The silver-white blade didn’t bite into the youth. It hit like a wave against a hidden cliff, halted before it could reach him. Heat flared in Aphelia’s chest—pressure met pressure—she snapped a micro spell circle into being, detonating it in his face, and yet the force holding her edge back didn’t thin at all.

No way she’d wait her turn. Her Holy Sword missed; her arcane blades were already chasing through the blast’s smoke. A pinprick of cold starlight, they stabbed for the youth’s brow.

ROAR!!!

The bellow hit like thunder in a gorge. Smoke shredded, torn apart by sound alone. What it revealed widened Aphelia’s eyes, a chill skittering down her spine.

The youth’s mild, human torso was gone. In its place clung a man-shaped shadow, black as spilled ink, grafted at the waist with strings of mangled flesh. The way it came out of him made her stomach tighten—obscene and wrong.

It was gaunt like a winter scarecrow, yet its arms were a cruel joke. The limbs ballooned massive, giant’s arms grafted to a starving frame—two of Aphelia shoulder to shoulder might barely match one forearm’s breadth.

No time to gawk. The shadow crossed its monstrous forearms, caught her blade. Behind it, twisted tendrils jetted free—whoosh, whoosh—like a storm of black arrows, whistling straight for Aphelia.

Irritation flashed first; instinct yanked her free. Aphelia broke pressure, rolled back sideways, skirts whispering like leaves in wind. The thing howled again. More tendrils tore out of its body, a black rain slung at her as she moved, relentless, hunting.

A normal attack, she’d meet it head-on, then send the attacker west with a single cut. But those writhing tendrils lit up every warning in her bones—revulsion, like touching rot in a temple.

Reason was clear. Madness seethed in them. Each tendril carried a warped will, a hive of killing moods. They gnawed even at a Mana Crystal; the earth around Aphelia’s feet withered at first touch, grass dying to ash, a deadland in a heartbeat.

Is this another Plague of Beasts? There’s no Arcane Power suppression at all…

She stood with twin blades in hand, a cold moon in her eyes, facing the ink-black shape. It felt animal—cunning in a feral way. After its first failed rush, it held the distance on purpose. A forest of tendrils hung in the air like a ring of fangs, waiting for the tiniest opening to tear her apart.

Plague of Beasts or not, it didn’t fit. Maybe a Demigod shrugs off anti-magic fields? Still, her Arcane Power flowed clean. But that corrosion and devouring… a mirror of the Plague’s hunger.

A tendril flicked loose like a hidden arrow loosed from a dark bow. Her pulse kicked; body moved first. If she’d been a blink slower, that spike would’ve punched through her face.

So it ambushes. Intelligence, not just instinct. This thing’s a world away from the Plague I sealed.

The black lash shaved a few strands from her hair. In that breath of space, her will sank into a tiny Rune, and the great net of Arcane Power lit like constellations. In the span of a few heartbeats, dozens of arcane blades snapped into being around her, fanning out to reap the storm of tendrils.

“One Begets the Myriad!”

Her twin swords moved like spirit serpents, weaving an unbreakable wall. Demigod strength turned defense into art; the press of tendrils broke like surf against rock. In her old body, she’d have yielded ground under such a flood. Not now.

Which left her mind free. She split the airborne blades in a flash. From dozens to hundreds, they hovered like a steel rainstorm, all points aimed at the shadow below.

The shadow roared again—hunger and spite. More tendrils jetted from its body. Those Aphelia cut apart wriggled and split like worms in rain, stealing her trick to swarm anew.

“Nature Spell—Forest of Thorns!”

She wouldn’t let it multiply unchecked. Sword-blades crashed down like a monsoon, clashing and hacking at the storm of black. Her chant rose almost without breath; a thousand thornvines broke earth, geysers of green turned wild, racing up to cage the shadow in a living prison.

She slid a step back, thoughts sharp. The blade of Arcane Power in her fist flew like a comet, straight for the thing’s head. A probe—would it flinch to protect a vital point?

As she expected, the shadow moved like it had smarts, yet it didn’t dodge. The blade drilled through its skull; it didn’t care, just whipped its tendrils to butcher thorns and steel alike.

“Hmph… have it your way.”

Her Holy Sword flashed silver—and in the same breath it folded, flowed, and became the Ghostface Vambrace. This time, with her body ascended, the carvings were finer, crueler, almost identical to the Bracer Gauntlets etched in her memory.

She watched the shadow thrash in the thornwood, a smile curving like a crescent moon at nightfall. No chant needed. A snap, crisp as ice. Fire leapt to her palm. The Ghostface Vambrace seemed to catch flame too, its demon mask drinking the blaze until it glowed a feverish crimson.

“If you can’t devour the arcane blades, that leaves two options…”

A strange fire rose around her—not ordinary orange, but blood-deep crimson, like a sheer feathered mantle settling over her shoulders.

“You can’t devour it, or you don’t have time to. Either way—you’re dead.”

Fists met with a ringing crack. The ghost face bared fangs and roared, and deep-crimson fire gushed out. Aphelia launched, no hesitation, a streak of red burning across the air behind her like a comet’s tail.

“Ancient Martial Flow—Collapse, Fist!!!”

Flame and Arcane Power braided tight, and the demon mask on the Vambrace flickered like a living thing. Two smaller crimson ghost faces unfurled along Ophelius’s sides, born from that seething aura, sprinting with her as she charged. She was a fired shell, a will that didn’t know retreat.

The shadow finally tore free of the thorns—but too late. The fist fell on its heart, a mountain dropping from sky. It flew back, weightless, while the two crimson faces pounced and gnawed, worrying it like wolves on a stag.

Aphelia didn’t stop. Heat steamed off her skin like dawn over hot springs, but her fingers were already sketching a spell array. Crimson Runes woke and aligned around her, snapping into a lattice of power.

“O great God of Space and Time, your child seeks your guidance, to reach for the radiant shore beyond…”

The crimson fire-ghosts were flung off, the shadow wrenching free with a shriek. Its lower body—what flesh it had—was burned to nothing, leaving a serpent’s coil of darkness. Its upper body was worse: a gaping hole near the heart, deep-crimson fire clinging to the wound, eating and singing. The scream it gave shivered like glass.

Most tendrils were shredded by the ghost faces’ bite. The few left hung limp, dead ropes in dead wind.

Then rage took it. The shadow seized the spent tendrils and mimed swallowing them. Aphelia’s senses pricked—no intake, no mouthful. It wasn’t eating. It was re-fusing them, folding itself back together.

So was it posturing for me? Or…

When the dead tendrils rejoined, black scales crawled over its skin, a charcoal armor, tailored to spite her fire.

Too late. A crimson spell array flowered under its feet like a blood-red lotus, wide in an instant. Arcane Power around Aphelia paused, then surged like a tide, rushing into the array.

“Spatial Spell—Crimson Seal!”

Red chains erupted, roaring up, coiling the shadow from crown to coil. It spat tendrils by the dozens to rip free, but under Aphelia’s control it was theater only. Chain after chain, each etched with a Rune, punched through the shadow and cinched tight. A thousand unseen weights pressed it to the sealing array, binding it completely, body and will.

Aphelia exhaled, light as spring wind. No toil, no drag, no hint of a battle just fought. She stood as she’d begun, unruffled.

Arcane fatigue? Let it stay a thing of the past.