Chap 174: Convergence
The Leaks burst forth from the forest in a sudden, violent surge.
They were monsters in every sense—towering, horse-like legs pounding into the swampy ground, splashing fountains of water with each stride. Their sheer size dwarfed the defenders. A scream split the storm as one Leak snatched a Vergant woman fleeing the trees. She was crushed in its fist, bones snapping like twigs, before the creature opened its gaping maw, jagged teeth descending toward her head.
Zod and Saeda reacted instantly, twin bursts of energy colliding with the Leak’s skull. The explosion sprayed gore across the rain. Kie conjured an energy construct midair, catching the falling woman before she hit the mud. The beast collapsed headless, crashing into the treeline.
Miko flash-stepped, cradling the limp Vergant in her arms before darting back. Tee, however, froze. Her breath caught as she met the creature’s black-filled eyes. The sight dredged up everything she wanted to forget—Lilith’s prophecy, Sade’s twisted devotion, the reflection of her own darkness staring back.
For a moment, the battlefield faded, and only memory remained.
The rescued woman was conscious but barely, her Ether energy drained, body too weak to weave sorcery. Around them, more Leaks pushed out of the forest—towering forms like living streetlamps, spines of bone jutting skyward in grotesque mohawks. Their hides were slick purple fur, gleaming wet, their limbs too many and too strong. Each movement was punctuated by the click-click of shifting bones, the air tainted with a metallic odor that cut even through the rain.
Then one of them began to glow. A sick light bloomed in its abdomen before erupting outward in a torrent of fire.
“Go!” Miko shouted, clutching the Vergant as she dashed away in a blur.
The blast tore through the downpour, heat so intense it hissed as raindrops evaporated into steam. The Sentinels barely scattered in time, silhouettes leaping through smoke and fire.
Tee spun midair, her blade a silver crescent. She severed a Leak’s head clean off, but its dying breath sent a blast into a building, stone shrapnel showering the streets.
By the time Miko returned, some of the creatures had already broken past the village edge. The Sentinels scrambled upward—onto rooftops, energy platforms, anything for height. Swords clashed against claws, Kie’s Ultramana blade gleaming with his will alone. The battle stretched across the flooded village, civilians screaming, defenders adding torrents of water-sorcery to push the beasts back.
Tee’s eyes caught movement—a Leak prowling toward a group of Vergants disappearing into a concrete passage. But it wasn’t charging. It was sniffing. Testing. Searching.
Then Tee understood. The defenders had crafted an illusion from the rain itself—a water wall glistening like a mirror, hiding the escapees. Her Absolute vision cut through it, revealing the people silently vanishing through teleportation gates.
The moment the last vanished, the wall collapsed. Tee’s blade whirled, slicing through two Leaks at once, their blood spattering the flood before their bodies toppled, demolishing homes in their fall.
High above, Miko’s voice rang from their telecoms. “They’re retreating! Back to the forest!”
Retreat? That chilled Tee more than their charge. She remembered the swarm—the millions of flying Leaks from the Veil. But the current creatures had to run, lumbering on their legs. Which meant the rift had been open long enough to send an army through. A whole legion could be waiting beyond those trees.
Her stomach turned.
Kie’s voice cut through. “Rendezvous at my coordinates. Now.”
When they regrouped, seven Vergants stood in waiting. Among them, one robed in deep crimson stirred a flicker of recognition within Tee. Their leader confirmed what they feared. The rift could be closed, but only with time, and only if they were protected.
Saeda spoke quickly. “One of us should escort them. Tee—if you can recreate that invisibility you used before, you’d be the best choice.”
Tee’s heart dropped. “I never sparked invisibility. I lied.”
The silence that followed cut like a blade. Tee’s lie about sparking invisibility unraveled at the very moment it might have proven useful. The truth hung in the air, heavy and accusing, dredging up memories she had prayed her comrades would forget. A liar—that was all she was.
“…Fine,” Kie said at last. “Saeda, you go.”
Saeda regretted opening her mouth.
Zod stepped forward. “I’m going too.” His grin betrayed his excitement to see a rift. “No one should go alone.”
Kie bristled. “We need manpower here.”
But Zod had already walked off. “Half-leader, remember? Technically, I don’t have to listen.”
“Everyone is practically gone by now,” Saeda added.
Before the argument could deepen, glass shattered. A child’s scream echoed from a broken window. A small Vergant stared down, wide-eyed, trapped.
“Almost,” Saeda muttered grimly.
The mission shifted again. The team scattered, Kie barking orders to clear the last survivors before the real fight began.
And as Tee leapt back into the fray, rain on her face, blood in the water, and fire searing the air, Kie caught one last glimpse of her. She no longer carried that hollow look. No longer the girl beaten down by doubt.
He almost felt relieved. And he hated himself for it.
The creatures began to retreat, their colossal frames pulling back toward the forest. But Tee and her comrades refused to allow it. Too many lives had already been claimed, too much blood spilled into the rain-swollen earth. They would not let the Leaks vanish into the shadows without paying for it.
Tee unleashed her power without restraint. Darkness poured from her in thick waves, and it felt intoxicating—raw, exhilarating, alive. She blasted torrents of shadow, the energy burning like molten night.
She carved the air with wide arcs, hurling blades of dark mana that cleaved heads from monstrous shoulders. Shadows slithered around her, darting across the ground to coil about the creatures’ legs like living ropes, then yanked them down into the mud where her blade finished them.
Miko moved beside her, striking clean and precise, cutting through a Leak’s leg so it buckled. But before it could rise again, Tee materialized a scythe of pure black light and swung, severing its head with ruthless finality.
Miko hesitated. For a heartbeat, she simply watched Tee. There was joy in her strikes—too much joy. A hunger in the way she fought. Miko preferred restraint, always searching for another way, but against the Leaks there was none. Those creatures weren’t retreating to safety. They had chosen to stay, to terrorize the village, to slaughter. And so they cut them down.
Tee wasn’t just killing. Her shadows seemed to know her intent before she moved, forming as if her very will alone was enough. They lifted collapsed rubble, clearing paths for fleeing villagers, as easily as they shredded flesh.
Her senses sharpened to a painful edge. Even through the rain’s constant hammer, she heard cries inside a half-collapsed building. She sprinted toward it, shadows propelling her. Inside, she found not stragglers in fear, but a crowd of Vergants stubbornly refusing to leave. They stacked scrolls, instruments, and glowing shards into bags while an elder barked orders.
“We cannot abandon our calculations! My life’s work will not be lost to rain and beasts!” he thundered, arms piled with documents.
Tee froze. They’re packing? People were dying in the streets, blood soaking into the floodwater, and there they were…packing.
Then the roof split apart. A colossal warhammer of fused bone and molten sinew crashed through the ceiling, splintering stone and wood. Screams filled the chamber.
Tee reacted on instinct, spreading a massive dark barrier above them. The hammer slammed into it, force reverberating through her entire body. Her boots cracked the floor beneath her, shadows writhing at her feet. Her eyes bled black, her fangs lengthened.
That Leak had chosen the wrong Sentinel.
It barged through the wreckage, warhammer clutched in clawed hands. Its face was plated in bone armor, the molten-white seams glowing faintly as rain sizzled on its body. Its belly pulsed with growing light, readying another fire-blast.
The ceiling had been ripped wide open. The storm howled in.
“Run!” Tee roared. The Vergants bolted for the back door as the Leak’s belly flared.
Tee split her jaw unnaturally wide and screamed. A sonic wave ripped the air, colliding with the monster’s fire and scattering it into steam. Before it recovered, she summoned twin swords of darkness, each cloaked in smoking mana, and with a whipping strike sent a wave of power so sharp it tore the Leak’s head clean from its shoulders.
Its corpse collapsed in a quake, sending water flooding deeper into the chamber.
The Vergants scrambled, flinging pitiful shards of ice at the remaining Leaks that pushed through the breach. But the monsters’ heat boiled their attacks to nothing, steam rising like ghosts in the storm.
Tee’s swords flashed again and again, cutting them down, while her constructs propped up the collapsing ceiling, holding the stone aloft so the civilians could escape without being crushed.
But when the Vergants looked back at her, it was not with gratitude. They saw her blackened eyes, the fangs, the shadows dancing hungrily about her frame.
“What in the heavens…?” one whispered.
“The Doomed One,” another gasped.
“The Destroyer.”
The words struck like knives. They had heard the stories—of a Sentinel cursed, fated to ruin.
A woman’s shrill cry cut through the storm. “Jeremiah!”
Tee’s head whipped around, following her arm pointing to the flood. A boy no older than eight struggled, his leg pinned beneath a vine beneath the water’s surface. From the trees, a half-crippled Leak crawled toward him, its lower body shredded but its hunger undiminished.
Tee leapt, soaring through rain and thunder. The creature lunged at her, maw opening wide, but her swords lashed outward. A surge of dark power erupted, tearing it apart and shoving its twitching carcass aside. She landed with a splash, water rippling outward.
The boy squeezed his eyes shut, trembling. Tee crouched and touched his shoulder gently.
He opened his eyes. And saw her. The black, bottomless pits where eyes should be. The fiery orange ember burning at their center.
His scream pierced her chest. “Monster!” He tore free and fled, legs thrashing through the water.
Tee’s gaze dropped to her reflection in the puddle at her feet. Her breath caught. Her eyes were no longer hers. Black veins webbed up her throat, crawling across her cheeks like corruption made flesh. The curse mark had spread.
She staggered, gasping. The boy’s words rang louder in her head than any Leak’s roar. Monster.
Severin’s warning echoed through memory: You do not belong to that side.
She ran after him, desperate to explain, to undo the terror in his eyes. But she froze when another figure intercepted him.
Kie.
He caught the boy in his arms, kneeling low. “Easy, easy. You’re safe,” he whispered, voice steady though his heart clenched. The child buried his face in Kie’s neck, trembling.
It struck Kie like lightning—memories of himself as a boy, running terrified from the orphanage into a world that offered no safety. The night of global curfew, the fear of the dark, the loneliness. He had been that child once, until a MG official found him and carried him to shelter. That was the night he swore he would never let another suffer as he had.
Tears blurred his vision as the boy’s mother came sprinting, robes clutched to her knees as she ran. The child broke from his arms and fell into hers. Kie looked away, blinking fast, grief hitting sharp. His mother was gone.
Meanwhile, Zod and Saeda moved through the treetops with a small group of Vergants, their pace slowed to keep their allies close. They pressed toward the rift, hidden by leaves until they saw it—and the sight froze them cold.
The Leaks had made camp.
Dozens milled about the rift’s mouth. They sharpened bone-blades on stone, hammered crude helmets, and lashed shelters together from trees. It was organized. Intentional. And worse—on the other side of the rift, a massive eye peered through. A single eye the size of a house, unblinking, hungering to enter.
The Leaks weren’t retreating. They were preparing. For war.
Tee caught Saeda’s voice crackling through the telecom.
“We found the rift… we’re heading back to report.”
Those were the last coherent words before her instincts screamed danger.
“Saeda!” Zod’s voice tore through the storm.
Saeda vaulted from her branch, narrowly avoiding a fireball streaking toward her. It slammed into the trunk behind her, shattering bark with a hiss as the rain steamed it away.
Perched on another branch, Saeda froze, wide-eyed. Looking down, the truth hit her: they had been spotted.
Crap.
Back at the village, Kie’s voice rang through the comms. “Miko, Tee—rendezvous in the forest. Now.”
The three Sentinels summoned their weapons—Miko’s blade glowing bright azure, Tee’s wrapped in smoking shadow, and Kie’s Ultramana sword gleaming with crystalline fire. They leapt toward the trees where Zod, Saeda, and the Vergants were under assault.
The real battle had begun.
The Vergants hurled icy spears, but the Leaks’ armor steamed them away. Blasts of fire lit the forest mouth in flashes of hellish orange.
Then the Vergant in the crimson hood stepped forward, glyphs burning around his hand. With a cry, he unleashed a wave of force that tore outward, scattering rain and Leaks alike. Monsters toppled into the mud, roaring. The Sentinels shielded themselves in energy orbs, bracing against the backlash.
“You!” Zod shouted. “Do that again!”
The hooded Vergant’s voice rang out, clear despite the storm. “My name is Beth-Aven. And no—it would be unwise. I must preserve my Ether if I am to close the rift.”
Another Vergant tried to approach the rift itself, but stepped too close. The eye blinked once—and a beam of pure annihilation shot forth, vaporizing him to ash.
The Sentinels froze. The storm raged.
And the weight of what stood before them sank in.
Tee, Miko, and Kie pressed deeper into the forest, their breaths coming in ragged gasps, adrenaline propelling them forward. The storm above hammered the canopy, rain slapping leaves and branches, and every step on the moss-covered earth seemed to echo like a drumbeat.
They reached the clearing just in time to witness sheer terror unfold. Across the gaping rift, the enormous, unblinking eye of the monster vaporized a Vergant instantly. The following explosion of flesh and light sent a shockwave through the mud-soaked ground, forcing the trio to stagger back to keep their balance.
There was no time to process the horror before the Leaks began clawing themselves upright from the muck, their grotesque forms twisting with unnatural speed. Beth-Aven’s wave of Ether energy had barely registered before it faded, powerless against the relentless tide.
Even worse, the massive eye shifted aside with a slow, deliberate movement, allowing a new swarm of Leaks to pour through the rift. Every creature they felled seemed to summon another in its place, as if some cruel will animated them, an unending tide of terror.
Each step they took sent ripples through the blood-stained water, the rain blending into crimson streaks that crawled over the mud. The Sentinels fought desperately, hacking and slicing, casting energy constructs, and hurling waves of raw power—but for every Leak that fell, two more advanced.
The Vergants were helpless without conserving their Ether. If they exhausted it, the rift would remain open, and more horrors would spill into the world.
Weary muscles screamed and hearts pounded in unison. Then a scream cut through the storm, sharp and piercing, causing all Sentinels to freeze momentarily. Some Leaks had escaped into the village, terrorizing those who remained.
Mud, water, and blood churned underfoot. It was impossible. Every choice felt like a death sentence, every second a gamble. Tee’s mind raced, her heart thundering in her chest. The storm, the screams, the splashes of mud and blood—it all seemed amplified, as if the forest itself held its breath, watching.
Kie’s thoughts flicked to a vision from the future—Tee, wielding a radiant white wave of Ether energy that had frozen monsters mid-attack. If he could get her to channel even a fraction of that power now, they might turn the tide, protect the Vergants, and finally close the rift. But how could he convince her?
Amid the chaos of severed limbs, shattered bones, and the relentless flailing of monstrous forms, Kie fought back-to-back with Tee, hacking and slashing with precise energy constructs. He tried to speak over the storm and the growls of the Leaks, trying to make her understand. But she stared at him, wide-eyed, utterly bewildered.
“You need to control those things,” he said, voice urgent, ignoring the dark markings crawling up her neck and the black, bottomless voids of her eyes. “Just like you did… once.”
Tee shook her head violently. “I’ve never done anything like that!” Her hands emitted smoky black tendrils of dark energy, twisting and slithering like living shadows. “All I can control is my dark side. I’m not—”
“Fine,” Kie cut in, letting his sword vanish as streams of blue Ultramana energy crackled and coiled around his hands. With a swift motion, he formed a shimmering orb of energy that encased them both. “You’re the dark, I’m the light. Together… maybe we can do this. Darkness and Light.”
Tee stepped back, uncertainty and fear clear in her stance. “What if I mutate? What if you get hurt?”
“You won’t,” Kie said firmly, stepping closer. “You’ve been fighting it your whole life. Besides… there’s a death list you’ve got to finish, right?”
The orb they stood beneath shuddered under the relentless assault of the Leaks, cracks spiderwebbing across its surface. Kie’s eyes glowed a piercing blue as he summoned a smaller, concentrated energy sphere around them, forcing them closer, containing their power and shielding them from the attacks.
“How do you know this will work?” Tee spat, her voice trembling with panic. “It never fuses when I fight the Harbingers. Let’s call the Commander—”
“Stop talking,” Kie snapped, cupping her face in his hands, his eyes locking with hers. “You’re going to make it work.”
Her heart skipped a beat at the closeness, memories of them—his touch, the warmth, the impossibly intimate moments. She swallowed hard, gripping his hands tightly, willing the power to flow through her. For the mission. For anyone who could be saved. For him… …and the possibility that her teammates might finally see her as not entirely bad in their eyes.
The dark energy from Tee and the blue Ultramana from Kie swirled violently around them, twisting upward like twin storms before merging into a blinding column of white Ether energy. Tee felt a serenity she had never known, a stillness amidst the chaos. Every sound—the storm, the screaming, the clamor of combat—diminished into silence at the center of the fusion.
Nearby, the Vergants fell to their knees in awe, mouths agape. The Leaks, sensing the sheer power, froze mid-stride, their eyes glowing pure white. Drawn as if by gravity, they stepped into the fusion. Flesh and bone disintegrated in a luminous blaze, transported across the Veil, leaving only the static, silent rift behind.
Zod acted immediately, blasting at the massive eye still peering through the rift, making it recoil violently. The Vergants, working together in awe-inspiring coordination, began weaving threads of light, stitching the torn fabric of reality back together as if repairing a gash in the world itself.
Amid the aftermath, Tee’s mind wandered briefly, recalling Kie’s earlier words about Xeno-victims. The thought of what could have been—a “normal” life, if she wasn’t a victim of the Xenogene—made her Ultramana flare uncontrollably.
Her dark side surged in response, striking out violently against the soothing white light. The clash of energies seared through her body, sending waves of pain that forced her out of the fusion, hurling her to the muddy forest floor.
The column of light dissipated, leaving Kie on his knees, exhausted, but alive. Tee lay unconscious, black markings crawling across her skin like ink bleeding into her flesh. Kie immediately summoned a protective energy orb around her, shielding her from the remaining Leaks, who skulked at the edges, uncertain, as the last remnants of the storm-lashed monsters were handled by Zod, Miko, and Saeda.
The Vergants stared in both awe and terror, their whispers barely audible over the rain. Miko refused to step closer.
“Is she…?” Zod asked, voice tight.
Saeda said nothing, eyes wide with unspoken fear.
A scream erupted from within Tee, an inner scream that clawed at her sanity. Her eyes shot open, pupils blackened and swirling with dark energy, and she realized she had been dreaming—but the nightmare was not over.
The room she found herself in was ancient, with wide, round windows open to the forest. Green vines crept through the openings, brushing against the stone walls and letting the wind carry whispers of the outside chaos.
Tee rose slowly from the bed, only to stop in horror. Her arms, once familiar, were veined with black markings that twisted and writhed as if alive. Panic set in, her throat constricting, making each breath a struggle. She trembled violently, the memory of the little boy fleeing from her searing her mind, echoing words she could not silence: Selfish. Liar. No care.
From the shadows, Elder Menrith, the elder in the purple hood, appeared, his voice grave and resonant.
“Thy dark side doth grow. Ere long, it shall—”
“Fine!” Tee snapped, voice sharp, cutting through the tension. “I’ll get the Balance Seal.”