A deafening roar.

The Mourning Behemoth lunges forward—a grotesque blur of sinew and malice. The ground trembles beneath its weight, its elongated, spiked hammer-fist swinging in a devastating arc toward Hikari.

She moves— just barely.

WHOOSH! The force of the swing shreds through the air, a vacuum following in its wake. Dust and debris explode outward as Hikari skids across the cracked pavement, barely keeping her footing.

[CUT TO:] Lila

A sharp inhale. Aura gathering.

Lila thrusts both hands forward— BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! A volley of energy blasts scream through the air, slamming into the Behemoth’s back. Each explosion ignites like a chain reaction, rippling outward in fiery shockwaves. The destroyed city block shakes from the sheer impact, sending rubble cascading into the streets.

Smoke engulfs the battlefield.

A low, guttural snarl rumbles from within the haze.

[CUT TO:] The Behemoth – Through the Smoke

A monstrous shadow looms, its amber eyes glowing like twin embers in the darkness. Without warning—

SLAM!

The hammer-fist cleaves through the smoke, sending a shockwave that slices the battlefield in two. The impact carves a jagged scar through the ground, shattering what little remains of the city’s foundations.

[CUT TO:] Lila – Mid-Air

The wind screams past her as she barely dodges the upward swing. Her stomach lurches as she propels herself back, feet skidding against the remnants of a fallen skyscraper.

The force of the Behemoth’s strike alone had parted the clouds.

Lila grits her teeth. This thing is getting stronger.

[CUT TO:] Hikari – Charging In

A blur of motion. She rockets forward, cyan aura flaring around her like a storm of light.

Hikari: “I think it’s about time we end this.”

A flash of steel. A shift in stance.

Hikari attacks—

A strike to the ribs—the impact sends shockwaves through its body.

A follow-up to the knee—shattering bone-like protrusions.

A final slash upward—her blade tracing a brilliant arc of light.

The Behemoth howls in agony, staggering back as cyan energy erupts from its wounds.

But then—

A presence. Watching.

Her gaze is unblinking.

The Supernatural Entity—ethereal beauty wrapped in sorrow. Her long, raven-black hair cascades like liquid night, strands shifting with a life of their own. Silver eyes—dull, hollow—stare through dimensions. Her robes, woven from darkness itself, ripple as if stitched from the fabric of forgotten nightmares. Ancient symbols flicker along her skin, pulsing with whispers of long-dead tongues.

She does not sigh. She does not breathe.

Instead, she observes.

Supernatural Entity: “They’re gaining the upper hand against my child… I suppose that won’t do.”

A soft smile—empty, haunting.

She vanishes into the abyss.

[Scene Transition:] The School – A Fragile Illusion

Laughter. Chatter.

Amanda sits at her desk, laughing with her classmates. She jokes, teases, pretends. Pretends nothing is wrong.

Because if she stops pretending—

The world crumbles.

Her classmates, all of them, are dead. Yet here they are, smiling, talking, playing their roles in an impossible play. Puppets to a power she refuses to acknowledge.

But then—

Flicker.

The classroom lights dim. Shadows curl unnaturally, stretching, shifting. The air grows thick— oppressive. Her friends freeze, their smiles turning vacant, lifeless.

She is no longer pretending.

A whisper, silk-soft, poisonous.

Supernatural Entity: “Amanda, my dear…”

A presence behind her. Arms wrap around her shoulders, gentle yet suffocating.

Supernatural Entity: “I need your help with something~”

Amanda stiffens. Her throat is raw—like she has been crying for years, yet no tears remain.

Amanda: “What… do you want?”

Her voice barely escapes her lips, a breathless whisper.

The Entity smiles. A mother’s warmth—deceptive.

Supernatural Entity: “I need your Necromancy, sweet one. Just a little push, so I can punish those exorcist murderers for you~”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Amanda trembles.

Amanda: “…What if they’re actually here to help—”

A shift.

A distortion in the air.

Supernatural Entity: “NO.”

Darkness engulfs the room. The illusion shatters. Her friends—gone, reduced to nothing but hollow echoes. The walls melt into black void, whispers creeping into Amanda’s mind.

Supernatural Entity: “They aren’t here to help you, Amanda. They will take everything away from you—again.”

The whispers twist around her, creeping into her memories.

The fires.

The screams.

Her family’s lifeless bodies.

Supernatural Entity: “They will destroy everything, again and again. Just like before. Just like always.”

Amanda’s knees buckle. Her breath is ragged, uneven.

Supernatural Entity: “I am the only one who can protect you.

The weight of despair presses down.

Her vision darkens.

Her thoughts spiral.

Supernatural Entity: “You must trust me.”

Despair Manipulation.

A power that taps into the deepest wells of sorrow, twisting pain into submission. The Entity’s presence warps the very fabric of hope, drowning all light in an endless abyss. Even the strongest break beneath its weight.

Amanda is no different.

Her lips tremble.

And then—

She whispers a single word.

Amanda: “…Okay.”

The moment Amanda spoke those words, reality itself seemed to bend.

A shift—imperceptible yet absolute.

The Supernatural Entity, Lirael, stilled for a fraction of a second. Then, slowly, impossibly, a smile spread across her lips—serene, knowing, triumphant.

Amanda stiffened. The name echoed inside her skull, sinking deep, as if it had always been there, waiting. Lirael. The name felt like an unspoken truth—one that had been whispering to her long before she ever realized.

Something unseen shattered.

A pulse of darkness erupted from Amanda’s fragile frame, warping the very air around her. The color drained from the world, reduced to a void of muted grays and lifeless blacks. The space around them trembled, as if rejecting what was about to unfold.

Amanda felt it before she could even process it—the weight of something unspeakably vast, pressing against her, sinking into her bones, carving itself into the deepest recesses of her soul.

And yet…

It felt familiar.

She raised her hands.

A deep purple aura coiled around her fingertips, swirling, alive, ravenous. It pulsed in sync with her heartbeat, an unnatural rhythm that did not belong to the world of the living. Her eyes, once dull with exhaustion, blazed with violet light, their depths resembling shattered glass reflecting infinite voids.

She spoke, and the words carried an authority that should not have belonged to her.

“Boost by 900x.”

The effect was instantaneous.

A Power That Should Not Exist

A low hum filled the air, deep and guttural, vibrating through the very fabric of reality. Lirael inhaled sharply, as though drinking in something intoxicating. The markings on her skin—those ancient runes of despair—flared to life, glowing with an eerie, pulsing radiance.

The temperature plunged.

Then—

Lirael threw her head back, and a sound escaped her lips—a breathless, almost ecstatic sigh.

Her slender fingers twitched, as though barely containing the raw, unholy energy surging through her. The space around her distorted, folding inward like the universe itself was cowering from her very presence.

Her eyes, dull silver no longer, now shone with an unearthly brilliance—a beacon of power that should never have been granted to a single being.

Then, a whisper. Soft. Gentle. A caress against the edges of sanity.

“Yesss… this… this is the power of death itself~.”

The moment she spoke, the ground decayed beneath her feet.

A deep, spreading blight consumed everything in its path, unraveling the remains of the ruined city, leaving nothing but an abyss of blackened nothingness. The air itself seemed to fracture, as if her very existence was now incompatible with reality.

Lirael raised her hand toward the sky—

And the heavens answered.

The Birth of a Cataclysm

A vortex of black and gray energy erupted around her, spiraling upward, stretching into the sky like a monstrous tendril. The atmosphere buckled under the sheer magnitude of its presence, thick with the stench of entropy and decay.

Lightning flickered within the abyssal storm, but it was not natural lightning. Each bolt cracked with eldritch energy, jagged and unnatural, illuminating twisted glimpses of something lurking within the clouds—something that should not be seen.

Amanda stared, her breath caught in her throat.

She had agreed.

She had given Lirael her power.

And now—

Now she was witnessing the true nature of the force she had unleashed.

Her stomach twisted, nausea clawing at the edges of her consciousness. Had she made a mistake?

Had she doomed them all?

A whisper, barely audible, brushed against her mind.

“Doubt already, little one~?”

Amanda’s body locked up, her throat tightening.

Lirael turned toward her, silver eyes now voids of endless ruin, her expression unreadable—both fond and inscrutable.

Then, she laughed.

Low. Melodic.

Final.

And as the abyss expanded, swallowing the sky whole, Amanda realized—

This was no longer a battle.

It was the end of something.

Perhaps… everything.

A single flash—blinding, unnatural.

Lila’s breath hitched as the sky above fractured with a violent burst of black and violet lightning, arcing wildly across the atmosphere. The very air around them trembled, rippling as if reality itself was struggling to contain the force that had just been unleashed.

Hikari felt her pulse spike, instincts screaming at her before her mind could even process the sight before her.

She turned sharply, eyes narrowing against the overwhelming glow.

Hikari: “What the—”

Beside her, Lila’s gaze followed, her usually sharp expression now dark with unease.

Lila: “What the hell could that be…?”

Her voice was steady, but there was something behind it—something unspoken, a creeping sense of recognition that neither of them dared put into words.

The world felt wrong.

Before they could question it further, a new presence announced itself.

A streak of pure devastation erupted from the horizon.

A lance of violet, grey, and black energy—churning, writhing, a force that did not belong in this world—shot forward from the distance.

The impact alone sent a shockwave rippling through the city, buildings groaning under the sheer weight of its force.

And at its epicenter—

The school.

The Behemoth Kneels

The Mourning Behemoth, the very creature that had taken everything they had to fight, stopped.

The ground beneath it cracked as it fell to one knee, its massive form bending in submission.

Not out of fear.

Out of reverence.

A monster driven by destruction, by rage, by an insatiable hunger to annihilate—bowing like a knight before a queen.

Lila clenched her fists, the unease in her chest solidifying into something much, much worse.

Who… no… what the hell was strong enough to make that thing kneel?

Hikari took a step forward, body tense.

Her voice was low, almost unwilling to speak the question aloud.

Hikari: “…Who’s coming?”

But deep down, she already knew.

The pressure in the air—the crushing weight that pressed against their chests, coiling around their ribs like invisible chains. It was suffocating, intoxicating, wrong.

This wasn’t just power.

This was control.

And then—

It changed direction.

The streak of abyssal energy—once aimed at the school—turned toward them.

Fast. Too fast.

Hikari barely had time to react before—

IMPACT.

A sound like thunder cracking through stone.

The ground shattered beneath them as something—or someone—struck the earth with the force of a meteor.

The pavement collapsed inward, a crater forming at the epicenter. The sheer impact released a shockwave so powerful it sent debris spiraling through the air.

Lila and Hikari instinctively threw up their arms, bracing themselves against the hurricane-force gust of wind that tore through the battlefield. The very air howled, pressure shifting violently, as if the world itself was protesting against the presence that had just descended upon it.

The dust swirled in chaotic spirals, thick and heavy, obscuring their vision.

But even through the veil of smoke—

They could feel her.

A presence so overwhelming, so utterly suffocating, it was as if hope itself had been stripped from the air.

Then, slowly, a figure emerged from the settling dust.

She lifted her head.

Silver eyes.

Not bright, not shining—dull, empty, endless.

The kind of eyes that had seen the rise and fall of civilizations and felt nothing for either.

Her raven-black hair flowed like ink in water, strands moving unnaturally, shifting in a way that defied logic. Her robes, stitched from shadows themselves, flickered and warped, never quite settling, as though they existed between moments of reality.

And then, she spoke.

Soft. Mocking.

Lirael: “Greetings~”

TO BE CONTINUED.