A chilling current coursed through the cathedral as the Devourer’s voice echoed through the hall.

  Her presence reemerged with overwhelming pressure, utterly unaffected by Orion’s silencing bolt.

  With a graceful, fluid spin, she turned to the organ. It pulsed faintly, glowing as if yearning for her touch.

  With a smile, Malamiris sat before it and lifted her hands over the keys.

  Orion used the brief lull to glance at Marie. She stood steady again, seemingly recovered from the Devourer’s manipulative grip.

  This is a difficult situation, he thought with a quiet sigh. While I am powerful enough to deal with this creature, I don't know enough about its power to use the full extent of my abilities.

  That was part of his nature. Where others charged recklessly, Orion always preferred to gather information. Usually, caution served him well. But here—inside this cursed hall—it might have been his greatest disadvantage.

  Why is it that the longer I stare at Malamiris, the more uneasy I get? He sharpened his gaze, listening to the unfolding melody. Not only can it bypass the protection cast on Marie, it can also ignore the ailments I place on it.

  White lights began appearing within the cathedral’s dark hall, small at first, then multiplying as Malamiris sang.

  Orion and Marie listened with unclear emotions. The music wasn’t simply heard—it was endured. As more and more eyes glared at them, they felt the oppressive weight of every note.

  At some point, Malamiris's lips opened, and she stopped singing to speak.

  "Listen to the Song of Death. Listen, and awaken from your slumber."

  This was not aimed at Orion, nor at Marie. It was a call to the countless souls lingering in the cathedral, haunting its halls and corridors without end.

  Then, unbothered by anything, Malamiris returned to her song.

  The Song of Death was not heard—it was felt. It began as a vibration, subtle and cold, threading through the bones long before it touched the ear. Slow and dissonant, the melody seemed older than sound itself—hollowed by time, heavy with grief, bleeding freely into the waterlogged air.

  There were no lyrics, yet it spoke. To each listener, it told a different story: the moment they were most afraid, the names they could not forget, the face they failed to save. It dredged up sorrow like a hand dragging corpses from a riverbed—beautiful in its cruelty.

  The harmonies twisted unnaturally, lingering between tones. Unease festered even after silence returned. It didn’t need to be loud. Even a whisper could shatter the resolve of the strongest will.

  To witness the Song of Death was to be undone—not by blood, but by erosion. A slow, elegant decay. Like petals falling backward in time, one by one, to the rhythm of an invisible funeral march.

  It was music as a weapon. Grief, sculpted into art.

  And once it began, nothing could sing over it.

  That was how the duo perceived it. Wails began to rupture through the darkness, awakening the oldest spirits that had died long ago.

  These cries...

  Orion’s heartbeat surged. Bone-deep screams—raw and wrong—answered the song, shifting quickly into shrieks.

  From the darkness, they emerged: wraiths. The lost souls of those Malamiris had slain—depicted in the cathedral’s stained glass.

  "Marie. Be prepared."

  The maid nodded, blades already itching for a fight.

  "Can we even fight ghosts? They aren't physical beings, so wouldn't we be disadvantaged?"

  Orion had already considered that. He had seen the wraiths forming in the shadows before they even fully took shape.

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  Their bodies—if they could be called that—were shifting silhouettes, ripples in reality. Long, trailing limbs twitched with erratic, spasmodic motion, like marionette strings pulled by invisible, chaotic hands. Their frames looked vaguely human at a glance, but everything was wrong: joints bent at impossible angles, and their movements were too sudden, too fluid, too fractured to be natural.

  The face was the worst of it.

  Sometimes there was none—just a void, smeared with suggestion. Other times, they wore distorted masks of what they once were: eyes that never blinked, too wide and glimmering with hysteria; a mouth stretched in either endless silence or a frozen scream. They didn’t see with sight but with awareness—fixating on thoughts rather than bodies, locking onto the unstable and feeding off the cracks.

  Their presence disrupted reason. A wraith was not only a spirit of the dead—but of unraveling. The physical embodiment of what a mind looked like when it shattered and tried to rebuild itself from broken parts.

  Wraiths did not walk. They jittered. Flickered.

  A wraith was not a ghost.

  It was madness given form.

  And Orion somehow understood their screams of agony.

  "…"

  The power of Boundaries he had obtained from Nature might have been the reason for his uneasiness, as his thoughts filled with grievous voices.

  He couldn’t understand their words, but their feeling was unmistakable: release.

  The wraiths longed for liberation—from this endless purgatory, from the madness Malamiris had chained them to.

  So, with that in mind, Orion lifted his left hand.

  "Alcyone."

  One of the wraiths lunged at him, claws twitching unnaturally.

  But Orion’s body shone. Brilliant wings lit the water.

  "HYAAAAA!"

  The wraith screamed as it disintegrated in the cleansing light.

  "I'll share my power with you. Use it how you see fit."

  With his halo pulsing overhead and his wings unfurled, Orion placed his hand over Marie's void blades.

  She saw him raise Alcyone toward her face—and as she turned, she caught sight of a wraith lunging at her back.

  A beam of light fired from Alcyone, purifying the spirit before it could strike.

  She looked at her blades, now coated in a faint, radiant glow—light and void intertwined.

  'Only a master such as him could even do this.'

  Forever in awe of his strength, Marie gripped the blades’ magical handles, now pulsing with light.

  I want to do something for him. Even while confused, he managed to protect me from harm, supporting my erratic and rash actions.

  She frowned slightly.

  I even drew my blade against him, and he still considers me his ally. For all he knows, I could still be under this woman's spell.

  And yet, Orion trusted her. That truth stirred something complicated inside her.

  I should hate myself for what I did. But all I feel is fear—of losing his trust again.

  A shrieking wraith came from the dark.

  Marie vanished.

  Her blade cleaved through the spirit, releasing it.

  He trusts me more than I deserve. I'll redeem myself with these blades!

  Still airborne, she warped behind another and repeated the strike.

  Again and again, her dance continued—fierce and fluid. Each regret-filled pair of eyes was extinguished by her merciless strikes.

  Her form blurred between grace and brutality—like a sparrow in flight, yet fierce as an eagle. Orion couldn’t help but watch.

  But he had no time to admire.

  He fired Alcyone at another wraith nearing Marie’s blind spot.

  I’ll support her for a moment. I need to think.

  While guarding her, Orion’s thoughts raced.

  Malamiris is predictable. Her powers target the mind—in a cognitive assault. Marie suffered badly from that. That means I might be the only one immune. I’ve sealed my heart from all intrusion, and for good reason.

  But I can’t protect others like that. Only those I’ve bonded with fully—my wives—are safe.

  He warped behind Marie, adjusting his aim.

  I’ve been cautious with her. Maybe too cautious. It feels like the longer we wait, the stronger her power grows.

  His gaze shifted to the Valkyrie at the organ. Its coral pipes writhed like worms. For a split second, he noticed the woman's gaze, licking her lips sensually.

  The corruption coming out of this instrument is without equal. Even Miasma's, while powerful and capable of eroding the very personality of its victims, doesn't compare.

  It crawls into you. Rewrites you.

  And that barrier... might still be active. I cannot be sure without firing at her.

  He remembered the first bolt that vanished in ripples.

  His body shifted closer to Marie’s, their backs brushing. He exhaled, ran his fingers through his hair, and lifted his bangs.

  A grim expression overtook his face.

  I’ll stop holding back.

  I want to see Tetra. I want to find everyone.

  He lowered his head—then snapped it upward.

  "You're in the way, Malamiris!"

  The halo above his head spun rapidly, scattering radiant motes into the air.

  I’ve spent so long holding back, I almost forgot what I was saving my power for.

  Alcyone unraveled, wrapping around his right arm.

  He raised it toward the Devourer, who turned at the sound of her name.

  "Wrap your arm around my waist."

  Marie didn’t hesitate.

  "Yes, Master!"

  Orion cast aside every restraint.

  "I hope you are sturdy enough, Valkyrie Carmillya! Because I won't hold back!"

  Alcyone drew in the halo’s scattered light, its tip burning white-hot.

  "Daybreaker!"

  A rising, resonant hum—like hammer on steel—rang from the weapon.

  Then: a crack like splitting stone. Thunder behind it.

  A narrow sun-lance of light split the cathedral, as if cleaving the world.

  A white backdrop swallowed all. Radiance rolled outward in waves, purging the dark.

  The last thing Malamiris saw before being consumed was the open maw of a beast made of light.

  "Wha-!"

  In a split second of reaction, wraiths intervened between the ray of light and the Devourer to protect her.

  The entire cathedral—from its threshold to its deepest hall—exploded in blinding, divine brilliance, stunning the people outside.

  The very history written on the stained-glass, retelling of the horrifying tragedy this sunken world went through, vanished into the blinding light, forever cleansed.