At Samira's words, the Guardian multiplied again... an army of them.
Strax and Scarlet stood firm, side by side, facing the real Guardian, while the spiritual field raged with his distorted echoes - a thousand horrors walking, crawling, flying, trying to intervene.
But the others were already at work.
Cassandra was the first to attack. With a gesture, she conjured a spear made of ice - each throw cut through the air with surgical precision, and where it hit, the clones scread in voices that never existed, disintegrating into spirit crystals that exploded like ethereal grenades.
Daniela, her eyes glowing, spun her chains made of blood - each blow was a prison, each lash sealed a clone in a circle of chaos, shattering them in precise cuts.
Belatrix appeared above three of them at once, her fists wrapped in blades of wind. She descended in free fall, and the impact of her punch created a storm of blades that collapsed the clones as if they had never existed.
"Look out behind you, Dani!" shouted Monica, before running through one of the spectres with a curved beam, made of plasma charged with her electricity. She danced through the air like a living storm - her every step leaving thunderous streaks in space.
Beatrice, smiling angrily, manipulated her rays in the distance. With a snap of her fingers, from the heavens, a storm of precise lightning bolts began to fall on the site, killing thousands of them each ti they struck.
Samira spun in the air with her flaming blade, holding it tightly. Her laughter echoed among the roars of war. "What kind of god creates such pathetic copies?" She cut with the grace of a dance and the precision of an executioner.
High above, Scarlet focused on the real enemy. Her eyes - now completely black with rings of red runes - fixed on the titan's central eyes.
"He's going to try to consu the entire plane," she told Strax, her voice echoing across three simultaneous planes.
"Let him try." Strax spun Artorias' sword, which now blazed with the weight of ti and justice. "Let's just smash him again and again. This guy is persistent, he'll only die when his faith is destroyed."
Scarlet flew like a blade of blood and fury, her arms opening to channel the surrounding field of souls. Thousands of spectral bats beca ethereal arrows. She fired them all into the chest of the colossus, who staggered for a mont, letting out a roar that made the floating mountains tremble.
But it responded.
With a gesture, the Guardian multiplied the heavens. Copies of the firmant tore apart, each spitting out living swords, judgntal eyes, and chains made of guilt and sin. They fell like tortured rain on the spiritual field.
Strax jumped. With a violent twist, he shattered part of the storm with his flaming blade, making his way into the titan's heart.
"SCARLET, NOW!" he roared.
She raised her hands. All the blood in the field spun like a red orb, forming a living sphere of arcane pressure and despair.
She threw it.
The Guardian raised his hand.
And the sphere of blood thrown by Scarlet - a storm of pain, souls and arcanovampiric pressure - was simply shattered. It evaporated into thin air, as if it had never existed. A gesture. A silence. Absolute contempt.
But that was exactly what they wanted.
"Distracted," muttered Strax, appearing behind the colossus' back with a violent flash of dinsional displacent. Its eyes burned molten orange. His wings opened in a thunderclap. He inhaled deeply.
And then it spat fire.
Not ordinary fire. Dragon's breath. The titanic Guardian's body scread, staggering backwards, covered in flas that burned in shades of amber, red and black.
With a seismic impact, the titan fell to the spiritual ground, close to the abode of the Spirits, far enough away not to interfere with Ouroboross and Tiamat who were keeping the White Ray piercing the sky under control.
Scarlet didn't hesitate. From her wrists, streams of living blood snaked out, piercing the earth, erging around the Guardian's arms and legs. The chains closed with sharp snaps, binding the fallen god like an ancient sacrifice.
He tried to react.
He tried to summon another copy of the sky.
But the air beca heavy.
And then... Strax appeared in front of him. Steely eyes. Burning shadow. He held out his hand, and in his palm glowed an ancient rune - "Containnt", learned from Artorias' mories, a symbol made to contain formless things, ancient dragon seals forged at the end of the First Age.
The rune lit up with a golden light, lting into the Guardian's chest with a dry, eternal sound - like the nail in a cosmic coffin.
Everything around stopped.
The skies froze. The Guardian's replicas, who were still fighting their daughters and allies, scread in unison before dissolving into mist and being sucked back into their trapped bodies.
The Guardian gasped. The light in his eyes flickered.
"It'll last a while..." muttered Strax, panting, observing the silence that followed. The streams of blood vibrated with the effort of containing such an entity. He approached, Artorias' sword still firmly in his hand.
Scarlet held the chains tight, eyes half-closed. "Enjoy. Ask."
Strax knelt before the deford monstrous face of the Guardian, who now looked more... human. Or perhaps... less godlike. Just a shadow with mories.
"How do we bring back the Spirit Realm?" - his voice was sharp, direct, the weight of the world compressed into a few words.
The Guardian... smiled.
Even restrained. Even without power.
"You already know. It's in the bones of ti. In what you call mory..."
Strax frowned. "Speak clearly, damn it."
The Guardian blinked slowly. "You destroyed it by sealing it in a stupid sword"
Scarlet frowned. "If it had been destroyed you wouldn't be alive, you retard."
"I'm just the evil remains." His voice vibrated like distant thunder. "The Real One is dead."
And then...
Sothing shook.
Not on the ground. Not in the sky.
Inside the seal.
Scarlet took a step back. "Strax..."
The containnt rune cracked in the center. Small golden lines beca fractures, and from the center of them a different hand erged. Not the Guardian's.
But from sothing inside him.
"That wasn't in the plan." Strax stepped back, sword steady.
The Guardian's eyes widened - not with power, but with fear.
"No... He woke up. You opened up too much."
The earth split beneath the imprisoned Guardian's feet, and a shadow erged from it like a naless snake. An arm made of pure vacuum, where no light could survive, stretched up to the sky, tearing the seal from the inside.
"What... is that?" whispered Scarlet.
"The true King..." replied the Guardian, now trembling.
The Guardian's mouth tore open - it didn't just open, it split, as if it couldn't contain what was about to erge. Bones broke, shadows distorted, and from the titan's throat burst a white flash like no other on that dark plane.
And then it ca out.
A man.
Or sothing that appeared to be.
White robes, heavenly, but tainted by an unnatural glow - as if they reflected light from a sun that no longer existed. The fabrics floated, without wind. Her feet didn't touch the ground. Her skin was translucent, her eyes two colorless orbs that forced any soul to look away. In his chest, there was a hole, and inside it... emptiness.
"What a misfortune..." he said, without moving his lips.
The voice was felt, not heard. A presence that invaded thought, invaded mories. Everyone present felt as if they had been seen in their entirety, as if their innermost secrets had been touched.
Strax stepped forward, Artorias' sword in hand. "Who are you?"
The man raised his head, empty eyes locked on Strax's.
"The Spirit King," he said.
Scarlet tightened the chains, trying to reinforce the broken seal. But her blood boiled as she approached him. The chains retreated of their own accord.
"That can't be right..." she muttered. "I'm sure a being like that can't survive long outside the Kingdom... Because you-"
"That's a human myth," said the King, floating over the spirit field, "I just had pacts that didn't allow to move around the Realms. Simple. But Artorias broke the pact and sealed in a fucking sword. He freed ."
Strax looked at the sword in his hand. Artorias' sword... was shaking.
The air exploded with a dry, absolute sound - a reality shift in itself.
In an almost lazy gesture, the Spirit King raised his hand and struck Strax with a wave of pure existential denial.
Strax was thrown backwards like a falling star, crossing three floating mountains and leaving a trail of flas and plane shards. The impact of his fall shook the spirit field like a war drum.
Artorias' sword spun in the air and fell slowly, embedding itself in the ground at the Spirit King's feet.
He unhurriedly floated down to it. With long, pale fingers, he raised the blade. He watched it like a curious parent in front of a toy he doesn't understand.
"Like a piece of matter..." he murmured, turning the sword over, feeling the runes pulse faintly "...were you able to seal in?"
He brought his face close to the blade, and for a second, the light inside the sword tried to react. But it was faint. Weak. As if even the sword was rembering who was in front of it.
"Artorias..." whispered the King. "Even you would fear what I'm about to do."
He closed his hand around the blade and, with a simple snap of spiritual force, broke it.
But... breaking it caused... sothing no one could have imagined.
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