Liora’s POVLiora sat quietly in the corner of the tent, her arms resting on her knees, her eyes staring blankly ahead.She wasn’t really seeing anything. She was too deep in her own thoughts.Rhok had changed. Ever since he came back from the cursed mists, something about him felt… wrong. Off. He spoke to empty air, stared into nothing, flinched at things no one else could see. The same cold, serious Rhok was there on the outside, but inside? It felt like something else was sitting behind his eyes.She had tried to ignore it, at first. Everyone goes through things, especially on missions like that. But the moment she saw the black tattoo running down his arm, her stomach dropped. It looked like a snake, thick, coiled, detailed like something that was alive.And it didn’t stop at his arm. When he took off his shirt, it wrapped around his chest too.She had stared, confused, and Rhok had just looked just as surprised. That scared her more than anything.He didn’t even know it was there

Rhok’s blade slammed against the red skinned Saint again for the tenth time. The sound of metal against metal echoed, but the result was the same, nothing. No wound or blood, no pushback, not even a scratch. The Demonic Saint didn’t flinch.He just grinned.Rhok was pushed back from the force of his attack, skidding on the dirt, eyes narrowed. He summoned ice that bound the demonic Saint by his feet and summoned ice spears, he did all of that in less than a breath. They crashed into the Saint’s armor and shattered on impact. Then he summoned his shadows, wrapping them around the Saint’s arms like chains, but his shadows shook visibly, as though succumbing to the power of something and dispersed.“Useless,” the Saint said with a low chuckle. His voice was like gravel rubbing against stone, rough and inhuman.Rhok didn’t respond. He couldn’t. He was too deep in thinking of the best possible way to kill this damned demonic Saint. He could barely hear the screams around him or the clash o

Rhok ducked under a wide arc of the Saint’s blade. The red skinned warrior roared, forming a crescent of fire through the air with each swing. Rhok’s foot twisted as he slid to the side, kicking up dust and dirt. His mind raced not from fear, but from thought. Something about mana and divine energy ticked at the back of his skull like a flickering candle flame.They felt different, mana was familiar, rhythmic, something you shaped like water in your palms. But this divine energy? It was raw, chaotic, like wildfire hiding in his veins. It wasn’t mana, but it wasn’t entirely separate either. They were related, somehow, he could feel it. Like two siblings that grew up apart. The moment his attacks had started carving into the Saint’s body, that same divine feeling trickled into him and he had been accumulating it with every strike.His body was changing. And he needed more.Rhok leapt back, flipping over a rock before hitting the ground in a low crouch. The Saint charged at him, the grou

Dian stretched on the ground with a groan, his chest heaving as he dropped his weapon. “How the hell did you kill that thing?” he muttered, wiping blood off his face with a shaky hand.Rhok didn’t respond immediately. He looked down at his dagger, faint traces of divine energy that only he could see were still flickering off the blade like embers from a dying fire. He wasn’t sure what to say. “I’ll explain later,” he finally answered. “Where are Liora and Luke?”Dian stared at him, confused. “They went deeper into the forest, chasing the last Saint. The one... the one with the bone armor and shadows.”Rhok’s eyes squinted, his heartbeat picked up, just enough for him to feel the warning signs crawling through his veins. “Shadows?”“Yeah.” Dian pointed in the direction. “There’s some... cloud there, it's pretty huge and black, like it's swallowing the light.”Rhok turned his head and saw it, an entire section of the forest shrouded in pitch black. It wasn’t just darkness. It was moving

The clash came like thunder, fast and loud. Rhok’s blade met the bone Saint’s skeletal fingers in a clash of ice and shadow. The force knocked Rhok back three steps. He braced himself, grinding his feet into the ground, his eyes were locked on the enemy in front of him.He had thought that he would be of the same rank as the other Saints, because his wasn’t just a Saint. He has become something else entirely.The Bone armor was resilient. The Saint raised his arms, and from the blackened soil, a horde skeletal figures burst out. Some were twisted humans, others were beasts with rotted horns and jagged claws. There were demons too, armored and silent, their skulls glowing faintly.They all charged.Rhok didn’t wait. He launched forward, a blur of shadows with blades in hand. He sliced through the first skeleton, shattering its spine with a single swing. Another swung at him but he ducked, twisted, and drove his dagger up through its ribcage.But for every corpse he destroyed, two more