Chapter 126: Cold Moon
The silence that followed the Guardian’s crash was heavier than the roar of the previous battle.
A ragged, wet breath escaped from his broken visor, laced with a dark trickle. The ground beneath him seemed to drink his vital essence. In front of him, the Lady of Midnight advanced. Every step was agony, a defiance of gravity and her own nightmare anatomy. Her body, now a forest writhing with supernumerary limbs, weeping eyes and mouths whispering curses, dragged itself forward with obscene slowness. The gnarled mass replacing her wounded flank throbbed like a sick heart.
The Guardian saw her twisted shadow spill over him. Saw the forest of claws rise, ready to strike him down. Despair should have consumed him. Instead, a glacial calm took over – the final reflex of a system on the verge of collapse. His one functional arm, the one still holding the Jian whose blade was now a jagged, smoking spine, extended forward. Not to block. Not to strike. But to plant the sword into the ground before him, like a final line in the sand.
The blade vibrated as it met the hardened earth. A faint glow, barely visible – more memory than light – ran along its chipped edge. Not enough to wound. Just enough to be seen by the maddened constellation of eyes fixed on him.
She hesitated for a fraction of a second. Like the ancient instinct of prey before a raised blade, dulled though it was. A moment’s pause in the storm of her fury.
That was all the Guardian needed.
With a roar that tore through his throat and spat out a jet of black blood, he lunged forward. Straight into the beast’s monstrous belly.
He left the Jian behind, planted like a silent reproach. His bare hands, slick with blood and grime, didn’t grasp a weapon—they seized the strongest pulse within the twisted knot of petrified entrails that had replaced her wounded flank.
The Lady of Midnight screamed. A real sound this time. A physical rupture in the air that made the Guardian’s bones shiver. A dozen claws came down on him, shredding what was left of his armor, digging into the already broken meat of his back.
He felt ribs give way, a lung punctured. The taste of copper and ash flooded his mouth. But his fingers, like iron vices, sank into the cold, viscous tissue of the growth. He pulled, with the madness of a man trying to tear a stone from a mountain.
He didn’t tear it free. He ripped it apart.