Osenas could scarcely comprehend it, his ancient consciousness reeling from the sheer, unyielding audacity that persisted even in the face of his supremacy.

  The ethereal speck that was the flesh-sack's essence clung to him with a stubborn tenacity that bordered on blasphemy, its minuscule, spectral hands clamped down upon the fang-pincers of his gaping maw like a ravenous parasite burrowing ever deeper into the putrid heart of long-festering rot, each tiny grip a disgrace to his magnificence.

  But what could it do? It faced a majestic prince of the wraiths, towering over its tiny scrap of a form. It could do nothing but be eaten, its essence and mind devoured.

  As Osenas surged forward to consume this trifling morsel, a blinding radiance erupted from the speck, searing into his form like Holy fire.

  Burning light cascaded outward in purifying waves, a corona of blazing rage that illuminated the shadow realm's gloom with unforgiving brilliance, casting strange shadows across the undulating void.

  Radiant armor coalesced around the intruder's form, plates of glowing fury, etched with glowing sigils of the Trey and Holy runes that pulsed like the heartbeat of a vengeful star, the sanctified agony burrowing into Osenas' hide.

  Blue-yellow electricity surrounded its hands. Embedded in its left arm blazed a miniature orb of incandescent wrath, like a sun, swirling with solar flares, its radiance like a spiritual inferno that charred the prince's spectral nerves, evaporating tendrils of his being into wisps of nothingness.

  Fear, pure terror, a sensation long forgotten in his eons of domination, flooded Osenas like vomit filling a choking throat.

  He snapped his chelicerae inward to crush the abomination, the pincers scissoring with crushing force, but the form held them in place as it began to swell, expanding with unstoppable might, glowing gauntlets seizing each fang fast in an unyielding grasp.

  Osenas thrashed, his vast body convulsing in panic, trying to wrench free and soar away on wings of shadow.

  But the grip was adamantine, unbreakable.

  As its form grew and grew, the flesh-sack's essence pulled outward, straining to rip him asunder, and with each heave, Osenas' essence frayed at the seams, threads of unholy wrath unraveling like rotted cloth.

  He lost himself to the panic then, his princely composure shattering into frenzied desperation, jerking his colossal form in spasms of terror, battering against the hold with flailing spines and lashing tails, but escape was impossible.

  The intruder's radiance intensified as it grew, now larger than Osenas’ majestic form, a blinding aureole that seared deeper, cauterizing his essence with purifying flames, while the form grew ever larger, towering now like a colossus of Holy judgment.

  In a final, horrid wrench, Osenas was torn in twain, his essence bifurcated with a shriek that rent the shadow realm's reality, both halves tumbling toward the spectral ground in slow, agonized descent, trailing streamers of dissolving ichor.

  The radiance clung to them like parasitic light, devouring inward, consuming his immortality bit by excruciating bit.

  He prayed then, to every ancient evil, every primordial devourer and lord of the pit, that the flesh-sack would deem him vanquished, a broken husk unworthy of further wrath, and depart this realm.

  But no mercy came.

  The intruder's form swelled further, a titanic sun blotting the false horizon, and a massive boot descended upon one half, stomping with earth-shattering force that extinguished it in a burst of shadowed vapor, the essence snuffed like a candle in a storm.

  Then the other foot loomed over his remaining fragment, descending inexorably.

  In that final, mind-rending instant of panic, Osenas' thoughts fractured into denial. He was Osenas, the Wraith Prince, seventy-first scourge of the wraith hierarchy, ancient, the architect of untold ruin.

  This could not be his end, not at the hands of this lesser sack of meat, not when the true power, that rune-clad juggernaut, still awaited its punishment for damaging his temporal form.

  This was blasphemy, all wrong, an impossibility…

  Why hadn't Salvador's weapons blared? No thunderous bark of the gatling gun, no booming retort from the arm-cannon, just an unnatural silence, broken only by the crawl up the soil and the distant rumble of churning clouds.

  Garioch clawed his way out of the crater at last, gauntlets scrabbling for purchase on the rim's crumbling edge, his Strider plate grinding against the loose rocks as he hauled himself up and over, his boots sinking into the ashen crust with a muffled crunch.

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  He staggered to his feet, his sight piercing through the haze of settling dust, and swept his gaze across the blighted plain, sucking thin air through his filters.

  He spotted Sal nearby.

  The Seraph stood motionless, a frozen sentry, his massive frame silhouetted against the bruised sky like a statue in a cathedral, staring toward the monstrous creature as if transfixed by some Divine revelation.

  Garioch's eyes followed, locking onto the Wraithlord, and his breath caught in his throat like a fish bone.

  The colossal horror, that unholy titan of fused nightmare, was unraveling, its profane genesis reversing in a sickening dissolution, as if the infernal alchemy that had birthed it now curdled into entropy.

  The air shook with a low, wicked groan, a collective death-rattle from thousands of crying corpses, as the beast's outline warbled and shuddered, reality rejecting its imposition like a body convulsing to expel a virulent poison festering too long in its bowels.

  The crimson veins spiderwebbed across its hide pulsed erratically, their glow flickering like failing lumen strips, before bursting in sprays of molten fluid that sizzled and steamed on the cracked earth below, igniting brief flares that danced madly across the plain.

  Embedded faces unknit in accelerated agony, mouths stretching wide in silent howls as they vomited forth streams of profane sludge, a vile torrent of malediction that pooled in hissing puddles.

  Then, with slurping rips like organs yanked from ruptured guts but amplified a thousandfold in grotesquery, the abomination's bulk fractured along unseen seams, the writhing appendages detaching in ragged spasms.

  Tentacles sloughed away in convulsing heaps, unraveling into mushed husks of pyromancers and bloodwraiths, charred remains tumbling in a rain of twitching shadow and ash.

  The titan deflated like a punctured bladder, collapsing into a steaming morass of viscera and evaporating mists, a scattered graveyard of smoldering husks, profane crud seeping into glowing fissures.

  In that carnage, amid the twitching remnants and dissipating fumes, stood Angar, unbowed, his cybernetic feet planted firmly in the profane sludge, armor gore-covered, scarred, and blackened, but intact, his maul still clenched in a gauntleted fist as if ready for the next tide of filth to face him.

  Garioch couldn't believe his eyes, the sight slamming into him like a train, his mind reeling in the grip of stunned awe.

  In that instant, within the reeking dissolution of the Wraithlord, he beheld his strange friend in a new light.

  The man unbroken, unyielding, a figure forged from the grim tales of old, standing in the profane slurry.

  The young Knight swayed, then crumpled to the sick ground, his form collapsing as if the weight of impossibility had finally exacted its toll on reality.

  A voice stirred within Garioch then, not the whisper of doubt or the echo of his own thoughts, but something deeper, purer, a Divine imperative from God.

  Stay with him, it commanded. Follow this one.

  The words resonated in his soul, this order from Heaven, about this man who’d stood alone against a Nofelim and survived, who felled a Wraithlord where even a famous Seraph faltered.

  For the first time, Garioch wondered if his own presumed election was just but a push towards this revelation, knowing he was naught but a pale shadow cast by this instrument of Holy wrath.

  Was Angar the true chosen?

  The notion ate away at him, a bitter worm in the core of his pride,

  But truth was truth, and seeing was believing.

  He hated to admit it, even to himself, but that Angar collapsed made him feel better, like the monster was still part human, still subject to the same rules of reality that governed everything else. Or near enough.

  Then Divine Theosis intruded, its luminous script searing across his vision.

  The first achievement was expected, as he'd battled bloodwraiths as an Imperial Marine, and had already gained the prior four.

  A Glorious Achievement!

  By God's grace, you have carved a path through the crimson accursed, felling 5,000 bloodwraiths. Their foul essence, now seeping foully into the earth, bears witness to your valor. Yet, the path to glory does not end here; the next honor awaits at the slaughter of 10,000, where your name shall echo with more honor.

  Glory Points bestowed: 1 (5 shared by 4)

  For God and Empire!

  Four more followed in swift succession, marking his tally against the pyromancers at 1, 10, 100, 1,000 felled, each granting a solitary point, shared achievements diluted among the group.

  But the crowning proclamation arrived like a lightning bolt, shaking the foundations of his weary soul.

  A Glorious Achievement!

  Behold, the vigilant eye of Theosis, the Holy System, pierces the veil of mortal strife to witness your triumph, Holy Knight.

  In a confrontation that shall be inscribed in the eternal scrolls of sacred lore, your ragged band has slain Osenas, the Wraith Prince, unholy filth from Hell's exalted strata. This scourge, reaper of Knights without number, including the revered Saint Ardin the Wise, lies extinguished, its unhallowed essence consigned to oblivion's pyre.

  By the unyielding will of the Holy Trinity, a mere handful of Crusaders and a humble Layman confronted this monolithic horror and emerged victorious, unbroken, and resplendent.

  This deed, a testament to undaunted spirit, marks a victory that resounds across the stars, a beacon of hope amid the gloom, a clarion call to all who would stand against the infernal tide.

  Let the Enlightened Scribes sing your praises, and let your name be entered into the Litany of Heroes, etched in luminous gold. March forth, Holy Knight, for the blood-soaked Glorious Path stretches ever onward to the righteous Crusade of Abyssalhome.

  Glory Points bestowed: 11 (10 base + 125 shared by 4)

  For God and Empire!

  Garioch's thoughts twisted in a storm of both exultation and envy.

  A curse rose unbidden in his mind. Only the barest sliver of glory, a single point for his meager role.

  Salvador and Angar would claim a richer portion, no doubt.

  But far more joy pierced the bitterness, as his name was etched once more in the Litany of Heroes, a second inscription in that hallowed archive.

  Angar was only a fledgling in the third Tier, but trailing in his wake promised a harvest of renown. Perhaps, in time, Garioch might even earn an epithet.

  While in dilated time, he summoned his Annals with a thought. The surge of experience was staggering at over two full levels gained, a boon that defied the sluggish grind of the second Realm, even amplified by his trio of XP-enhancing items.

  Simo and Angar must have reaped over ten levels each. Well, if the Layman was saved from the ensorcellment that gripped him, that is. Garioch prayed he was, as Simo was a good man, a stout companion.

  Curiosity ate deeper now, like a relentless itch. How had Angar defeated the…whatever a Wraith Prince was? How had he achieved the impossible?

  Defeating named entities wasn’t common, an unheard of deed for those not Seraphs.