Seris bit down on her pain and glared.
Whatever the ugly skeleton was doing to her really really hurt. Every pulse of it made her vision swim. But that was okay, Seris was used to pain.
Big Sis was watching over her in the real world. Seris had no doubt at all that Big Sis would win, because Big Sis was a Goddess and Goddesses won. So if there was a battle Seris needed to worry about, it was this one.
Even so, something had changed.
The ugly skeleton's form in the dreamscape was still translucent and wavering, like a ghost trying very hard to pretend it belonged in the world. But its presence felt much heavier now. Meaner. The pressure of it sat on the Ashen Wastes like a storm cloud pressing down on the world.
And worst of all, the coin inside Seris's chest had stopped moving completely.
She could still feel it lodged in the center of her being, like a door that should have opened but refused to budge. No matter how hard she willed it to turn, it stayed frozen in place, and every attempt only sent fresh pain spearing through her chest, bright enough to make tears spring to her eyes. Even though there was just a tiny little bit more to go.
Seris swallowed hard and blinked furiously.
A Saintess of Light should not cry before her enemy. It did not matter how much it hurt. It did not matter how frustrating and unfair it was. Crying where the ugly skeleton could see would feel like losing, and Seris absolutely refused to lose to that thing.
A renewed sense of injustice swelled inside her. What was that ugly skeleton's problem? Why could it not just let her be happy? What had she ever done to it?
"Let there be light," Seris said, voice tight with pain and fury.
A great beam of golden-white radiance split the gray heavens and crashed toward Vhal with enough force to melt mountains. But unlike before, the ugly skeleton's barrier swallowed it without even a ripple. The holy light vanished into the congealed darkness as though the attack had never existed at all.
Seris stared.
Then she pointed at it with as much saintly dignity as she could manage, and a thousand swords of light screamed down from the sky.
They struck Vhal's barrier in a storm of radiant blades, bright enough to turn the Ashen Wastes gold for an instant. Sparks burst outward. Light hissed and scattered. The barrier did not even crack.
The ugly skeleton was no longer looking at her. It sat on a newly summoned throne of black bone and warped iron, jaw clenched so tightly she could hear the faint grind of teeth even from this distance. Its empty eye sockets burned with unstable green fire, but its attention was completely elsewhere.
Seris's lips pressed into a thin line.
That was understandable, she supposed.
Whatever Vhal was doing to her in the real world had to be difficult. If it was affecting her real body, then Big Sis was definitely fighting it right now, and if Big Sis was fighting it, then of course it could not spare much attention for Seris.
That was understandable. That was fair.
Big Sis was amazing, and if Seris were in the ugly skeleton's place, she would probably be concentrating very hard too.
Seris was still mad anyway.
She was the Saintess of Light. Ugly skeletons and monsters and every horrible thing in the world were supposed to tremble before her.
A bolt of green lightning split the air with a shriek, and Seris yelped as she flung herself sideways with a frantic beat of her wings. The lightning scorched past her shoulder so closely that the heat prickled across her skin. More spells followed immediately after. Lances of deathly fire. Spears of black ice. Green comets that howled as they tore through the sky.
Then came the arrows.
Seris clasped her hands in prayer, and the Ashen Wastes split in half beneath a towering golden barrier that sprang from the earth and rose into the heavens. The first volley shattered against it in bursts of dark magic and splintered bone, but Seris felt the difference immediately.
These attacks were too strong. Where spells and arrows struck, cracks spiderwebbed across her barrier's golden surface, and they did not heal.
Seris's breath caught. Below her, the dead were rising.
Skeletal hands burst from the ash-black earth in every direction. Fingers clawed and scraped and dug into cracked stone as corpse after corpse dragged itself upward into the world. Some wore rusted armor. Some still had scraps of rotted banners tangled around their bones. Others were little more than blackened skeletons wrapped in strips of grave-cloth, their jaws hanging open in silent screams.
Each one that emerged lifted a weapon. Each one turned toward her. Each one attacked.
Farther out, the skeletons of long-dead giants heaved themselves upright from the wasteland, their towering frames shedding dust and ash in great gray clouds. Their hollow eye sockets blazed green as they looked down at her from impossible heights. Above them, the sky darkened under the spread of vast, rotting wings.
Dragons.
Or what had once been dragons.
Their flesh hung in strips from exposed bone. Their ribcages glowed from within with sickly green fire. When they opened their jaws, smoke and corpse-light spilled out.
Seris's throat tightened.
The army of darkness stretched all the way to the horizon.
At the front stood armored figures that looked just like the mean death knight who had once bullied her, except there were dozens of them now. No, hundreds. Their swords burned with black aura, and every one of them radiated the same cruel, oppressive menace. Above them drifted liches in torn robes and ornate crowns, their staffs crackling with unholy power.
They were only a little less ugly than the ugly skeleton itself.
Seris suppressed a hiccup.
This was too scary. And unfair. That ugly skeleton was cheating!
Well, Seris could cheat too. She had Big Sister, and one Big Sister was much better than all of those scary undead put together. The ugly skeleton had cheated first, so if Seris cheated too then it absolutely was not her fault.
She shut her eyes for one desperate second and pictured Big Sister standing beside her.
Perfect. Immaculate. Serene and gentle and beautiful beyond words.
Big Sis would place a hand on her shoulder and smile that warm, reassuring smile of hers and say: Everything will be alright, Seris.
Seris reached for that image with all her heart. A shape formed beside her.
Soft light gathered into the outline of a woman. A vague silhouette. Gentle warmth. Pale gold. Familiar in the way sunlight was familiar, or the feeling of being wrapped in blankets while someone stroked your hair.
But it was faint, thin, and incomplete. Less than a shadow.
Seris opened her eyes and stared at it in dismay.
"No," she said. "That's wrong."
The pale figure flickered uncertainly beside her.
"No, no, no, Big Sis is much prettier than that!"
She reached for the image harder, trying to remember every detail. The exact curve of Big Sis's smile. The way her eyes softened when she looked at Seris. The warmth of her lap.
The silhouette trembled. Then the army attacked, and Seris had no more time to figure it out.
Her barrier shattered. It broke with a sound like crystal splitting under a hammer, and the sky beyond it erupted into chaos.
"Ah!"
Seris threw herself backward as black magic tore through the space where she had been hovering a heartbeat before. A death knight came flying at her with impossible speed, black aura exploding from its blade as it swung for her neck. Seris jerked upward, barely avoiding decapitation, only for a dragon's breath to roar across the sky from above.
Green fire washed over her.
She screamed. Pain flared across her side. The smell of burning cloth and singed hair hit her a second later, and Seris nearly lost control of her flight before instinctively flinging up another barrier.
That barrier lasted perhaps three seconds, then a lich's spell punched through it and sent cracks racing across the surface.
Seris fled.
There was no better word for it.
She dodged. She cast barriers. She dodged again. She twisted and rolled through the air while arrows hissed past her cheeks and sword aura carved glowing wounds through the sky. Every time she managed to gather enough focus to attack, it accomplished almost nothing.
She hurled a thousand swords of light.
They bounced off the death knights' armor.
She called down heavenly judgment.
Entire swathes of skeletal soldiers vanished in holy fire, reduced to ash and molten slag. But even as they burned, more hands clawed up from beneath the earth. More skeletons rose. More dead things dragged themselves upright and took their places.
There was no end to them. There was only pain and noise and the relentless certainty that if she slowed down for even a moment, they would tear her apart.
And through all of it, the ugly skeleton sat on its throne. It never looked at her.
Its form flickered. Its jaw remained clenched. Green fire leaked from the corners of its eyes like molten hate. It was still fighting Big Sis in the real world. Still straining every part of itself toward hurting Seris where she could not defend herself.
And it did not even need to watch while its army hunted her. That made her so angry she could have bitten something.
But anger did not stop the arrows. It did not stop the dragonfire. It did not stop the death knight whose blade of black aura carved across her thigh and sent her spinning through the air with a scream. It did not stop the next spell that hit her in the shoulder. Or the next. Or the next.
At some point, Seris stopped holding the tears back. They spilled hot and humiliating down her face as she flew.
"This is unfair!" she choked out, ducking under a sweep of giant skeletal fingers. "This is cheating!" Her voice broke. "Big Sis!"
The name escaped her before she could stop it. No answer came. Only another volley of arrows.
But the thought refused to go away: Why could the ugly skeleton summon helpers when she couldn't?
Seris flung up a barrier, and it cracked so badly on impact that she felt the strain all the way through her bones.
The searing pain from her real body joined with the dream-pain of the battle until she could no longer tell where one ended and the other began. Spellfire burned her skin. Sword aura sliced into her flesh. Holy magic stitched wounds closed only for new ones to open seconds later. Her head pounded so hard it felt like it might split apart. Every breath came ragged. Every beat of her wings hurt.
And beneath all of that, something else was happening. Visions kept flashing through her mind, brief, violent, and unwanted.
An arrow grazed her cheek, and for a heartbeat she saw a young man screaming as green fire ate him alive, his hands clawing uselessly at his own burning face.
A blade of black aura shattered her barrier and sliced across her chest, and she saw a knight in silver armor collapsing to his knees as corruption spread through the crack in his breastplate like living tar.
A dragon's shadow passed over her, and she saw a proud beast broken and burning beneath a gray sky.
Seris's breath caught. The world sharpened.
Everything around her suddenly seemed to slow. The undead still surged. Spells still flew. Arrows still screamed through the air. But Seris stood at the center of it all with cold clarity settling over her like snow.
She watched, she endured, and she understood. "These aren't fake," she whispered. Another arrow spun toward her face. She tilted her head just enough for it to miss.
The ugly skeleton's army was not made from imagination alone. These things were history. They were the scars carved into Vhal's existence. The dead. The conquered. The tormented. The ruined.
They were not simply soldiers. They were records. The grudges of Vhal's victims, stamped into its soul so deeply that even now, even broken and dead and half-rejected by the world, it could still drag them up and make them fight for it.
This was the path it had walked. The proof that it had once been powerful. The proof that it had once won. The cornerstone of what it was.
Seris's gaze snapped back to the ugly skeleton on its throne.
It flickered again. Its outline blurred, then sharpened, then nearly vanished for half a second before dragging itself back into coherence.
And Seris realized something else. The ugly skeleton had put everything on the line just to hurt her.
It had bet its past.
And just like that, Seris knew what she had to do. Her eyes narrowed.
Then she would bet her future.
She beat her wings hard and shot upward, putting as much distance between herself and the army as she could. The air burned against her skin. Her wounds screamed. Her vision swam.
She clasped her hands in prayer anyway.
A golden barrier split the Ashen Wastes in half once more, surging upward in a wall of light that forced the army to slow. It would not hold for long, Seris could feel that immediately. But it would hold long enough.
She closed her eyes, and reached. Past the Ashen Wastes. Past the dreamscape. Toward the warm, sacred presence waiting just beyond the edge of her mind.
Mount Aurelis answered at once.
Warmth flooded through her in a wave so pure and gentle that Seris nearly sobbed from the relief of it. She felt white stone beneath bare feet that were not truly standing anywhere. She smelled sacred incense and fresh snow and the clean sweetness of the white flowers blooming along Aurelis's slopes. She heard bells. Hymns. Wind moving through prayer banners.
"I vow," Seris said. Her voice rang across the dreamscape, small and clear and impossibly steady. She did not know whether she was speaking to the mountain, or the world, or herself.
"Where there is darkness, I shall be light.
"Where there is suffering, I shall be mercy.
"Where there is evil, I shall be judgment."
Mount Aurelis sang beneath her, and for one suspended moment, the dreamscape opened.
Seris saw the world outside.
She watched from a great height as Big Sister stood within the grand ritual at the Font of Light, radiant and terrible and beautiful beyond words. Sigils of light and impossible geometry orbited her in vast, interlocking circles, each one turning with divine precision. Her white-silver hair floated around her like a river of moonlit silk. Her brows were furrowed in concentration, and though her expression remained calm, Seris could feel the immense force of her will pressing against the world.
Around her stood her brothers and sisters, lending their strength to the ritual, each one solemn and magnificent in their own way.
A colossal pillar of holy light connected the Font to the heavens.
Twelve knights in shining armor knelt around it in a perfect circle, each one bowed in solemn prayer. Their gauntleted hands were clasped around the hilts of their swords. Their foreheads rested against the pommels. Their blades burned like captured suns.
Between them stood seven priests in immaculate vestments, voices raised in sacred hymn. The song rolled through the mountain like living gold, and Mount Aurelis sang with them.
Far below, at the foot of the holy mountain, streams of people poured from vast warp gates held open by entire teams of mages working in disciplined coordination. A sea of the faithful knelt at the mountain's base, praying for the return of their Saintess.
Seris stared. Her chest hurt a little, but in a good way this time. She had never seen so many people wanting her before.
And with each word she spoke, she could feel Mount Aurelis affirming her. She could feel the faith of the Goddess of Light's believers pouring into her like a river.
"I vow," she said again, the solemn vow of Saintesses past, immortalized in scripture and song.
"To burn as beacon, to stand as shield, and to endure as hope for all who live beneath the Light."
The oath engraved itself into her soul. Each word settled into her being like a shining law, heavy with duty and impossible expectation. And with that expectation came power.
It surged up from within her like an inexhaustible spring breaking open beneath stone. Holy light flooded every part of her. Her wounds burned, then cooled. Her exhaustion peeled away. The air around her turned bright enough to make the Ashen Wastes recoil.
Below, the undead army burst into holy fire. Skeletons collapsed into ash. Liches screamed as their bodies split apart into burning green fragments. Dragons fell from the sky trailing white-gold flame. And deep inside her chest, the frozen coin quivered.
Vhal turned to look at her at last. Its concentration faltered. Its wavering form sharpened in sudden alarm.
"You—" it began, and Seris smiled. That had been a very big mistake, because Seris wasn't fighting alone.
The dreamscape cracked. The sound of it was immense.
The sky split. The earth groaned. Fractures of white-gold light raced across the Ashen Wastes, tearing through gray clouds and black stone alike. Vhal staggered on its throne and clutched at its skull with one shaking hand.
"I vow," Seris said, her voice brighter now, stronger now, carrying through the unraveling world like the toll of a sacred bell, "in the name of the Three Goddesses…"
The coin in her chest trembled violently.
"…that no shadow shall find the people undefended while I yet draw breath."
The ugly skeleton's throne cracked beneath it.
Its army was burning away by the thousands now, their forms coming apart into drifting ash and fading resentment.
"So long as I endure," Seris said, "I shall guide, I shall guard, and I shall not fail this sacred charge."
The coin turned, completed its final rotation, and dissolved into light. The sensation that followed was so overwhelmingly right that Seris almost forgot to breathe.
Something that had been broken for a very, very long time had finally clicked into place.
Below her, the last of the undead burned into nothing. The dragons fell. The giants collapsed. The death knights disintegrated. The Ashen Wastes itself was coming apart now, crumbling at the edges as the dreamscape failed around them.
And on its shattered throne sat the ugly skeleton, slumped and diminished. Its green flames burned low and unsteady in its eye sockets. Its robes hung in tatters. Its form flickered like a candle in a storm.
Seris hovered there for half a heartbeat, radiant on wings of fire.
Then she swooped.
She dropped from the sky like a falling star and landed in front of Vhal just as the throne beneath it cracked apart into cinders. The ugly skeleton looked up at her.
"This is not—" it rasped.
Seris reached out with both hands and clamped its jaw shut.
"Bye-bye, Mr. Ugly Skeleton," she said with a bright, radiant smile.
Then she poured holy fire directly into its ugly face.