Cassian's grip on the enchanted blade was unrelenting as he circled Arianna. Her lips curled in a sneer, dark energy coiling around her like a living shadow. The air between them crackled with tension, the battlefield around them fading into a blur of chaos and carnage. "You think you can stop this?" Arianna taunted, her claws flexing, dripping with blackened blood from her earlier victims. "Your strength is nothing compared to the Lycan King's will. You're already dead-you just don't know it yet."
Cassian didn't respond. His gaze was locked on hers, cold and resolute. In a single, calculated motion, he lunged forward, the enchanted blade slicing through the air with lethal precision.
Arianna parried, her claws screeching against the blade as dark sparks flew. She retaliated with a flurry of strikes, her movements unnaturally fast, her snarls feral and unhinged. Cassian dodged and countered, the blade nicking her side. Black ichor oozed from the wound, and she hissed in fury, her eyes glowing with hatred.
"You'll regret that," she spat, leaping at him with savage force.
Cassian met her mid-air, the blade plunging deep into her shoulder. She shrieked, her body convulsing as the blade's magic burned through her corrupted flesh. Undeterred, she wrenched herself free, dark tendrils weaving around her wound to hold her together. "You'll have to do better than that, wolf," she snarled, her voice distorted and echoing unnaturally.
Cassian's movements became more aggressive, each strike aimed with surgical precision. He slashed her thigh, severing muscle and forcing her to stumble. He followed with a crushing blow to her ribs, shattering bone and sending her sprawling to the ground. Blood pooled beneath her, black and thick as tar, but still, she laughed.
"You think pain matters to me? This is nothing," she growled, her body twitching as she tried to rise.
Cassian loomed over her, the blade's glow intensifying. "You don't deserve mercy."
He plunged the blade into her stomach, twisting it as her screams echoed through the battlefield. The enchanted magic flared, tearing through her body, disintegrating the dark energy she had bound to herself. Arianna clawed at him desperately, her talons raking his armor, but Cassian didn't flinch.
"You've taken enough," he said through gritted teeth, pulling the blade free and driving it down again, this time into her chest. The magic coursed through her, breaking apart the shadows that had corrupted her soul.
Arianna's screams turned guttural, her body convulsing violently. Black veins crawled up her neck and across her face, splitting her skin as the corruption consumed her from the inside out. Her eyes widened, filled with terror as the reality of her defeat sank in. "Stop," she gasped, blood spilling from her lips. "Stop-please-"noveldrama
Cassian didn't hesitate. "This is for everyone you've hurt."
With one final, brutal motion, he drove the blade through her throat, severing her windpipe and silencing her forever. The light from the enchanted blade erupted in a radiant surge, obliterating what remained of her dark energy. Arianna's body collapsed in on itself, crumbling into ash and ichor that soaked into the ground.
Cassian stood over the remains, breathing heavily, the blade still glowing faintly in his grasp. Around him, the battlefield began to quiet as the wolves realized Arianna's reign of terror was over.
"Let her be forgotten," Cassian muttered, his voice low but resolute. He turned away from the scene, the bloodstained blade in hand, knowing that while Arianna was gone, the Lycan King still waited in the shadows.