Single for Eternity
Chapter 117: Ritual

Chapter 117: Ritual

While Einar fled the battlefield—retreating from the chaos he himself had set into motion—he quickly discovered one brutal truth:

There was no escape from Malthorn’s domain.

Not yet.

The landscape had been twisted. Molded into the Undead Lord’s image.

A kingdom of bones.

The terrain stretched endlessly in every direction—jagged ribs of colossal beasts formed bridges, shattered skulls served as uneven footholds, and long, splintered femurs jutted out of the ground like pikes, ready to skewer any who dared to tread carelessly.

It was more than a battlefield.

It was a graveyard dreamt into existence.

And it belonged wholly to Malthorn.

After his initial, effortless slaughter of one of the participants, a suffocating silence fell over the rest.

A silence that crushed.

A silence that screamed.

Fear permeated the air like a toxin, and it showed—visibly—in the trembling stances of the remaining participants.

Most of them weren’t strong. A few were barely Awakened. They were competent, certainly. Enough to pass the initial trials. Enough to think they had a shot at earning a fragment of glory here.

But they were not prepared to face a Demigod.

Not even close.

And then—it happened.

What little hope they clung to was obliterated.

Malthorn raised one arm—casually, almost lazily—and with a flick of his skeletal wrist, the sky responded. The clouds above split apart like curtains being drawn aside, revealing a swirling mass of ghostly aether.

And from it—bones rained down.

Thousands upon thousands of sharpened bones, each one shaped like a javelin, fell like a divine judgment.

Schhkt. Schhhkkt. THWACK. THWACK.

Screams rang out as participants were impaled on the spot. Bodies exploded under the force, flesh torn apart like paper. The lucky ones died instantly. The others suffered, twitching on the ground as the death-field painted the ashen ground in crimson.

When it ended—when the rain of bones ceased—only a fraction remained alive.

And they stood there... frozen. Staring at the mangled bodies of their comrades.

Shell-shocked.

Terrified.

Some began trembling uncontrollably. Others backed away, trying to escape the perimeter, but the landscape shifted with each step, always bringing them back to the center. Back to him.

Back to Malthorn.

As if the land itself wanted them to die.

And then—

A chime.

A sharp, crystalline note struck the air like a bell.

The sound echoed—not just through the bonefield, but through the tension, slicing it apart.

And in the very next instant—Malthorn was struck.

An icy shockwave surged through the air, crackling with ethereal frost and rippling in concentric circles outward.

Time itself froze at the point of contact.

The air went still.

For a moment, even Malthorn did not move.

He had blocked the attack with his right arm—more out of reflex than strategy—but the moment his bony limb made contact with that frozen force, it turned solid. Crystallized in a coat of pure ice that pulsed with silver light.

Then—

CRACK.

The arm shattered.

Fragments of skeletal ice clattered to the ground and instantly melted, steam hissing up like a chorus of spirits screaming.

Eyes turned.

Every surviving participant turned to the one who launched the attack.

Seren Album.

She stood at the edge of the battlefield, sword drawn.

Dissonance, her blade, glowed with that same silver hue, faint wisps of mana dancing along its length like delicate threads of moonlight.

Her silvery hair fluttered behind her, and her crimson eyes narrowed with intensity—not fear.

Only focus.

A grin curled on Malthorn’s partially crumbling jaw.

"Well," he rumbled, his voice like a grave being dug, "aren’t you a strong one?"

Seren tilted her head slightly, as if weighing his words.

"Guess I am," she replied coolly.

And with that, she moved.

Like lightning.

No—like a falling star.

She jumped high into the air, a beautiful arc of silver against the dark sky, then dove down with tremendous speed, Dissonance aimed to cleave through Malthorn’s ribcage.

But Malthorn was no stationary titan.

The Undead Lord responded, his remaining hand extending outward.

A beam of spectral undead aether erupted from his palm—black, blue, and sickly green, like the breath of a dying world condensed into light.

It screamed toward her.

Seren’s eyes gleamed, and her sword moved like liquid silver.

Slaaash!

She sliced through the beam with a single, clean stroke. The attack split in two, its energy dispersing into the air like vapor. The battlefield shook from the residual force.

But not all of it had dispersed.

A sliver of that death-aether had touched her skin.

And that was all it took.

A small patch on her upper arm blackened.

Then turned grey.

Then rotted—skin peeling back, muscle unraveling like overripe fruit, exposing pale bone beneath.

The pain hit her a split second later, but she didn’t scream.

Didn’t flinch.

Her face was unmoved.

She simply shifted her stance and stepped back.

A piece of her shoulder had been reduced to bare, decayed tissue—but she gripped her blade tighter.

She wasn’t done.

Not yet.

Malthorn tilted his skull, observing Seren’s wound with a morbid fascination. He let out a dry, scraping chuckle that echoed like wind through a crypt.

"A shame," he mused, stepping forward. "You mortals always rot so beautifully."

His foot touched the ground, and something shifted.

Beneath the ashen surface, the bones began to stir.

No—not just stir.

They began to twitch.

A pulse of spectral aether pulsed outward from Malthorn’s body. It wasn’t a visible wave, but felt—a deep, unnatural resonance that thrummed inside the marrow of every remaining participant, vibrating like a plucked string.

And then...

The corpses moved.

Torn flesh slid across the bone-ridden ground. Shattered limbs jerked unnaturally. Heads twisted around with grotesque snaps.

The participants who had died mere moments ago—skewered by bone, eyes wide in agony—were now standing once more.

But not as themselves.

Hollow. Gray. Lifeless.

Their eyes glowed with a dim spectral blue—the same hue as Malthorn’s.

Dozens of reanimated cadavers now surrounded the living, forming a ring of death and silence.

Seren’s crimson eyes flicked across them, registering each one in an instant.

Some still wore their trial gear.

Some were missing limbs.

One had no lower jaw, but its teeth still ground together in a maddening rhythm.

"Necromancy," she muttered.

"No," Malthorn said with pride, spreading his arms wide. "Authority."

The bone throne he’d once sat on had vanished, but its power remained. His dominion over death was absolute here.

And now he intended to prove it.

The first corpse lurched forward, sprinting with unnatural speed.

Seren dashed in response, her footwork fluid and practiced—Dissonance cleaved through the undead attacker in one clean stroke, sending its upper body flying.

But more came.

Two, four, then eight of them charged her at once.

She danced between them like wind through blades, cutting and evading, parrying and weaving. Ice burst from her feet as she slid under a flurry of clawed swipes, then rolled up and sliced three of them in a spinning arc.

Yet no matter how many she felled—they kept coming.

From the corners of the field, more corpses began to rise.

Some of the surviving participants—realizing the horror descending upon them—joined the fray, trying desperately to assist.

A girl in bronze armor hurled fireballs at the undead, incinerating two before her arm was crushed by a charging corpse.

A boy with a halberd struck one in the spine—but then three more tackled him to the ground and tore out his throat.

It was a massacre.

But not a fast one.

A controlled one.

Malthorn wasn’t fighting to win. Not yet.

He was entertaining himself.

"More," he said under his breath, his hands rising.

The ground cracked open.

Bones erupted from below—entire skeletal constructs forming like golems from buried ossuaries.

One of them stood nearly fifteen feet tall, stitched together from the remains of dozens of corpses. Another had three heads, each screaming in a different pitch.

Seren panted slightly, her breath visible in the cold aura swirling around her.

Dissonance still glowed.

But her arm was still bleeding.

Rotting.

And Malthorn... wasn’t finished.

He stepped forward once more, casually, as if strolling through a garden.

Then he raised both hands high above his head.

The world darkened.

A sudden eclipse blotted out the sky—not of the sun, but of a massive glyph, an ethereal sigil of undead aether carved into the heavens.

Seren’s eyes narrowed.

This wasn’t necromancy anymore.

This was a ritual.

Malthorn’s voice bellowed, reverberating across the battlefield, cracking the bones beneath their feet.

"Let despair rise from the marrow. Let the still heart beat again. Let my army... awaken."

The glyph pulsed.

Every fallen corpse—even those that had already been decapitated—twitched.

And then... began to mend.

Severed necks reattached.

Exploded skulls reformed.

Flesh regrew.

The entire battlefield writhed as though possessed.

Seren turned her gaze to the center.

And then she saw it.

In the middle of the death circle—where the glyph’s light shone brightest—something new was rising.

Not a corpse.

Not a skeleton.

Something else.

Something twisted.

Claws first. Then a massive hunched back. Then a jaw that split vertically open, revealing rows upon rows of mismatched teeth.

It roared—not with sound, but with aether, a scream that threatened to tear thought itself apart.

Seren’s knees bent, readying for combat.

But for the first time... her expression changed.

It wasn’t fear.

But it was something close.

Behind her, a faint voice called out.

"...You’re gonna need help with that one."

Seren’s eyes widened just slightly.

The voice was unmistakable.

She turned her head—and in the swirling storm of bone and dust, a figure approached.

A familiar smirk on his face.

Hands in his pockets.

Clad in his signature pulsing armour and defiance.

Einar.