~~~Bradley~~~

Bradley surged to his feet, eyes wide, as he frantically searched the courtyard. He saw bodies slumped all around him—still living bodies—and Z struggling to his feet, but no sign of what he desperately sought.

"MAR!" His roar set the earth dancing around and below Three, and Bradley was about to demand Three send him back when he felt something. A familiar flicker of power. It came from the behemoth under Three and flowed to... her!

She flew from the roof overhead, then kicked off the air and shot earthward. In his adrenalized state, and despite her using the beastmaster boost, it still felt like it took an eternity for Mar to reach him. Bradley spent that eternity drinking in the sight of her. She was here and uninjured.

It had all been an illusion. He'd known it wasn't real, but it had felt so...

"What is it!?" Mar said, landing smoothly and with twin-blades bared in preparation for a fight.

Bradley took a step toward her, half terrified that this might all be another illusion, and opened his mouth. There was the bang of a door crashing open, and Bradley tore his gaze from Mar even as he surged to stand between her and the sound. He moved fast enough to see Amy emerge from Lee's apartment. Alone. She leapt onto the balcony railing, then sprang for the far roof, screaming for Saira as she went.

Amy never made it to the roof. Instead, she exploded into a cloud of blood and gore before making it halfway across the gap.

Bradley watched it happen in slow motion, a terrible realization finally dawning in his mind. Lee had gone in after them. That was the only explanation. He'd gone in and gotten them all out alive. Somehow. But he was still in there. In the clutches of that... thing.

Lee was special; there was no doubt about that, but even he couldn't fight against the power Bradley had felt from that monster.

Could he?

The power Lee had used to create Three had felt... close. But it had also nearly killed Lee while turning him into an old man. Could he use it again? Would it even be enough?

He knew Amy was some kind of bodyguard class and that she shared damage whenever Lee got hurt. But looking at her now, or what remained of her, Bradley wasn't even sure if she was still alive. What did that mean for Lee?

It meant Lee was dying. Or already dead.

Bradley called to the Earth and felt stone materialize around his body. He wasn't creating the stone—he still couldn't do that—but his new evolution came with some perks. Earth, as in planet Earth, was sending him the stone. Or at least that was his current theory. There was a... sense. Or a feeling. However it worked, it gobbled mana like crazy. But it was fast, and speed was what he needed now.

He used the stone to carry himself into the air and onto an intercept course with Amy.

Unfortunately, he didn't catch her. Something rippled through his soul, something dark. It blacked out his world for a moment, then it was gone, leaving behind nothing more than a screaming echo of pain and rage. Along with a reverberating growl...

Fortunately for Amy, the vines covering Three's roof shot out in a storm of red spears that snatched her from the air. Saira wasn't far behind, and she landed among the increasingly dense bed of vines before they even reached the courtyard floor.

Bradley followed them down as Saira peeled the woman out of her armor, and he felt a touch of relief when he saw that Amy still lived. The downside was that he only knew she was alive because he could see her heart beating between her ribs. With his eyes. She wasn't breathing, either, which, considering that most of her throat and face were missing, came as no surprise.

Despite everything he'd seen to date, between monsters and humans dying before his eyes, the sight of her like this still made him queasy. He forced himself to ignore that feeling as he landed in the courtyard beside Saira, being careful to avoid stepping on even a single life-giving vine.

That was when he felt a tile crack beneath his feet... and realized that his mana wasn't regenerating.

It was obvious once he noticed. Three was constructed of stone on a fundamental level. Cement being a type of stone, at least according to his magic. Except it was usually an immutable stone that his power couldn't touch. Only now it wasn't. Aside from one small area...

Mar gasped when she reached them, and her hands went to her mouth. "W... what happened in there?"

Bradley opened his mouth to explain... and closed it again. How could he explain any of it? He didn't even know what was happening with Lee. Aside from the fact that he was obviously dying.

So was Amy. The vines were shriveling up into dust and blowing away one after another. Yet she wasn't improving. Even if her heart still beat.

Saira was muttering under her breath the entire time, then she growled, "It's not working! I need more!"

Bradley didn't hesitate. He dropped to his knees beside Saira and held out his arm. "Take from me!"

He was a D-grade. His body was full of more life than anything or anyone in the entire fort. Lee might well be responsible for this entire mess... but he had gone back for them. He had saved them from a very real and terrible nightmare. This was the least he could do to help.

Saira didn't hesitate, either. Vines erupted from beneath her flesh and stabbed into his arm. Well, they tried anyway. Bradley had to snatch a knife from Mar and use it to open a hole through his skin to let the vines in. Then he almost toppled over when he felt his life start draining out of him in a rush.

Mar held out her own arm, her motions extra sluggish now that her boost had ended, but Saira waved her off with a, "Wake the others. Get my apprentice!"

She stumbled away while Z kneeled on Saira's other side and held out his own already bleeding arm. "Take."

Bradley eyed the alien as a new concern rose into his thoughts. Z was helping them now, but what would happen if Lee actually died? Its contract was with Lee, not any of them. Would it turn on them?

"He still lives," Z said, its eyes meeting Bradley's gaze through the narrow slits of its helmet, almost as if reading his mind.

Bradley glanced down at Amy and then away again. "Why isn't she healing?"

"I don't know!" Saira snapped. "I'm keeping her alive, but most of the energy is going... somewhere else! Where is Lee!?"

"In the shadows... I think." There was a certain feeling that always permeated the building, one he only now realized was missing. Though he wasn't sure if the lack was from Lee's missing presence or Three's diminished... size.

Bradley glanced up as Alejandro stumbled to a stop, looming unsteadily over them. "Bradley... we're alive... My god, Amy! Wait, where's Lee!?"

"He went in after us." Bradley didn't know that for sure, but it was the only thing that made sense.

"We have to help him!" Alejandro said and started staggering uselessly toward the stairs. There was nothing he could do. He had to know that. There was nothing any of them could do. Every single member of this fort working together would still be less than an ant before that monster's power.

One of the anubians sprinted past Alejandro and slid to a stop beside Saira. "Mistress! I am here!"

"Rax, get the elixirs of regrowth and dump them on my tree!"

"Yes, Mistress!" He hesitated while staring wide-eyed at Amy. "How many, Mistress?"

"All of them! Now!"

His eyes somehow got even wider, and he sprinted away immediately with a howled, "Yes, Mistress!"

Bradley only then noticed that he could feel the ground vibrating around her tree. He glanced up to where it should have been towering above Three's roof and saw only the very top in view. It was shrinking... and the little he could see looked far more brown than its usual blood-red color.

Saira wasn't looking very good, either. She had wrinkles, and they were visibly growing even as she shriveled before his eyes. "Saira, are you okay?"

"Where is the mana!?" Saira demanded instead of answering, her eyes wet. "Is Three... is it gone!?"

"His apartment," Bradley said. "It's the only..."

The vines squirmed and shifted beneath them, then lifted all of them into the air and up toward Lee's apartment, the only part of the building that he couldn't touch. The only part of Three that remained.

He felt his mana tick up when they entered, but it felt slower. Weaker. Or was that because he was D-grade now? He'd never really tested it after evolving. He hadn’t had time.

Alejandro got there after them, and despite his pleas to Three, he didn't disappear. Lee didn't reappear either.

More people came in and out, bringing potions and food, but Bradley barely noticed and simply ate or drank whatever was handed to him through the haze of his life draining away. He did notice when Mar returned and sat beside him.

She took his hand in hers and there was a stark difference between her smooth, healthy skin and his own increasingly shriveled skin. Mar noticed, and he saw her expression as she glanced between him and the not quite dead but not quite alive Amy. She finally opened her mouth to say something, but he preempted her. "I love you, Mar."

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Her eyes leapt to his, and she froze like a deer in headlights.

Bradley was aware of the other people in the room with them, but he didn't care. "I've loved you for a while now, but I think I was too scared to say anything. Well, I was an idiot, and I love you." He squeezed her hand gently. "You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know."

Of course, he really started wishing she would say something when she only stared at him with an expression he couldn't decipher.

"Mom?" she said after what felt like an eternity. "I think you're killing him."

Saira looked even worse than he felt, but she mustered a small smile. "He is fine. At least feed him, if nothing else. His body is a furnace, and it needs fuel. I will not give up on Amy or Lee so long as they live."

Mar turned bright red for some reason, then stuffed a piece of meat in his mouth when he tried to ask if she was okay. She kept feeding him every time he tried to speak, to the point he feared he might choke and stopped opening his mouth.

She hadn't replied to his confession, but she also hadn't fled screaming. She even leaned into him and held tightly to his arm when not stuffing his face. That was enough. He hadn't scared her off, and she knew the truth. That was all he wanted.

Bradley watched her when she wasn't looking, content to drink in the sight. He also watched Z, though with less content and more concern. He didn't fear the alien anymore, especially since it had signed up for the life drain alongside him. However this turned out, he knew he was stronger.

If Lee didn't come back... I'll protect them for you, Lee. You trusted me, and I won't let you down.

His silent promise turned into a fiery conviction when Mar whispered ever so softly beside him, "I love you, too."

~~~Lee~~~

I'm sorry, Stan. Lee had time for one last thought of his brother before the monster came through his apartment door. Literally.

It didn't have a defined physical form, but it condensed itself into the facsimile of one as it attacked. A human facsimile. Sort of. It had two legs, a head, but far too many arms. Or appendages, at least. Not that Lee thought it needed a physical form to hurt him; it had more than enough power for that.

He only got to see it coming thanks to his time bubble, and even then, it all happened in less than a second. The doorway evaporated ahead of its charge, its appendage reached for him, and Three turned on the lights before Lee could even articulate the order to do so.

True lights.

Brilliant runes shone from every surface inside his apartment, lighting up the darkness in a way that Lee suspected this world had never seen before. The sudden illumination didn't hurt his eyes, but the momentary glimpse of what was assaulting him did more than enough psychological damage on its own.

It was a nightmare, literally and figuratively, and in that moment, Lee knew this creature had never seen the light of day in its entire existence. It was born in the dark, and it had never left. He didn't even think it could leave. At least, not for long. Because it would burn, and not only in daylight. The reflected sunlight from the moon would burn this thing. Perhaps even the stars themselves would shine too brightly... It was darkness personified. Pure, untouched darkness.

Lee's light runes were special—a type of pure light that would not abide such darkness—but they were such a small thing compared to the shadows filling this monster. They burned it, scoured at the shadow of its existence, and ripped holes into its very being. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to stop it.

At least, not by shining in from the outside.

Lee had expected as much already, which was why he enacted his own mad gamble of a plan at the same time. He had to stick a light rune inside the monster. Ideally, a source-empowered light rune.

It was a terrible plan. Obviously.

He'd barely managed to stick a rune on the last shadow monster, and that thing had been so much weaker than this one. Never mind his plan of using the source. But it was all he had. Light was its only weakness and the only way he could ever hope to hurt it. Much less kill it.

Of course, his concentration broke when its appendages slammed into him with enough force to launch him into orbit. Luckily, they hit from every angle, at almost the same time. It meant he only got beaten to a pulp but without a free trip across the dark countryside outside.

The speed it attacked with was what he'd expected, and much too fast for him to dodge or escape, but shockingly, he didn't die to the impacts. He felt each hit vividly as they ripped and tore him apart. Or tried to. Because somehow, his runed bones held up under the onslaught. They shouldn't have... He'd seen it go through Three's walls like the building wasn't there, and Three was stronger than him. Or it should have been.

Lee wasn't aware of much else in that moment, but he'd never been more aware of his runes. He felt them, knew them, and saw them grow only brighter when they should have otherwise failed. He knew why, too. Because he would die if they failed, and he couldn't die here. He couldn't do that. He couldn't die. He couldn't fail his brother. He wouldn't fail everyone who was counting on him! He had to live. He had to survive. He had to fight!

Debuff Gained: [Mana Burn]

His survival wasn't free, and mana flooded from his core at a speed akin to unleashing a Mana Beam. Meanwhile, his soul did something... similar. It didn't flood, but it moved. In a way. His soul wasn't content with merely standing unyielding in the face of overwhelming power. It pushed back, and Lee pushed back with it.

From the floor where his unresponsive body lay, Lee took every scrap of mana the Well could offer on this side of reality, and he threw it all at the darkness.

Uselessly.

The monster laughed. It stood in his apartment, burning under the glare of a thousand light runes, and it laughed. Then it drove a cloud of shadowy appendages into and through his flesh.

Except they never touched his flesh... instead, they dug into his soul.

He knew what it was after once it did that. He'd suspected as much but hadn't been sure before. Not until he felt those tendrils digging in, reaching straight toward the glowing crack inside their wounded soul.

It wanted the source.

Unlike the previous time, this monster didn't carve their soul apart. It was so much stronger than the skeleton had been that it simply smothered him beneath its own power and started pushing deeper. Straining to reach the source.

Lee remembered what Z had told him about True Souls and how inviolable they were supposed to be. He was pretty sure that was where they held the source, and so for all its power, he didn't think this thing was strong enough to violate their True Soul. Unfortunately, it didn't have to. Because they had a weak spot.

It snaked a single tendril into the still-healing soul wound, slipping through tiny gaps in the rune seal, and it felt terrible. Not quite on the level of when they received the original wound, but somehow worse in its own new way—a horrible sense of violation that ripped through him as the tendril wriggled inexorably deeper.

He fought back, but it accomplished nothing. He was drowning under the pressure. He couldn't stop this thing...

Then anger rose inside him. Not even anger. He was already beyond pissed at this monster. For threatening his friends. For hurting Three. For putting him in this situation where he now stood poised to lose everything. So no, he was already well and truly angry. This new feeling was beyond anger, beyond even rage. It was a blind, hateful, bloodthirsty, and poisonous wrath that would burn him for touching it.

It was Stanley.

Lee's heart ached at what he felt from his brother, at the fear that Stanley tried to hide beneath so much rage. So much rage... It wasn't good, and it wasn't right, but Lee still grasped onto it like a lifeline, and Stanley pulled his head back above the surface.

That was a good start, but it wasn't enough. The monster was still wriggling deeper into their soul, and they had to stop it before it reached the source. It was all over if they didn't, because Lee suspected this monster might actually be strong enough to wield the source itself, and then their already slim chances of survival would shrink to nil.

Lee never found out if it could wield the source or not, because something inside their soul stirred. Something... woke up.

Something moved.

The smothering monster of darkness shrieked and recoiled from their soul, pulling back a mere stump of the appendage it had driven inside their soul. As it recoiled, a single spark of the source slipped out after it and through the same weak spot in their soul. A spark that burned through Lee's mind and body, then slipped free into the realm beyond light. A new star, shining upon a world of darkness.

Strangely, and despite it appearing so very bright to him, it didn't seem to bother the monster of shadow and darkness as it lunged for the spark. In fact, the spark didn't even shed its light on anything...

Lee hadn't expected or even considered that something could be bright without being actual light, and he didn't care. Because he reached the spark first. It was only an infinitesimal speck, but that didn't matter. It was power, and it didn't matter if it was an actual light or not. He could make it become one.

So he did.

He wrapped that tiny spark of potential within a piece of his soul, twisted that bit of soul into a specific shape, and then burned that shape into the nightmare's very essence.

It screamed again, louder this time, and fled for its life, but not because of the blazing rune of light shining from within its body. That rune was already failing, but then again, Lee had never expected it to be enough. Not when the monster could destroy Three's structure so casually. His runes were good, but not that good. Even when empowered by the source, he simply couldn't channel enough of it to compete with the dark mana that absolutely saturated the creature's form.

Instead, he had a different plan. His original plan. And phase one of that plan had just gone off almost perfectly. Aside from a few hiccups, of course. Like not being able to use the source before it invaded their soul. Or almost getting knocked out by the sheer pressure of its presence. Or it almost getting its hands on the source before him... and having to get saved by what he was certain had to be Caffeine...

Lee didn't dwell on his mistakes. He would have plenty of time to ruminate on those later if he survived the consequences of his actions. Instead, he immediately started in on phase two of his plan. A plan that depended on one singular principle.

There is always a bigger fish.

Fortunately, he was right. There was a bigger fish, and now it was coming his way. Lee didn't know how far away it was, but he could feel it coming, and it was definitely bigger. The nightmare must have felt the same thing, because it ran for its life even faster than it had moved to attack him before.

Even as the nightmare fled, Lee was already creating a new rune on Three. Or rather, a variation of an older rune. In fact, it was almost the exact opposite of the rune he'd stuck into the nightmare. Instead of a light, it was an... anti-light.

He didn't know if Three felt what was coming or if the building simply reacted to him. Either way, it did what he wanted and switched its own lights.

Darkness fell inside Three. Deep enough that the dim illumination shining in through his missing front door felt bright. Illumination that came from a pinprick of light attached to a rapidly disappearing nightmare fleeing over the horizon.

The darkness came just in time, too. Because he saw something blot out the light and the horizon, an instant before a new notification appeared with a flash of pain.

-1 Twin-Soul

The nightmare was dead. Just like that. Eaten right along with the rune Lee had left on it.

Three didn't let him see anymore. Instead, the building swallowed him into itself while shrinking what remained of its now shadowed rune into a tight coffin around his body. It was the only reason Lee remained conscious when whatever had devoured his enemy was suddenly looming over them.

Lee had thought he understood, at least roughly, what the differences between grades felt like. He'd been so wrong.

He felt like an ant standing on the surface of the sun. A dark sun. An incomprehensibly vast inferno of dark fire far beyond any understanding of his insignificant little insect brain.

Those searing flames burned him to ashes a thousand times, and yet he remained to burn again. It scoured him, flayed him, and crushed him into oblivion for an eternity... and then it retreated, fading away into lingering echoes of a growl, until even that was gone, leaving nothing but silence in its wake.

Lee remained where he lay, unsure how much time had passed and if he even still lived. He didn’t dare to even breathe.

His lungs eventually started screaming for air, but it was trivial to ignore. He couldn't believe that it was gone, yet it was impossible that it remained. Nothing could hide that inferno. Nothing could possibly have hidden him from it. He couldn't be alive. He must already be dead. It was the only explanation.

It was only as his consciousness faded when he finally noticed the runes on his bones. And how they had changed.