In the clamorous silence that followed, Judge Helsong spoke with a grave tone, his words echoing ominously through the banquet hall. "The Cult of Fabel, my friends, is not merely a dissident group; it is a manifestation of an ancient, divided divinity. The Seven-Headed Griffon of Kanaan symbolizes a complete yet contested power. With Zepharion, the All-Seer, as its final head, it once stood for a comprehensive unity, now fractured, scattering his essence to provoke chaos and conflict among us."
The room listened, riveted as Helsong continued, "Zepharion's fall was dramatic and deliberate. His siblings feared his vision—a Perfect Order of Radiance—would purge their realms of freedom, crafting a world of unified thought, devoid of conflict and strife but also personal essence. Betrayed, his power was torn asunder, strewn across our lands."
As the judge elucidated on the Cult of Fabel, his voice dipped to capture the gravity of their creed. "Rising from these remnants, Fabel members cloak themselves in black, the Black Halo a stark symbol of their devotion to the eclipsed deity. They seek to reforge Zepharion by gathering Immortal Seeds, scattered artifacts capable of birthing Crimson Tendril Trees, each a limb, a fragment of his former glory."
Suddenly, a knight burst into the hall, his face pallid with terror. "My Lord," he gasped, "the sky... it's turned a dark, spiraling red—!"
THOOM!
A spike of shadow came from the ground, piercing through the knight.
"No!"
Arshan said to Helsong, "You must be possessed! By that damn cult! A follower of Zepharion wouldn't do this—!"
"You know nothing! You abandoned the ways of Zepharion many times! Sparing those who should have died by law…not abiding by the rules your own ancestors placed down for us. I was raised to initiate Perfect Order, which is what Zepharion excerpts speak of. If I'm gonna be able to fit in…to be able to make my place in this world, Perfect Order must be established. The Fabel are the only way.l
"You bastard!"
Confusion and fear rippled through the assemblage. From without, screams rose, a cacophony of terror that thrummed against the sturdy castle walls. Helsong's face remained an eerie mask of calm as he explained, "The Father of the Cult wields the Red Flame—Zepharion's raw, angered essence. This flame transforms, it torments, it alters the very fabric of being."
Outside, the horrific tableau unfolded just as Helsong narrated. Animals, mythical creatures, and humans alike were engulfed by the fiery crimson spirals descending from the sky. Their dying cries pierced the air, a grotesque symphony of agony. Yet, as the flames disintegrated flesh and bone, something else took place—a terrifying resurrection. Bodies, grotesquely reshaped, arose amidst flickering red flames clinging to their new, monstrous forms. These beings, now slaves to the very essence they feared, turned their blazing eyes toward the castle, sprinting with unnatural speed toward the gathering.
Panic ensued within the hall as nobles, warriors, and scholars clutched at weapons, whispered prayers, or stood frozen. Arshan rose, his voice booming across the chaos. "Arm yourselves! Protect the kingdom, for the very fabric of our world is under threat!"
Gill, normally aloof, found himself aiding younger attendants, his actions belying his usual disinterest.
"Get the children out!" He cried.
'What's going on?! This cult..they're really doing this?! What kind of power is this?! I have to be strong..just this once..even if it's my last time fighting!'
Ellie, clutching her dagger, scanned for strategic points of defense. Despite the terror, Helsong remained composed, his eyes scanning the advancing horde with an analytical gaze.
'That spiraling eye in the sky…it's causing everyone to transform, but in the worst way possible. Helsong couldn't have done this, his power isn't darkness, but light itself. Someone else is doing this. Who is Father?'
King Arshan shouted orders, rallying his guards and knights. "Form barriers! Archers to the balconies!" His commands cut through the despairing moans and metallic clashes of hastily donned armor.
Through it all, Zabriel remained silent, his masked face unreadable.
As the cursed horde descended upon the castle, the air thick with ash and the stench of charred rebirth, the fates of those within the banquet hall hung perilously in balance, their lives intertwined with the very lore they had feared and revered.
As chaos engulfed the castle, shadow swept over Judge Helsong, cloaking his figure in darkness. But in a swift, desperate move, Zabriel lunged forward, clutching at the elusive fabric of Helsong's robe. His fingers only caught the shadowy arm as it dissolved into the void, leaving Zabriel clutching emptiness, his expression a mask of thwarted resolve.
'I was too late. Something pulled him, his form is a shadow itself..I couldn't grab him if I wanted. I have to go outside, I will kill whoever is controlling this. Father.'
The transformed beings encircled the castle, their bodies grotesquely altered. Limbs morphed into deadly, poison-tipped blades of blood, reflecting a ghastly crimson under the besieged castle's torchlight. They moved with terrifying speed and agility, their strength seemingly inexhaustible. Ellie, with her twin daggers gleaming under the blood-red sky, danced between her foes. Each stab and slice was a desperate bid for survival. She tried casting a healing spell on a transformed beast, hoping to revert its monstrous form. The magic fizzled out, ineffective. With a resigned grimace, her blades danced a brutal ballet, severing the creature's blade-arm, followed by a swift, clean cut through its neck.
Ellie's heart dropped, saying, "I can't heal them?!"
Arshan replied, "Killing them away from this grotesque form of theirs is the only way to save them!"
"If they transformed…by this Red Flame or whatever..then it means its nothing that's hurting them, but gave them an entire new being. That's why I can't heal them..dammit!"
'Are the children out? Good..'
King Arshan, armed with his royal broadsword, stood at the forefront, the weight of his responsibilities as heavy as his blade. He parried a blow from a blood-bladed beast, the clank of steel echoing. With a powerful upward swing, he disemboweled another attacker, his face splattered with dark ichor. His shouts echoed, commanding and directing his troops amidst the frenzied combat.
Gill, though not the largest, used his agility to his advantage. A transformed beast lunged, and he rolled beneath its swing, slicing its legs in a fluid motion. As he regained his footing, another attacked; its blade sliced across his arm, drawing blood. Wincing, he spun, using the momentum to behead the creature. Blood sprayed, red as the skies above.
"I killed it…I'm sorry…"
'These aren't monsters! These are beasts and creatures and humans who were minding their own business!'
Holt swung his twin axes—one wreathed in ice, the other in fire. Each strike was a tempest, the heat and chill clashing with the bodily horror of their foes. A beast leaped at him; he met it mid-air, axes crossed, cleaving it in two. Landing heavily, he swung widely, decapitating another pair of the monstrosities.
"Those bastards killed tribe maids! Kill every last being!"
In a blur of motion, Ellie ducked under a swipe, letting the blade embed itself in the wall. She kicked off the surface, driving both daggers into her foe's back. As it fell, she wrenched her blades free, rolling aside just as another beast's blade crashed down where she had been moments before. Arshan, his armor dented and smeared with gore, faced down a trio of blade-limbed horrors. He caught the first's strike on his shield, shoved it backward, then swung his blade in a wide arc that caught the second beast across the torso. As the third closed in, he dropped and rolled, slicing at its ankles and bringing it crashing down.
A beast's blade arm whistled past Gill's ear, too close. He parried the next, his own sword ringing. Blood dripped from multiple shallow cuts across his body. With a burst of anger, he drove his sword deep into the beast's chest, through rib and heart, before kicking it off his blade. With a beast charging, Holt threw his ice axe, freezing it mid-stride. Swiftly closing the gap, he shattered its frozen form with a fiery blow from his second axe, fragments of ice mixed with dark blood showering the grisly battlefield. Caught between two blood-bladed creatures, Ellie spun like a top, her daggers tracing deadly arcs. One blade sliced a throat while the other disemboweled. Not missing a beat, she leapt up, using a fallen foe as a springboard to reach another attacker, driving her dagger through its skull.
Tiring, yet undeterred, Arshan rallied his strength. An overhead swing cleaved a beast in half, bone and sinew parting before his blade's sharp insistence. He bellowed a war cry, bolstering the faltering spirits of his men as they fought desperately around him.
Back against a stone wall, Gill faced onslaught from three sides. He ducked, weaved, and slashed. One beast's limb was severed; another was blinded. Gill took hits, his armor crumpling, blood streaming down his side. Exhaling sharply, he thrust forward, piercing through a skull before collapsing against the wall, breathing heavily. Holt, surrounded, whirled his axes in a deadly dance. The fire axe cauterized wounds as quickly as they were made, sending scorching pain through his foes. The ice axe chilled the air, creating a barrier of frost. Beasts slowed, faltered, and fell as Holt's relentless assault continued. Vaulting off a rocky outcrop, Ellie descended upon a beast, both daggers plunging deep into its exposed neck, severing arteries with precision. Fluids erupted, and she flipped backward, escaping a retaliatory strike from another ghoul.
Even as his strength waned, Arshan's resolve hardened. A brutal exchange left him and a beast staggered. With a roar, he thrust, burying his sword up to the hilt into the creature's chest, their faces inches apart as its life fled from its eyes. Bruised but unbowed, Gill faced an encroaching hoard. His sword swung in broad, deadly sweeps. Each contact was a gunshot of force; each step he took was labored yet calculated. With a final, desperate effort, he cleaved through two attackers at once, watching as they collapsed into ruinous heaps at his feet. The battle raged on, a grisly dance between horror and heroism. The castle's stones were splattered with dark ichor and the defenders' blood alike, testament to a night of unyielding terror and spectacular bravery.
As the castle's battle raged with a ferocious intensity, Zabriel stepped into the open air, his scythe held firmly, its blade catching the eerie glow of the blood-red sky. Fat droplets of blood began to rain from above, each one sizzling slightly as it hit the crumbling stone of the disheveled courtyard. The heavens above were a roiling canvas of dark, ominous red, teeming with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cult members. Their faces were obscured, each masked by a sinister, small red flame that bobbed in the gloom like fireflies of doom.
Suddenly, Zabriel was ignited with a red flame, his body burning him, trying to transform him, but he kept walking forward, seeing the cult members in the sky and the beasts in front of him.
Below on the battle-torn earth, grotesque mythical beasts, transformed by these red flames into monstrous versions of their former selves, began their charge. Their forms were a nightmare's menagerie—tusks protruding from jaws too large for their skulls, wings where there should be arms, scales covering what once might have been fur—each detail a testament to their horrific transformation.
As the horrific beasts thundered towards him, Zabriel's eyes narrowed, his grip on his scythe tightening. In a blink, a mere fraction of a second, he moved with supernatural speed. The ground beneath him cracked and split along the long trail, a spiderweb of explosive force radiating from where he had been. The beasts, caught mid-charge, were brutally cleaved in half by the swing of the scythe, their bodies falling to the sides as their momentum carried them forward still, now in pieces.
From the blood-rain sky descended a gigantic eagle, its eyes aflame with the same red that transformed it. Its wings were tattered banners of war as it swooped down on Zabriel, talons extended, beak open in a silent screech. But Zabriel was again a blur of speed, vanishing only to reappear above the monstrous bird. His scythe moved with him, a silver streak of deadly precision. It flashed in a series of brutal, calculated slashes, each strike removing chunks of the eagle, feathers mingled with darkened blood raining down until the creature was no more than falling debris.
Then, the air grew oppressively hot, and down from the heavens descended a figure of awe and terror: Father, of the Red Flame. His head was not a head at all, but a literal blazing sun, radiating tendrils of fire that licked the air around him. His feet touched the blood-soaked earth, and steam hissed up with each step he took towards Zabriel.
"Ahh, it's you. The Titan boy—"
But Father's words were cut abruptly as in a mere instant, quicker than thought, Zabriel closed the distance between them. His scythe now hummed softly, the blade at Father's throat, gleaming with a deadly light. The air vibrated with the tension of that moment, the clash of titanic forces suspended in an instant of dramatic stillness.
Father smirked, "You shouldn't even be here, son of the Oracle."