Chaos unfurled.

Like an explosion without fire, without a shock wave. Only a brute and merciless force that sent nearly a quarter of the battalion flying in a crimson downpour. Blood, guts, and dismembered limbs rained down. Dozens of mangled bodies instantly made themselves available through divine conduit to Tristessa, who had recoiled at the sight of the perpetrator of such carnage.

Giant claws with the size of human arms, piercing shreds of metal stained with blood and bone and muscle remains sticked to it. They emerged from a thick leg, covered in thick, dark fur, connected to the body of a creature almost the size of an adult elephant from Earth. Its head was the same as the one Daiana-Mercer Archeos had thrown at her feet in the Evil Dream of a past loop, in the Forest of Dead Titans: a small snout, sharp teeth that were tearing at the flesh of its recent victim, and eyes that emitted a yellowish glow that broke the thick density of the darkness.

And emerging from its forehead was a luminescent organ that emitted a reddish glow similar to the color of the corruption of the heavens. The most striking characteristic of the corruption exerted on that beast that had chased Lufreya and Melian to the entrance of the city.

"TAINTED URSALL!"

The Commander had survived the attack that had reduced much of his battalion to bloody pieces. His shield had saved him, though his right arm was reduced to a mass of twisted flesh and bone. He had no way to get up from the ground after being thrown through the air and falling a few meters from the river.

Without a doubt, his yell amplified with magic saved many lives, by allowing his soldiers to snap out. They retreated the moment the evil creature reared up on two legs and filled its lungs with air tainted with Discord.

"GRRRRAAAAAAAAA!"

A roar capable of breaking the spirit of even the bravest warrior. Deafening, vile, eager for more Death to quench a ravenous thirst. And it wasn't a diabolical sound that resounded through souls like a pulse of destructive force, but the glow of its luminescent organ that began to become a beacon in the midst of absolute darkness…

It was a [forbidden light], invasive, and flooding the mind. So much light that it suffocated, impeded the passage of air inside the brain, pushing out everything that wasn't of that evil nature.

"…someone…whoever…"

Tristessa found it impossible to break eye contact. That light had just become her world, her center of the universe. There was nothing but that light, a pleasure that humans weren't prepared to enjoy, to relish. That was why it was forbidden. It was ambrosia from the garden of the gods, the moist lips of a lover, the cleansing embrace of an angel, the bounty of an endless feast, the sound of a waterfall crashing against the rocks, the movement of a baby in the womb, the vibrant and passionate steps of a tango, the warmth of the first rays of the sun in the morning, the tickling of nails tracing paths on the back, the touch of the soles of the feet against the dew on the grass, the fragrances of a field of roses, the cold and entropic touch of [Golden Chains], the breath of polar wind on the face, the beauty of a midnight moon, the resistance of skin being ripped off from flesh, the acidic taste of an apple, the ethereal harmony of the musical piece Clair de Lune, the burning of the pharynx being flooded with gastric juices, the pressure of the eyeball before leaving the socket, the ammoniacal smell and warmth of urine sliding along the legs, the sensation of stabbing someone in the back, feeling bones splintering within, seeing skin and muscle give way at a compound fracture, the excruciating pain of every toenails and fingernails being ripped off, the agonizing pain of the high-temperature pulses of being electrocuted, the hellish pain of feeling the throat being torn apart by a predator's teeth, the indescribable pain of feeling two hands inside the mouth and opening it beyond the limit of muscle, shredding skin, ligaments, until the lower jaw gets separated from the skull with a disgusting, loud, cracking snap…

"DON'T LOOK!"

Like grabbing a saving hand when free-falling into infinity, Tristessa regained conscience. She was lying on the cold ground. Astoria's seraphic silhouette was in front of her, on her knees, projecting a harmless shadow that blocked that forbidden light from her eyes drowned in trauma.

"W-what happened…? Ah… m-my…!" The girl brought her palms to her face and pulled them back, stained with her own blood, the result of the self-inflicted wounds around and on her eyes. "What the fuck…?!"

"That light attacks your sanity!" the knightess reproached her, helping her get up from the ground. "If you don't have a trained mind, that will be your fate!"

Furious, Astoria pointed to where many soldiers were screaming at the top of their lungs. They were convulsing on the ground or focusing their bloody eyes on the heavens, cursing the cruel fate that befell them. All victims of a growing madness caused by the forbidden light generated by the organ in the tainted ursall's forehead.

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That beast, vile and malicious, attacked and devoured the defenseless soldiers driven to the abyss of insanity, shoveling into its mouth anything it found, be it fresh meat or the steel armor that tried to protect it in vain. Its luminescent organ was inactive for the moment, having achieved its goal…

Fortunately, many of the other infantrymen had not been overcome by the temptation of the evil light and were retreating toward the wall. They surrounded the tents, their priority always being to defend every Imperial citizen there. One of them helped the Commander retreat, carrying part of the weight of his limp body on his shoulder. And some of the thaumaturges had taken the two mercenaries along the same path.

That beast, corrupted by the Dark Lady's evil, was too dangerous to be confronted without strategy or organization.

"Where are the Mercer-Archeos?!" the girl asked Astoria, noticing that they were no longer in that corner by the tents, hugging each other and protecting themselves as best they could from the evil invading the city's perimeter.

"Calm down, lady. They're inside my tent. Very tightly packed, but safe from that beast's cursed light." Auron was walking toward the two women, and along the way, he finished off the last remaining terrdrak screeching on the ground with a precise shot between its eyes. "For now, I'll pretend I never heard those last names. There are more important matters at hand…"

His attention was focused on this new, brute enemy. Soldiers leaped to the attack to defend their comrades who had fallen to the madness and prevent the beast from forcing its way toward the refugees, plunging their spears into the side of the beast's back or its hind legs. A suicidal act that ended with bodies crushed between the ground and the armor they wore, heads ripped from the base of the neck, or torsos slashed open as if in an autopsy, regardless of the hardness of the armor.

"If we don't do something, Blackguard, that thing will massacre all the refugees in a matter of minutes."

"You and I against a Tainted Ursall?" Astoria asked, her red eyes filled with disbelief. "Have you lost your fucking mind, Casimir? Or does your desire to find a high-grade soul-jewel inside that beast overcome your survival instinct?"

"That's another thing in its entirely. We could distract it until new reinforcements arrive."

"And how do you expect to achieve that? It'll tear us apart, just like those soldiers, you greedy bastard!"

Every second that passed, a new corpse. From the wall, shots were focused exclusively on the ursall, but the effectiveness of the bullets was minimal against that fur, so resistant thanks to the corruption. Even several of those gigantic harpoons from the mounted crossbows flew towards the beast. But the distance was so great that the ursall involuntarily dodged the projectiles due to its constant movement, crashing against the ground and sending earth and debris upward.

"There are… so many," Tristessa murmured, looking around the battlefield, oblivious to the two warriors' discussion. "So much Death…"

The helpless refugees wept and screamed from their tents, the soldiers on the walls and those left defending the civilians begged for reinforcements… And the dead. The dozens and dozens of dead, both humans and shadow creatures.

Seeing a human being die wasn't the same as killing one with one's own hands… But seeing that vast number of corpses was another level altogether. The smell mixed with the miasma of Discord was unholy, vile, intolerable in every way. A sickening odor emanating from each of those shattered bodies, turning the end of the Meridion Highway into a bath of blood and gore.

The call of all those corpses… It was becoming unbearable. Deliciously unbearable. As if her dark soul was being drawn to the edge of the Abyss, engulfed by its call, and only one step away from falling…

"I can distract the ursall."

Tristessa said that with gentleness and a touch of discretion. But both the gunslinger and the knightess had heard her, and their discussion was put on hold. They both looked at her with very skeptical looks, perhaps the first thing they had agreed on that afternoon overshadowed -in the literal sense- by the Evil Dream.

"Are you an idiot?" Astoria asked, angered by the unnecessary waste of words, and thus, living Imperial lives getting extinguished by the second. "A pipsqueak like you will end up dead!"

"No, wait a moment, Blackguard. What do you mean by that, lady?" Auron was growing increasingly nervous by the way the tainted ursall slaughtered the soldiers and approached the wall, but he gave Tristessa the pleasure of following her with his eyes as she approached the tainted terrdrak's body. "Lady!"

Tristessa stopped at a distance where the noxious scent of that bat-winged beast stimulated her gag reflex. Only its mouth, with its long, sharp fangs, had remained intact from Auron's gunfire; the rest were pieces of skull still spewing a dense mixture of blood, black fur, and liquid brain matter.

Stranded, losing the warmth of the existence to which the Shadow Queen had condemned him with her dream made of the purest malice… And now, a new chance to return.

To a false life bound to Tritessa's soul and her [Divinity of Accursed Existence]. A doomed existence.

"I will bring this monster back to life to aid us."

She didn't wait for the two warriors to say anything, even to reason her words. Without breaking eye contact with the corrupted creature that attempted to slaughter her and the Mercer-Archeos, she filled her voice with the power of her Divinity and issued the command that violated the Balance between Life and Death:

"Arise."

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