The Dark Knight came up off her knee, and nobody was ready.

Not really. Ronan stood behind half a shield. Finn’s arm was red to the wrist. Cillian’s lightning flickered around one working hand. Maeve had 35 mana and a field thin enough to see through.

She came anyway.

[DARK KNIGHT OF THE SUCCUBUS CROSS — FINAL WRATH]

[ARMOR REGENERATION FAILED]

[PARTY CORRUPTION RESISTANCE STRAINED]

The first swing had nothing measured left in it. It came down at Ronan like a tree falling, and the burning blade dragged a red-black trail through the air behind it.

Ronan caught it on the broken frame.

CRUNCH.

The frame folded around the blow. He turned with it instead of against it, shed half the force into the mud, and still went skidding back three meters with his boots plowing twin lines.

"Still up," he said. It came out as a wheeze.

She was already swinging again. Messier now. Heavier. Every cut was a kill if it landed and an opening if it didn’t, and she no longer cared which.

[TRBWatcher]: The armor isn’t closing anymore. Look at the chest.

[RaidStatsGuy]: The cracks are STAYING. Every hit from here is permanent.

[DubsTowerDiary]: I’ve watched every floor stream since the Tower opened. I have never seen a boss fight like this.

[Anonymous donated €50,000]: FINISH IT.

She broke Ronan first.

He blocked high, and she let the blade slide off the frame and drove her armored shoulder through him instead.

WHAM.

He left the ground. He hit the mud five meters back, rolled twice, and came to rest face-down with the broken frame still strapped to his arm.

He pushed up to his elbows. His arms shook. He did not get further than that.

[RONAN CLEARY — CRITICAL CONDITION]

"Ronan!" Maeve’s hand came up. Light gathered at her palm, sputtered, thinned — there was almost nothing behind it.

The circlet gave what she couldn’t.

[APOSTLE’S RADIANT CIRCLET — EMERGENCY PULSE ACTIVATED]

[MAEVE CALLAHAN — MANA CRITICALLY LOW]

A weak ring of pale gold crossed the square and settled over Ronan, and the bleeding under his armor slowed. He stayed down. Breathing. Down.

The Dark Knight turned toward him to finish it.

Finn got there first.

He stepped into her path with his axe up and took the cut meant for Ronan’s spine across his own chest — turned enough that the edge didn’t go deep, not turned enough that it didn’t go in.

SHRRK.

He didn’t fall. He planted, grabbed the burning blade’s crossguard with his free hand, gauntlet smoking, and held her in place for one full second.

"NOW!"

Cillian’s bolt hit her sword arm at the elbow.

CRACK.

The arm jumped. Finn shoved off the blade and staggered clear, chest running red — and Cillian doubled over with his own lightning crawling back up his burned arm the wrong way, eating through the bandage line.

He straightened. Slowly. His left arm hung.

[IronRingLive]: Ronan’s down BAD.

[MarrowAndMana]: Finn just took that hit on purpose. He stepped INTO it.

[RaidStatsGuy]: Cillian’s arm is finished if he forces lightning one more time.

[QuietWatcher_Tallaght]: I can’t look away. I genuinely cannot look away.

James read the square.

Ronan: down. Finn: open chest, still standing. Cillian: one arm, maybe one charge. Maeve: empty. The python beside him: torn, coiled, waiting.

They were winning. They were also one mistake from a body.

And then the Dark Knight lifted her head and screamed at the sky again —

"MOTHER!"

— and James saw it.

The fire on the sword guttered. Every time. Not flickered — guttered, dipping almost to nothing for half a breath while the call went up and failed to land. The cross was gone. She was reaching for the source directly, and the reach took everything she had, every single time, and nothing ever reached back.

"Listen to me," James said, low and fast. "When she calls, the fire drops and the guard drops with it. Next call, we end it. Everything into the chest."

"Define everything," Cillian said. His voice had gone hoarse. "I have one left."

"Then that’s when you spend it."

Finn spat red into the mud and got both hands on the axe. Ronan rolled onto his side, then his knees, then — somehow — his feet, dragging the wrecked frame up with him.

"You should stay down," Maeve told him.

"Probably," Ronan said, and took his place anyway.

Maeve raised one shaking hand and spent almost the last of what she had. Two thin orange brands went out — one onto the split helm, one onto the broken seam down the chest plate.

[HEXLIGHT BRAND ACTIVE]

[WEAK POINT EXPOSED]

James brought the python low against the mud, coiled to strike.

The Dark Knight raised the burning sword over her head. The black helm tilted back. The crack down its face caught the red light.

"MOTHER—!"

The fire guttered.

"Now."

The python hit her leg at full extension.

THOOM.

Fangs into the knee joint, body whipping around the calf, and it hauled sideways with everything its torn length had left. Her balance broke off center.

Ronan slammed into her sword arm — not blocking, pinning, the broken frame and his whole body wedged against the weapon to hold it away from Finn.

Finn drove the axe two-handed into the branded chest seam.

THUNK.

Cillian spent his last charge into the branded helm.

CRACK-OOM.

And James fired Necro Blast into the seam Finn’s axe had levered open, straight through the gap, into whatever was under the armor.

[ABYSSAL VENOM PYTHON — BINDING STRIKE]

[FINN HALE — AXE STRIKE]

[CILLIAN WARD — OVERCHARGED LIGHTNING IMPACT]

[NECRO BLAST ACTIVATED]

[MANA: 1,300/1,420 → 1,270/1,420]

[DARK KNIGHT OF THE SUCCUBUS CROSS — CRITICAL DAMAGE]

The Dark Knight staggered.

The sword point dropped into the mud. The chest plate split wider with a sound like a frozen lake giving way, and through the crack in the helm, the voice came out again — smaller than it had ever been.

"Mother."

Nothing answered. Nothing had ever answered.

[TRBWatcher]: That HURT it. Look at the chest.

[GuildScout_EU]: Chest plate is wide open.

[MarrowAndMana]: They’ve found her timing. She opens every time she screams.

"Don’t stop," James said. "Nobody stops. Pull!"

The python wrenched the leg again and her knee buckled. Ronan threw his whole weight onto the sword arm and rode it down into the mud. Finn ripped the axe free and swung it into the same wound —

THUNK.

— and Cillian, with no lightning left, simply kicked the back of her braced knee and dropped her another foot.

"Maeve!" James called. "When she goes — the corruption goes with her!"

Maeve understood. She didn’t spend her last pulse on healing. She threw it over the boss instead, a thin gold shell wrapping the broken armor to hold in whatever came out when it died.

[RADIANT CONTAINMENT ACTIVATED]

[MAEVE CALLAHAN — MANA DEPLETED]

Finn levered the chest seam wide with the axe head and threw himself clear.

"James!"

James put everything through the opening.

[NECRO BLAST ACTIVATED]

The bolt went in through the split chest and the Dark Knight froze mid-strain — every limb stopping at once, the way a puppet stops.

The fire on the sword went out.

The armor broke from chest to helm, one long running fracture, and the black blood pouring out of it turned dull as it hit the mud. She folded to her knees first.

Then she fell forward, and did not move.

[DARK KNIGHT OF THE SUCCUBUS CROSS — HP: 0]

[BOSS DEFEATED]

[DARK KNIGHT OF THE SUCCUBUS CROSS SLAIN]

[FLOOR 15 CLEAR CONDITION MET]

Nobody cheered.

Ronan sat down where he stood. Finn leaned on his axe with blood dripping off the haft. Cillian cradled his dead arm. Maeve stayed upright by leaning on nothing at all.

[TRBWatcher]: It’s down.

[IronRingLive]: THEY KILLED IT. TEAM ZERO KILLED THE FLOOR 15 BOSS.

[GuildScout_EU]: Floor clear. That’s the clear, right?

[RaidStatsGuy]: Wait. Why hasn’t the transfer started?

[QuietWatcher_Tallaght]: ...why are they still standing there?

James was watching the corner of his vision where the reward screen should have been building.

The clear chime had sounded. The transfer light had not come.

Then the sky moved.

The red haze above the village folded inward — not clouds parting, the whole sky pulling aside like a hand drawing back a curtain — and the stream feed stuttered, the image tearing into bars for a full second before it caught itself.

Something came down through the opening.

Dark-red wings, spread wide, each feather catching the dead light like blood on glass. She descended into the ruined square without hurry, bare feet finding the mud as if it were marble, and the wings folded behind her like a royal cloak.

Pale skin, mostly bare. Black-red script curling over her body like scripture. Small horns curving from black hair. Red eyes ringed in gold.

No System window opened.

No name. No level. No boss bar. Nothing.

James had stood in front of named horrors on six floors, and every one of them, the Tower had at least been willing to label.

It would not label this.

"Up," he said quietly. "Everyone up."

They got up. All of them, on whatever they had left — Ronan with the wrecked frame, Finn with the axe, Cillian with one arm, Maeve with empty hands. Nobody had to be told twice. Every instinct in the square was saying the same thing.

The woman ignored all of them.

She walked to the Dark Knight’s body and crouched beside it. She laid one hand on the broken black armor — lightly, the way you touch something you own — and her head tilted, like she was listening for something inside it that wasn’t there anymore.

"Who are you," James said.