The succubus leapt from the dead tree like a falling crow, her translucent wings stretching behind her, made of veils and screams. The impact of her arrival made the ground shake. The surrounding trees bowed, as if the forest itself feared her presence.
But Kael did not flinch. He did not blink. He simply raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
The energy that had been building between his fingers exploded into green flas, burning with an intensity that was not physical, but spiritual. The air around him rippled, as if lting from the invisible heat of magic. Kael’s hair floated in strange spirals, driven by a force that seed alive.
"Then co," he said, his voice low and sharp. "Destroy , if you can."
The succubus smiled with sharp teeth. "You will be my greatest delight, Kael. I have never tasted a soul like yours. So bitter. So ancient. So... scarred."
She lunged forward. In a second, she was upon him, claws raised, eyes shining with promises of death and pleasure. But Kael had already moved. His body turned to smoke for an instant, dodging the attack, and reappeared behind her with a spear of green light in his hands.
He threw it.
The succubus turned at the last mont, the projectile grazing her belly, leaving a wound that opened and closed almost instantly. Black blood fell to the ground, and where it touched, the vegetation died.
Kael took two steps back. Not out of fear—out of calculation.
Exelia slowly got up, wiping blood from her face, her eyes refocusing. Liora kept her hand on the amulet around her neck, trying to resist the residual psychic influence of the illusion.
"Kael! She’s still draining the forest’s energy!" Liora shouted. "She’s connected to the roots. She’s using the earth itself as a shield!"
"Great," he growled. "Then I’ll kill the forest too."
The succubus laughed. "You would do that, wouldn’t you? Kill everything around you just to get to ."
Kael pointed at her. "It wouldn’t be the first ti."
With a gesture, he dug his hands into the ground. The earth shook, and in a twenty-ter circle around him, everything rotted. The trees withered, the grass died, the insects fell motionless. He sucked the life around him to convert it into raw magical energy.
The succubus staggered.
"You’ve gone mad..." she murmured, unable to hide the note of fear in her voice.
Kael rose again, his eyes completely green, without pupils. Pure energy swirled around him, like a storm trapped inside a man.
"This is what you wanted, you bitch," he said. "Now play with , you fucking slut."
She growled and attacked again, this ti surrounded by illusions—three, four, five copies of herself running from different directions. Kael didn’t move.
One of the illusions struck him with its claws. Or tried to.
The mont the blow touched his skin, Kael exploded into spines of magical energy. The illusions dissipated, like glass shattering in the air. The real succubus recoiled, eyes wide.
"How did you—"
"I’ve faced you before, do you really think I wouldn’t absorb knowledge from that?" he cut her off. "You’re going to die, bitch."
He advanced, and this ti it was his charge. He leaped, propelled by a magic circle beneath his feet, and descended upon the succubus like a green cot. She defended herself, conjuring a shield of bone and skin, but Kael’s magic blade cut through the barrier like hot butter.
The impact threw her against a tree, breaking it in half. The succubus fell to the ground spitting black blood, her wings torn.
"You’re nothing," he said, approaching her. "You’re a parasite. So get out of here, and stop wasting my ti."
She tried to get up, but her leg was broken. The magic no longer responded with the sa fluidity. The fear was now real. Palpable. Kael could taste it.
But before he could deliver the final blow, sothing stopped him.
Liora.
She placed a hand on his arm, gentle but firm.
"Kael... not like this. She’s still alive. We can still interrogate her. Find out why she led us into this trap. Why she ssed with the elves. She didn’t do this alone."
Kael hesitated.
For a mont.
Then he turned to Liora. "Do you think she’ll talk?"
"If she doesn’t, you finish what you started," she replied. "But if there’s a chance she’s connected to sothing bigger..."
"She is," said Exelia, finally approaching, stained blade in hand. "Succubi don’t act like this. This was... preditated. Planned. There’s a master behind it. Or a cause."
Kael looked at the succubus on the floor, now semi-conscious. The putrid sll of her magical essence was beginning to dissipate, indicating the end of the illusion, of the trap. But also a greater danger.
"Tie her up," he said coldly. "Break her wings. And use iron. Lots of iron."
Liora shuddered, but obeyed.
As the ritual of restraint began—Exelia drawing runes on the floor, Liora conjuring silver ropes, and Kael watching with predatory eyes—the succubus muttered sothing.
"She... will... co..."
"Who?" Exelia crouched down, the blade still firm in her hand. "Who is coming?"
The succubus smiled, a thick strand of black blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes flickered, drunk with pain and sothing worse—a dark faith.
"The one... who gave my na... The one who tore from the veil and gave form. She... will see my death. She will feel it."
"Who the fuck is she?" Kael growled, kneeling brutally beside the creature and pulling her by her dirty, bloodstained hair. "Speak. Now."
The succubus let out a hoarse laugh. It was dry, broken. A sound that carried no humor, only madness.
"You think you’re strong, wizard? You think you’re soone?" She spat blood near his face. "You’re just the thunder before the flood. Just the harbinger. With every spell you cast, every drop of blood you spill... you open her eyes."
Kael pressed the blade against the creature’s throat. "Tell her na. Or die now."
She raised her feverish eyes to him, as if contemplating a cosmic joke.
"Hahaha... why would I tell you? You’re already dead. You just haven’t accepted it yet."
And then she whispered, like a secret vomited from the mouth of a corpse:
"She sees you, Kael. She saw what you hide. And she’ll use it."
The succubus smiled one last ti, her teeth stained with dark blood. And then her body began to writhe.
Kael took a step back, his eyes narrowed. Exelia raised her blade. Liora clutched the amulet to her chest, feeling the change in the air—the subtle breaking of whatever that presence was.
The creature’s body shook as if silent laughter echoed inside. Her skin bubbled. The putrid sll that already hung in the air intensified until it was almost unbearable, like burnt flesh dipped in black oil.
"Exelia, prepare a containnt circle!" Kael shouted, but it was too late.
The succubus’s body slowly exploded from the inside out, not like a detonation, but like a corpse sinking into an invisible swamp. The flesh lted, dripping in long black strips that smoked when they touched the ground. The bones were visible for a mont before they too dissolved, turning into black, magical mud, alive, pulsating.
"That’s not blood..." Liora murmured, taking a step back, her eyes wide. "It’s liquid shadow... it’s demonic energy!"
Kael conjured a shield around the three of them, preventing the vapors from reaching their skin. Still, sothing seeped through, a vibration that corroded the spirit more than the flesh.
Exelia threw black salt in a circle around what remained. Liora began to chant an ancient prayer, summoning ancestral light to repel the growing darkness.
But Kael already knew. The truth was there, stamped in the growing viscosity, in the heat of the anger cooling in his throat.
"Damn..." he growled. "It was another decoy. Another distraction."
The black pool bubbled, but did not disappear. It pulsed at intervals, as if sothing were watching it from the other side. An eye. A whisper that breathed.
"She wanted us to co here," said Liora, her voice trembling. "This forest... this fight... it was all part of a bigger plan. To draw us in, to expose us."
"Or to weaken the barriers," said Exelia, still casting runes on the ground with her stained hands. "Every spell, every death here... everything feeds sothing. This is an altar. A hellish one."
Kael clenched his fists, watching the black mud that condensed in the center of the circle. Inside it, for a mont, a face seed to erge—not that of the succubus, but of another. Tall, veiled, eyeless. The impression of a smile. And then, silence.
He turned to Liora. "Can you seal this?"
She hesitated. "I can... for now. But not alone. I need your magical anchor. And Exelia’s blood."
The woman didn’t even protest. She just stepped forward and cut her own palm. The blood fell thickly, mixing with the salt and silver powder. Kael planted his hand on the ground, letting his energy flow like an electric current, locking the space between worlds.
The seal closed with a sharp thud, like a door being locked from the outside. The mud began to lose its consistency, slowly evaporating. But it didn’t disappear. Not entirely.
"That was a ssage," Kael said, standing up. "Not just for . But for all of us."
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