Chapter 165: Chapter 165: The Father’s Blade II
Marcus moved before the healing finished closing.
He crossed the gap while the wing was still half-knitted and drove the sword into the joint a second time, the same spot, before the bone had finished setting.
[MARCUS HALE — SKILL: SWORD ART — LEVEL BREAK]
[CRITICAL TARGET: LEFT WING JOINT]
[DAMAGE: 5,200]
[VESPERA — HP: 40,000/58,000 → 34,800/58,000]
[LEFT WING: SEVERED]
The blade went through bone, through the red thread still half-rebuilding it, through black membrane, and the wing came free in one motion and hit the floor behind her, dragging a line of blood across the broken stone.
Vespera screamed.
It was the first sound out of her that had not been chosen.
She was still beautiful. The elegance was gone.
Silver hair stuck flat to her bloodied face. One side of her back ended in a raw stump leaking red thread instead of feathers. Her tail cracked against the stone hard enough to put a fracture line through it, and she used the hit to steady herself, because her balance had been built around two wings and now there was only one.
Her smile had stopped being a performance.
Marcus was already closing on her again.
She did not retreat clean this time. She stumbled the first step, the missing wing throwing her weight wrong, and caught herself with the tail and came at him in a single vicious lunge instead of the controlled, patient thing she had been before.
The blood from the severed wing was still on the floor, and it moved.
Thread rose up out of the spilled blood like wire pulled taut, and it caught Marcus’s sword wrist mid-swing and held it for half a second.
[VESPERA — BLOOD THREAD BIND]
[MARCUS HALE — MOVEMENT RESTRICTED]
Half a second was enough.
She lunged into the opening and her claws raked across his chest, through the plate, into the muscle underneath.
[VESPERA — BLOOD CLAW]
[MARCUS HALE — HP: 12,200/16,800 → 8,300/16,800]
Marcus took the hit without a sound.
In the portrait hall, the last of the red mark cracked off Finn’s throat in a fine grey ash, falling away in flakes onto his collar.
[BRIDAL CURSE: POSSESSION TAX — PURIFIED]
[FINN HALE — EXP GAIN RESTORED]
[EXP PENALTY: 50% → 0%]
[STATUS: CLEANSED]
Finn dragged in one full breath, the first since her hand had closed around his throat, air filling his chest the whole way for the first time.
He looked toward the gap in the wall.
Marcus was on one knee for half a second, blood running down his chest in three long lines, and then he was up again, already moving.
Finn’s hands closed around his axe haft.
He did not move toward the gap. Not yet. He understood, watching, that there was nothing he could add to what was happening on the other side of that wall.
Marcus did not pull his wrist free of the thread.
He stepped forward instead, into it, letting the bind cut deeper into his skin as he closed the last of the gap, because pulling back cost him a second and stepping in cost him only blood.
[MARCUS HALE — CONTINUOUS STRIKE]
[DAMAGE: 3,400]
[DAMAGE: 3,700]
[VESPERA — HP: 34,800/58,000 → 27,700/58,000]
The thread tore at his wrist as he drove the blade into her side once, then again, the wound at his chest still bleeding freely down his front.
Vespera staggered back, off-balance without the second wing to correct her weight, and reached for the portraits behind her — for distance, for one more thread aimed at the gap in the wall.
Marcus cut the hand off at the wrist before the thread could leave her fingers.
[MARCUS HALE — SWORD ART: LEVEL BREAK]
[CRITICAL HIT]
[VESPERA — HP: 27,700/58,000 → 19,200/58,000]
[RIGHT ARM: SEVERED]
He had taken her wing. He had taken her threads. He had taken the hand that reached for his son.
There was one thing left.
She attacked with everything that remained.
Her tail cracked the floor where he had been standing a half-second earlier. Her remaining claws raked across his raised guard, and the stump where her wing had been left a smear of red thread wherever it brushed the wall.
Marcus stepped inside the range of all of it and kept cutting.
[MARCUS HALE — CONTINUOUS STRIKE]
[DAMAGE: 4,100]
[DAMAGE: 4,600]
[VESPERA — HP: 19,200/58,000 → 10,500/58,000]
She was falling apart and still trying to kill him, claws and tail and stump all moving at once, every piece of her still fighting.
Marcus drove the final blow through her chest.
[MARCUS HALE — SKILL: SWORD ART — LEVEL BREAK]
[EXECUTION CONDITION MET]
[DAMAGE: 10,500]
[VESPERA — HP: 10,500/58,000 → 0/58,000]
The blade went through her and into the cracked wall behind her, pinning her there. Her mouth opened. Her lips shaped a name that started with the sound of an A, half-formed, never finished.
Marcus twisted the blade once.
The rest of the word never came.
[VESPERA — BRIDE OF POSSESSION SLAIN]
[BRIDAL CURSE SOURCE DESTROYED]
[ALL POSSESSION EFFECTS PURGED]
Her body came apart into red ash and black feathers, drifting down through the broken stone and settling over the rubble. The severed wing on the floor crumbled the same way, falling into nothing.
Marcus pulled the sword free and stood over the place where she had been, breathing hard, blood running down his chest, his wrist, the knuckles of the hand he’d used to break the wall open.
He did not turn around yet.
The System opened in front of him.
[BRIDE OF POSSESSION DEFEATED]
[OUTER COURT SEAL: BROKEN]
[INNER COURT ACCESS: UNLOCKED]
Deeper inside the ruined chamber, past where Vespera’s body had fallen, a second door ground open in the stone, dark on the other side of it.
From somewhere beyond that door, Alice laughed.
It was a soft sound, almost pleased, almost fond — the sound of someone who had been listening the whole time.
Marcus finally turned back toward the hole in the wall.
Finn was still standing in the portrait hall, alive, the axe in his hands, watching him.
Marcus looked past him at the new door, and at the dark waiting on the other side of it.
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