Void System: Every Heroine Makes Me Stronger

Varexia’s third step came down.

Her eyes fixed on empty air half a step to Severin’s right. The heel followed.

Stone split beneath the false position.

Maerith crossed behind Severin’s left shoulder before Varexia could pull the strike back. She locked Varexia above the elbow, struck her upper back with the free palm, and turned with the committed weight instead of meeting it head-on.

The red-black line missed Severin.

It opened Varexia from left hip to ribs.

Dark cloth parted. A heartbeat later, flesh followed the fracture she had driven through the floor. The split climbed into her body and refused to settle.

Varexia’s breath caught. Her knee bent.

"Now," Maerith said.

Severin had no proof the Void could hold a living Goddess. Every creature he had taken before had already lost the fight. Varexia still had enough strength to tear the residence apart.

Waiting would give her room.

Severin opened Void Devour.

Black mist burst from him and closed around Varexia.

It climbed from her boots to her shoulders and swallowed the light touching the broken floor. Grinding stone dulled inside the mist. No notification came, and Varexia remained standing.

Pressure drove back through the mist, enormous and deliberate. It pushed behind Severin’s eyes and down both arms. His grip tightened around the blood-darkened sword.

Varexia pressed her palm into the wound along her side. Red-black light snapped inward. Ruined cloth, flesh, and part of the spreading fracture vanished together.

The wound stayed open, its edges still crumbling.

"She changed the break," Maerith said. Her forearm trembled against Varexia’s resistance. "She didn’t close it."

Arieth stared at the angle of Varexia’s shoulders through the mist. Her answer arrived late.

"Left shoulder led..." Arieth blinked and corrected herself. "No. She’s turning for the right lane."

Varexia twisted toward it.

Severin stepped closer and tried to draw her inward. She didn’t move. The pressure only climbed through his arms, so he closed the mist tighter around the turn of her shoulders.

Varexia looked at him.

"Release me."

"No."

Something severed through the arena.

Dust kept falling, but Varexia’s boots stopped pressing into the floor. Maerith’s arm jerked as the body in her grip lost its weight against the room. A strand of Varexia’s hair lifted and hung motionless.

Then the severance struck the mist.

A narrow gap opened above Varexia’s right shoulder. The force binding her to the floor vanished around it, cleanly cut.

The black mist remained.

Severin drove it shut before Varexia could turn through the opening.

Varexia’s gaze sharpened on the mist that had refused to part.

The floor exploded beneath Severin.

Threat Vector marked a short shift left. He took it as stone burst under his right boot. His left hand closed beneath his right on the hilt as the next shock followed through the fractured seam. Impact Echo carried the force through his hips instead of folding him over it.

Steel bent across the shallow nick near the middle, then snapped. The blade spun into the mist and shattered again on stone. The hilt wrenched against Severin’s injured left palm before he caught his balance, reopening the cut.

He dropped the useless grip and kept the mist closed.

She lunged toward the right lane.

Severin gave ground without loosening the mist around her shoulders. Fatigue dragged at his knees. Pain Partition kept his right arm working while blood soaked farther through the torn shirt.

Seraine waited beside the fallen edge of the raised walk.

Her injured left forearm stayed close to her ribs. She planted her right foot beside the fallen stone and angled her shoulder away from the collision.

Varexia struck her anyway.

Seraine crossed her good arm over her chest. The impact lifted her from the floor and hurled her into the cracked base of the walk.

Stone broke behind her.

She dropped to a knee with no breath left. Varexia landed with her shoulders turned away from the exit.

Maerith stepped inside that turn and caught the same arm again. She drove Varexia back toward the center of the mist.

Blood ran down Maerith’s right side. The cut through her ivory gown widened without another blow.

At the same moment, pressure tightened around Severin’s open shoulder.

"Eschara," Maerith said through her teeth. "It’s holding the wounds open."

Varexia drove an elbow backward. Maerith’s grip slipped across dark cloth, caught again, and pulled Varexia off the line she wanted.

Severin’s legs shook. The Trials had hollowed the strength behind his knees, and every correction pulled more from them while Varexia drove against the mist.

Hold.

Varexia stopped fighting for the lane and went rigid. A second outline lifted from her skin.

It began at the head and shoulders, pale against the black mist, drawing upward while the wounded body remained in Maerith’s hands.

Arieth blinked hard. "The body shifted first..."

The outline pulled farther.

"No," she said. "She’s leaving it."

Maerith’s eyes found Severin through the dark. "Her soul is separating."

Severin tightened the mist around the pale outline as it rose. When it turned toward the open space above the broken right lane, Threat Vector marked the seam beneath his left boot. He planted there and leaned into the dark.

The outline stopped moving sideways.

Varexia’s fingers closed around Maerith’s wrist, tightened, then weakened.

The fracture along her left side reached deeper despite the piece she had destroyed. Dark cloth collapsed into ash around it. Her knees struck stone.

The mist held her upright through another breath.

"You don’t understand what you’re taking," Varexia said.

Severin’s shoulder burned through Pain Partition. Blood slid from his palm to his wrist. His sword lay in pieces behind him.

He kept the mist closed.

Varexia’s body stopped resisting first.

Maerith released Varexia’s shoulder and caught her beneath the other arm. "Her body has failed. The soul hasn’t stopped."

The pale outline pulled out of alignment to the waist. Its face turned toward the gap above the lane.

Black mist climbed with it.

Maerith’s grip tightened around an emptying body. "Severin."

He held on until the outline snapped backward and body and soul vanished together.

The mist folded inward and rushed back into Severin without stirring the dust. The arena brightened around an empty patch of broken stone. No corpse fell, and no dark vapor remained.

[Void Devour successful.]

[Target: Varexia]

Varexia was dead. She remained beyond Severin’s reach, whole and silent, and nothing she had carried answered him.

Digest.

[Digestion Target: Varexia]

[Digestion initiated.]

Pain Partition ended.

Pain struck his right shoulder deeply enough to shorten his breath. His palm burned when he flexed it. Straightening tightened the soreness under his right ribs. His knees softened until he widened his stance, and swallowing scraped his dry throat.

Water from the broken carafe had turned dust into a gray smear across his trousers. Cold cloth clung to his shin. The calf wrap had shifted but still held.

Maerith lowered the arm that had held Varexia.

She went to Seraine first.

Seraine braced her right palm against the cracked walk and tried to rise. Her hand slipped. Arieth caught her before her knee struck again.

Maerith checked the back of Seraine’s head, then the arm she held against her ribs.

"Nothing broken," Seraine managed. She drew another breath. "I think."

"I’ll decide that."

Maerith moved to Arieth and caught her chin. "Follow my hand."

Arieth’s eyes tracked the first pass. They lagged at the end of the next.

"The borrowed thread is gone," Arieth said. "I can still report."

"Slowly."

Arieth turned toward the damaged gallery. She ignored the first voice from within, waited for it to repeat, then answered.

"The arena is clear. Report."

Replies came from different rooms.

"West doors are jammed," an Angel called.

Another voice answered from deeper inside. "The archive wall split. North and lower passages are blocked. No deaths."

An Angel stepped over a fallen piece of the gallery arch. She looked back when something shifted deeper inside, waited until another voice answered, then faced Maerith.

"All 10 are accounted for. The cracks stopped widening when Varexia disappeared. Some sections are still settling."

"Keep everyone away from them," Maerith said. "No one tests a damaged floor alone."

The Angel bowed and withdrew.

Dust settled across the sagging walk. An ivory strip torn from Maerith’s gown caught on a jagged stone, fluttered, and went still.

Maerith turned to Severin.

Blood had reached the lower edge of the cut in her gown, but her steps stayed even.

"If you had released her after I turned the strike," she said, "she could have cut free and carried the fight into the inner rooms."

Severin looked at the empty floor where Varexia had vanished. "I wanted her dead."

"I know."

"And I wanted what she carried."

Maerith held his gaze. "I know that too."

He waited.

"Thank you," she said.

Severin looked at her for a moment longer. Severin glanced at the broken hilt among the stones. He didn’t bend for it.

He checked the digestion.

[Digestion Target: Varexia]

[Digestion Progress: 0.01%]

[Estimated Time Remaining: 30 days, 4 hours]

Severin flexed his bleeding hand. At that pace, nothing inside Varexia would answer him soon.

A voice called from the gallery. "My Goddess. Several divine presences are waiting at the outer boundary. They haven’t tried to force entry."

Maerith looked toward the passage. "They arrived after Varexia disappeared?"

"Yes."

They had missed the mist. They would find a broken residence, wounded Angels, and no body to question.

Maerith drew a careful breath, protecting the wound in her side.

"They can wait."

She crossed toward the private interior, then stopped at the threshold and looked back.

"You and I need terms before I answer them."

Severin followed her without a sword.

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