Seeing his sister follow his order, Leon swung his sword in a mighty sweeping arc. A magical wind blade emanated forth, following the line traced by his swing. The nearly invisible ripple cleaved the overwhelming multitude in two at the hips. Countless torsos toppled to the floor, the severed parts nevertheless tried to crawl forwards. They were trampled underfoot as the rest of the mindless dead surged forth to take their place. Lumie scrambled back to return to her brother’s side.

“Protect Runald! I’ll handle this street and the one to the south!” Leon bellowed.

With her heavy armour destroyed, Lumie couldn’t afford to stand on the front lines, she sprinted to Runald’s side. The warlock worked feverishly, sweat dripping into his desperate eyes.

The zombies in the street to the south were coming dangerously close, barely being kept at bay by Leon’s wind blades.

Meanwhile, Kari’s yellow vial was running out. The blue vial was a last resort. If he was forced to use it, they would be overrun in seconds. The spell it produced, a water whip, was simply incapable of defending two streets at once.

“I’m nearly empty!” Kari screamed.

“Nearly done!” Runald declared tensely. He had just a short stretch left to draw, and one last reagent to place at the end of that stretch.

At that moment, a red-skinned demon leapt down at the levitating Runald from a nearby rooftop, silhouetted against the brightening sky. The demon appeared as a cross between a human and a bat, with two sets of bloodstained jaws and four sickly yellow eyes, all focused on biting through the warlock’s neck.

Lumie was quick to intercept the demon with a thrown axe. With the crack of a defensive enchantment being smashed through, Lumie’s axe was buried sharp edge in the demon’s humanoid chest, knocking just slightly enough off course to save Runald’s life.

Runald didn’t even react to the demon that narrowly missed him, finishing the magic circle. Now all that was left was to place the final reagent.

Wasting no time, Lumie drew her trusty spear, but she was in no position to reach Runald, who floated a few meters off the ground.

Another demon fell straight down from the sky. A bewitching female succubus with wings of pink velvet folded flat against her form.

A glimpse of the demon’s supernatural beauty charmed Lumie for just an instant, slowing her reaction speed. The slight delay was enough; the knight had missed her opportunity to defend Runald. There was no angle with which Lumie could intercept the succubus’ dive-bomb now.

Sensing something amiss and with the magic circle completed, Runald whipped around, drawing his anti-magic dagger. He had just enough time to raise his weapon before a clawed hand closed violently around his neck, sending them both plummeting to the ground below.

Runald was slammed into the cobblestone street below accompanied by the sound of shattering glass. Something beneath partially cushioned his fall, but his hips still smashed into the ground, sending his back into a full arch of atrocious agony.

“Runald!! Lumie!!” Leon hollered in concern.

Lumie struggled to find herself after being badly dazed breaking Runald’s fall. Her right hand still gripped the shaft of her spear, but with her legs trapped beneath Runald writhing in pain, she could not easily find enough space to pierce the succubus right in front of her.

The succubus drew her arm back, clawed fingernails growing with disgusting cracking noises.

There was no time.

But at that moment, a tendril of tentacle-like water whipped around the succubus’ wrist, yanking the demon backwards.

It was Kari. His yellow vial had run out. Finding that the blue vial was utterly futile in stopping the incoming hordes, he had turned his attention to Runald’s spell, which was nearly complete.

Lumie adjusted the grip on her spear, holding it close to the pointy spearhead and stabbed at the succubus. The first two strikes were deflected by a magical ward created by an enchanted artefact somewhere on the succubus’ person.

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“No! Ssstop!” The snake-tongued succubus cried.

But with the sound of shattering glass, the knight’s third strike smashed through the invisible barrier, plunging straight through the succubus’ exposed neck, out the back of its head in a burst of blood, brain and bone.

Kari turned his attention back to the rapidly encroaching number of zombies.

“Runald!” Lumie shouted, shaking the warlock back to sense.

“I can’t get up. I think I broke my hip.” Runald groaned. “You need to finish the spell!” The warlock said with great urgency, rummaging in his robe. A look of despair fell upon his face. “Ulberich’s avarice…” the warlock said gravely, pulling a fragmented orb of purple glass from a pouch at his side.

“What’s wrong?” Lumie asked anxiously.

“This is the last reagent, a noble soul. The vessel broke. It’s escaped.”

Lumie looked around desperately, meeting Kari’s gaze just a few paces away. The man understood right away what had happened. All around them, the red tide pressed in wayward limbs scrabbling forward. They were all going to die.

Unless Lumie did something.

A desperate, crazy idea came to mind even as Kari stared back into Lumie’s eyes. She broke his gaze. He knew that look. The look of someone who had accepted their fate.

“No. Don’t!” Kari roared.

Runed legs toppled the reagents in their places as the undead encroached on the magic circle.

Would the spell even function? Lumie had time to wonder as she got up, casting aside her weapon. She sprinted towards the place of the final reagent, just twenty meters away on the other side of the magic circle, where Leon kept the two other streets clear of enemies. How would ADAM interpret Lumie’s presence as a reagent in the arrangement of this spell?

There were many uncertainties, but there was no more time left for thinking. Only time for action.

In the distant skies, Lumie might’ve seen a silver shape gliding toward her. And hanging from that silver shape, a certain elf.

“LUMIE!!” that familiar voice wailed desperately. But Elwin’s cries fell on deaf ears. He could only watch hopelessly as that noble knight stepped towards that final point on the magic circle, ready to give up her very soul.

But before her foot could fall into place, something wrapped around her torso and yanked her back. She fell to the ground near Runald. Before her, she could see Kari sprinting to take her place.

It had been water.

But Kari was too far for the short-range whips of his wand-pistol to reach her on the far side of the magic circle.

How? How had he done it?

Water from Kari’s wand-pistol spread out like a blanket, protecting the crippled Runald and the stunned Lumie from the world. But rather than simply fall over them, the blanket froze into a thick sheet of impenetrable ice. Hundreds of runed arms beat into it, attempting to get through to the two living beneath. But Lumie ignored all of it, unable to take her eyes off Kari’s retreating form, visible through the perfectly clear ice that glinted with the first rays of dawn.

With a deep breath, Kari shaped the water produced by the blue vial with his Gift, sending out rings of spinning, saw-like ice to cleave into the masses of zombies.

He felt like he could finally breathe again. Finally, after something had weighed on his chest for so long.

His Gift had never left, only his sense of self.

Water streamed from the wand-pistol, coiling around Kari like a dragon, shielding him from the noise of the world. Kari walked slowly, deliberately towards his place on the magic circle. There was no question about if he wanted to do this or not. Even with his Gift restored, the spell needed to be cast, and Kari was not okay with the idea of sacrificing anyone other than himself. Even if he stayed and fought with all the might of his Gift, the wand-pistol would eventually run out of ammunition.

A whisper floated in the wind. Kari looked up, catching a glimpse of a certain silver shape, and a dangling figure with an air of familiarity about it. The fallen reagents on the other points of the magic circle mysteriously righted themselves, returning to the perfect position.

For the first time in his life, Kari smiled a most contented smile… and stepped into place.

At once, the entire ritual arrangement lit up with a pure white glow.

“NOOOOO!!” Elwin howled.

Like a burst dam, a torrent of roiling, radiant light burst forth. Spilling forth along the streets, overflowing along the rooftops, blindingly bright, but paradoxically pleasing to the eye. It spread as fast as a raging river, ceaselessly sweeping out from where the spell had been cast.

Leon, who had turned to see commotion going on behind him at the intersection, flinched as pieces of fine white salt exploded onto his face; what remained of unholy forces exposed to the brilliant energy. But even this salt was quickly swept away as gusts of fresh air blew forth like a surging stream, cleansing the land.

Kari’s light passed Leon, Lumie, Runald, Elwin and Blue harmlessly by as it radiated outwards relentlessly, spilling over Al Dherjza’s walls onto the battlefield and cascading through the catacombs below the city. Wherever it touched the demons and the undead, their bodies spontaneously burst into powdery geysers of fine white salt.

And with the sound of a deep exhalation, the flow of purifying light came to a sudden stop.

All eyes were on the spell’s origin. Something was there. Rising into the sky, an ethereal shape. Its silhouette was otherwordly, like countless rays of light so bright that they pierced through the empty air like the sun’s light piercing through the clouds from beyond. And within that diaphanous edge, the impression of something watching. But despite the utterly alien nature of that presence, something about it felt familiar to everyone gathered.

“…Kari?” Lumie asked aloud in disbelief.

But with the quiet gasp of a flame being gently snuffed out, what remained of Kari’s soul vanished; only his lifeless body remained in a heap on the ground.