"Move!" Serena snapped, pulling him back just as a tendril of black water snapped through where he stood. Aegis slammed his fist down again, sealing the gap with a jagged wall.

The Queen roared an order, her voice cutting through the thunder. "Press the attack! Don't give it time to recover!"

Her dragon surged upward, lotus light blazing bright enough to split the mist. But the serpent's tail whipped out faster than sight. The Queen barely raised a barrier in time before she was thrown back, crashing into a shattered building. Indigo light exploded outward from the impact.

"Mother!" the Crown Prince shouted, rushing forward, but one of the attendants seized his arm. "She'll live. Focus!"

The serpent raised its head, scales cracking and leaking shadow like veins of ink. The corrupted waters bubbled violently, faces forming and dissolving beneath the surface.

Kain felt a tremor run through the ground beneath his feet as a geyser of water penetrated the ground where he was standing.

The water exploded upward like a living spear, and Kain twisted aside just in time. The blast tore through the air where he had been standing, leaving behind a streak of black mist that filled the surroundings, which was quickly absorbed by Aegis.

Kain exhaled sharply, eyes narrowing. "It's targeting me now."

The serpent loomed above the battlefield, its fused human face half-submerged in its own body, whispering something that only Bea could hear. The sound was faint at first—a hum like wind passing through a hollow shell. But soon, Bea's voice touched Kain's mind. 'It's chanting again.'

"What's it saying?" Kain asked, dodging another water spear coming at him from behind.

'Not a single thing, but thousands of overlapping words,' Bea replied. 'They're like prayers… no, more like pleas. It's the same voices we heard before—the people who once worshiped here. They're still trapped, looping their devotion around that creature.'

Kain frowned. "So the priest's own followers are feeding it."

Bea spread her awareness wider, brushing through the chaotic storm of thought. Beneath the frenzy, she began to detect a pattern—the mental noise wasn't random. Each repeated line connected to the next in a rhythm that generated power, in a sense it reminded her of...

'They've built a kind of audible array,' Bea realized. 'A spiritual web formed through endless worship.'

It was like if the sigils of an array had been turned into a chant instead of being drawn—an impossible concept. Arrays were meant to be inscribed into something permanent, fixed into reality through written symbols and infused with spiritual power. Sound, fleeting and intangible, shouldn't be able to carry that permanence. Yet somehow, through ceaseless repetition and faith strong enough to warp the world, the impossible had taken form.

Their faith refused to die. Even after their bodies were twisted into abyssal mockeries and their souls made into eternal servants for the Abyss, the worship that once sustained their temple lingered.

That faith, directed toward Nāgaji and their beloved High Priest, did not vanish with death; it simply adapted. Now, with both the guardian and the priest turned into one abyssal being, their reverence had found a new vessel. It was as if the heavens themselves couldn't tell whether to reject or accept their devotion—so the world compromised. Their worship, corrupted yet sincere, slipped through a loophole and was allowed to remain. And in remaining, it reshaped the land into a domain that even the abyss could claim.

The revelation made Kain's blood run cold. The only saving grace was that such conditions to allow Abyssal domains were extremely hard to achieve, needing a pure and fullhearted devotion before turning, so that it'd be impossible for the Abyss to utilize this loophole on a grand scale. Such an event can only happen again by serendipity.

"So that's why this area feels like a domain. Perhaps this array has the effect of making the environment 'accept' the foreign abyssal domain."

When abyssal domains try to manifest, the world normally rejects them outright to prevent their formation. But what if the residents of this area had worshiped the turned Nāgaji and High Priest even after corruption? A city steeped in such devotion might no longer reject the abyss—it might welcome it, reshaping itself to mirror the faith of its people.

Even now, those prayers were not the cries of despair one would expect from the damned. And they were different from the usual erratic chaos in the minds of low-grade abyssal. They were hymns of loyalty. Each word, each mental echo carried love and reverence. Theirs was a faith so pure it transcended corruption, a light twisted into darkness yet still shining in its own warped way. It was that contradiction—the coexistence of piety and depravity—that allowed this perverse sanctum to exist.

Don't think that faith and belief shouldn't have that ability. Kain knew that in this world, unlike his past one, faith was tangible—it could birth life itself. Emanascions such as Balens were proof enough of that truth.

Bea's tone sharpened suddenly. 'There's another voice beneath them—a deeper one. Not the people's. I believe it's the fused High Priest. But it's not repeating their words—it's moving in tandem, like a second song harmonizing beneath the main melody, answering each line with another.'

Kain's stomach dropped. "So he's responding to their prayers?"

'Yes,' Bea said. 'And every reply strengthens the loop. The serpent and the trapped souls are locked in a cycle—each amplifying the other.'

The air thickened, and the corrupted water began to spiral counter to the river's natural flow. The temperature fell sharply, and a deep vibration resonated through Kain's bones. The psychic array was awakening fully.

"Can you interrupt it?" Kain asked quickly.

Bea hesitated for a fraction of a second. 'I can try. It would require invading tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of minds. I have never attempted to infiltrate so many creatures at one time'

Kain's gaze hardened on the raging abyssal ahead—the serpent swelling larger as the voices grew louder. "Try. I'll do my best to support you from behind."

Bea's presence pulsed once in acknowledgment. All across the corrupted battlefield, the faint threads of her mental field brightened, spreading outward like a web of light invisible to mortal eyes.

Serena and Aegis moved to cover her. Or, to outsiders, to cover Kain since they could not see Bea and assumed the shift in the air originated from him.

The Queen, still bleeding from earlier, sensed the massive amount of spiritual power originating from his position and began forming a defensive barrier of rotating lotus petals. "Whatever you're doing, make it fast!" she shouted.

Kain didn't reply, keeping his attention on Bea, ready to support her with additional energy or a spiritual skill if necessary.

And, at his request, she also shared all of her senses with him...but he was beginning to wish she hadn't as the voices reached a deafening crescendo inside his skull. Thousands of overlapping prayers—pleas for mercy, cries for salvation, songs of worship—merged into one unbearable chorus.

Then Bea struck.

Bea's mental threads lashed through the field of prayer like a blade through tangled silk. She tried to cut the audible loop, forcing each echoing thought to stop repeating—but it was like slicing smoke. Every severed thread simply reformed, the faith too deeply rooted to unravel by force.

She hissed in frustration, pushing harder, her psychic presence surging through the endless chorus. 'It's like those chants are woven into what they are. Not just simple thoughts,' she muttered, 'I can guide the flow of a river, but I can't make it stop being water. At best, I can nudge the current into a different path.'

Kain could feel her irritation, the effort draining her energy faster than she could replenish it. But those words also seemed to spark an epiphany in her. Her next thought came sharper and with some excitement. 'If I can't stop it, maybe I can redirect it!'

He frowned. "Redirect?"

'Their devotion's tied to the object of their faith—the guardian Nāgaji and the High Priest. If I can change who or what they're worshiping, the loop may realign to favour our own.'

As Bea's idea flickered through his mind, Kain's gaze drifted across the battlefield until it landed on Serena's Elemental Guardian. Still in its water form, the massive serpent reflected various colours like a kaleidoscope as the Rising Sun refugees launched attacks around it.

"Serena," he called, voice steady even amid the chaos. "Your guardian—it's fluid, right? Can it change its appearance?"

She blinked at him, surprised. "Of course. It's made of water. Why?"

"Because what they're worshiping isn't just Nāgaji or the priest—their just the closest entities that they can realistically envision tied to their faith. The true object of their faith is the idea of the Naga." His eyes gleamed with sudden understanding. "If your guardian can resemble a true Naga—just enough to fool their instincts—maybe we can turn their faith."

Serena hesitated, then nodded and gestured toward her elemental guardian. The great water serpent rippled, its liquid body trembling as its shape began to shift. The sinuous neck stretched, and faintly human lines took form within the flowing current. Glimmering scales of liquid sapphire gathered like plates of translucent armor, while two graceful, scaled arms emerged from the chest and lifted in a slow, almost ceremonial motion. A crown of radiant fins fanned out behind its head like a halo. When the water finally stilled, the serpent no longer looked like a beast—it resembled a divine figure shaped from living water, a vision of the Naga from ancient myths come to life before their eyes.

Bea caught on immediately, her voice echoing in Kain's mind. 'If it works, their faith might attach to it instead.'

Kain's jaw tightened. "Then let's pray that it does."

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