Willem watched as the withered, mummified form of Faith stepped out of the city walls, the shadows swirling and coalescing around him. There was a sudden pulse, like the echo of a heartbeat, and the skal poured into the man like a tide, surging into his flesh and rippling under his skin. They seemed to transfer vitality and life into the walking corpse; Willem watched as skin smoothed and hair grew lustrous, muscle swelling and veins bulging on the surface.

There was a terrible pressure that surged out of Faith’s body, a sheer presence that seemed to ripple through the very air and press down on Willem’s flesh like a mountain. It was a weight that made every motion an effort, that made him strain to even breathe. It pulsed like a heartbeat, thudding against his ears, and Willem strained with bloodshot eyes to see the air behind Faith shimmer and ripple. Like the image of a giant cast onto the clouds, an expanse of air the size of Meshira itself seemed to twist and distort. There was a faint image carved into that space that towered over them all, seeming vaguely like a man but devoid of features and terrifyingly empty.

“Atal…” Kha whispered, the demon’s voice trembling with a mixture of horror and disgusted reverence. This pressure, this presence, this mind-numbing strength—this was no longer Faith. This was a god.

Atal hardly seemed to react to the others that were watching, his black, pupil-less eyes instead focused entirely on Joy. With a lazy wave of his hand, skal suddenly flew out of his fingertips like so many strands of silk, spiraling out into the air like so many ribbons. They coiled and danced in a strange parody of mahji, tasting the air like serpent tongues before diving at the legion with a blur of motion.

Willem opened his mouth to shout, only for the god’s presence to slam into him like a wall. The air was suddenly crushed out of his lungs, his vision flashing white as he abruptly fell to his knees. He could barely notice out of the corner of his eyes as much the same happened to the legion, shields and swords clattering to the ground in a cascade of steel as they collapsed in seizing fits. Willem felt his heart skip a beat in terror, his mind going blank as he was helpless to stop what came next.

The skal took advantage of the situation immediately, diving at the men—yet not at their flesh, but rather sinking into their shadows. Willem watched, horrified, as the legionaries’ shadows sprang up seemingly of their own accord, a grotesque mirror of the flesh. The shadow-soldiers lunged at their counterparts, wrapping around the screaming men with a hiss of steam and crackling ice where they touched. Then, tendrils of black shadow wormed their way under the skin, burying themselves into the veins and blood.

Willem could only watch as that black crept through the legion’s flesh, turning their veins into night, swallowing their eyes with black. Their screams slowly withered away, giving out until they were little more than rattling gasps. One by one, the men collapsed motionless to the ground. Then, slowly, the rose up with an awful uncertainty, their movement jerky and clumsy as the skal grew accustomed to controlling their new puppets.

An army of men—gone, in an instant.

That’s not fair, Willem wanted to cry out, tears streaming unbeknownst down his face as he struggled not to laugh incredulously. They had families. They had friends. And they were so—so damned close. “It’s not fair…” he managed to gasp out raggedly, before struggling to his feet, feeling like he was carrying the weight of the world on his back.

“Brother,” Atal spoke once more, his voice like the rasping winds blowing over desert sands—emotionless, timeless, eternal. “Will you come down? Will you face me?” At those words, Willem felt a force like a tugging in his chest, as if some great unseen hand was tugging at his soul, trying to rip it out of his chest. He coughed up a mouthful of blood and bile, struggling to stand. But the battlefield was silent as no response came.

Atal waited only for a moment before letting out a snarl. His face contorted into a horrifying visage, those blackened eyes flickering with infinite cruelty as he raised his hand to the sky before pulling it down in a yanking motion.

A sudden pillar of brilliant light slammed out of the ground, crashing straight on top of Joy with an explosion of dust and force. The air around the demon rippled, the wind surging outward with wall of force. Joy let out a ragged howl before dropping to all fours, and Willem felt another immense presence weigh down on his mind. His psyche struggled to remain conscious, his vision growing blurry just from being in the presence of two gods as Ajah was called down from the heavens.

Yet the possessed men did not seem to suffer any of the effects, letting out a keening, animalistic howl before charging at Willem and the few other demons. They did not touch their swords and shields, their hands instead covered with swirling shadow that lengthened into sharp claws as they ran. Their eyes were without humanity, their expressions feral as they bore down on him.

Kha was not moving as the skal-puppets approached, and Willem could barely muster up the strength to move. The other demons were no luckier, able to get out much more than a strained scream before the possessed legionaries pounced on them with a swarm. Willem watched as the three other demons fell, small flickers of flame licking out of their jaws before the pile of men tore into their flesh.

And then the remainder of the swarm was coming for him.

Panicked and struggling to fight through the shackles that fell around his mind, he instinctively reached out for the last strands of mahji that lay in the pit of his stomach. There was little—too little for any spell—but he reached out for it nevertheless. In the back of his mind, he remembered that wild feeling when he had fought in the night a week before, when he had burned magic and soul to fuel flame for his claws. Once more, he reached out for his spirit, only in this instant, it was not fire that he sought after.

Instead, in this moment of panic and instinct, Willem searched for the form that came to him first—wind.

With a roar of desperation, he felt the vahma inside of him tear away like ripping parchment in half, a massive chunk vaporizing into the smoke and ash that streamed out of his eyes and mouth. But out of his claws came a billowing gale, a tempest that slammed into the swarming legion with unstoppable fury.

Away, he cried out with a nonfunctional tongue, to hell with all of you! The soulwind was happy to comply with his wishes, tearing through armor and limbs alike with invisible teeth before scattering the remains across the plains. Willem collapsed to the ground almost immediately, feeling the raw buzz of power that coursed through his veins like a drug. His mind was euphoric, his thoughts fleeting as he struggled to maintain a grasp on reality.

Yet he could clearly feel that divine pressure only grow, feel blood trickle out of his nose and his ears pop with cracks of pain. He looked up with strained eyes, managing to watch as the pillar of light above Joy shifted and rippled until it too took the form of a man. Similar in size to Atal, the humanoid figure featureless and expressionless as it slowly rose up from a kneel.

As it did so, a glorious radiance seemed to spill out, soothing and gentle as it flushed over the land. Where it touched, the earth crackled and hissed before slowly bleeding into white, into a pure surface that was utterly devoid of shadow. Pace by pace, that aura of light spread out from Joy until it encompassed half of the battlefield, of the arena.

Yet Atal did not even seem to notice as a few wriggling tendrils of skal were caught by the light, their shapeless forms letting out screeching hisses before disappearing into trailing smoke. Instead, the god merely gazed impassively at his fellow counterpart before something in his visage wriggled. Like a worm, like a tear, it snuck across his expansive, featureless image. It was a moment before Willem realized, disconcertingly, horrifyingly, that it was a smile.

“Once more, we meet, Brother.”