steel. Then he stopped. He saw her silhouette framed in the jagged opening, a dark halo of coalescing grief shimmering around her. This was not a fight he could win with steel. He lowered his hand, leaving the weapon sheathed.
“Ruzena, wait,” he rasped, coughing spittle and grit. “Let me speak.”
Her response was a guttural snarl. “Lies! More lies from a viper’s tongue!” She stepped through the fractured wall, her eyes glowing with an incandescent, bitter light that made the surrounding fog recoil. The obsidian mark on her chest pulsed, a hungry, black sun. Her hands, still delicate despite the recent trauma, flexed. The air around her compressed, whining, then solidified into jagged, obsidian shards, each one humming with a malevolent resonance.
She launched them, a volley of razor-sharp grief. Ozerin braced himself, a grimace twisting his face. The first shard struck his shoulder, tearing through his tunic with a sound like grinding glass. White-hot agony flared. He staggered, but did not fall. He did not raise his hands to defend, though every instinct shrieked at him to. He needed her to see his sincerity, even through the haze of her justified hatred.
“Listen to me!” he shouted as another shard sliced his cheek, drawing a line of stinging heat. “I took you from the altar, but I will not leave you to rot!”
“Stop trying to poison my mind!” She condensed a heavy knot of petrified ash and flung it straight at his chest. It struck his ribs, the crack audible over the wind. Ozerin dropped to one knee, sucking in wet air through clamped teeth. He clutched his side, fighting the urge to double over.
From inside the shattered safehouse, Iliya Teresh watched, his expression a complex mix of disbelief and cold calculation. He had his own blade drawn now, a short, wickedly curved dagger, its surface absorbing the meager ambient light. He saw the genuine agony on Ozerin’s face, the deliberate refusal to retaliate. It made no sense, not for the Ozerin Vaskoi he knew, the calculating predator.
“You broke me, Ozerin,” Ruzena whispered, her voice trembling with barely contained fury. “You left me to be harvested, a resource for your wretched Conservatory. You are a monster!” She raised both hands, pulling at the very fabric of the air. A massive, jagged spear, black as petrified night and twice as long as Ozerin himself, materialized between her palms, its tip radiating pure, unadulterated desolation.
This was it. He would die here, by her hand, a fitting end. But he had to make her understand. “The altar was my design,” he managed, each syllable scraping against cracked bone. “I broke you so I could possess what remained. But I will bear the rot in your place.”
Her arm, poised to strike, wavered. The spear pulsed, its energy unstable. A flicker of something other than hatred crossed her face, a fleeting shadow of confusion. The spear dipped, its needle point grazing the cobbles. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to unleash her devastation. The conflict twisted her features.
Then, the earth beneath them began to rumble. Not a tremor, but a deep, resonant groan that shook the flagstones. A low, wet bellow tore through the fog, closer than it should be. The very air grew thick, heavy with the stench of decay and concentrated misery. From the street, a gargantuan bulk sheared through the adjoining brickwork, flattening timber and mortar into dust. It surged forward, a hulking mass of congealed sorrow, weeping yellow eyes weeping black brine across its hide. The beast towered twice the height of a carriage, born from the city's deepest gutters.
Its pupil-less eyes locked directly onto Ruzena, drawn to the radiant corruption smoldering in her chest. A sound like a thousand whispers rose from its mass, a hungry, sibilant hiss. A club-like limb studded with grinding teeth snapped toward Ruzena.
“Ruzena, move!” Iliya’s shout was sharp, immediate. He launched himself forward, a blur of motion, his dagger flashing as he slashed at the approaching limb. The blade scored a shallow furrow through the shadowy hide, provoking a high shriek without slowing the lunge.
Ozerin, despite his agony, reacted. He surged to his feet, drawing his Vaskoi Steel with a sharp *shink*. There was no time for explanations, no time for her rage. The monster was here for her. He lunged, bringing his blade down in a sweeping arc, severing one of the beast’s smaller tendrils just as it was about to coil around Ruzena’s waist. The tendril thrashed, dissolving into acrid smoke.
Ruzena recoiled, breath tearing from her throat. The black spear dissolved to smoke, her control shattered by the stench of the beast. Iliya skipped around the flailing tendrils, cutting repeatedly to draw its gaze. Ozerin struck with precise, heavy strokes, hewing through the shifting mass, though each rent sealed itself with black tar.
“We need to fall back!” Ozerin roared, his voice strained. He deflected a clubbing arm that reeked of unburied corpses, the impact rattling up into his collarbone. “It’s too powerful. It’s drawn to you, Ruzena, it won’t stop!”
“No kidding, Vaskoi!” Iliya snapped, ducking under a sweeping claw that tore a chunk out of the floor. “What do you suggest? It breached an old Conservatory vault to get here!”
The fiend drove them inward, through the collapsed masonry into a cavernous sub-hall whose high vaults held leaded panes depicting martyrs warring with forgotten Zal. The hall, now scarred by time and the creature’s brute force, offered little refuge. Its form continued to grow, feeding on the despair it exuded, becoming a towering, almost liquid mountain of shadow and weeping eyes.
“The crypts below!” Ozerin shouted, spitting dark blood. “The arches will bottleneck it!” Behind the beast loomed an immense leaded pane showing Saint Elos cast into the pit.
The Zal lunged, its cavernous maw peeling wide to show needle-teeth of petrified ash. It was aiming for Ruzena. Ozerin acted on instinct, his mind a blur of calculations. He spun, driving his shoulder into the creature’s side, using his own body as a battering ram. The impact was like hitting a wall of living granite. He grunted, pain flaring anew, but he held on, pushing with all his might. The creature bellowed, momentarily thrown off balance, its focus shifting from Ruzena to him.
With a ferocious, agonizing effort, Ozerin pushed harder, driving the beast backward, towards the towering stained-glass window. The glass shrieked as its weight pressed against it, spiderweb cracks erupting across the saint’s painted face. “Iliya! Take her to the deep catacombs, now!” he screamed, his voice strained with effort. The lead framework tore loose, exploding outward into the dark with a violent crack of tinted glass. Locked against the beast, Ozerin dropped out into the fog and the drop below, yelling into the wind: “Go! Save her!”