Chapter 36 – One Chance
Luna barely had time to understand what she was seeing before Rachel’s broken form came hurtling through the air past her like a discarded doll, scales scorched and wings trailing smoke. The impact of Rachel striking the pavement somewhere behind her echoed dully through the chaos, yet Luna could not even turn fully to look, because in that same terrible stretch of seconds the sky itself seemed to open in judgment.
Light descended.
Something vast and merciless that carved through her growing army as though they were nothing more than paper silhouettes. The reinforcements she had so carefully gathered, the sisters and brothers who had believed in her, who had trusted her promise of love and ascension, were swallowed in blinding columns from above. Their screams did not last long. Their bodies burned into drifting ash that scattered across Hamilton’s streets like grey snow.
Emily stood only a few steps away from Luna, and she too seemed frozen, ears flattened so tightly against her head that they almost disappeared into her hair.
Ahead, through the rolling smoke of burnt flesh and ruined asphalt, a shape emerged.
The Knight walked forward without hesitation, without the slightest tremor of fear or doubt in her stride. In one hand she carried a shield, its surface unmarred despite the devastation around it. In the other she held her spear, glowing faintly, its light not bright like the angel’s judgment but steady and terrible, like an ember that refused to die.
“Emily, regroup with the others quickly!” Luna shouted, her voice straining against the ringing in her ears.
She did not know why she and her circle had been spared from the heavenly fire. Perhaps they truly were too powerful for such a wide spell to erase so easily. Or perhaps the angel had chosen not to kill them. Perhaps they were meant to witness this.
Emily did not move.
She stared at the advancing Knight, pupils wide, shoulders trembling.
“Emily, move now!” Luna commanded, summoning every ounce of authority she possessed as leader.
The catgirl jolted as though waking from a nightmare, then broke into a sprint, darting to the side in an attempt to circle the Knight and rejoin the others who still lived.
Luna blinked only once.
The Knight vanished.
There was no blur, nor a streak of motion that Luna could track. One heartbeat she was a dozen metres away, emerging from smoke. The next heartbeat she was simply not there.
A scream tore through the air.
Emily flew past Luna in the opposite direction Rachel had, body twisting midair before she crashed hard against the cracked concrete and rolled limply.
Luna’s head snapped forward.
The Knight stood where Emily had been.
Those glowing red eyes, set in black sclera, locked onto Luna with a focus so intense it felt like a physical pressure. This was her. This was the one from the videos, the one Umbra warned of.
Their nemesis.
And above her, somewhere in the smoke-streaked sky, hovered the angel.
The recordings had done the Knight no justice at all, in person she was overwhelming. Nearly twice Luna’s height, yet built with an eerie leanness that made her seem almost elegant, though there was no mistaking the strength within that frame. Her horn curved upward in a magnificent arc, framing a face that was deeply inhuman. Her mouth stretched wide across her face, split into a furious snarl that revealed far too many needle-like teeth.
The Knight stopped perhaps a dozen metres away and slowly raised her glowing spear.
Her voice carried clearly through smoke and distant gunfire.
“I will give you three chances to surrender. Each one you turn down will cost you. Prove to me you are free of the Witch’s thrall.”
Luna felt heat rise in her chest, anger overpowering fear.
“I won’t let you kill Umbra! I won’t let you kill my friends, evildoer!” she shouted, lowering her stance and bracing herself.
The Knight tilted her head slightly.
“Why would I kill myself? I am here to stop you.”
The words struck Luna like a slap, but she refused to falter.
“I won’t yield!” she declared.
The Knight exhaled, a long sound that almost resembled a weary sigh.
“Fine. First, I will take your arm.”
The world compressed. One instant the Knight stood at a distance. The next she was directly in front of Luna, spear already thrusting forward in a blur of silver light. Luna’s body reacted on instinct alone. She rolled sharply to the side, the spear stabbing into empty space where her arm had been a fraction of a second earlier. The pavement cracked beneath the impact.
Using the momentum of her roll, Luna pushed herself upright with the aid of her tail and conjured a spear of jagged ice in her hand, the cold biting into her palm as she hurled it with all her strength.
The ice spike shattered uselessly against the Knight’s shield, fragments scattering like brittle glass.
The Knight surged forward again, relentless, spear angling toward Luna’s right arm as promised. Luna pivoted, barely slipping around the thrust, and whipped her tail across the Knight’s chest with enough force to stagger her..
Seizing the moment, Luna summoned fire, the flames swirling into a compact sphere in her hand before she launched it directly at that horned silhouette.
Again the shield intercepted it, the blaze collapsing against its surface and dissolving as though swallowed.
Heavy hooves thundered against stone.
Harry burst from the smoke with a roar, massive frame lowered as he charged and slammed into the Knight from behind. The impact drove her forward, metal boots screeching against concrete as sparks sprayed from beneath her soles.
Yet she did not fall.
Instead, her body twisted in a way that looked disturbingly unnatural, her shield whipping backward in a brutal arc that smashed into the side of Harry’s head. The blow loosened his grip just enough.
The Knight tore free and sprang several metres away in a single fluid motion.
Luna did not hesitate. She coated her remaining arm in a blade of sharpened ice, shaping it as finely as she could, and lunged toward the joint behind the Knight’s knee while her back was turned.
Then a pillar of blinding radiance crashed down in front of her without warning. Luna barely threw herself sideways in time, but her right arm was caught in the descending beam.
Pain unlike anything she had ever known consumed her. It was not simple burning. It was purification, annihilation, a sensation of being erased piece by piece. She screamed as her arm disintegrated into nothing, balance failing her mid-strike as she stumbled and collapsed to one knee.
High above, wings spread against smoke and fire, the angel hovered.
The Knight did not even look back.
“That was the cost of your first refusal,” she said evenly. “Surrender.”
Luna trembled, clutching at the empty space where her arm had been.
“N-never!” she spat, forcing the word past clenched teeth. “I won’t let you hurt Umbra!”
Another sigh escaped the Knight, quieter this time.
Harry, furious and wounded, attempted to swing a heavy punch at her towering form. The Knight abruptly tossed her spear upward, caught his fist mid-motion with one gauntleted hand, then twisted sharply.
A sickening snap echoed through the air, followed by Harry’s howl of agony.
The Knight released him and kicked off the ground, retreating several paces with effortless grace, then caught the spear on its way back down.
“Your master, the Witch of the Void, stole my name,” she declared, voice carrying with unwavering conviction. “I am Countess Umbra Steelblight, hero of Ganymede.”
Luna blinked through tears of pain.
“The moon?” she asked weakly.
A faint shrug rolled through the Knight’s shoulders.
“Weird coincidence.”
Rage flared again in Luna’s chest despite everything.
“How do I know you didn’t steal her name!”
The Knight regarded her steadily, those red eyes unblinking, as if staring directly into her soul.
“I suppose you don’t,” she replied. “But truth does not bend to delusion.”
The Knight exhaled, a slow, almost weary sigh, adjusting her spear behind her with cold precision so the tip angled toward the cracked concrete below. Sarah, charging recklessly, blitzed into the motion, and with a sickening sound, the spear pierced her thigh. Her scream cut through smoke and ruin.
Clutching the wound, blood streaking her fingers, Sarah collapsed, writhing in shock and pain. The Knight’s movements were fluid and terrifyingly precise; she lifted the vampire, still impaled, and hurled her toward Emily and Rachel with effortless control. Sarah landed hard among them, sobbing and clawing at her injury, helpless beneath the towering, red-eyed Knight who now surveyed them with calm inevitability.
“My wife and I are outnumbered, thrall, but you are outmatched. The only reason my wife has not executed you yet is because we are trying to save you from yourselves. But our time runs thin if we are to save you and this world from the Witch of the Void. Surrender, please. Do not force me to take lives that could be spared.”
Luna’s body froze mid-motion, her tail twitching nervously behind her. Could it be true? Could this towering, horned Knight, the one who had shattered their army in moments, really be speaking the truth? No, it was impossible. She remembered every moment with Umbra, the real Umbra, the months of working together, fighting together, learning together. Everything she had trusted, every ounce of belief in the Knight’s care and guidance… it all insisted this must be deception.
“No,” Luna spat, voice trembling with a mixture of defiance and desperate hope. “I do not know you! But I have worked with Umbra for months! She cares about us! She loves us! She only wants to help everyone!”
The Knight’s red eyes narrowed.
“Months? The Witch has been in Hamilton for less than a day,” she said almost reproachfully.
“That’s not possible!” Sarah’s voice broke through the tension, still clutching her mangled thigh, sweat and blood streaking her pale face. “I remember all those training sessions she put us through! I remember her instructions, her patience, her—”
“She’s lying,” Luna cut her off sharply, shaking her head, her tail flicking in agitation, “she’s trying to confuse us, to make us doubt ourselves.”
The Knight did not flinch, did not raise her voice in anger. She simply said, measured and precise: “I swear to the Triumvirate, I am not lying. Now surrender.”
“No,” Luna repeated, more stubborn than ever, her body rigid with determination and disbelief.
The Knight’s shoulders lifted slightly as if shrugging against the weight of her own patience, a long sigh that carried something beyond frustration—resignation, perhaps, or the inevitability of action. She looked up at the hovering angel above, and spoke something in a different language to each other. Then they nodded, almost in resignation.
The angel said something none of them understood and light fell with surgical precision, searing through the broken group with unflinching judgment. One horn of Luna’s was splintered and seared away. Rachel’s torn wings smoldered, scales and flesh alike evaporating into smoke. Harry’s powerful arm was lost, burned away in a motion that made him howl and collapse onto one knee. Emily shrieked as her tail, once so supple and fluid, was consumed in the divine light, leaving her helpless and unbalanced. Each beam struck only once, but it was enough to fracture, maim, and humiliate, to strip them of power and pride and leave them gasping, broken, screaming under the unrelenting radiance.
The Knight’s voice cut through the agony again, sounding sorrowful but resolute.
“I do not take pleasure in this. Not like your Mistress does. This is your last chance. After this, we will ensure that you are removed from the fight permanently.”
Even in the face of pain and horror of the darkening sky, there was clarity in her words, a terrible honesty that demanded recognition. Luna’s chest heaved as she tried to hold herself upright, her defiance clashing with the undeniable truth of the Knight’s power, and the slow, unbearable realization that she and her circle were no longer in control, and perhaps never had been.
“We… we won’t let you kill us,” Luna rasped, her voice thin and ragged from pain and smoke, her remaining hand pressed against the scorched ruin where her arm had once been. She forced herself upright despite the tremor running through her body, chin lifted in defiance even as tears blurred her vision.
The Knight’s red eyes flared brighter.
“Are you so lost in your delusion that you cannot understand me?” she thundered, her voice no longer calm but booming with frustration that shook the broken street around them. “I do not want to kill you! Your friend begged me to save you from yourselves. So survive to the next day. Cease your atrocities. Is that truly so much to ask?”
The words struck something uncertain in Luna’s chest.
“W-what friend?” she demanded, though her voice faltered.
“Samuel Wilson. He came to us. He begged us to save you.”
The name hit like a physical blow.
“Samuel…?” Luna whispered. “He disappeared weeks ago. You stole him. You’re the reason he’s gone.”
The Knight’s expression hardened, though not with cruelty, but with something closer to disbelief.
“You transformed Samuel last night. He separated from your group eight hours ago and sought us out. Are you so far gone that you cannot even measure time?”
“That’s not true!” Luna screamed, shaking her head violently. “Lies! Liar, liar, liar!”
Her voice cracked on the last word, breaking apart under its own strain.
For a moment, the battlefield seemed to quiet around them. The Knight held Luna’s gaze without blinking. Beneath the monstrous features, beneath the horn and the serrated snarl, there was something like sorrow flickering there.
“Last chance,” she said more quietly now. “Surrender.”
Tears streamed freely down Luna’s face. Her thoughts spiraled in frantic circles. Had it been hopeless from the beginning? Umbra had told them they would stand a chance if they stood together, that unity was strength, that love would overcome force, but the Knight and the Angel towered over them like living cataclysms. Even now, wounded and crippled, Luna could not deny the truth pressing in around her.
If the angel had wished it, beams could have erased them outright. If the Knight had wished it, her spear could have taken hearts instead of limbs.
The timeframes the Knight described… they had to be lies... They had to be! Luna remembered the first day Umbra had appeared, remembered the long nights of training, the strategy sessions, the reassurance in her voice. Those memories were vivid and filled with warmth.
Umbra would never lie.
But… Samantha and Jason were still hidden. Umbra, the real Umbra, was moving through the southern districts even now. If they could just stall, just survive a little longer, perhaps everything could still turn.
Yes. They only needed to endure.
Luna swallowed hard and forced her shoulders to relax.
“We surrender,” she said at last.
“Mistress!” the others cried out in disbelief, pain and outrage mingling in their voices.
“We stand no chance,” Luna continued, steadying herself, masking her desperation beneath forced pragmatism. “We are beaten. Better to live through this than to die where we lie.”
The Knight studied her carefully, as though weighing the sincerity of every syllable. Then, slowly, the tension in her posture eased. A gentle, pained smile touched her monstrous mouth.
“Thank you,” she said, genuine relief threading through her deep voice. “I take no pleasure in hurting you. But it had to be done.”
Luna felt it before she fully understood what she was sensing, a familiar pressure gathering at the edges of her awareness like standing too close to a great furnace and feeling the heat before seeing the flame. It was not the towering Knight in front of her, nor the radiant angel hovering above, but something she had come to recognize with reverence and devotion.
Umbra was near!
Not the armored impostor who claimed stolen titles, but her Umbra, the one who had taught them, guided them, promised them a future where they would not have to hide or beg or suffer. That presence pressed blessfully close.
Then something brushed against her thoughts, a command that slid through her mind and settled there with absolute certainty.
Hold them for just a few more seconds. After that, everything would change.
Luna forced herself to sag slightly, to let her breathing grow uneven, masking the flicker of hope igniting in her chest.
“Good, good,” the Knight was saying, the tension in her massive frame easing ever so slightly as she accepted the surrender. “Tell me where the Witch of the Void is and—”
The light in the sky shifted in a way that made the skin prickle. It warped, as though the brightness itself were being pulled inward toward a single point high above them. The air grew heavy and dense enough that drawing breath felt suddenly more difficult, and the lingering radiance that surrounded Farah twisted in on itself.
Then a cry rang out, not one of command or righteous fury, but of pain so sudden and unguarded that it froze every soul on the battlefield.
Heads turned upward in unison and saw the angel fall.
Her wings faltered mid-beat, feathers scattering light in uneven pulses as she dropped from the heavens. At the center of her torso gaped a wound that defied understanding. It wasn’t bleeding nor was it burned, but the hole was filled with a churning mass of darkness that writhed as though alive. It sealed the opening with motion that was wrong to look at, wrong in a way that made the stomach lurch.
“FARAH!” the Knight roared, and the sound that tore from her throat carried more fear than Luna had thought possible from such a being.
Her shield crashed to the pavement, the impact cracking stone. The spear followed, forgotten without hesitation. In a single fluid motion she launched herself upward, armor gleaming as she rose to intercept the angel’s descent, catching Farah against her chest before gravity could claim her entirely.
They struck the ground together in a controlled but violent landing much further down the street, the concrete fracturing beneath the force as dust and debris rolled outward in a choking cloud. The Knight dropped to one knee within the shallow crater she had created, gathering Farah close with a care that seemed painfully at odds with the destruction she was capable of.
Luna’s heart pounded so hard it hurt. The presence in her mind surged, no longer patient but swelling with unmistakable triumph.
Now this was the opening they had been promised, the fracture in their enemies’ unity, the moment carved out by sacrifice and strategy. This was their chance.