AutumnXd
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CHAPTER 65
🕑 Added 2025-06-30 15:38:29 +0000 UTCThe bright moon hung high in the sky, a silent, indifferent observer. Its quiet moonlight spilled through the tall, stained-glass windows of an old church in London, casting long, skeletal shadows that filled every corner with a deep and profound darkness. The silence inside was not peaceful; it was a heavy, oppressive blanket, thick with an ancient dread. In the darkness, it felt as though a great beast, one that devoured people, was holding its breath, waiting.
At that moment, a bright, nervous circle of light appeared at the top of a grand stone staircase, followed by the sound of soft, hesitant footsteps that echoed with an unnatural clarity against the cold stone. A priest, his body hunched with apprehension, descended slowly, the cross hanging on his chest glinting in the beam of the flashlight he held. A step behind him followed a nun in a simple white habit, her face pale with fear, her hand clutching the back of his cassock. They moved cautiously toward the main prayer hall.
Suddenly, the nun gasped, her hand flying to her mouth to stifle a scream. Her eyes were wide with horror, fixed on something just ahead.
In the trembling beam of the flashlight, it sat upon the altar. A human head, freshly flayed, the muscle and sinew still glistening wetly. The eye sockets were empty, dark pits of blackness. The priest, his own blood turning to ice in his veins, was momentarily paralyzed by the grotesque sight. He fumbled with the cross on his chest, raising it before him like a shield. Its familiar weight gave him a sliver of confidence. He had to see. He had to know.
"Don't go…" the nun begged, her voice a choked whisper, her fingers digging into his arm.
"It's alright," the priest whispered back, his voice shaky. "Jesus will bless us. He will protect us." He patted her hand comfortingly, then gently broke free from her grasp. He continued his approach, the flashlight beam cutting a nervous path through the gloom. As he walked in, the gruesome details of the flayed skull became clearer, the blood vessels a terrible, intricate web.
Kacha… kacha…
A crisp, wet, bone-cracking sound suddenly echoed from behind him in the silent church. The priest froze, every muscle in his body locking up. He felt something… wrong. As if the air itself had grown colder, heavier. Feeling an indescribable dread, he turned around with a stiff, robotic motion.
The nun was suspended in the air, held aloft by some unseen force. Her body was limp. But her head… her head was simply gone.
A cold terror, so pure and absolute it felt like a physical thing, shot up the priest's spine and exploded in his brain. His hair stood on end. In the faint moonlight filtering through the windows, a blood-red demon had quietly appeared behind the nun's headless body. It was chewing something, its claws tearing at the flesh of the corpse it held, a thick, dark liquid dripping from the corner of its mouth.
"Ahhh!!!!" A raw, primal scream tore from the priest's throat. Fear seized complete control of his body. He turned and ran, his mind a white-hot blank of pure terror.
The demon didn't seem to care. It continued its grisly meal, grabbing more food from the body in front of it and stuffing it into its mouth.
The priest ran, his heart hammering against his ribs. He burst through a door into a small bedroom, slammed it shut, and in a panic, ran to the closet, yanking the door open to hide. But just as he was about to step inside, a primal fear of enclosed spaces made him reconsider. He turned, his eyes darting around the room, and scrambled toward the bed, diving beneath the heavy quilt.
After the demon had its fill, it wandered lazily through the church, its senses seeking out the priest's location. Squeak… The sound of the bedroom door being pushed open was terrifyingly clear in the quiet space. The priest, hidden under the bed, clenched his fists, held his breath, and prayed, not daring to move a muscle.
Thud. The demon's heavy footsteps crossed the room. CRASH! The wardrobe was punched clean through, splinters of wood flying everywhere. But there were only some old nun's clothes and underwear inside. The demon was not disappointed. It smiled a cruel, knowing smile. It turned, and its footsteps began to walk away, leaving the room.
The footsteps outside gradually disappeared. The priest waited, his heart pounding, for what felt like an eternity. After about ten minutes, his frantic heartbeat began to calm. He couldn't help himself. He had to know if it was gone. He carefully, slowly, lifted a corner of the quilt.
A pair of teasing, blood-red eyeballs were staring directly at him, inches from his own face. The priest's heart suddenly stopped beating.
But at that exact moment, a blur of red and blue crashed through the bedroom wall like a cannonball, slamming into the demon and sending it flying out of the room. The entire building seemed to shake from the force of the blow. A blood-red figure, wreathed in a faint blue energy, landed in the center of the room.
The demon tumbled into the ruins of the main hall, a long stretch mark carved into the stone floor where it had skidded to a halt. The cracked wall behind it testified to the immense power of the blow. Before the dazed demon could even regain its senses, the red shadow rushed in front of it, picked up the handle of a huge hammer that seemed to materialize on its chest, and swung it high into the air. The shadow of the moonlight was eclipsed by the massive figure of the attacker.
BANG! The hammer slammed onto the ground, and the entire church seemed to tremble. At the last possible second, the demon rolled, the hammer missing it by inches and cratering the stone floor.
"You dodged? Let's try that again!" the red figure's voice, metallic and amused, echoed in the hall. It didn't lift the hammer; it swept it sideways. This time, the demon was not so lucky. The hammer connected with a sickening crunch, sending the creature flying across the room.
The church became a demolition site. Pews splintered into firewood. Stained-glass windows shattered into a rain of colored jewels. The ground cracked and buckled under the repeated, brutal impacts. The demon, its head in a state of chaos from the first blow, never had a chance to retaliate. It tried to run, but a whip of scarlet chains shot out from the attacker's arm, ensnaring it. It was hit by the hammer again, and again, flying around the church like a rag doll until its breath gradually weakened, and it finally fell silent.
A man in a dark, hooded robe walked in through the main church door at that moment. He stopped, taking in the scene of utter devastation. He then hurried in the direction of the fight. When he arrived, the corners of his eyes twitched fiercely. A red-armored figure was standing over the demon, wielding a hammer bigger than a man, and was still hammering the corpse into the ground, ruthlessly. With every blow, the surroundings trembled.
"He should be dead by now," Kaecilius said, lifting his hood and reminding the figure in a low voice, looking at the horrifying state of the demon embedded in the floor.
"Ah? Is he dead?" Aidan, who was wielding the hammer, stopped mid-swing when he heard the voice.
"Definitely dead," Kaecilius said with certainty, stepping forward to look at the pulpy mess.
"Okay," Aidan replied. "I thought demons were supposed to have strong vitality, that they weren't so easy to kill." He dispersed the magic attached to the hammer he now held on his shoulder. With a low hum and a flash of intricate, glowing runes, the hammer that was bigger than a person shrank at a speed visible to the naked eye, until it became a pocket-sized, ornate bronze hammer.
From the outside, it looked ancient, with intricate magical patterns engraved on its surface. The World-Forger's Maul, a magical relic Aidan had acquired from the Kamar-Taj treasure house. He had been a little dissatisfied when the hammer had chosen him; he had wanted a gorgeous holy sword or a cool, flowing cloak, not something so… blunt. But after the feel of the fight just now, he had to admit, it was quite useful.
As a blacksmith, he thought, it makes sense to have a hammer.
The demon, he mused, had died an aggrieved death. This person had come in with two hammers, hadn't allowed it to say a single word, and hadn't fought with any sense of honor at all.
Comments
KingSpy25i .
Honor is for the righteous and sadly he it's neither one or the other. Thank you for the amazing chapter 🙏
