I watched, bracing for the killing-blow, my filters filled with the stench of unholy blood and the scorched scent of stone and fell energies.

  The darkness had him now, lost fully to its corruption. It had been inevitable, as sure as the night devouring the day.

  But I was wrong. Again.

  Angar, somehow, beyond comprehension, shook it off.

  He rolled forward, evading the chief's savage chops by a mere centimeter, then rose off the ground like a Holy and unbreakable tide, his cybernetics churning in the silence to follow.

  How had he not succumbed already, twisted into some mindless Thrall or gibbering madman? It spoke of a fortitude bordering on the impossible, unyielding as Theosis' edicts.

  How much longer could he hold?

  Though I barely noticed, the insidious murmurs of corruption still ate at the edges of even my sanity, whispers I knew all too well, having danced with them my whole life.

  I’ve rebuked evil far more potent and insidious. But I am me, and a peak Seraph, forged before this world fell to the infernal abyss.

  This Knight? A child barely out of Cloisteranage.

  His martial display impressed me too, and other questions ate at me still. Why did he forgo his sidearm? It might hand him an easy victory.

  And why spurn his psychic gifts, those bursts of Electrosynaptic fury I had witnessed searing through swarms of foes?

  Did his peculiar talent falter against the undead, their animated husks impervious to the spasms and contractions that afflicted the living?

  Likely, it was his tattered Resilience which stayed his hand. To wield such powers would invite the darkness fully in.

  Still, this restraint (or perhaps necessity) impressed me.

  Minutes bled away as the two combatants resumed their deadly dance, each exchange a demonstration of skill forged in disparate fires.

  One hewn in the Three's Holy graces.

  The other in Hell's unholy pits.

  In that crypt there was only the rhythm of hammer, blade, breath, and the splatter of black ichor dripping steadily from the Gatekeeper, each drop steaming faintly as it met the chill stone.

  The boy’s movements had lost their early grace. Now they were economical, murderous, the motions of a man who refused to accept fate.

  The chief’s parries, once effortless, now carried weight. Each block came a fraction later, each reformation of blades a fraction slower.

  I found myself counting heartbeats between blows, waiting for the moment of doom.

  The fiend lunged like it was its last chance at redemption, its blades wedded in an overcommitted overhead assault, a reckless gambit to destroy this far too persistent foe.

  Angar neither flinched nor yielded, the hammer-haft locked high across his chest, the strike colliding like a bull's wrath unleashed.

  The vault-stone wept in fury, shards lashing down like deadly confetti, battering armored wills that refused to shatter.

  Through the dust-veil, visor met undead eyes. No pause for breath or mercy.

  Ripostes blurred, each parry igniting sparks, each evasion a whisper of the abyss closing in.

  In the shard-storm and dust, the duel grinding them down, boy and brute, mirrors in the muck, each swing was a prayer spat at two different but equally uncaring masters.

  From the gloom's throat, as I watched on, it hit me.

  It didn't matter who won this duel.

  In all the time I've been fighting the infernal, the only real truths I've learned?

  Every fiend slain just clears room for the next, the abyss no shallower for all the blood poured in.

  You think you're tempering your soul in the blood of the unholy? No. It infects it, burning off the man you were until you're left with just a husk that swings because stopping means sinking.

  Hell doesn't need to conquer. It just needs to wait it out, patient as rust.

  That's apt. Rust. Corruption's just like it. Our Empire's just like it.

  It didn't matter one bit who won.

  What mattered was they fought like this, so gloriously.

  Once more into the fray. Living only for the fight.

  Else life's just a long road to learning you're the hammer, not the smith.

  Rising swiftly from an evaded blow, the Marauder Chief unleashed an assault fueled by mounting desperation, fighting with the fury of a cornered beast.

  Angar parried the thrust with a downward deflection, and dodged the slash by leaning back, the blade grazing along his breastplate in a screech of scored alloy that sparked brilliantly.

  He drove a metal foot into the fiend's thigh with tremendous force, denting the armor inward in a crunch that elicited a groan from the undead warrior.

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  It went to attack, but the boy’s hammer struck true again, disarming the right-hand blade by smashing the gauntlet and forearm in a spray of ichor that arced through the air like blackened rain, the pain drawing a yell this time.

  Sensing the end, the undercroft's very foundations seemed to quiver, charged with a malevolence that made the shadows writhe and the stones whisper.

  The chief staggered, but pride kept it upright, its crimson mantle settling defiantly over its battered armor, its void-eyes igniting like twin pits of endless hunger.

  Chants clawed forth from its ruined throat, a malefic curse that didn't just warp the air but flayed it, twisting the crypt's fetid breath into a viscous shroud, seething with malevolent rot.

  I knew that reek, that rising bile of fell desecration.

  A baleful crimson aura bloomed around the Gatekeeper, unholiness spilling into the crypt like intestines from a gut wound, pulsing with the heartbeat of something ancient and starving.

  I'd seen this foul incantation birth doom a hundred times myself. A ward and an attack, a multi-layered beast of a shield protecting the caster as the assault built.

  Angar charged forward, maul raised high, desperate to end it before whatever sorcery this was took root.

  But the air bit back, an unseen gale of infernal spite, howling without sound, repelling him backward like a Heretic from the Trey.

  Dust didn't stir. No, this was purer malice, a wind that shoved at his soul as much as his frame, forcing him to brace against the floor, cyber-feet grinding sparks against the stones.

  "Witness true skill, mortal!" The roar exploded from the fiend like an auger of doom, the ruined claw of the mangled hand thrust skyward, the other thrust forward.

  The shield unfurled then, a blasphemous lotus of iridescent force. Seven petal-layers bloomed in profane symmetry, each stratum a razor-veined membrane that drank the crypt's gloom and spat it back as charging venom.

  They quivered, brightening from sullen embers to searing blaze, drawing energy for a strike that would disintegrate all in its path. Not just shatter flesh, but unmake it.

  The air coursed with the ward's hunger, a loud hum that set my teeth on edge, the whispers in my own skull rising like old ghosts to jeer.

  Angar reeled as the gale held him back, then turned and sprinted away from it for a moment. He turned abruptly, extending a gauntleted hand forward.

  Nothing stirred. He backpedaled, hand still raised, buying distance from the nullification's chokehold.

  Ten meters. Eleven. Then, crack. Blue-yellow lightning erupted from his palm, a searing torrent of electric wrath.

  It lanced the outermost petal, not with a shatter but a scream of luminous shards, the chamber igniting like a pyre's vengeful heart, embers swirling in a storm that scorched my filters with ozone and profanity.

  The second layer cracked open like rotted fruit, the bolt's fury reverberating up the fiend's braced arms, drawing a tremor from the hulking frame, its chant stuttering for the first time.

  The third buckled under the assault, sending fragments dissolving into hissing mist.

  The fourth detonated in a shockwave, hurling grit and debris in a storm, forcing Angar to shield his eyes against the blinding glare.

  The shield's baleful glow faltered, its venomous charge fizzling into harmless sparks, and the chief's roar twisted into a howl of animal-like frustration, a sound I'd heard from its kind plenty.

  It had tasted eternity, and now it fled, blurring toward the crumbled hole in the ceiling in a crimson streak of defeat, the ward's remnants lighting its retreat.

  But Angar was wrath incarnate, swifter than cowardice. Runes blazed along his maul's head, the gravitic pulse warping the air, then a shimmer as he summoned a shield of his own.

  His form dissipated into charged particles, instantly reforming behind the creature in a clap of a thunder, lightning streaking down to bore through the fifth layer in a spray of infernal fire that lit the fiend's back like a brand of judgment.

  The chief’s scowl faltered slightly, the undead features shifting into something like uncertainty.

  Not in the theatrical uncertainty of a doomed man, but the slow, dawning realization of a creature that has not been surprised in too long, and had forgotten the sensation.

  Its expression shifted by a finger’s breadth. That was all. But I saw it.

  The sixth layer yielded with a groan like rending steel as the hammer smashed through, sending ichor-flecked winds whipping the dust into a vortex.

  Another bolt ate into the seventh, eroding its bloom to glowing slag, but it clung, stubborn as sin.

  Until the maul struck again, doing the trick, breaching the final barrier in a blazing rupture that lanced agony through the chief's frame, the fell sorcery sputtering out at last.

  It crashed to its knees surrounded by dissolving petals that withered like dying illusions, the crypt shuddering as if thirsting for blood to be spilled.

  The hammer descended once more, sinking into the helm with a sick crunch and spray of dark ichor painting the vaulted walls.

  The fiend sprawled in a twitching ruin with limbs splayed.

  As Angar stepped forward clutching his hammer, it propped itself on one elbow, the mangled hand raised in feeble halt.

  The Gatekeeper groaned through bloodied and rotted teeth, its grating voice now stripped of pride, just a broken thing pleading for a favor as its final death approached. "A worthy fight. If you'd grant me a moment...to make peace. To call upon my brother...to…to avenge me."

  I wondered what the boy would do. End it swiftly, as pragmatism demanded?

  To my surprise, he retreated ten meters, the hammer’s runes blazing anew, keeping vigilant watch as the creature murmured dark words even I couldn’t make out.

  Seconds passed as black blood poured from the shattered helm in rivulets that steamed on the cold stone.

  Then, the Marauder Chief called out in final defiance. "I am ready, mortal!"

  The boy approached. The hammer descended once more, now imbued with that potent power I had glimpsed a handful of times earlier, as he fought the hordes, most likely a Capstone.

  As the weapon connected, there was a cataclysmic release that birthed something akin to a sonic boom, the air compressing and exploding outward.

  The attack decimated the Gatekeeper's body in a visceral eruption, sending chunks of flesh, armor, and bone splattering across the undercroft, clanging off walls and pillars, causing the entire chamber to quake dangerously.

  More debris tumbled from above, the structure protesting with groans like the death throes of a titanic beast.

  I have killed things made of pure nightmare, colossal abominations towering over buildings.

  I have killed things that pretended to be gods.

  In my youth, when I was only ascended to the third Tier, I was tougher than most. I’ve always been made of sterner stuff.

  But I would’ve lasted only six seconds against this Gatekeeper. Perhaps seven, if the Lord was feeling generous that day.

  Ash hadn’t sent me to babysit a Knight.

  He sent me to shepherd a monster he’d found in some dark pit of Hell.

  I am still unsure how he supposedly bested that wraith, Osenas, so I discount it. There was some form of outside meddling there, and a great deal of it.

  What other explanation holds any water?

  None. There is no other explanation.

  But here, seeing this with my own eyes, I was astounded. The boy had slain a Marauder Chief in fair duel. And what a fight, what a blaze of defiance! I'd borne witness to my first true miracle.

  Discounting the large cracks in the back from prior battle, he’d only taken a scratch or two fighting such a worthy Gatekeeper. On his own, and within its zone of nullification no less.

  And resisting the accompanied dark whispers throughout?

  Another miracle.

  He reached down in the carnage to claim his reward, then turned toward the stairs upward, ascending to what might have been the narthex or chancel in a true church or cathedral, though who could fathom the layout and naming of filthy Pleiadeans?

  I truly hate those creepy bastards. Every last one of them. I hope we grow enough spine to completely purge them one day, along with all the Grays and Reptiloids in the Holy Empire. Alien scum. In truth, what do they add?

  Thus, the clash concluded, leaving the undercroft shattered and silent, a grim chronicle etched in blood, ruin, and corruption's defeat.

  Though I wondered, as the boy vanished into the light above, how deeply those whispers had burrowed, and what price his victory would exact in the time to come.

  I caught up with him as he exited. I needed to check for corruption. And I had many questions.