The scythe finished forming, and the car park changed.

The broken level was burning in patches, cars on fire down the rows, dust still falling from the cracked ceiling in slow grey sheets. The stream hung in the corner of James’s vision, still live, still climbing.

Across from him, Langford stood in his white-gold armor with the Cathedral Field glowing out around his feet.

But the light did not reach James anymore.

It bent. It curved away from the black blade and the frost crawling up James’s wrist, leaving a cold dark circle around him where the holy ground could not hold.

James was still bleeding. His body still ached from the holy pressure. The Dark Knight was down on one knee and the wolf was dragging itself on its front legs.

[AUTHORITY RELEASE: 29:41]

The clock was running. The only question left was whether Langford could kill him before it turned.

Langford did not give him the time to settle.

[PALADIN ART: KING’S STEP]

He vanished in a flash of white-gold and reappeared at James’s shoulder, the holy sword already coming down at his neck.

James brought the scythe up.

CLANG.

He did not get thrown.

He held. The floor cracked under both their feet, and the shock of the block rolled out through the burning cars and rocked them on their frames. James’s boots slid back an inch on the concrete and stopped.

Where the holy sword met the black blade, a thin line opened down Langford’s edge.

His sword had cracked.

He looked at it for half a second, and then he looked at James, and the easy control in his face thinned.

[grimreaper_99]: HE BLOCKED IT. he didn’t even move

[tower_dublin]: the knight’s SWORD cracked. did everyone see that

[poggers_pat]: the black thing. what IS the black thing 👀

[viewer_0451]: the fight just changed. it just changed

Langford stepped back and threw both arms wide.

[PALADIN ART: CATHEDRAL FIELD]

The white-gold light flooded out again, brighter, climbing the pillars and pouring across the broken floor to take the level back.

It hit the wolf and pinned it flat. It rolled over the Dark Knight and her armor began to smoke where she knelt.

It reached James and burned through his mana and under his skin.

But the cold circle held.

The black frost spread out from under his boots, slow and even, and it pushed back against the holy ground a foot at a time. The light met the frost and could not cross it.

The Dark Knight got one foot under herself. Then she stood.

The wolf lifted its head off the concrete.

Langford watched his own field stop at the edge of the dark, and the truth of it settled on him. His authority still worked. It no longer owned the room.

James moved first this time.

He pulled mana into the scythe instead of his hand, and it ran down the blade and came off the edge as a black crescent.

[NECRO BLAST ACTIVATED]

The crescent cut across the gap and bit into Langford’s raised shield of light. The shield held, but it cracked where the black energy hit, and Langford had to brace behind it.

James did not wait for it to clear.

[GRAVE COMMAND: ADVANCE]

The order ran through the link sharper than it ever had. The Dark Knight came in from the front and the wolf came wide from the side, both moving on the same beat, cleaner than James had ever managed with his own attention split three ways.

Langford turned the Dark Knight’s great sword on his blade, twisted from the wolf’s lunge, and caught the scythe coming through the gap on his vambrace.

He blocked all of it.

But his armor smoked where the scythe grazed it, and the glow around his sword flickered, and each exchange dragged a little more out of him than the last.

James was not breaking him yet. He was making him defend, and a Paladin who had to defend was not a Paladin in control.

Langford ended it with force.

[PALADIN ART: ROYAL PURGE]

White fire burst out of his armor in every direction.

HSSSS.

It caught the wolf mid-step and blew it through a burning car. It slammed the Dark Knight back across the floor. The fire rolled over James’s cold circle, thinned at the edge of the frost, and broke through enough to reach him.

He got the scythe up but not all the way.

The white fire cut across his chest, a clean line through his shoulder and down, and the heat of it went straight to the bone.

James staggered.

[JAMES GANNER — HP: 744/1,020 → 561/1,020]

The wound burned with the holy power left in it. The blood that ran from it came out too dark, the scythe pulling at it, and the pain under that was real and bright.

"You feel that," Langford said. He was breathing harder now, but his voice held. "Whatever that thing is, it didn’t make you a god. I am the King’s own aide. Did you think a stray would be enough?"

James pressed a hand to the wound and said nothing.

Their next exchange went into the ceiling.

Langford’s blade came up in a holy arc and James answered it with the scythe, and the two edges met above their heads and the force of it tore sideways into a support column.

CRRRAAACK.

The column failed.

A whole section of the hotel lobby came down into the underground. Marble, steel, a reception desk, light fittings — and people. Cars dropped through the new hole with it. Pipes tore open and water sheeted down. Sprinklers burst across the level and the fire alarms began to scream through the whole structure.

Some of the people who fell did not move when they landed.

Others screamed from under the marble, trapped and alive.

The feed caught the edge of it.

"There," Langford said, and he turned it toward the lens without missing a beat. "Look at what stands beside this boy. Look at what follows him. This is why a thing like him cannot be left to run loose."

James looked at the people under the stone.

He had no time to look long. Langford was already moving, and stopping now only added names to the floor.

He turned back to the fight.

[Sadge_enjoyer]: there were PEOPLE in that. there were people

[tower_dublin]: i can hear them screaming under it oh my god