Just as Lucimia commanded ink-black shadows, Ment breathed smoke like a choking mist, and Elyssus drove a writhing octopus, Vosh, too, kept her own art.

She puppeted Nat and snapped her fingers, the crack sharp as flint.

The next heartbeat, water burst out, pouring from all directions like sudden rain.

The ground bled springs, trunks and leaves sweated streams, even the air beaded into water that drenched Lucimia’s pitch-black shadow.

This was the Purification Deity’s Holy Water, cold and bright as moon-silver.

Ment was checked by Lucimia, and Lucimia, in turn, was partly checked by Vosh, like rock and reed in shifting current.

Vosh kept it simple: if Lucimia stole Ment’s energy, she’d wash those shadows clean with Holy Water, like scrubbing soot from glass.

If that failed, she’d purify Ment’s energy itself and seal it like ice, so no trick could let Lucimia Devour it.

She knew too well: if the Devouring Authority ate enough, something would wake, something even the true eldritch kept at arm’s length.

Holy Water rushed across the valley like a pale flood, but Lucimia didn’t flinch, a dark lotus in rain.

She tipped her chin, glanced at Vosh, and breathed two soft syllables, cold as frost on glass.

Reversion.

Vosh jolted as if pricked by a thorn in the dark.

She knew Lucimia’s play, as clear as lightning on a storm front.

Ment had withdrawn his energy; Lucimia had already devoured a torrent; Vosh was burning power to block and even purify Ment’s share.

That meant the Purification sustaining the Reversion-curse was thinning like mist, maybe gone with the wind.

Lucimia seized the gap and devoured the curse of Reversion; her Reversion returned, sharp as a reset blade.

Her word fell. Reversion flashed and was done, a door slammed and reopened.

She opened her eyes at the instant she’d first begun devouring the Cross’s energy, like circling back to a footprint in snow.

In short, she’d chain Reversions to stop Ment from reeling energy back and stop Vosh from washing her shadows away.

She could use Devouring to dodge Reversion’s reset, stepping past a falling guillotine.

Purification could do similar, but Vosh was sealed, shackled from inscribing concepts with raw Authority Power.

She could only act through mediums or built-in Purification traits, like Holy Water, rain forced through a sieve.

Even then, with what Lucimia had devoured and the Cross draining by the breath, Lucimia could hold a grinding stalemate.

In other words, the tide had turned and was running Lucimia’s way, a river finding its fall.

“Tch. Still gave her an opening?” Vosh’s voice was a blade with grit.

“Ment, that brainless lump, as dumb as that big octopus. If they’d just followed my way, she’d be gone.”

“The idiots back then too—running their little schemes and getting us all locked up by Olivya.”

Seeing the board wouldn’t flip back, Vosh chose to purify Ment’s energy, to dam Lucimia’s intake like a hastily raised levee.

Lucimia timed her Reversions to the moments Vosh irrigated with Holy Water and Ment tugged at the stream.

Back and forth, like tides and undertow, most of the energy still flowed into Lucimia.

After drinking deep, Lucimia oozed an eerie scent, like cold iron in fog rolling off a graveyard.

Her looks shifted—whether from Authority Power or the glut she’d swallowed, a chrysalis cut mid-molt.

Fine lines surfaced on her pretty face, and a tail bloomed behind her, matching the Fuzzy Orb’s, fur like night-cloud.

Seeing those lines, Vosh’s heart dropped like a stone into a well.

She cursed Ment again, dropped him without a glance, and slipped back into the void like a fish into dark water.

She feared Lucimia might use some half-forgotten Authority Power to reach her through Nat’s flesh, a hand inside a glove.

Lucimia herself finally understood why Olivya told her to devour without restraint, like wind urged to be wind.

If taking Yuna’s energy in the Town of Tranquility only unlocked Authority Power, then this wild feast was leveling it up, steel in flame.

Three messages surfaced in her mind like lanterns lifting in night fog.

Authority Power: Exemption.

Authority Power: Severance.

Authority Power: Soul.

She also gained her elder brother’s memories, spells she could cast, and even swordcraft, echoes settling into bone.

Severance was what her brother had devoured; Soul was what Olivya once devoured, links forged in shadow.

“This is… inheritance?” Her whisper fell like ash.

Lucimia clenched her hand, feeling the two new powers thrumming inside like taut strings.

She’d wondered before: with several holders of the Devouring Authority, why had the powers they devoured vanished like smoke?

Now it seemed they hadn’t vanished, only hid, and enough energy would unseal them like buds in spring.

No wonder Vosh bolted, a fox from fire.

What is she afraid of? Could one inheritable power be something she dreads like flame?

Lucimia didn’t dig further; her gaze slid down to Lev like a falling blade.

She willed it, eager to test the new power—Sever the Link, a knife through rope.

In the next instant, Ment’s bond with his Cross snapped like a cut wire; he couldn’t draw his energy back.

Ment blanched, color draining like water from sand.

He didn’t know how Lucimia pulled it off, a trick with no seams to catch.

He looked up at her in the sky and, for a heartbeat, felt like a mere human while she was the true Dark Deity.

No—run.

Since the energy wouldn’t return, Ment cut his link to Lev on the spot and fled to the royal capital, already plotting his next step.

All-out war, or escape, thunder or smoke.

Lucimia didn’t chase; she looked at the unconscious Nat and Lev, her eyes going cold as still water, and called on Severance again.

“Sever… the soul.”

Their bodies jerked, their heads tilted, and then they went still, candles pinched out.

The whole valley had been flattened by Lucimia’s Devouring, a plain scraped clean by a black tide.

After swallowing a flood of energy, she swayed on her feet like a reed in wind.

A chorus of mutters kept ringing in her skull; even Devouring couldn’t wash them away, like stains in bone.

“So loud… so loud…”

Her vision warped like heat-haze; directions unraveled; she couldn’t stop herself from dropping.

“No—this can’t… it can’t…” Her breath broke like thin ice.

She fought to steady her mind, but each effort slipped like sand; she fell from the sky.

Luckily she wrapped herself in a ring of wind magic; the fall met a cushion, and the earth’s embrace didn’t hurt as much.

She clawed up from the dirt, small hands heedless of mud, pushed to stand—and toppled again like a cut string.

“So dizzy… so sleepy…” Her voice faded like dusk.

She let her eyelids drift shut, shadows pooling like ink.

Squeak-squeak-squeak!

The rats’ cries snapped her awake like a splash of cold water.

Half-lidded, she saw the surrounding swarm streaming toward her like a gray tide.

Right… the rats.

My Devouring only ate energy, not anything else—and that means…

She held her head and looked around, seeing some magical beasts already gone, silhouettes fading like ghosts.

Their habitat was erased; staying here meant nothing but dust and wind.