Chapter 168: Chapter 168: The Confession Court Breaks II
Maeve caught the pattern the second he said it out loud.
She stepped in close to the next booth over and pressed two fingers against the wood, and a thin gold line burned across the inside of the frame, marking it.
[MAEVE CALLAHAN — HEXLIGHT BRAND]
[CONFESSION BOOTH ANCHOR EXPOSED]
James was already moving a body toward it.
He kicked a fallen Penitent into the glowing frame and triggered it before Seraphine could turn to stop him.
[JAMES GANNER — CORPSE EXPLOSION]
[CONFESSION BOOTH ANCHOR DESTROYED]
BOOM.
The booth blew apart from the inside. The chain wrapped around Declan’s ribs went slack all at once and dropped to the floor dead. The Ironwall officer’s footing steadied under him.
Seraphine staggered, one hand going to her own chest like something inside her had just been struck.
They had found the way to win.
She understood it at the same moment James did.
Her eyes went from the smoking wreck of the booth to James, and her priority changed in the space of a breath. She was no longer trying to overpower a group. She was trying to reach the one person taking her room apart before he finished the job.
She broke away from Declan.
Camillia stepped into the lane before Seraphine could cross it, blade raised, and Seraphine’s face twisted at the sight of it — the thing she still could not command standing between her and what she wanted.
She struck anyway.
From there the fight turned into something closer to a demolition than a battle.
Maeve marked a second anchor and James put a Necro Blast into it before Seraphine could reach the wreckage to stop him.
[JAMES GANNER — NECRO BLAST]
[SECOND CONFESSION ANCHOR DESTROYED]
The wolf ripped a Wraith bodily out of a third booth and the whisper it had been feeding into the support’s hands cut off mid-word. The Python crushed a line of chain flat under its coils, and the support burned a cleanse on the Ironwall officer half a second before a chain could drag him fully into an open door.
Declan kept Seraphine pinned to the center of the room through all of it, bleeding from his side, refusing to give ground even when she opened a second shallow cut across his forearm.
Every booth that came apart made the next one easier to reach.
Seraphine made her turned Wraith and wolf pay for it.
A chain whipped out of the last standing row of booths and caught the wolf across the ribs mid-lunge, and the impact threw it into a wall hard enough to crack the stone.
[CONTRACTED UNDEAD DAMAGED]
[CONTRACT FEEDBACK DETECTED]
[JAMES GANNER — MENTAL STRAIN INCREASED]
James flinched like the hit had landed behind his own ribs, his vision swimming white for a second, and he kept his hand raised anyway because the fight didn’t stop for it. The Python took a claw strike across its side a moment later, and the same jolt ran through him a second time, sharper.
Summons weren’t free. They never had been.
He fought through it because stopping cost more than the pain did.
Two anchors left.
The rest of the booths lay in wreckage around the court, splintered wood and dead chain-links scattered across the red stone. What was left of the standing rows burned with the same black-red light that had first opened the confessions, unstable now, flickering.
Seraphine’s veil hung in ruins off one shoulder. Blood ran from the cut at her side and the one on her lip, and the calm religious stillness she’d walked in with was entirely gone. What was left was raw and furious and cornered.
The group wasn’t clean either. Declan was bleeding from two places. The Ironwall officer’s breath came ragged. Maeve’s mana had thinned enough that her Radiant Field flickered at the edges when she called it. The support’s hands still weren’t fully steady. James’s skull throbbed behind his eyes from the double contract strain, sharp with every heartbeat.
Nobody in the room had this cheap.
Seraphine abandoned the room and came straight for James one more time.
She crossed the broken court in the same blur she’d used before, the same speed that had nearly reached his throat the first time.
This time James didn’t freeze.
He’d already set the board. The Python’s coil was already moving into her path before she finished crossing half the distance. Camillia’s blade was already rising into the angle she’d have to take. Declan was already turning, already closing from the side instead of chasing from behind.
The Python caught her ankle mid-stride. Camillia’s sword opened a line across her guard before she could correct for the snag. Declan met her dead center with his shield and his full weight, driving her back a full stride into the ruin of the nearest booth.
He hadn’t been fast enough to stop her the first time.
This time, James had made sure he didn’t need to be alone.
Maeve marked the last anchor while Declan and Camillia held Seraphine pinned between them for the three seconds it needed.
[MAEVE CALLAHAN — HEXLIGHT BRAND]
[FINAL CONFESSION ANCHOR EXPOSED]
James kicked the last corpse into the glowing frame and detonated it.
[JAMES GANNER — CORPSE EXPLOSION]
[FINAL CONFESSION ANCHOR DESTROYED]
[COURT EFFECT COLLAPSING]
BOOM.
Every remaining chain in the room fell dead at once, hitting the stone in a long clattering wave. The last standing booth doors cracked apart down their centers. The Wraiths that hadn’t already been torn out lost their shape entirely, sinking back into black smoke that thinned and vanished.
Seraphine had nowhere left to reset to.
Without the room behind her, she was still fast. She had nowhere to put that speed.
Declan pinned her forward motion with his shield. Camillia’s blade opened her guard down the middle. The Python’s coil held her back leg long enough for the shot to matter.
James raised his hand.
[JAMES GANNER — NECRO BLAST]
Not a new power. The same one he’d opened the fight with.
The black bolt went through the gap Camillia’s cut had left, straight into the center of her exposed chest.
[SERAPHINE — HP: 6,900/54,000 → 0/54,000]
[SERAPHINE — BRIDE OF CONFESSION SLAIN]
[OUTER COURT SEAL: TWO OF FOUR BROKEN]
[REMAINING BRIDES: 2]
She came apart into red-gold light and drifting black feathers, the last of the chain-wreckage dissolving to ash around the edges of the court along with her.
Nobody celebrated.
Declan lowered his shield slow, breathing hard, blood still running from his side. The Ironwall officer sat down hard against a wall that no longer had a booth in it. Maeve let her field drop and closed her eyes for one full second before opening them again. The support finally stopped shaking.
James stood with black energy still fading off his fingers, the strain behind his eyes easing back down a degree, Camillia silent at his shoulder and the wolf limping back to stand near the Python.
Two Brides. One each.
The red stone beneath them cracked and began sinking away, the broken confession booths dropping through the floor one by one, the walls opening into a dark passage beyond.
Nobody had time to feel it before the System spoke again.
[RAID NOTICE]
[LOWER CHAPEL GROUP — CRITICAL STATUS]
Maeve’s face changed.
James looked at the words hanging in the air, and understood, with no time left to sit with it, that somewhere else in this ruined city, another group of theirs was already losing.
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