The approaching figure began to exert a staggering amount of pressure. The assailants were trembling, the Paladins were trembling, and even Lucien felt the involuntary shake in his hands. What the hell can exert this much pressure?

  A gentle light manifested from the far side of the tunnel. In the shifting glow, Lucien noticed the assailants readying themselves to bolt. Without a word, he snatched a stone and hurled it at Sir Valerius.

  The Paladin spun around, seeing the group preparing to vanish into the shadows. He moved into immediate action, cutting off their escape and pinning them in place.

  "What is going on? Who is coming?" Valerius barked.

  The men refused to answer, their eyes darting toward the tunnel with a look of pure, unadulterated dread. Valerius’s gaze swept the group until it landed on the one man adorned with specialized tools—the Engraver. He plucked the man out of the crowd by the collar. Engravers were a notoriously selfish sort; it was a stereotype, but in this moment, it was a lifeline.

  "What is it?" Valerius yelled. He grabbed the man’s arm and bent it sharply in the wrong direction. The engraver let out a jagged yelp.

  The other assailants jumped into action, desperate to protect their comrade, but Seraphine intervened instantly. She suppressed them all with a flare of her aura, rendering them powerless against the two Paladins.

  "Speak," Seraphine commanded. "If you speak, you may escape this unscathed. What is coming through that tunnel?"

  The engraver looked toward the growing white-gold light, his teeth chattering so hard they sounded like rattling dice.

  The engraver’s eyes went wide as the white-gold radiance began to lick the edges of the salt pillars. "The light..." he wheezed, his voice cracking. "It seals the curse!"

  "Shut up!" one of the other assailants barked, lunging forward, but Valerius’s aura pinned him back.

  The engraver ignored his comrade, his terror overriding his loyalty. "The Sovereign is the source of that light! It’s the only thing keeping the curse from going wild!"

  "What Sovereign?" Valerius demanded, twisting the man’s arm even harder. The engraver shrieked, the sound echoing off the crystalline ceiling. "The first—"

  Before he could finish, the man holding the stone bust moved with a desperate, jerky speed. He flicked his wrist, and a throwing knife hissed through the air, burying itself deep in the engraver’s throat. The man slumped, his secrets dying with a wet gargle.

  The group spun around to the man with the bust. He was pale and trembling, but a fanatical, determined look was etched into his face. "You're fucked," he spat. That was all he said.

  The heavy footsteps reached a crescendo. From the mouth of the tunnel, the figure finally emerged, and the sight of it froze the breath in Lucien’s lungs.

  It was an undead skeleton, but unlike any Lucien had seen in his studies. Its bones were pitch-black—not the color of rot, but the color of the void—yet somehow, they emitted a soft, pulsing light that pushed back the shadows. On its back, it carried a massive broadsword, the blade so encrusted with ancient grime and dried blood that it looked like a slab of rusted iron. Its clothes were little more than tattered, light-woven rags, but the embroidery was enough to identify it as a relic of an era long since buried.

  "The Hollow Sovereign..." the man with the bust whispered, a manic laugh bubbling up from his chest. "We might have failed to spread the curse, but at least we took down two Paladins with us!"

  The rest of the assailants joined in the laughter—a sound of men who knew they were already dead. This operation had been a walk on a knife’s edge from the start. They had lost their engraver, their only means of controlling the curse’s flow, and now they were trapped between two 8th Vein Paladins and an unknown monster.

  Their fates were sealed, and they were going to enjoy the carnage.

  The Sovereign didn't look at them. Its hollow sockets, burning with a faint white ember, fixed solely on the child. The massive broadsword on its back began to hum, a low vibration that made the salt beneath Lucien’s feet start to crack.

  The Sovereign’s skull unhinged, and a brilliant, sacred glow spilled from the empty jaw as the ancient melody filled the cathedral once more.

  "Hush now, little spark of night..."

  The lullaby acted as a physical force. As the Sovereign sang, the desiccated woman’s mouth snapped shut, and her head slumped as she finally entered a forced, artificial rest. But the child remained unchanged, its obsidian eyes staring vacantly into the ceiling, drinking the light.

  Lucien forced his Equilibrium into his vision, and the sight nearly blinded him. Every inch of the Sovereign’s pitch-black skeletal frame was etched with glowing sigils.

  "The 10th Vein," Valerius whispered, his voice cracking with a fear Lucien had never heard from him. "The Vein of Transcendence."

  The Sovereign let out a low, vibrating roar that shook the very foundation of the salt mines. It reached back, grasping the hilt of the grime-covered broadsword.

  Alarms screamed in Lucien’s mind. He lunged for the unconscious Sebas, throwing his servant arm over his shoulder and retreating with every ounce of strength he could muster.

  The Sovereign swung.

  The motion was agonizingly slow, as if the weight of the sword was dragging the flow of time along with it. A wave of gentle, white light rippled from the blade. It looked peaceful, but the reality was a distortion of space itself.

  "Light that does not burn, light that does not fade—" Seraphine and Valerius roared in unison, their voices overlapping in a desperate, high-speed chant.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “By Solenne’s name, I call! Circle what I guard. Harden the air. Refuse the blow! Let malice end at me— until I fall, nothing passes.”

  Two massive shields of crystalline light materialized in front of them, overlapping to create a fortress of 8th Vein divinity.

  The collision was silent at first. Then, the world turned white.

  The remaining assailants didn't even have time to scream. Though they weren't the target, the sheer atmospheric pressure of the Sovereign's "gentle" light vaporized them instantly, leaving nothing but scorched ashes where they had stood.

  Lucien felt the shockwave hit him like a mountain. Even at a distance, the force launched him and Sebas through the air. The world spun—salt, stone, and white-gold light blurring into a single chaotic mess.

  Lucien tucked Sebas against his chest, twisting his body in mid-air to take the brunt of the impact. They slammed into a distant salt pillar, the stone shattering behind them. Lucien’s vision went dark for a second as the air was punched out of his lungs, but he held on.

  As the dust settled, the cathedral was unrecognizable. The Hollow Sovereign's strike hadn't just leveled the room; it had carved a path through the earth itself, shattering the cave system above them.

  Lucien looked up, his breath hitching. He could see the night sky—the cold, distant stars peering through a jagged tear in the mountain. Rumors had always claimed that a strike from someone who had reached the 10th Vein could level mountains, but seeing it was a different horror entirely. Even in the past, Ray Melbourne didn't wield this type of casual devastation. Ray could have achieved it if he had gone all out, but for this skeleton to do it with a single, effortless swing was a terrifying display of transcendence.

  In the center of the massive, smoking crater stood the Sovereign, his heavy broadsword lowered back toward the salt.

  Lucien breathed a sigh of relief. Through the haze, the two Paladins emerged. Their armor was scorched, and their golden shields were spider-webbed with deep cracks, flickering like dying embers, but they stood tall. Though sweat poured down their faces and their breathing was heavy, they did not buckle. They held their ground with the defiant pride of High Paladins.

  "Still standing..." Valerius exhaled, his voice steady even as he tightened his grip on his mace.

  Beside him, Seraphine stood with her head held high, her emerald eyes fixed on the skeletal king. She was shaken by the display of power, but her spirit remained unbroken. She noticed that despite the crater, the mother and child remained untouched on a small, isolated pillar of salt—the Sovereign had perfectly controlled the wake of his blow to spare the Vessel.

  The Sovereign tilted its pitch-black skull. It didn't seem angry that they had survived, nor did it seem impressed. It was indifferent, the way a mountain is indifferent to the wind. It was simply waiting for the next "note" of the silence to fall.

  Lucien, still sheltering Sebas in the shadows of the debris, realized the danger hadn't passed. He recognized one thing. That attack was very powerful, but it did not come from a living creature. This was an animated skeleton. An ancient skeleton at that. It was still a limited vessel compared to a living, breathing 10th Vein master. The Sovereign was reaching the limit of what those old bones could channel, but he wasn't done yet.

  The Sovereign didn’t wait for them to recover. It moved with a sudden, jerky speed that defied its skeletal frame, the massive broadsword whistling as it cut a horizontal arc through the air.

  Valerius met the blow head-on. He planted his feet, his mace glowing with a fierce, steady light as he braced against the flat of the ancient blade. The impact buried the Paladin’s boots inches into the salt floor, the vibration rattling his teeth, but he didn't buckle. He let out a guttural grunt, shoving the massive sword upward to create an opening.

  Seraphine took it instantly. She was a silver blur, sliding beneath the arc of the Sovereign’s weapon. Her blade flickered like a serpent’s tongue, striking three times in rapid succession against the skeleton’s pitch-black ribs. Each strike rang out with the sound of metal on tempered glass, leaving white scores across the bone but failing to shatter them.

  The Sovereign’s free hand clamped into a fist. A pulse of white-gold force erupted from its center, throwing Seraphine back. She twisted in mid-air, her cape snapping like a whip as she corrected her balance and landed in a low crouch.

  Before the skeleton could reset its stance, Valerius surged forward. He swung his mace in a brutal upward diagonal, catching the Sovereign’s shoulder. The black bone didn't break, but the force of the 8th Vein impact sent the towering figure stumbling back toward the center of the crater.

  The Sovereign regained its footing and drove the point of its broadsword into the salt. The ground rippled. Jagged shards of salt and stone erupted from the floor like spears, shooting toward the Paladins.

  Seraphine moved with fluid grace, dancing between the rising spikes, her sword parrying the shards that flew too close. Valerius didn't dodge; he walked through the storm, his shield raised, the shards shattering against his golden aura like glass against a wall.

  They reached the Sovereign at the same time.

  Valerius came in high, his mace coming down in a vertical crushing blow. Seraphine went low, her sword lunging for the Sovereign’s knee joint. The skeleton dropped its sword and caught Valerius’s mace with one hand, the impact cracking the salt beneath its feet. With the other hand, it swiped at Seraphine, its long, skeletal fingers narrowly missing her throat as she recoiled.

  For a moment, the three were locked in a stalemate of pure, concentrated power. The Sovereign’s black bones began to hiss, the soft light within them flickering as the Paladins’ combined holy auras began to burn at its necrotic frame.

  The skeleton’s jaw unhinged, letting out a silent, vibrating roar that shook the very air. It shoved Valerius back with a surge of raw light energy and kicked outward, forcing Seraphine to leap away.

  The Sovereign reached back for its broadsword, but as its fingers closed around the hilt, a visible crack spider-webbed up its forearm. The vessel was starting to fail. The bones couldn't hold the 10th Vein pressure much longer.

  The two Paladins didn't give it a chance for another big attack. They fanned out, circling the skeleton from opposite sides, their breaths coming in synchronized rhythms as they prepared for the next exchange.

  Lucien’s mind raced as he watched the three titans clash. He realized the trap history had laid for them. It seemed history was repeating itself—he realized that in the original timeline, these two must have confronted the Hollow Sovereign and defeated it, only to realize too late that they had to become the replacements for the curse.

  The timeline had accelerated. In his memories of the future, Lucien had been eighteen when the Paladins fell; now, he was only thirteen. The five-year difference didn't change the grim outcome—if the Sovereign’s skeletal vessel shattered, the "Sealing Lullaby" would vanish with it. With nothing left to anchor the curse, the exhausted Paladins would sacrifice their own souls to act as the new seals, falling into that same eternal sleep that had crippled the Church’s power.

  That future left the world with only one Paladin—the weakest of the three—whom Ray Melborne eventually cut down.

  He had come here to prevent a tragedy, so that was exactly what he was going to do.

  Lucien looked around and spotted the cloak the assailants had used to hide the mother and child. It was tattered and scorched from the shockwaves, but as he focused his Equilibrium, he could see the sigils were still deep and active. An engraver's masterpiece didn't lose its power that easily.

  He moved with silent efficiency, dragging the unconscious Sebas into a crevice and piling salt-shattered rocks over him to keep him shielded from the coming fallout.

  "I'm not letting them sleep," Lucien whispered.

  He burst from the shadows, staying low as he lunged for the tattered cloak. He felt the cold, heavy weight of the sigils as he grabbed the fabric, his Equilibrium already beginning to hum. He had a plan, but he would only have one chance to bridge the gap between the fading light of the Sovereign and the darkness of the child.