Reborn with a Necromancer System
Chapter 154: Battle Between Siblings

Chapter 154: Battle Between Siblings

Without hesitation, Mari fired a bolt of divine magic, its light screaming through the air like a falling star.

Kai didn’t flinch. Instead, he reached into the cold tether of his shadow space, yanked forward a zombie shambler, and thrust it into the path of the incoming spell.

The bolt struck it dead center.

The shambler’s ribs flared with light, and a moment later, it exploded into ash and scorched bone.

Vepice gasped.

Her hand covered her mouth. Her eyes, wide and glassy, darted between the remnants of the walking corpse and Kai’s calm expression.

"You-you’re using undead?" she whispered, taking a step back.

Kai’s stomach twisted.

’I’m surprised enough to know you understand what undead are...’

But he didn’t have time to explain. Not now. Not with a priestess trying to incinerate him.

He flicked his fingers and five skeleton knights erupted from his shadow like puppets thrown by invisible strings. They surrounded Vepice in a tight circle of bone and rusted steel.

"Guard her," he ordered them.

Then he looked her in the eyes, pleading, earnest.

"I know you’re scared. But please. Trust me. Hide. Somewhere deep. Anywhere. I’ll find you."

"But... Kai... what are...?" Her voice trembled.

He didn’t wait to hear more. He scooped her into a princess carry, light as paper, and ran.

The earth blurred under his feet. He pushed his mana into a lightness spell on his boots, just enough to turn rocks into stepping stones and roots into launching platforms. Trees whipped past. Birds scattered. His breath rasped in his lungs, but he didn’t slow.

When he found a mossy knoll near a fallen tree and a cluster of brambles, he gently lowered her.

"Go. Don’t stop running."

Vepice hesitated. Then, with a final look at him, she vanished into the underbrush.

---

By the time Kai doubled back and reached the clearing near the cave, Mari was standing just outside it.

His skeleton knights were gone, with nothing left but the ash outlines of where they’d stood. Burned away by purifying light.

Mari stood tall in the middle of it all. Her staff glowed with divine power, casting dancing halos across her face.

"How could you trick me like that?!" she shouted.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, but her expression was nothing short of rage.

"I trusted you! I liked you, like really liked you!"

Kai flinched. "Oh. That’s... awkward."

He cringed harder at the look of pain that flashed across her face.

With no time to waste, he thrust his hand into his shadow and ripped out Grond.

The massive ogre loomed before Mari like a shadow cast by the end of the world. Its club, bound with petrified bone and iron chains that Kai spent hours one afternoon crafting so that it could hopefully take just about anything dealt to it, rested in its hands.

Mari raised her staff. "You really think this will stop me?"

Kai didn’t answer.

Instead, he moved. His sigils glowed in the air as he danced around Grond, casting shifting barriers that wrapped around the ogre like a living armour. The magic was fluid, reactive. It bent with Grond’s motion, intercepting Mari’s first divine bolt.

The shield cracked.

Grond didn’t stop.

It charged.

Mari prepared another spell, but she was too slow. She had been caught off guard when her spell failed to destroy one of his undead like it had every time she had gone up against them.

’My time spent trying to get a divine-resistant barrier working was worth it. I wasn’t sure that it would be, but I am so glad...’

The pain assaulted his senses. He couldn’t heal himself until she was taken care of. Otherwise, he could need it to fight her further.

The ogre’s club connected with her side and she was flung like a comet into the dense wall of trees. Wood splintered. Leaves exploded into the air.

Kai exhaled, staggered.

"And that is that..."

He recalled Grond back to the void and walked toward the broken trail she’d left.

But when he reached the end of it, she was gone.

As if to answer his confusion, he felt a burst of divine mana, and a blinding light split the canopy.

Kai’s instincts screamed, and so did the undead within his shadow space. The ones inside with any sort of sentience, like Ralts or Joe, probably wouldn’t even come out if he summoned them.

’Well, maybe Joe would.’

The brightness of the light increased and he staggered back as radiant heat poured from above like divine judgment.

And through that light... figures.

Too many to count. Wings. Crowns. Radiant eyes.

And Mari descended.

But it wasn’t her anymore.

Her feet barely touched the ground. Her hair whipped unnaturally in the still air. Her eyes glowed with the gold of judgment unbound.

"I didn’t think I’d need to use the sister of the abomination to end you," the voice said, but it was not Mari’s.

Kai’s chest tightened. "Mari?"

But he knew the answer already.

She tilted her head, mockingly.

"She’s taking a break." She tapped her temple. "You’ve been quite the pest, necromancer. But you’ve shown us everything. Her. Your army. And now..." She raised a hand. "You’ll both die."

Kai reached again for Grond, but a divine arrow struck his shoulder before he could even summon. He screamed as his arm was seared, the bone beneath scalding.

Above him, the goddess, wearing Mari’s skin, held a radiant longbow of pure light.

She nocked another arrow.

’A never-ending stream of divine arrows? That’s unfair.’

Kai dove behind a tree.

’Think! What can I do?!’

He grit his teeth and pushed his life essence into his shoulder, burning through enough to force the wound closed.

Then he ran.

The pressure of her divine presence followed him, curling around his lungs like smoke.

When he was far enough, just far enough, he summoned his thirteen ghasts. They erupted into the world with shrieks and hungry snarls, clawing at the earth.

"Hunt her," he ordered.

They vanished into the trees.

Kai turned, sprinting toward a place he left untouched when he left the forest all those years ago.

---

The being inside Mari, entered the old grove.

She spoke aloud, not even trying to be subtle:

"Mortal. Come out of hiding. You should give up before you become something even you don’t recognize. Don’t live long enough to become a monster."

The words echoed.

But it wasn’t Kai who heard them.

A rumble answered her challenge.

Then another.

And another.

Iron Bears.

Massive. Relentless. Towering beasts with hides like living metal.

Things that Kai had faced before.

The grove was theirs.

Kai, cloaked in his Umbral Mantle, watched from the shadows as she turned toward the sound.

And then they charged.

Divine light seared into them, but they didn’t stop. The goddess snarled, drew a great glyph of flame, but they were on her.

They tore. Bit. Crushed.

And then there was a sharp silence.

"ENOUGH!"

The voice was not Mari’s. Not even remotely.

A radiant shockwave blasted the grove, stripping flesh from bone. Blood misted the air.

The Iron Bears collapsed.

The survivors fled.

Mari stood in the clearing. Her robes were tattered, burned away. Her body looked untouched.

Perfect.

Divine.

Kai stepped from hiding and immediately took another arrow to the ribs.

He screamed. Summoned a Shadow Death Knight, and it shielded him, absorbing seven divine arrows before it shattered into bone dust.

’I just need a little more time-’

She fired again. He pulled skeletons from his shadow, forming a living wall.

Twelve fell in seconds.

A final arrow pierced his stomach.

Kai hit the dirt. Blood bubbled from his mouth.

She walked slowly toward him, savoring it.

"You don’t deserve any last wishes. No rites. No forgiveness. No final meal. No trial. You die here, now." Her bow hummed with light. "What do you say for yourself?"

Kai raised his head.

Smiled through blood-stained teeth.

"Finally..." he rasped. "You’re within range."

"Within range of what, little necromancer? You can’t do-"

She froze.

Lines of pale-blue light ignited across the ground in concentric rings around her, blooming like ghostly flowers beneath her feet.

They pulsed once.

They pulsed twice more.

Then the light locked into place.

One by one, barriers activated. Eight. Ten. Then fourteen. All interwoven with dense sigils etched into the bark, stones, and even into the shadows of the forest themselves.

Kai leaned heavily on one knee, hand clutched to the wound in his stomach, blood seeping through his fingers. But he smiled.

"Been laying these for the past half hour while you played tag with my ghasts," he said, voice strained. "They’re tuned to react only to divine mana signatures. Didn’t want to scare off any wildlife, after all, and give you reason to suspect me."

The divine being narrowed Mari’s eyes.

"You think this will stop me?" she spat. "You could erect hundreds of barriers and it wouldn’t matter. I am immortal. I am divinity incarnate. I’ll destroy them all, then take your miserable life while you crawl in your own blood. What a futile resistance."

Kai exhaled and leaned against a fallen tree. "Yeah, that’s the thing."

He gestured weakly.

"You probably don’t feel it. Breathing, I mean. Goddesses probably don’t need oxygen. But Mari does. And you’re using her body, aren’t you?"

The divine being blinked.

A subtle hissing began to rise from the glowing barrier rings.

"I altered the inner space," Kai continued, coughing between words. "No oxygen. No air. Just enough pressure to make leaving... painful. Soon, Mari’s lungs will fail. And what happens to you then?"

The being snarled and reached upward, shimmering with light. "I’ll just leave. I’ll rip myself free and-"

"Try it." Kai interrupted.

For a split second, a sliver of radiance peeled away from Mari’s skin. A misty-white essence, half-shaped like wings and flowing hair, began to surge upward, but then was violently pulled back into the body.

It wasn’t just a barrier. It was a prison.

The entity screamed.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"

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