Lucien managed to sneak near the battle. Not as near as he wanted to be, but near enough to yell at them and not get hit by a shockwave. He activated Equilibrium and put it into his voice.

  "Don't kill it!" he yelled.

  His voice boomed across the battlefield. This shocked both Paladins and Lucien himself; he didn't think his voice could be that loud.

  "Are you crazy?" Valerius yelled back.

  "No!" Lucien yelled back. "Keep it at bay! Don't kill it and don't let it go wild!"

  He yelled again as Valerius started to lose his mind. The Paladin was barely holding on with the help of Dame Seraphine, and vice versa, and now he was being asked not to take out the monster.

  Before he could blow his top, Lucien poured some cold water on their logic.

  "If it dies, then who is going to hold back the curse?" he yelled. "Two tired Paladins who barely pushed the curse away the first time?

  The weight of his words hit them. They realized the Sovereign was the only thing stopping the curse. If it is destroyed, they would have to take its place.

  "Keep its attention!" Lucien commanded.

  Valerius and Seraphine shifted. They stopped their offensive and moved into a defensive lock, pinning the Sovereign’s broadsword between their shields and mace. The Sovereign roared, its skeletal frame hissing as the energy from this 10th Vein power continued to crack its bones, but it was trapped in the Paladins' light.

  Lucien took his cue. He sprinted toward the mother and child, reaching the edge of the crater and leaping across the gap. He walked up to them and saw the mother, a suffering corpse, dried and desiccated. Then he looked at the baby. He couldn’t help the shiver that ran down his spine. How could a corpse be so perfectly preserved? Maybe it wasn’t even dead. Its skin was a haunting, porcelain-white, and its jagged, dark crystal eyes. Maybe it was a devil after all.

  How could the mother be so animated? Was it the baby's doing? At the moment, he wished he were the expert he claimed to be so he could have the answers, but he was not. He only had the fairy tale. From what he had seen today, the old stories were accurate. He guessed that the Hollow Sovereign was the original warrior of light. The Sovereign must have figured out a way to seal the curse, but even he must not have been strong enough to destroy it.

  There was no point in overthinking it now. His plan was simple: he was going to use Equilibrium on the Sovereign when he sang his lullaby and supercharge it. The problem was getting near enough to activate it. Anything that monster did would obliterate him.

  That’s why, when he saw the cloak, the idea popped into his head. If it was able to survive the shockwaves, then maybe with Equilibrium he could bolster its defenses and get close enough to do his thing. He also noticed that when the curse flares up, the Sovereign focuses on that, so maybe he had a chance there.

  But right now the curse was thoroughly sealed. How did these morons agitate it?

  He went to the remains of the group and started to look through their artifacts. It was then that he spotted the bust. It seemed strange to him. He wished that Elaine was here—she was basically an encyclopedia—but he was no slouch. All other items were wearable, but this one stood out. Could it be the one object that could agitate the curse?

  He turned the bust toward the woman and child pair and activated the artifact. The bust opened its mouth, but not much else happened at first. After a while, the sealing array started to awaken, and the weeping mother started to stir.

  Lucien immediately deactivated the artifact and finally began to formulate his plan. The only problem was that he needed someone to activate the bust at the exact right moment.

  As if to answer his prayers, he heard the sound of rocks tumbling down from the crevice where he had hidden his companion. Sebas was waking up. It seemed that Lucien had successfully managed to pull the dark tendrils of the curse off him just in time. Sebas pushed the heavy rocks aside and looked around, utterly confused. When they had entered, they were deep in a tunnel system, but now he could see the night sky stretching above them. He wondered for a moment if he had been moved outside while he was unconscious.

  Then, he saw Lucien waving at him frantically from the edge of the crater.

  "Get over here!" Lucien yelled.

  Sebas was still disoriented, but he didn't question the command. He had grown accustomed to simply following orders in this chaotic journey. He ran toward Lucien, and as he drew closer, he finally got a clear picture of the situation. The massive power ripples radiating from the intense battle made his stomach drop. He started to shake in his boots; he was just a countryside noble's butler, never having been exposed to the top echelons of the world’s power.

  "Young master, what is this?" he stammered as he arrived, his voice trembling.

  "Don't worry about it," Lucien said shortly. He thrust the stone bust into Sebas’s hands. "Activate this when I say. If we miss our chance, then this will truly be all over."

  Sebas was pale, his face drained of all color, but he just nodded his head rapidly like a chicken.

  With Sebas in position, Lucien draped the heavy, tattered cloak over himself. He felt the weight of the sigils pressing against his skin. He inched closer to the battlefield and then yelled out again.

  Lucien draped the heavy, tattered cloak over himself. He felt the weight of the sigils pressing against his skin. He inched closer to the edge of the crater, the air vibrating with the sheer pressure of the paladins and the hollow sovereign's powers.

  "Dame Seraphine!" he yelled again, his voice cutting through the ringing of steel. "I need you to come pick me up! I'm jumping on your back—I’ll piggyback off you!"

  Both Paladins froze for a fraction of a second, stunned by the absurdity of the suggestion. In the middle of a battle against an ancient, mountain-leveling skeleton, a thirteen-year-old was asking for a piggyback ride.

  "Hurry up!" Lucien yelled, injecting every ounce of confidence he could muster into his tone. "I am the expert here, and I have a plan!"

  Seraphine and Valerius exchanged a desperate, fleeting look. They were exhausted, their energy reserves flickering, and they knew that even if they outlasted the crumbling skeleton, they had no way to stop the curse that would follow. They had barely survived the mother’s first wail at peak condition; now, they were prepared to sacrifice their lives just to act as a temporary seal. But here was this mysterious "expert," offering a way out.

  "I will cover you !" Valerius roared, his voice thick with grit.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He stepped forward, his boots crushing the salt floor as he took the full focus of the Sovereign. He abandoned his defensive posture and surged into the skeleton’s reach. With a guttural shout, he swung his mace in a wide, punishing arc. The Sovereign raised its grime-covered broadsword to parry, the collision sending a shockwave that cracked the pillars behind them. Valerius didn't back off; he leaned into the strike, his golden aura flaring with a frantic, overcharged brilliance to keep the skeleton’s empty sockets fixed solely on him.

  "Now!" Valerius screamed, his muscles straining against the Sovereign's superior weight.

  Seraphine didn't hesitate. She disengaged, her silver form blurring as she pivoted away from the Sovereign’s flank. She moved with the fluid grace of a dancer navigating a swamp. She was squeezing everything she had, kicking up a trail of white salt dust. She sheathed her sword mid-stride, preparing her center of gravity for the added weight.

  The Sovereign realized the shift. Its ribs hissed as it tried to wrench its sword away from Valerius to intercept the fleeing Paladin, but Valerius slammed his shield against the flat of the Sovereign's blade, pinning it.

  "Look at me, you bag of bones!" Valerius bellowed, hammering his mace against the skeleton's forearm to draw a sparking roar of energy.

  Seraphine reached the edge of the crater in seconds. She didn't slow down; she skidded to a halt just long enough to crouch low, her back turned toward Lucien.

  "Get on!" she commanded, her emerald eyes scanning the Sovereign's every twitch.

  Lucien leaped. He latched onto her pauldrons, the tattered cloak billowing around them both like a dark wing. He could feel the heat radiating from her armor and the tremor of exhaustion in her frame.

  "Hold tight," she hissed.

  She exploded back toward the center of the fray. She didn't run in a straight line; she zigzagged, dodging the shards of salt that erupted from the ground as the Sovereign stamped its foot in fury. Valerius was being pushed back, his shield beginning to splinter under the Sovereign’s relentless vertical strikes, but he was holding the Sovereign's gaze.

  Seraphine vaulted over a jagged pillar of salt, her boots barely touching the ground before she was airborne again, closing the distance between them and the towering skeletal king.

  "We're in position!" Seraphine yelled to Valerius, her voice strained. "What's the move?"

  Lucien didn’t answer. He closed his eyes for a split second, focusing his Equilibrium into the fabric of the cloak. He "tilted" the defensive properties of the runes to their absolute maximum, reinforcing the ancient threads until the cloak felt like leaden armor. He needed to be a ghost in the middle of a hurricane.

  He looked at the Paladins. Valerius was now locked in a desperate struggle, his aura dimming shockingly fast. It was no surprise; an 8th Vein master against a 10th was an impossible feat. But this was just a remnant of the past. It could not possibly show the true might of someone who had unlocked the Vein of Transcendence.

  Then he looked at the Sovereign.

  "Now, Sebas!" he yelled.

  Across the crater, Sebas activated the bust. The stone mouth gaped open, beginning the slow process of agitating the curse. But it would take time.

  "Go!" Lucien told Seraphine. "Get as close as you can. I will hold on!"

  Seraphine didn’t hesitate. She surged forward, her boots kicking up plumes of salt as she charged into the kill zone. The Sovereign, sensing the agitation from the bust and the incoming threat, let out a silent, bone-shaking roar. It swung its massive broadsword in a wide, horizontal cleave meant to bisect both Paladins at once.

  Valerius caught the brunt of it. His shield shattered into a thousand golden shards upon impact. He was forced onto one knee, his mace shaking as he used both hands to keep the grime-covered blade from crushing his skull.

  "I have you!" Seraphine screamed.

  She didn't stop to defend. She used her speed to slide under the Sovereign’s guard, her own blade flashing out to strike the black femur of the skeleton. The impact sent a jar of holy energy through the Sovereign’s frame, forcing it to shift its weight and giving Valerius the inch of breathing room he needed to heave the broadsword back.

  Lucien felt like he was being torn apart. Every time the Sovereign moved, the air pressure shifted violently, trying to rip him off Seraphine’s back. He buried his fingers into the gaps of her armor, his knuckles white, while the reinforced cloak snapped and roared in the wind like a dying beast. He felt the heat of the Paladins' holy light clashing against the Sovereign’s necrotic chill, a friction that threatened to singe his lungs.

  The Sovereign stamped its foot, and the ground beneath them erupted. Jagged salt spears shot upward. Seraphine pivoted on a single heel, twisting her body to shield Lucien from the debris while simultaneously parrying a downward strike from the Sovereign’s skeletal hand.

  "Hold on," she gritted, her breathing ragged.

  Valerius rejoined the fray, throwing his shoulder into the Sovereign's ribs. The three of them were now in a chaotic, close-quarters dance of death. Valerius acted as the anvil, taking the crushing blows of the broadsword, while Seraphine acted as the hammer, striking at the joints of the black bone.

  Lucien squeezed his eyes shut and focused everything on his grip and his Equilibrium. The world was a blur of golden sparks, black bone, and the smell of salt. He was a passenger on a storm, waiting for the moment the curse flared bright enough for him to strike.

  Then the mother’s first sob broke through the roar of battle—a harrowing, hollow sound that, for Lucien, was the signal of hope.

  "Stop attacking!" he ordered, his voice cutting through all the dust.

  The two Paladins didn’t hesitate. They shifted instantly into a desperate defensive stance, locking their flickering shields together as the invisible, oily tendrils began to lash out from the child’s obsidian eyes. As the curse flared, the Hollow Sovereign stilled. The skeletal being ignored the Paladins entirely, its hollow sockets fixing on the weeping mother with a tragic, singular focus.

  The Sovereign’s jaw unhinged, and the first notes of the ancient lullaby began to vibrate through the cavern. This was the moment. Lucien launched himself off Seraphine’s back, his hands catching the tattered, starlit robes of the skeletal king. He climbed onto the Sovereign’s back, and as the energy from a 10th Vein being began to pool, Lucien activated Equilibrium.

  He reached into the very marrow of the Sovereign, grabbing the strands of white-gold light that were leaking from the black bones. He didn't just touch them; he pulled. He dragged out every ounce of power the Sovereign had left.

  "Hush now, little spark of night, The stars are falling from their height. They heard you crying in the deep, And dove to join you in your sleep."

  As the first verse rang out, a pillar of pure, crystalline light erupted from the Sovereign’s chest. It tore through the jagged hole in the cavern ceiling, piercing the heavy clouds aboveground. The night ignited, the sky turning to a false, brilliant day. The pillar shone with a magnificent clarity, but there was something more to the light—There was a presence.

  "The sun has cast its crown away, To hide within your bed of clay. It seeks the dark within your eyes, where every light and shadow dies."

  Through the blinding luminescence of the pillar, the cavern walls seemed to dissolve. On the other side of the light, a vision of an impossible world emerged. It was a garden of eternal spring. Flowers made of liquid starlight swayed in a breeze that smelled of jasmine and ancient peace. Great weeping willows with leaves of gold dipped into silver streams, and the very air hummed with a harmony that made the curse’s wail feel like a distant, fading bad dream.

  "Your mother’s tears are made of glass, to watch the bitter seasons pass. Your father’s heart is made of lead, To keep the devils from your bed."

  In the heart of this divine garden sat a figure of overwhelming grace. She was tall, like a giant. Draped in silk that mirrored the colors of a morning sky. Around her, a plethora of celestial beings hovered in silent reverence, their wings shedding soft, glowing feathers that drifted like snow.

  But as the light reached her, the Being froze.

  In front of her stood a young boy, a brilliant symbol burning behind his back. He turned his head, his eyes widening in pure surprise as he stared directly through the rift—locking eyes with Lucien across the boundaries of existence.

  "But I will stay and hold the line, Until your crystal shutters shine. I’ll sing the stars into the well, To light the dark in which you dwell."

  The lullaby reached its crescendo. The Sovereign’s black bones turned to brilliant white ash, finally surrendering their burden. The Being stepped forward, her hand reaching toward the veil that separated their worlds. Her gaze was soft, filled with a recognition that spanned across time and death.

  "My child?" she whispered, her voice a melody that promised the end of all suffering.

  The light flared one last time—a blinding supernova of white and gold that consumed the crater, the garden, and the rift. Lucien was beyond exhausted; he could no longer hold himself together. For a fleeting second, the silence was broken by the sharp, healthy cry of a newborn infant.

  Then, the world went black.