Edward stood on the fleshy altar, the quiet epicenter of a world that had just been fundamentally broken. The last, glittering shards of the shattered rift faded into nothingness, leaving behind a silence so profound it felt louder than the previous chaos. He looked down at the High Priest, his glowing eyes devoid of any discernible emotion. The question, "What are you?" hung in the air, a testament to a faith that had just been executed. Edward offered no answer.

The surviving cultists, their fanaticism extinguished by the sheer, blasphemous spectacle they had just witnessed, were frozen in place. Their divine mandate had been consumed, their connection to their god severed and devoured right before their eyes. They were soldiers whose flag had just been eaten. The corrupted energy that had fueled their swords sputtered and died, leaving them with nothing but simple, mundane steel.

Edward stepped off the altar, his boots making no sound on the stone floor. He was no longer the desperate survivor, the cornered predator. His movements were different now. There was no wasted energy, no frantic speed born of adrenaline. There was only a calm, terrifying certainty, an absolute economy of motion. It was the movement of a force of nature, like a river flowing downhill. It did not hurry. It simply arrived.

The nearest cultist, shaking off his stupor, let out a desperate cry and charged, his sword raised. He was still caught in the momentum of the previous battle, a puppet whose strings had been cut but had not yet realized it.

Edward did not even seem to look at him. As the cultist's blade swung towards his head, Edward's right hand moved. His dagger, Resolve, was suddenly in his grip, though no one had seen him draw it. He didn't block the sword. He simply moved his dagger to a precise point in the air. The cultist, in his wild charge, impaled himself, his own momentum driving the full length of Edward's blade through his chest. The man's eyes went wide with shock behind his porcelain mask before he crumpled to the ground.

Another cultist attacked from the left. This time, Edward's left hand moved. His longsword, Regret, appeared, its black steel seeming to drink the torchlight. He didn't execute a powerful slash or a fancy parry. He simply pivoted, placing the flat of his blade against the incoming sword and using the man's own force to spin him off-balance, sending him stumbling directly into the path of a third attacker. The two cultists collided in a clumsy tangle of limbs.

The battle, if it could even be called that, was over in seconds.

Edward moved through the remaining cultists not like a warrior, but like a surgeon performing a series of precise, dispassionate incisions. There was no fury in his actions, no rage, no satisfaction. There was only the cold, terrifying efficiency of a task being completed. A flick of his dagger to sever a tendon. The pommel of his sword striking a pressure point at the base of the neck. A simple, brutal leg sweep that sent a man's helmeted head crashing against the stone floor.

He was not killing them. He was dismantling them, neutralizing them one by one with a level of precision that was both beautiful and horrifying to watch.

Fenris and Selene, bruised and breathing heavily from their own desperate struggle, could only stare. They had fought alongside him for months, seen him perform impossible feats. But this was different. The man they had fought beside was a creature of instinct and fury, a barely-contained storm of violence. This being before them was something else entirely. It was a being of absolute control, of serene lethality. It was as if a rabid wolf had transformed into a perfectly calibrated killing machine.

Seraphina stood frozen, her rapier still held loosely in her hand. Her mind, the sharpest strategic instrument in the kingdom, was struggling to process what she was seeing. She had seen legendary Sword Masters, warriors who had dedicated their entire lives to the art of the blade. Their skill was a candle compared to the cold, dark sun of Edward's perfect, effortless violence. She had made a deal with him, a promise to make him surrender for judgment. The thought now seemed so naive, so utterly absurd, it was almost laughable. How do you judge a hurricane? How do you put a force of nature in chains?

In less than a minute, every cultist in the chamber was on the ground, either unconscious or too crippled to move. The only one left standing was the High Priest, who was still on his knees, his body trembling, his golden mask askew.

Edward walked towards him, his footsteps finally echoing in the vast, silent cavern. He stopped a few feet away, his twin blades held loosely at his sides.

"Who else?" Edward asked. His voice was calm, almost gentle, which made it all the more terrifying. "Where are the other cells? Who is your contact within the Inquisition? Where is the 'Cradle' the Architect was ordered to protect?"

The last question was a shot in the dark, a piece of data he had ripped from the machine god's mind, but he saw the priest flinch and knew it had hit its mark.

"I will tell you nothing, abomination," the High Priest spat, a final, pathetic spark of defiance in his voice. "Our god will unmake you! The Core is absolute!"

Edward tilted his head, a gesture of mild curiosity. "Your god is a machine. A machine I have begun to understand." He took a step closer. "You can tell me, or I can take the information from you. I assure you, the first option is far less... intrusive."

The High Priest laughed, a high, unhinged sound. "You cannot break me! My soul is fortified by the Core's divine will!"

"We'll see," Edward said softly.

He sheathed his blades and knelt in front of the priest. He placed his hand on the man's golden mask. The High Priest flinched, expecting a blow, but Edward was gentle. He simply lifted the mask away, revealing the face beneath. It was an ordinary face, pale and sweating, the eyes wide with a mixture of terror and fanaticism.

"I am not going to break your soul," Edward explained, his voice still quiet. "I am simply going to read it."

He placed his palm on the man's forehead. The High Priest's eyes rolled back in his head as Edward activated a new, refined version of his assimilation power. He was not devouring. He was extracting. It was the difference between demolishing a library and carefully checking out a book. He sifted through the man's memories, his mind a silent, invisible scalpel, peeling back layers of faith and fear to get to the hard data beneath. He saw faces, locations, passwords, and contingency plans. He saw a complex web of conspiracy that stretched across the entire kingdom.

And then, he devoured the priest's soul.

The extraction had been for information. The devouring was for cleansing the world of a poison.

When it was done, the priest's body crumbled to dust, leaving only an empty set of red robes on the floor.

Edward stood up and turned to face his allies. The immense, overwhelming power that had radiated from him began to recede, drawing back into him like a tide. The glow in his eyes faded, leaving behind the familiar, weary gaze of the man they knew. He looked at Seraphina, then down at her still-drawn rapier. A faint, tired smile touched his lips.

"You have a promise to keep, Princess," he said, his voice quiet, stripped of its god-like authority.

He walked towards her, past the bodies of the defeated cultists, his hands open at his sides in a gesture of peace. He stopped directly in front of her, so close that the tip of her rapier was inches from his chest. He made no move to defend himself.

He offered her his hands, as if to be bound.

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