C202: Hive MindKael stepped back into the hushed interior of the church, the air thick with a mixture of incense and stale dust, carrying with him a small child whose frailty seemed almost tangible, as though her very presence sucked the warmth from the room. The girl’s face was marked with rashes, scabbed lines crisscrossing her delicate skin, some of which could have been mistaken for cuts, but Kael’s Eyes of the Great Sage, always probing beneath the surface, revealed the true cause: the evidence of restless scratching and a body overwhelmed by multiple underlying ailments. Each breath she drew was shallow, ragged, a struggle that spoke louder than words of the exhaustion her young frame had endured.‘Judging by this, the healers in this town have been incompetent beyond reason,’ Kael thought, a frown tightening on his face as he closed the distance to the girl. His arms extended, palms glowing faintly as the soft hum of Dioki coiled within him, waiting to be s

C204 — Judgement Rising Kael’s gaze fell on the girl before him, her small form trembling yet defiant under the fading glow of the fractured lights around them. “Anna,” he said, voice calm yet threaded with urgency, carrying the weight of command and concern in equal measure. “Yes, mister?” she replied, her voice innocent yet tinged with faint fear, swinging her legs loosely as if the world outside her immediate perception could not touch her, though one of her knees was streaked with crimson, the bright red stark against the pallor of her skin. The sight sent a ripple of concern through him, a prickling tension along his spine that whispered of time slipping faster than he could react. ‘Is there any method to save her?’ Kael asked The System silently, a warm smile briefly touching his lips before he knelt and placed his hands gently on her injured knee, the faint glow of his mana spilling over her skin, binding the wound with a subtle he

C206 — Haloed RetributionThe instant Kael's words reverberated through the space, the being that had long since shed any remnants of its former form erupted into action. It moved with a primal ferocity, its body a grotesque mockery of what it once had been, twisted now into something that teetered on the edge of monstrosity. Every movement it made carried with it an air of lethal intent, an instinctive intelligence that had evolved purely for killing, for destruction, for the raw, unrefined necessity of survival.Despite the chaos of its appearance, its movements were not without method, its attacks calculated with a precision that suggested some fragment of reasoning still lingered beneath the monstrous veneer. It struck fast, its motions fluid, and the danger it radiated was immediate and absolute. One strike could annihilate an unprepared target, and for Kael, whose essence remained disembodied, fragile, and confined within the halo, the stakes were infinitely higher. A single suc