The woman Jacob once knew is gone, replaced by a grotesque monument to Asmodeus’s corruptive influence.

  Her once-proud features have been stretched and hardened into a mask of obsidian-slick chitin. The “Golden Sight” she traded away has left her eyes as hollow pits of roiling, violet void-fire, leaking a constant trail of dark, steaming ichor that sizzles against her skin. A crown of jagged bone shards erupts from her skull, weaving together like a thorned halo that pulses with a sickening, rhythmic light. It replaced her horns.

  Jacob, gazing into those eyes, feels like it just replaced her soul as well.

  Her skin is no longer flesh but a patchwork of bruised, translucent scales and exposed, iron-hard muscle.

  From her spine, four tattered, bat-like appendages burst forth. They aren't made of membrane, but of woven shadows and splintered ribs, snapping open with the sound of breaking glass.

  Chunks of the shattered Obelisk seem to have fused into her chest and shoulders, pulsating with the violet light of the power she forcibly consumed.

  “What have you done?” Jacob asks, backstepping.

  Iskara doesn't respond.

  She doesn't even have a hole for her mouth anymore.

  Instead, she just looks down at her form, bringing a claw in front of her face, tilting her head, curiously satisfied with it.

  The space around her physically distorts, as if her sheer mass of corrupted Mana is too heavy for reality to support.

  But when she looks at the terrified expression on Jacob's face, she seems to momentarily recoil.

  “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” Jacob, spent, with the Reverse Domain running out and hands riddled with necrotic damage, wields his sword with both hands at Iskara. “ISKARA, WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?!”

  He can feel the monstrous power.

  She belongs to the Monster God now.

  Iskara's chest rises and then slowly goes down. She raises a hand and shakes her head.

  I'm dead, Jacob suddenly realizes.

  There's no way he's going to fight this form. Even before absorbing the obelisk's power, she had already risen above Jacob's power.

  Her body language seems to say that she's sorry, but Jacob just feels a blind rage in his body.

  “WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU?!”

  Before Iskara can kill Jacob, though, an opening appears on the plateau and an Infernal man appears there. He's dashing, heroic, with a statuary height.

  “Oh my,” he says with a pearly smile.

  Iskara turns toward him, surprised.

  The Infernal man walks in front of Jacob, completely ignoring him.

  “You're beautiful,” the Infernal says, holding Iskara's face.

  “True divinity,” the Infernal murmurs, his voice is a sultry purr.

  “And who are you?!” Jacob shouts, panting for air.

  The Infernal turns toward Jacob with a smirk, ignoring him again and turning toward Iskara.

  “He's not yours to kill,” the Infernal man says. “Now, come. I will show you a new, better world.”

  Yet, before they move their first step, their surroundings start changing.

  The Infernal turns toward Jacob, surprised.

  “A Domain? Interesting.”

  Jacob's skin is covered in bone-like tattoos again, but they're flickering.

  The Infernal swats away at the Domain, which crumbles away in moments.

  “Iskara,” Jacob wheezes, his Reverse Domain finally flickering out and leaving him small and vulnerable in the shadow of two giants. “Don't... don't listen to him.”

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “Come,” the Infernal says, halfway through the portal. Iskara moves past the Infernal without even looking at Jacob.

  “We'll come for you soon enough, don't worry,” the Infernal man says to Jacob.

  * * *

  Liuthkrav has brought Jacob back to Rafnov's lab, holding his broken body in his arms and depositing him over a stone bed in the lab that helps with healing. The damage . He has now healed his injuries. Under his master's directives, he couldn't have intruded on the exchange between the Infernal Princess and his Junior Brother.

  “So, Junior Brother Cloud, what is your next move?” Liuthkrav asks.

  The Mithril Golem has seen Master Rafnov being betrayed many times by those whom he considered friends.

  It's the softness of the flesh, he thinks. It's the same disease that affects so many of those with a pure heart. They surrender themselves to trying to save everybody.

  Liuthkrav doesn't blame his Junior Brother for this. He gets it. Seeing Jacob lying down, staring at the ceiling, he imagines he must feel like he's been torn apart by what the Infernal Princess did. Not only she fought alongside him for a week, but he left for a stronger warrior.

  The Mithril Golem feels compassion for the boy, for this younger version of his own master in many regards.

  I bet she struggled to make a decision, but she was always going to end up like this. And, if i know how my master would have thought, Jacob Cloud is going to try and tear the armor apart, take her away from the monster that she's become.

  And even though Liuthkrav knows it's a senseless pursuit, he feels like for some people, it's all they can do. And he'll respect Jacob's desire, even if he decides to do something as foolish as trying to get back the Infernal Princess.

  Jacob does not move. He remains flat on the stone slab, his gaze fixed on a hairline fracture in the vaulted ceiling. The necrotic rot that had blackened his hands is gone, replaced by the pale, fresh pink of magically accelerated scarring, but the stillness in his limbs feels heavier than any injury.

  Liuthkrav stands at the foot of the bed, his mithril joints shifting with a sound like silk on silk.

  The torchlight ripples across his polished silver surface, highlighting the subtle mimicry of human musculature etched into his metal chest.

  “The silence of the broken is often louder than their cries, Junior Brother,” Liuthkrav says, his voice a resonant chime. He tilts his head—a gesture so human it’s unsettling. “You have been staring at that crack for an hour. If you wish to speak about your pain, please, do not shy from talking to me. Often, I've witnessed Master Rafnov's moments of sadness. And you still passed a Trial, even if you didn't reap its main boon.”

  Jacob doesn't blink and turns to look at Liuthkrav with a frown.

  “It takes time to recover from a betrayal, Junior Brother. Do not fret, just rest. I think it's best if we take this slowly.”

  He must be completely broken for him to react like this. Master Rafnov wept often about his lost friends, but this boy is clearly unable to even process--

  “Liuthkrav,” Jacob calls out, sitting up slowly. The stone bed hums beneath him. “What do you think I'm thinking?”

  “About saving her,” the Mithril Golem sighs. “I imagine you must be tormenting yourself with thoughts of what could have been, of what you could have done.”

  Jacob gets up on his elbows to stare at him, then he smiles.

  “Get the Crucible ready,” Jacob says, getting up smoothly from the bed, with not one worry on his face. Jacob's feet hit the cold floor with a solid thud.

  “Junior Brother Cloud, are you sure? It's a very taxing process. You must already be devastated. Why not wait?”

  “Liuthkrav, don't get me wrong,” Jacob says, looking at the Mithril Golem. “I regret what Iskara chose to be.”

  Jacob looks around, walking with determination toward the large needles of the crucible that would need to be inserted inside his body.

  “What's the meaning of that, Junior Brother Cloud?” Liuthkrav frowns. He did not expect those kind of words.

  “That wasn't Iskara,” Jacob says, his fingers tracing the cold iron of the nearest needle. “She made a choice, Liuthkrav. She looked at the Champions, at us, and decided we weren't enough. She decided she had to become a monster to survive.”

  “Junior Brother, I... do not understand. What do you--”

  “She made a choice,” Jacob interrupts, his voice dropping, losing its casual edge. He turns, and for the first time, Liuthkrav sees the full measure of the look in his eyes. “She thinks she is now scary because she looks like a monster. Because she embraced Asmodeus.”

  It's neither grief nor softness.

  There's only fury and coldness in Jacob's gaze.

  “I’m not going to save her, Liuthkrav,” Jacob says. “I'll show her what scary really means.”

  He looks directly at the Golem, and the hunger in his eyes is almost scary.

  “She and that Infernal who convinced she had to become a monster to survive...” Jacob grabs another giant needle and hands it to the Mithril Golem. “I'm going to find them, and when I do...” Jacob has fury painted all over his face. “And I will kill them both.”

  Liuthkrav is speechless.

  Jacob looks at the giant needles all around him, hanging from wires of metal, then back at Liuthkrav with a dark, mirthless smile.

  “Start the process.”

  “Junior Brother...”

  She thinks that becoming a monster is going to be enough, that she had to betray a friend, to run away from the Champions--the same people that would have fought for her--that she had to shed all her will to become that?! She thinks that that power makes her the apex predator?! That stripping away your humanity makes you better?!”

  “Junior Brother Cloud, I--”

  “Fine. Let her believe that.”

  Jacob takes a deep breath.

  “Liuthkrav,” he says. “I won't make your Master mistakes, nor mine. But now, start the process. I'll integrate the three drops of Star Metal, and then I'll go back. They're coming to show everyone how scary monsters are, how much better than Champions they are supposed to be. But the moment they step into the arena...”

  Jacob stares straight ahead, his gaze piercing through the stone walls of the lab, fixing on a distant, burning horizon.

  “They are coming to the arena to show the world what monsters can do,” he says. “So I’m going to be there and show them what happens to monsters.”