The Wrath-born demigod approached the fort, finally stepping into view. A black fog curled around it like tattered robes. The surface of its body resembled obsidian cracked apart by molten light. Deep crimson radiance pulsed beneath its plates, brighter at the joints and core. Four burning violet vertical eyes flecked with gold scanned the fortress with idle anger (it's default emotion) and curiosity.

Seven horns rose from its head, each twisted and marked with faint sigils—Infernal sigils, symbols of its past life in the Underworld Realm before being turned into an abyssal.

Where it walked, the ground warped, buckling inward as though the earth itself recoiled from the touch.

Serena lifted her bow, a high-level artifact passed down in her family that would even allow her to kill high-level spiritual creatures at the expense of enough spiritual power. Taking full advantage of her near bottomless spiritual power, she injected enough spiritual power into the bow, until it seemed fully saturated, steadied her aim, and fired a shot straight into its chest. The spiritual arrow—a high-grade one she conjured using more power than she's ever wielded at once in her life—struck the demigod's chest and simply dissolved like mist. Not deflected. Not resisted.

Rendered meaningless.

A chill settled beneath her ribs.

She had expected that outcome. She had even prepared herself for it.

But seeing the reality—that even her strongest attacks couldn't so much as inconvenience it—made the hopelessness of the situation settle heavily in her chest.

Around her, soldiers continued to break. A young man screamed as his arm twisted unnaturally, his bones reshaping until a massive claw sprouted from his hand. He lunged with an angry yell at the nearest ally, who couldn't even raise a defence before being torn open. Two staff members in charge of maintaining the sigils on the walls, attempted to stabilize a formation node, only to suddenly turn on each other with their own spiritual skills, blasting holes in the sigils that were already coming undone. As a result, the already precarious shield that just barely kept out the might of the demigod, began to flicker.

But even if the abyssal demigod was kept out, the fortress was still becoming a slaughterhouse.

Serena inhaled deeply, narrowing her eyes to keep the domain's influence from unravelling her thoughts.

Focus.

Anchor.

She had been trained for this.

But even she was sweating.

The demigod continued its approach, and each step reshaped the world around it. Where its foot touched ground, the ground did not crack—it compressed, as if the mass beneath compacted under the weight of its existence.

The temperature fluctuated violently, plummeting and then spiking as the emotional field warped perception.

Serena didn't need Balens' analysis to know what would happen if she stayed in its line of sight any longer.

It had come here for one reason only. To turn or destroy all of them.

She handed the boy off to the nearby Vespid again before shifting her own stance, preparing to bolt. But before she could move, a wave of spiritual force rippled outward from the demigod. Walls buckled inward. A pillar toppled sideways like a toy. Dozens of soldiers were hurled from the battlements, some vanishing into the seething mass of abyssals below before their screams were swallowed by chaos.

Serena's feet slid across the stone from the recoil. She stabilized herself quickly, but the foundation beneath her was fracturing.

Then the demigod finally turned its full attention on her.

A shiver ran up her spine.

Its four eyes narrowed at the only sane human remaining in this district, even if she wasn't the most powerful one. Its domain thickened around her, and the rage in the air focused like a sharpening blade trying to cut into her mind

Her breath hitched. The demigod's arm rose slowly.

One smooth, fluid motion.

Like a gesture of execution given by an Emperor

Serena braced herself.

She strung another arrow, not because it would help, but because firing at least felt like trying. She inhaled deeply, forming a dense arrow of pure spiritual force, and drew the bowstring until it nearly split.

If she died, she would die standing.

The demigod lashed out.

The attack was not a beam or a shockwave—it was a collapse. The space between them trembled violently, as though being squeezed inward, a compression of air and spiritual force that crumpled the ground like paper as it passed.

Serena's instincts screamed at her to move—

Too late.

She used every means she had at her disposal, bracing herself for a hit that even the high-grade items given to her by her lineage couldn't withstand.

And this was just a casual blow from it that was even further weakened by the remaining shield along the walls.

Yet it made her so helpless.

She braced for death.

Then—

It stopped.

Everything did.

The rippling distortion halted mid-air, suspended like a solid wall of warped glass. Falling stone fragments hung motionless. The scream of a soldier several meters away cut off mid-breath. Abyssals climbing the wall froze like grotesque statues.

Serena's thoughts drifted strangely, as though she had fallen out of her own body. Her vision blurred, then clarified with unnatural sharpness. For a moment she wondered if this was what dying felt like.

Then something warm, solid, and familiar pressed against her back to steady her body that had begun falling at some point without her notice.

A chest.

Broad. Steady.

A familiar voice whispered near her ear.

"Looks like you're caught in quite the predicament."

She exhaled shakily, head tilting just enough to see the edge of his cloak. Kain's expression was tight with concentration, eyes glowing faintly with unstable violet energy.

Despite his light-hearted tone, he felt like he was dying inside. This level of attack was too much for him to halt for long.

Time—held, but only barely.

Serena almost smiled.

Almost—because she could feel the strain in him. The tremor in his limbs. The faint instability in the halted space.

He could not hold this for long.

Kain swallowed once, not looking away from the frozen attack.

"When I let go," he murmured, "you run. Get out of his line of sight."

Serena's pulse hammered. "And you?"

He didn't answer.

He didn't need to.

She understood exactly what he was intending.

The domain still pressed against them, pulsing like a second heartbeat in the air. And the demigod, seeing its attack halted, began to ready a second attack in anger.

Naturally, Kain's time-halt wasn't stopping the demigod.

It could barely stop the lighthearted attack it just made, and he had no hope of it stopping its stronger follow-up attack.

Time around them cracked.

And the frozen world began to move.

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