As Eldric's words settled into Jekyll's thoughts, he did not wait.

He sent signals out hard and fast, bargaining with Craftsworth Peak and Contractcrown Alp for whatever they could spare that would end an eldritch without leaving a doorway open for it to crawl back through.

Terms, prices, favors owed. He stacked them in his head while his boots stayed planted on the broken summit of Ledgegrove Bazaar.

Below the rim of ice and nails, the Aberrant stared at the people around it with sympathy and indignation, as if the pain made it more certain it was human.

"Who is controlling all of you?" it demanded. "Why do you keep fighting me?"

Silent Severance did not answer. Blows rained down on its hide anyway.

Physical body cultivators took turns, fists slamming the same spot, over and over, until thunderous booms rolled across the peak.

Each impact left a dent in metal like muscle, a shallow bruise that did not heal.

Elemental qi surged into the open cracks, burning from within while the rest of the creature remained locked in ice cold enough to bite the air.

It was a total lockdown. It still was not enough.

An eldritch could not be treated like a normal beast, and Jekyll knew that too well.

Normal beasts died from pain or blood or cold. This thing survived rules the way rot survived winter.

Fine cracks spidered across its chest. It threw its head back and roared, and the sound carried a sad note that would have been almost convincing if it had not come from a mouth built to eat people.

"Why shall we fight, my subjects?" it pleaded. "Let us investigate what had really happened."

No one believed it. No one stopped.

Jekyll watched the cracks deepen and felt the window closing. Eldric had bought them time, and that too needed to be repaid.

He needed the end, not the delay. Then a boom split the air above the summit.

A rectangular object cut through the sky, spinning once before it leveled, as if the wind itself obeyed it.

People looked up and saw a throne, massive and ugly, a chair built for someone who never feared being toppled.

Symbols were carved into its frame, and they glowed with a cyanic light that made the ice around it look sick.

"Catch it," Jekyll snapped.

More than twenty masked men moved as one. They caught the throne midair with practiced ease, boots digging in, shoulders braced, breath hissing through masks.

Conjurers stepped forward and split the ice like a surgeon parting flesh. The over twenty meter throne was shoved into place, wedged to the Aberrant's back, locking against the nails already pinning its joints.

The creature blinked at it, confused. It did not know what the throne was for.

Then the masked men forced it down.

The Aberrant was made to sit, and the small needles in its joints flared with pressure, as if they were about to rip it alive from the inside.

Its falsified king's dignity shattered into a raw, animal sound.

Seated on the throne, the Aberrant could not rise even if it remembered how.

Across the ridges, the other cities had already raised their offensive armaments, the kind meant for wars and for calamity.

Fires burned in signal braziers. Runners vanished into passes. On distant peaks, silhouettes shifted into battle lines.

On the far side, at Contractcrown of Plunder Alp, power gathered at the very top.

The air there began to turn, slow at first, then faster, folding into a vortex that looked like a tribulation about to descend.

Snow lifted and spiraled. Stone dust rose with it. The sky dimmed around the forming center as if light itself feared getting too close.

A man stood within the pull, feet braced, holding a javelin that drank the attention of everyone present.

A hundred men knelt around him and chanted prayers into the weapon, their voices rough from altitude and dread.

"This weapon shall vanquish both evil and good. For this shaft is made to steal and our hands our made to plunder."

Runic circles floated in the air above the entirety of the weapon, forming in segments, each ring glowing with white lightning.

Ten. Twenty. Thirty. When the fortieth ring formed, the man's arms shook. Strain climbed up his shoulders and into his jaw.

He did not wait for his body to fail. He threw.

It happened almost in an instant.

A white streak cut across the world, not straight, not polite. It curved as if it could smell its target.

Anyone watching could feel it. The javelin's aim was true.

It struck the Aberrant in the chest and lodged deep.

For a heartbeat, the creature only stared at it. It felt no pain. That absence was worse than pain.

Then the sealing artifacts clicked into place like it was a pair made for each other.

The shaft of the javelin began to grow crystals, pale and greedy, spreading along every energy pathway the Aberrant had ever built for itself.

They drank. They stole the heaven and earth energy moving through the Aberrant's body, pulling it out in a steady, merciless tide.

The throne answered.

Its cyanic glow stained, swallowing color until it ran red, as if the chair itself was learning the taste of blood.

It gulped vitality from the creature in heavy draughts, and the ice around its limbs crackled as the heat of life was taken away.

The Aberrant's mouth opened. Its voice came out guttural and pleading, and yet the borrowed memories of a king in its head still tried to make it sound reasonable.

"Why are you doing this? I. I do not understand. Why must you bring me torment?"

It did not want to die.

It wanted, in its own warped certainty, to bring prosperity to the land. To rule well. To be loved. The lie was almost tender.

It lifted its eyes to the sun, still high in the sky.

The sight of it made something faint tug inside the creature, a thin connection it could not name.

It felt like it knew what the sun was. It felt like it was supposed to do something with that knowledge.

But it could not fathom what.

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