“Don’t use it,” Garioch implored, his worry clear even with his ragged voice. “Shatter the accursed vial against the stone. Simo’s duty has finally ended. He's served honorably and well, earning his peace. Find solace in that he dwells now in our Lord’s eternal light.”

  Angar let out a breath laden with loss and burden.

  In any other time, with any other soul, he’d have clung to that piety, drawing comfort from Heaven's promised glories.

  But not here.

  And not with this man.

  Simo’s death was Angar’s doing, and he had the chance to fix this grave mistake.

  The veteran had burned with such fierce pride in his ascension to Paragon, his heart alight with anticipation of homecoming, of accolades from family and friend.

  Accolades that Angar and Garioch had conspired to bestow in full glory, in mere days hence, during the New Year’s revelry at Fort Acre.

  Now Simo lay slain, a steadfast friend, a balm in rough times, a man who had marched at his side through countless battles.

  When he’d lost everyone, Spirit’s presence had once eased that pain, a bright flame against the encroaching dark, giving his life purpose and meaning.

  Then she’d abandoned him, and Simo’s gruff camaraderie, his fatherly presence, had filled that chasm.

  Just as fortune had seemed to smile, with Spirit’s full return hovering on the horizon like a promised dawn, fate snatched her away, he feared permanently.

  He harbored guilt for that, assuming if he'd never told her the Nexus might be imprisoned within Holy Theosis, just as she was, she'd be free and fine.

  Then to lose Simo mere weeks after, and due to another folly he'd wrought himself too?

  No.

  How could he stand before Veerta, and look into her joyful, expectant eyes searching for the man who Angar was supposed to protect, and tell her he could've done something, but chose not to act?

  Or face Jon and Mari, shattered by the news that he caused the death of their father, and without even attempting to save him when he had the means to try, at least?

  “I must,” Angar declared with unyielding resolve. “Forgive me, Saint, but I must make the attempt.”

  Garioch exhaled a sigh that carried the toll of both sin and a thousand Heresies witnessed, his face setting in wary lines of disillusionment as he closed his eyes.

  Angar wouldn’t lie, especially to himself.

  Truth be told, he knew this act was Heresy, a grave sin unworthy of a man who bent the knee to the King of Kings. Or claimed the mantle of friendship.

  But if he must endure life, shackled by the cruel and uncaring chains of duty, he preferred to do so with Simo by his side.

  And this sin allowed that.

  With care, Angar cradled Simo’s cracked skull upon his knees, aligning the Puteus Vitae at the nape, where flesh met bone in fragile union at the brainstem.

  A slight click and hiss heralded its activation, the serum surging forth like a profane benediction.

  Simo’s form convulsed as if struck by lightning, his spine arching in a terrible, backwards bow, his chest expanding in a desperate heave that sucked in the chamber’s stale air.

  Then agonized shrieks erupted from his lips, echoing off the shadowed vaults like the cries of the damned.

  Angar administered a swift jab of every incapacitant available, pinning the thrashing body with his one good arm, holding fast until the fit ebbed into the labored, wheezing gasps of unconsciousness.

  Wasting no moment, he turned to the grim labor of mending with his functional hand, delving into the advanced medkit supplies.

  Restoratives and healants coursed into veins, analgesics dulled the edges, coagulants stemmed the crimson flood, and ointments smeared across sutures stitched with crude haste, then covered with curative adhesive pads.

  It was patchwork salvation, imperfectly applied, but the best he could do with the tools at his disposal and without removing the armor.

  In his prognosis, unless the Swarm’s infused power rivaled that of a Vitaelux Apexium, life would ebb from Simo once again, extinguished by the uncaring pull of the inevitable.

  Dismissing the thought, Angar shifted his attentions to Garioch, noticing the black veins were receding, which was good. He applied what medical treatments he could to the Saint's savaged form with the armor still donned.

  Through the ministrations, Garioch’s gaze remained fixed upon Simo, unblinking as the Eye of Providence.

  Minutes passed, Angar working on the many wounds, before the Saint seized his wrist in an anxious grip. “Behold!” he rasped out in horror. “He turns undead!”

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  Angar whirled, his blood turning to ice in his veins.

  Simo’s skin took a sickly-gray pallor, sloughing with decay. His cheeks hollowed to gaunt caverns, and even behind sealed lids, points of light glowed.

  “See there,” Garioch growled in revulsion, "a phylactery forms. You've condemned him to the lich’s eternal curse, damning his soul. Break it. End this Heresy and his suffering.”

  Anxiety raked at Angar’s mind like talons. The ointment he clutched clattered to the stone as he lunged toward Simo.

  There was still time to excise this blight.

  He would invoke the Absorptio Profana ritual, drawing the corruption into his own flesh, a martyr’s penance for his sin of unrighteous greed.

  Garioch's gauntleted hand reached to wrench Angar back. “Don't do it. End this blasphemy now!”

  But the Saint was immobile, unable to stand or crawl. He could neither reach the phylactery nor stop the ritual.

  With trembling fingers, Angar pried open one eyelid, revealing an orb drowned in abyssal black, shining with a profane light. But no unholy sigils scarred the inner lid.

  He thrust a leonine finger into his own mouth, coating it thickly with saliva, then traced the moisture across Simo’s sealed lids in an anointing, bridging the chasm between pure and profane.

  Next, he slipped the finger between Simo’s parted lips, gathering the cursed spittle upon it. He daubed his own eyelids in turn, sealing the bond in mingled fluids.

  His claws unsheathed silently, etching a shallow incision into Simo’s brow, from which blood welled.

  As before, he got onto knees and began reciting the incantation.

  Garioch, face paling beneath the crusted ichor, pleaded. “Angar, brother, cease this!” he begged, his voice filled with dread. “You’re trafficking with the profane, damning your soul!"

  Angar ignored him as he finished the words, then pressed his own slashed wrist to Simo’s slack mouth, lowered his face to the forehead wound, drawing forth the taint in a suckling kiss, coppery warmth flooding his tongue, infused with the taste of rot.

  And as before, long seconds passed before Simo stirred, his lips fastening instinctively upon the proffered wrist, suckling with frantic hunger.

  The transfer ignited then, a vortex of unholy energies swirling between them like a cyclone born in Hell’s foul depths.

  Angar felt the corruption slither into his veins, a writhing flow of foulness that, like the Baptistry of Igneous Purgation, somehow burned and chilled in equal, agonizing measure, threading into his flesh.

  Dark whispers slunk through his skull endlessly, corrupting his mind, drowning his thoughts, making it near impossible to think.

  He endured, locked in this profane transmutation, taking in what he’d inflicted on Simo, until the transfer crested in a silent, tainted release.

  Simo slumped back, his breaths steadying, the gray pallor retreating like mist before a harsh wind.

  The forming phylactery dissipated, the Paragon's his gaunt features filling out as the undead’s curse ebbed from him, siphoned away into a willing vessel, while Angar reeled, the curse now nesting in his own corrupted body.

  He sat there, against the cold stone, rigid as a statue, the desecration seeping into his very marrow, the sacrilege seizing him, transforming him into a blasphemy against God and all that was right and Holy.

  A strange agony ripped through every fiber of his body, a burning frost that ate away at muscle and sinew, nerve and soul.

  He plunged inward, diving into the depths of his being, marshaling the iron fortress of his will to confront the taint, rebelling against the invader seeking to remake him.

  He was unstoppable, forged in a life of unbowed defiance. He demanded every cell of his body, every sinew, every drop of the blood of kings and conquerors coursing through his veins to rebuke this filth writhing inside him.

  He was a Holy vessel of the Lord’s wrath, His hammer to shatter the profane, his soul an impenetrable bulwark that had withstood Nofelim and demon alike, uncorrupted.

  But the curse cared little about any of that, slithering through his body with insidious hunger, promising eternity unbound by flesh's frailty, a throne of undeath where power and necrotic sorcery reigned supreme.

  It ate at his soul, leaching warmth from his blood, hollowing his bones. His skin itched as it withered, his heartbeat stuttering unnaturally, undeath blooming in his body’s depths, winning the battle.

  But Angar would not yield.

  With a titanic surge of will, he clamped down upon the blight, his resolve swelling as he latched on to his Knightly oath.

  He envisioned the curse as a foul chain, and his resolve the anvil upon which he would shatter it.

  His claws unsheathed involuntarily, scoring the stone in sparks, his throat loosing an endless, tattered bellow that resounded through the chamber.

  But the darkness rallied, too. It recoiled, lashing back with savage ferocity, reasserting dominion with its own unholy roar.

  Angar's pride roared louder, an unyielding defiance of soul.

  His body convulsed as muscles knotted into tight cramps, his heart pounding erratically as if trying to burst free from the prison of his chest, sweat pouring from him in rivulets, mingling with the blood seeping from fresh splits in his skin, where the curse erupted outward in splotches of sick decay.

  And he endured. The mantra of his Knightly oath wasn’t a prayer, but a verdict, repeated over and over, like hammer blows on an anvil.

  The chamber faded into a haze as the battle raged within.

  There was only the oath and the curse and the anvil.

  The rot recoiled.

  The frozen fire dimmed, waning.

  The dark whispers turned to pleas.

  With one last, monumental surge of will he brought the hammer down for the final time, crushing the invasion beneath the full, colossal weight of his resolve, expelling the curse in a shuddering heave that left him trembling and spent.

  He gasped, inhaling deeply.

  The air tasted sweet and pure, like the first true breath he’d ever taken.

  Normalcy returned as the pain and rot ebbed away, lingering in a strange chill that clung to his bones like the memory of a nightmare.

  “Are you undead?” Garioch croaked out worriedly in his raw voice. “Damned? You don’t look it. Say something, man!”

  Before Angar could reply, something shifted within him.

  In the recesses of his mind, a dark presence laughed.

  An overpowering compulsion seized him, demanding that he must safeguard Simo’s ‘death’ within an object, to bind it, to protect it.

  His fingers, trembling with exhaustion, fumbled through the pouches at his belt, seeking a fitting object.

  As soon as they brushed the chapter token of the Zealous Few, a surge of unholy power coursed through him, pouring into the metal like venom into a vial.

  It locked there, sealed within the artifact.

  Angar's eyes whipped anxiously to Simo. He lay on the cold stone, unchanged, his skin flushed with the warm hue of the living, free of the gray pallor of corruption, breaths inhaled and exhaled in labored but steady rhythm.

  He was no lich, nor any breed of undead. Thank the Lord.

  Anyway, a phylactery was always paired black boxes on an amulet, scrolls in one, soul in the other, never any other item.

  Angar turned his gaze to his own flesh, inspecting with growing unease. His skin appeared unmarred, his veins pulsing with hot blood.

  He had won the battle against the curse.

  But he’d also lost.

  Somehow.

  In some way he couldn’t yet fathom.

  He could spare no more thought to unravel the enigma, as the Swarm's grasp loosened then, the antechamber dissolving in a nauseating swirl of shadow and decay, freeing them from its infernal clutch, hurling them back into the world.