Chapter 327: Turning the Tide (1)

“To begin with, the damage on the Mortal Realm is not small,” the Tower Master said, and his voice carried the dry fatigue of a man who had been counting losses since dawn. “Pisarapia is now burned. The spring that held pure Myst has vanished from the world. Three Heroes died, and scores of Transcendents fell.”

He let the catalog continue because it had to be spoken aloud at least once. “Below that level, the casualties are beyond measure. Five churches burned until nothing remained. Three kingdoms collapsed.”

Ketal listened without interrupting. The Tower Master wet his lips and finished the thought.

“If I am honest, it is terrible.”

There was no telling how long recovery would take. Perhaps some places would never recover at all. The wound Necrobix had carved into the world felt like a scar that would not fade with time.

“And the thing lived here only ten days,” the Tower Master added. “A mere handful of dawns, and yet the damage looks as if it were written with iron.”

Ketal exhaled softly and let the silence sit. The Tower Master did not leave him there.

“But in the end, you killed Necrobix,” he said, as if setting a counterweight on the other side of the scale.

One of the Four Pillars of Hell, a being that had fought gods during the age of descent, had fallen. The Tower Master, who disliked dramatics, allowed himself a small, lopsided smile.

“Measured against that, the price is... not high. Call it cheap. In truth, it is closer to free. Hell did not pull that thing down here for a few cracked cities. The plan must have been to let Necrobix roam for months.”

He stared past Ketal, seeing routes on maps that were already being redrawn. “It would have burned the World Tree, toppled Mantamia, leveled kingdoms and churches by the dozen. It is not impossible to imagine. In ten days, it dealt wounds we can barely bind. Give it months, and I truly think half the continent would have been broken.”

Ketal had not allowed months. He had not even allowed weeks.

“So, they gambled,” the Tower Master said. “To bring Necrobix down, they will have spent an absurd tribute. To keep the heavens from intervening, they will have burned through even more reserve. It was a hedge against our gods, a bold move.”

He did not bother to soften the conclusion. “And the gamble failed.”

The mage rubbed the bridge of his nose, then lowered his hand, his gaze sharpening. “They will not be able to block heaven forever. Already, the Hall of the Gods is arguing for a firmer hand. Your victory changed the flow of the war.”

He let the words hang between them, plain as a boundary stone. “To be plain, I would say the momentum has swung. It is on our side now.”

The current of the war had shifted. The time for only shielding and retreat had ended. The Tower Master even allowed himself a joke.

“This is all because of you. You did wonderfully. In my heart of hearts, I would kiss you if I could.”

Ketal opened his mouth to decline and then paused, eyes narrowing with sudden, ridiculous curiosity. A lich’s kiss. Even across a lifetime of stories, he had rarely seen that depicted. He wondered, for the span of half a heartbeat, how it would feel.

“It is a joke,” the Tower Master said at once, catching the look and grimacing. “Do not make that face. It is unsettling.”

Ketal laughed under his breath.

“Jest aside, you did more than well,” the Tower Master continued. “I cannot offer a kiss, but I can offer recompense. Give me two days, and I will have something worthy of what you did.”

“That sounds fair to me,” Ketal said, smiling.

***

The Tower Master had judged the moment rightly. From Hell’s point of view, the blow was grievous, and the current had turned. Proof of that truth filled a chamber far from sun or soil, where the remaining Demon Lords of Hell sat. Their council felt like a room where a great fire had just gone out.

“Necrobix is dead,” Materia said, and the sentence seemed to absorb sound even as she spoke it.

No one answered.

“Dead,” she repeated, voice sunk low. “Completely.”

It was not banishment or sealing. It was not a forced return through a conjured gate. The being itself had ended.

Necrobix had fought beside them since the age when demons first named themselves. It had survived warfare with the Oldest Ones and the long, burning era that came after. Now, for the first time, one of their four lay still.

Caliste, the Demon of the Sword, turned his head and asked without inflection, “Who killed it?”

“The ashen-haired barbarian of the White Snowfield. Ketal,” said Abyss, the Demon King’s first tool, and even that voice, which was more pattern than throat, had a rough edge.

“Of course it was him,” Caliste said, and his eyes cooled.

“He is the only one who could kill Necrobix,” Materia replied. As Necrobix moved across the Mortal Realm, it had poured everything it saw back into Hell, and so they knew the figure who now stood at the center of their map.

“The authority of the Abomination,” Caliste said.

“How does a mortal come to possess that?” Materia breathed, dragging her fingers through her hair until it tangled. A humorless sound left her mouth. “Is this madness. Are we sure we are not dreaming?”

The Mother of All Demons had not looked so unguarded since the Divine-Demonic War. The moment was grave enough to permit it.

“What is the damage on the Mortal Realm side?” Caliste asked her.

“It is not light,” Materia said. “But it is not as heavy as it should have been.”

“Assessment is uncertain,” Abyss said, “because Necrobix is gone.”

Necrobix had not been merely a weapon. It had served as the master node for dark mages, gathering the knowledge of a thousand eyes and sending it back to Hell in a digestible stream. Demons had been able to probe the Mortal Realm’s weak points precisely because Necrobix measured them.

Now that the node was ash. If Hell were a person, it had just lost both eyes and both ears. The fluid, surgical raids of the last months would be harder to repeat.

“The value of the Mortal Realm’s wounds does not match the value of Necrobix’s life,” Materia said softly. “Nor can we keep the heavens out forever. They will return.”

“Do we have a counter?” Caliste asked her.

Materia was silent for a long beat that answered him better than words.

“We do not,” he said, and his voice did not rise. Facts did not benefit from volume.

The Demon Lords of Hell had been four. They were three now, and there was no answer in the room.

Hell fell quiet.

***

“Here,” the Tower Master said two days later, placing a core in Ketal’s palm.

“What’s this?”

“This is the reward for what you have done.”

A cool blue light pulsed inside the crystal, as if a small sea were moving inside the glass. He knew what it was even before he spoke.

“This is Myst,” Ketal said.

“It’s one of the cores that upholds the Tower,” the Tower Master replied. “This one alone could fund every mage in the tower for a month of research without anyone worrying about coin.”

The core pulsed again, and the density of it made Ketal’s fingers tingle. It sat above a Dragon’s Heart by more than one rung.

“Are you sure you can part with it?” Ketal asked him.

“Measured against what you did, it is cheap,” the Tower Master said. “I would give more, but the tower was attacked and we are not flush. Forgive me.”

“This is more than enough,” Ketal said, and meant it.

Even so, the Tower Master kept apologizing with a sincerity that would have been comical if it were not so unadorned. “If there is anything else you need, ask. If I can do it, I will.”

“In that case,” Ketal said, and his eyes brightened like a boy’s, “will you teach me magic?”

“Magic,” the Tower Master repeated, blinking. “I could. It is not especially hard to begin. But for you?”

He tilted his head, genuinely puzzled. “You already have the Dragon Tongue. Why take up the human copy?”

The dragon’s incantations were powerful—far beyond human reach. Human magic was little more than a degraded imitation of that language. Given what dragons already possessed, he could not understand why Ketal would desire human magic at all.

Ketal’s answer was simple enough to end the question. “Because I want to learn it.”

“That is the point for you,” the Tower Master answered, as understanding reached him at once. He shrugged, amused despite himself at the strangeness that made the barbarian who he was. “Very well. Not now. We are still at war, and I am spread thin. After this phase, I will teach you.”

“Good,” Ketal said, and smiled as if given a festival day.

With the talk finished, he carried the core to an empty yard and stood in a patch of sun. The Tower Master had already explained the method, and Ketal did not hesitate. He brought the core up and struck it in his palm.

The crystal cracked with a clear, bell-like note. The Myst inside burst free in a rush and tried to climb out of the world, only to turn in a tight gyre and pour into him. For anyone else, it would have been madness. A human body could not bear such a rich, pure feed without rupturing.

However, Ketal was not like anyone else. The Abomination in him stirred, opened a mouth that existed partly in symbol, and devoured the unruly Myst with a practiced greed until it lay tamed. Ketal drew a slow breath and felt the new reach of his hand.

“At last,” he said. “I can do both at once.”

He could now move Aura through his weapon while also reinforcing his body with Myst. The time limit that had dogged him stretched as well. Where he had measured his edge in dozens of minutes, he could now hold form for more than two hours. Satisfaction warmed his face.

“Strengthening you is not entirely to my liking,” the Abomination said, sour. “The stronger you are, the stronger your control becomes.”

For the monster that could not escape that control, it was far from a pleasant experience.

Ketal laughed. “We might be together for the rest of our lives. It is better if we make the best of it.”

“Horrifying,” the Abomination said, and shuddered theatrically.

The Mortal Realm answered Ketal’s new reach with its own changes. Without Necrobix to act as eyes and ears, the demons stopped finding the seams in mortal walls as easily. The dark mages suffered worse. Many of their strongest had spent themselves as Necrobix’s puppets and were gone. The front quieted in places where it had screamed for months.

Ketal and the Tower Master did not waste the new space. They set out along the lines that still bled and closed them one by one.

A bastion of corrupted stone rose like a black tooth from a valley. The air there stank of oil and salt, and the light felt bruised as if the sun had been struck. Ketal opened his stance, drew Myst into the bones of his arm, and let Aura temper the axe.

The swing cracked the world like glass. The outpost that had tormented three provinces for a season crumpled into dust, and the shock of it rolled out in a clean wind. People who had fought a whole winter there looked up with faces that had forgotten how to move.

“It is finished,” Ketal said, and when he stepped out of the ruin, the stunned quiet broke like a dam.

“Yeah!”

“Ketal!”

“Thank you, Ketal!”

His name had reached every corner of the world. In taverns and courts and broken fields, everyone knew it now. The Tower Master had not hidden who had killed Necrobix. He had made sure to shout it from every rooftop that still had shingles. The faces that met Ketal held awe and a kind of tender longing, the way villagers looked at a spring they had thought might never return.

A cluster of voices found a single title. “Our Great Champion!”

“Champion, you say...,” Ketal said, glancing sideways.

“It is not wrong,” Serena said at his elbow, eyes gleaming as if the cheers were warming her blood. “You’re the one who chose me, after all. I’d say that’s a pretty accurate way to see it—and I like it!”

She basked in the crowd’s reverence with a smile so bright it could have been Ketal’s. He snorted, amused despite himself, and let the moment pass through him.

Time moved. The Mortal Realm, which had spent months ducking hammer blows, began to raise its head. The despair that had settled into the eyes of ordinary people like a gray film thinned. In its place, something clear began to gather.

One morning, when the air was clean and the city had not yet found its noise, a messenger in white and gold arrived at the tower gate. The Saintess of Kalosia, Shadranes, stepped through the hall without haste, and Hayes trailed a step behind her, looking as if she wanted to glance everywhere and nowhere at once.

“It has been too long, Ketal,” Shadranes said, offering the faintest bow of the head.

“It has,” he said, and turned to Hayes. “And you.”

“Y-Yes. It’s been a while,” Hayes said, then winced at herself.

“You can treat me as you did before, Hayes. You are my friend.”

“That’s easy for you to say, but you’re not the same as before...,” Hayes muttered.

She had never quite known how to stand beside Ketal. The man she had first met had been a strange, terrifying barbarian. Time had dulled that fear, until he saved her holy land—and then killed a Pillar of Hell. Respect had turned back into fear, and then into something else entirely, something for which she still had no name.

Back when they had first spoken, Ketal’s fame had been narrow. A few towns might point if he walked through their market. Now the entire continent would know him by silhouette.

“Either way, it is good to see you,” Ketal said, rescuing her from the spiral. “What brings you here?”

Shadranes answered without preamble and without flourish. “Kalosia seeks an audience. There is something our god would speak to you directly.”

“Then let us meet at once,” Ketal said, and his answer came as if it had been ready.