The Sentinel, still disturbingly human, was the only one left untransformed amidst the chaos. His raven-black hair framed a face etched with hatred, his black eyes empty of pupils and teeming with rage.
His lips parted as if tasting something sour. "Mage."
Claude's gaze remained indifferent, barely flickering with interest. Before he could fully register the threat, the Sentinel's legs bulged as he launched himself sideways, narrowly avoiding the crushing force of Claude's water-formed fist that hammered into the ground, cracking stone with each brutal impact.
Claude's face stayed impassive as he redirected the watery hand, sending it crashing down again and again. The Sentinel dodged each strike, moving in blurs of desperate speed.
Then, with a snarl, he spat out a toxic green ball of sludge that sizzled as it flew. Claude raised a thin disc of water to block, but the fumes seeped through, choking his lungs.
Nausea coiled within him, and a faint, corrosive burn began to spread in his chest. Yet even as the toxin twisted his insides, Claude kept attacking, striking blow after relentless blow.
Each impact made the chamber shudder, leaving nothing in his mind but the need to destroy, or be destroyed.
Smash! Crash! Bang!
The Sentinel staggered, and this time, Claude's water fist caught him mid-leap, slamming him down, his body twisted into a broken pulp.
But Claude's expression remained impassive; he stared down with a detached gaze as the Sentinel's mangled flesh writhed and pulled itself back together, knitting broken pieces back together.
"Damn blasphemer!" the Sentinel hissed. "I'd have crushed you if I'd had just a bit more power." His eyes grew wild, his laughter shrill and edged with hysteria. "But so what? I'll still make sure you don't walk out alive!"
A crack split down his chest, stretching vertically, as a twisted, inhuman form began to tear its way out, shedding the body like a cocoon. Claude took a step forward, intending to strike, but he was too slow... or perhaps just indifferent.
"You're about to learn why your kind fears us, you damn rat!" The Sentinel's voice was twisted and monstrous now, his form elongating as twisted, clawed limbs pushed free.
What emerged was a writhing shadow layered in sinew and rotting flesh, its surface seeping acidic black fluid.
Viscous tendrils thrashed from its sides, each dripping a foul, bubbling slime. Its head was an indistinct, fractured mass, only its eyes clear—two orbs of hate, glowing like coal.
Then, it screamed. The sound that worming its way into Claude's mind, muffling his thoughts, pressing in like a dark fog.
He barely blinked as the creature barreled toward him, and before he could react, it slammed into him with impossible force, crushing him against the stone wall. Pain seared through him, bones shattering, but his face remained calm, even as blood pooled in his mouth.
"This seems familiar…" he muttered to himself, almost amused. Indifferent to his own suffering. His vision blurred, and his spine felt as if it was ground to dust.
Yet the thought of death? It was distant, a vague whisper that neither intrigued nor disturbed him.
The creature struck again, its twisted arm thrust forward, impaling him through the chest, lifting him off the ground as though he were nothing. Claude's head tilted back, his mouth filling with blood, but a faint smirk tugged at his lips. "So… this is it, then… death…"
With a shuddering exhale, his fingers closed around the creature's arm, his grip like steel despite his weakening body. Ignoring the agony in his lungs, he summoned his last reserves of energy.
The nearby puddles quivered, then rose, spiralling into razor-sharp tendrils of water that latched onto the monster. They twisted and slashed, ripping through its black flesh in silence.
The creature let out a final, guttural shriek before dissolving into a pool of acidic sludge that splattered onto Claude, burning his skin with every searing drop.
He didn't flinch, even as his flesh bubbled under the ichor's touch. He slid down the wall, panting, his eyes glazing over as he stared into the wreckage around him.
Debris and fragments lay scattered across the room. Gouges in the walls, fractures spidering through the stone floor, remnants of corpses tossed aside like broken dolls. The rank smell of scorched stone and sulfur hung thick in the air.
Then he noticed something… strange.
There was no blood.
No grey sludge from the cultists' strange transformations, no black blood from the monster the Sentinel had released, not even a vivid, seeping crimson.
The thought barely flickered in his mind, dimly nagging as his vision wavered. "Who...?" His words drifted into silence as the cacophony of shouts beyond the room broke through his reverie.
But he felt no spark of curiosity, no fight. His vision grew dim, and his body slumped as though even the act of breathing was too heavy a burden to bear.
In that final moment, he welcomed the darkness that folded around him.
He knew he was about to escape from the prison he called reality.