What the hell is this thing?

Good question. If the corpses that birthed it knew their flesh had been woven into such chaos, they’d tremble like winter leaves and kneel, begging God to forgive the evil they’d become. They can’t hear. Only the Wraithbound Golem hears, only it senses the world—its mask turns toward the shout, and a breath like a monk’s sigh slips from beneath the iron face.

As it twisted, Adelaide moved. She leapt to stand before Skela and Hazel. A crimson shield bloomed in a rush, just in time to catch the golem’s hammer-blow, like a storm-wave hitting a cliff.

A shriek like metal grinding split the air. Adelaide staggered a step. In that knife-close moment, she finally saw the coils of pattern on its arm—etched veins like burned vines—and one of her worst suspicions snapped into focus.

“Real generous of you lot…!”

Same gripe, but this time her voice had teeth. Beside her, Hazel’s ears rang like struck bells; the roar had muddled her hearing, and she missed Adelaide’s words.

“What did you say!” she shouted, palm half-covering her ear.

“They etched counter-formations on this Wraithbound Golem. It shrugs off magic that matches its own nature. Standard Blood Magic won’t touch it!” Adelaide yelled back, her tone a steel wire.

It was the short version. She hadn’t told Hazel the lines weren’t painted with ink but refined from human heart-essence—drops wrung from hundreds of corpses like bitter sap. Even without that, Hazel still shot her a look and repeated the question she’d asked before.

“How do you even know that?!”

Rare for her, the face under Adelaide’s mask twisted with temper, like a torch flaring in wind.

Of course she knew. She was the one who’d decoded the Blood Magic scroll that makes Wraithbound Golems; her own copy still sleeps in her basement like a snake in a jar.

Back then she’d thought a spell that needs ten thousand bodies was a blasphemy too grand to be real. She didn’t know that organization had roots like iron trees. She figured they could never gather that much flesh, and so she handed over the blueprint without a second thought, like tossing a stone that would crush her own foot.

The grinding stopped. Not a good omen—silence like a held breath before lightning.

Adelaide and Hazel looked up. The Wraithbound Golem clasped both fists. A mass like a falling meteor dropped from above, shadow swallowing light.

The crash rivaled the first time it burst into the room, a thunderhead breaking over stone. Worse was the tiny crack beneath it—the subtle sound of a shell giving way. Adelaide’s hurried shield couldn’t take a second impact. It was about to splinter like thin ice under a heavy boot.

She flung another vial, but before the sacrificial flare could awaken, someone stepped in front of her.

“—axan sanda (Shield of Law)!”

Skela’s tattered habit whipped like a banner in the golem’s roar, but her holy high note cut through at the last heartbeat. The instant the blood barrier shattered, white light blazed into a shield, a moon-pale wall between her and the iron giant.

All three braced for another crash, shoulders tensed like bows—but it never came.

Instead, they heard a sizzle, like fat searing on stone.

A wail—long, ragged. The golem recoiled, that bulk hopping back in awkward, giant steps. It flinched from Skela’s shield like a beast from flame. The hands that had touched it were half-melted, blackened and dripping like tar.

Holy light works on this thing! The realization struck, and hope rose on Hazel’s and Skela’s faces like sunrise breaking fog.

But Adelaide’s face stayed storm-dark.

“It’s not enough…”

“Not enough?”

“The golem’s body runs on a soul crystal inside it. The crystal endures, the flesh persists.”

As if to prove it, the golem shrieked. From the half-liquefied sludge that had been its hands, new pallid knuckles budded like bone lilies.

In the space of a few blinks, bronze-colored fibers wound over the joints like creeping vines. It finished its own repair right there on the floor before them.

“That’s cheating!”

“It’s what ten thousand corpses buy you. What did you expect?”

“So where is that crystal?!”

The golem surged at them again. Adelaide was already chanting, voice low like a river under ice. She used her free hand to point at its head, sealed in an iron prison.

A heartbeat later, the Wraithbound Golem was on them—mountain-sized, yet moving like a trained athlete. It slid, slammed one foot down, and braked. The tile under its weight cracked with a gunshot pop, fracture lines spidering outward like frost.

Just as Adelaide expected, it curved around Skela’s Shield of Law, coming in from the flank like a wolf around a bonfire.

She didn’t hesitate. She pressed the glowing array in her palm to the stone beneath her feet, like stamping a seal.

“Back!”

Hazel grabbed Skela—still mid-incantation—and dragged her away. Rainbow light seeped under the floor like dawn under a door. The instant the golem stepped, that light detonated like a landmine.

As before, the patterns along its skin flashed. An unseen bulwark sucked up Adelaide’s force, like sand swallowing rain.

Only, this time she wasn’t striking its body. She struck the ground—each magic mine blew a pit tens of meters wide, like craters on a dead moon. The golem’s ankles plunged in, and its own sprinting momentum hooked it, sent it tripping forward.

The giant body toppled toward them like a felled tree. Adelaide’s second array spun and widened in her hands. Two thick spikes launched from the array’s heart, and their own speed plus the golem’s falling weight rammed them into its iron helm like nails driven by an avalanche.

Magic was packed so tight they bit deeper than anything she’d thrown before. Even so, the counter-formation jammed them fast, locking them inches from the flesh beneath, like spears stuck in a gate.

Adelaide’s fingers cut a new path in the air, swift and precise, pinching invisible threads tight.

“lahta- (Cross)!”

The twin spikes obeyed. They crossed, grinding together with a sound that set teeth on edge, like slate shredded under steel.

Like jacks prying stone, they tore a ragged hole through half a meter of forged iron, exposing the black burden inside, a darkness like a starless pit.

Another spell flared.

“calma quessë (Radiant Feather)——”

A great bolt of light, feathered and bright, arced over Adelaide’s head and speared for the torn gap, a comet guided by her cut.

The golem, indifferent until now, finally felt threat. Its head twisted in ways no spine should bend, trying to dodge the incoming holy light. But no matter how it turned, the light’s arrowhead locked to that gap like a magnet to its pole, drawn by the evil spilling from the helm’s wound—until they struck.

White swallowed everything, a tide like the sun rising in this buried lab. For an instant, the world was nothing but day.

Did it work? Did they drop the golem?

Adelaide hadn’t opened her eyes yet when the golem’s howl, raw and pained, yanked her heart taut again like a bowstring.

She looked. The golem knelt and raged, hands clawing its helm as it convulsed. Black, half-coagulated blood spilled from the torn gap in a foul waterfall, chunks of meat lost to their original shapes tumbling in the stream like drowned relics.

It looked pitiful, but Adelaide knew: if a Blood Magic construct can still make sound and move, it can still kill you as easily as snapping a twig.

That Blood Puppet earlier was proof. The Wraithbound Golem is worse, a storm-breeder.

Skela’s long-range light can’t descend deep enough. Wounds like this stall it for seconds, a handful of grains sliding through the glass.

Damn it. Do I use that here? She’d meant to save it for the very end—for facing Mira, for a duel on that level. A last blade hidden under silk.

She bit her lip, wavering, mind a sparrow beating against bars. Then a cry burst behind her.

“Sanyi, what are you doing—”

Her veil lifted at one corner as if wind had plucked it, but there’s no wind underground, only breath and heat.

She turned, and in the edge of her vision she caught Skela stepping on blue mana midair, running straight for the golem like a streak of sky.

In that instant, Adelaide understood what Skela meant to do.

Too reckless. She doesn’t know what sits inside that helm. That helm isn’t there to protect the golem—it’s there to prevent—

Adelaide reached out on reflex, but it was too late. She grit her teeth, changed the angle of her hands, crossed her wrists, and shouted the crossing spell again.

Her voice tugged the spikes still riveted in the helm. They crossed once more. The leverage bit into structures made of pure magic, and metal fatigue followed like winter creeping up old iron.

They bent to the limit, ready to snap like overdrawn bows. In the last heartbeat before breaking, they ripped the helm clean open.

The two halves hit the floor with dull, heavy thuds. The head beneath, black as a hole in the world, lay naked to the air.

Adelaide didn’t know it yet, but she’d soon regret that choice like tasting ash.

Right now, she thought only this: if she can’t stop Skela, then she can at least clear her path.

And that, without a doubt, was the wrong call.